A New Being

WIE: At times you’ve characterized agape or “creative love” as a future-seeking or, could we say, evolutionary movement, the intention of which, as you’ve put it, “is to bring something new into being.”

Bruteau: It is a will to being —it’s the ultimate energy of God, if you want to call it that. This intention to share being is agape. And it is central, it is original, it is Source. When you discover it, you discover that you are that —that the most “self” thing that you are is that. This is what people find when they have what’s called Self-realization. And it’s an energy that has no limit. The central or True Self that is the truth of our being is continuous with the Divine Source of all reality. And that, of course, is intended toward the future —it is future-oriented, and it is the intention that there should be more being because its own nature is the gift of being. It gives itself to every being. It is its pleasure to give itself, to expand and radiate. It is our participation in the “glory of God” that “fills the whole world.”

This is how we, as individuals, doing our spiritual practices, coming to our Self-realization, to our enlightenment, make possible the next step in human evolution, which is to say, cosmic evolution, which is God’s Self-manifestation. The hidden Godness in us comes forth and shows itself for what it is and rejoices in the truth of its Being.

WIE: In your view of the next evo­lutionary step, you emphasize the importance of the collective or human community. Why is the nature and formation of this collective so significant?

Bruteau: Because the collective is an integrative operation. You see, the collective is the medium by which the oneness both is made out of the diversity and protects the diversity and transcends the particular diversity that composes it. This is a kind of leapfrog by which evolution always moves. So a molecule is a kind of community. A cell is a kind of community. Molecules are communities of atoms, cells are communities of molecules, and so on. Now, we’re following this same pattern that evolution seems to have followed, which is unite in order to create. The new human community will be some kind of an entity, some kind of a Being. Just as the organism is a collective of molecules and the molecule is a collective of atoms. So if you can get human beings to share their characteristic human energy —which is agape, knowledge, concern, creativity, inventiveness, and all the other kinds of strictly human energies that we have —all that interchange of energies binds us together into a community. And when the whole community experiences and practices this kind of love, the crisscrossing energies form a net, and the net is the New Being that can do what the individuals that it is composed of could not do.

WIE: In your writings, you elaborate on the role of integration and differentiation —two central elements of both scientific and spiritual evolutionary theory. We’ve spoken quite a lot about the process of integration, but could you say more about the role and value of differentiation in the creation of this new order, or what you just called the “New Being”?

Bruteau: Yes. Diversity is absolutely essential to the unity of the composed being. The more diversity, the better. It means the greater the variety of the relations and interactions among the composing entities, the more intricate the composed unity. Think of a painting with fifty different shades of color rather than one made with only three. Or think of an orchestra with fifty different instruments instead of a single instrument —the different players interact with one another, increasing the being of the whole, the richness, the beauty. Each time cosmic evolution makes another Great Step, the diversity within the New Being and the diversity of the interactions of the new whole with its new peers is vastly increased. It’s like adding another dimension; how much more there is to a volume of space compared with just a surface!

Complex Nondualism

WIE: Many Eastern traditions describe the pinnacle of human potential as the realization of nonduality. Is the union you are speaking about analogous to this definition of enlightenment?

Bruteau: Yes, but it’s a nondualism that doesn’t reduce to a monism. That is to say, our personal energies do not merge or become submerged in some amorphous whole. We do not acquire a kind of oceanic sense of being swallowed up in a great All. Quite the contrary: subjectively, it feels rather like an intensification of individuality —Self-consciousness or Self-realization. Perhaps we might call it “complex nondualism.”

WIE: Do you think that some philosophies of nondualism might be antithetical to an evolutionary perspective? For example, the traditional Eastern definition of enlightenment is final cessation, or the end of all becoming. What is the relationship between enlightenment, as it’s traditionally conceived, and your view of spiritual awakening as the foundation for an evolutionary progression toward ever-higher expressions of integration?

Bruteau: The answer to that brings together two things I’ve been speaking about. When you find the I AM in the center of your self, that’s the cessation part. And having found it, you discover that its intention is toward becoming, and that’s the evolution part.

WIE: So could the traditional definition of enlightenment as the end of becoming actually be an obstacle to the realization of our evolutionary potential?

Bruteau: If we really think that that’s the final goal and there’s nothing beyond it, then it might be.

WIE: A lot of spiritual teachers do think that way. We often hear it said that when you wake up, you realize that this world is only an illusion and therefore nothing of this world matters!

Bruteau: Oh yes, I know. But if you really wake up, you should discover from the experience itself that it is not the end. In fact, I believe it was the Indian philosopher and sage Sri Aurobindo who said that Shankara told only half the story. Traditional Vedanta says that this world is really Brahman, or the Absolute, but it appears as Maya, or illusion. Now where Aurobindo felt that Shankara had stopped short was that Shankara did not pursue this and say, “Well, what Brahman is doing is manifesting as world. And that means that the world is holy and the world needs to be encouraged to manifest further.” What we’re looking at is the creative activity of the Brahman. There is the Absolute, and the Absolute manifests itself in terms of the relative. Both the relative and the Absolute are real. Both the Infinite and the finite are real. You are a miniature of the same structure. The deep Self in you is the Absolute, the Infinite, the Eternal, the Divine, and it’s manifesting as the particular human being that you’re embodied as, at the present time. So I would say there are two poles. There is a mystical pole, which is what Shankara invites us to, and then there is the creative pole, which is this whole evolutionary movement.

WIE: So would you say that a view that recognized only the validity of “Being” and not of “Becoming” would be an incom­plete view?

Bruteau: I would say that a nondualism that eventually rejects or escapes the whole domain of manifestation deprives the process of its own intrinsic value. Complex nondualism urges that we do not need to reject the manifest phase in order to perfect the unmanifest phase. Rather, the desired position is to rest in the Unmanifest and express in the Manifest, not alternately but simultaneously and by mutual implication. The Unmanifest, being of the nature of agape, necessarily radiates Being, thus expressing as Manifest. And the Manifest, realizing its deep nature as the expression of the Unmanifest, experiences itself as That. Our evolution in consciousness is aimed at this complex Self-realization and enlightenment. Our spiritual practices are to bring us to that realization.

What Is Going On

WIE: Do you see a final culmination, or as Teilhard would have put it, an Omega point, at the end of the evolutionary trajectory?

Bruteau: I tend to go along with the idea of an expanding universe; I don’t have an Omega. I don’t think there’s a final end point; I think it’s a song that goes on singing. We don’t sing the song in order to come to the end of it. The divine Self-expression isn’t trying to complete itself. We impose that idea because we generally do things with some kind of a defined goal, but here we’re doing something with the Infinite, and so it doesn’t have a limited or defined goal for itself. It’s trying to express the Infinite in the various media of finitude. I would say that life attains its goal —it becomes what it is supposed to be, fulfills itself —precisely by never coming to an end. If it ever did come to an end in which there was no more novelty, there would be no more life; it would be dead.

So you see, it is very important that we participate in this because this is What Is Going On. This is reality. We respond to it initially on the individual level because that is where we are presently experiencing ourselves. And we all must do it because we all exist, and no one can be left out. Everyone is absolutely essential and infinitely precious. Since the process of forming the next Great Step in evolution, which is the manifestation of the Infinite One, requires that we ourselves voluntarily, consciously, and intentionally do the interactions that will constitute the energy exchanges that make the New Being, we each and all have the honor and the responsibility for living and creating the expression of God as world.

Every little thing counts because everything is real and is part of the picture. Nothing escapes; nothing is on the side. Everything is making its difference to the whole. No one is ever outside the God-process. But it goes only where we go with it. It doesn’t force us; we are the movers from the inside. So it won’t go forward unless we move it forward. That is why we are all so important. We cannot wait for the world to turn, for the times to change that we may change with them, for the revolution to come and carry us round in its new course. No more will the evolutionary forces of nature propel us in their groping way through the next critical point into a new state of Being. From now on, if we are to have any future, we must create that future ourselves. We ourselves are the future and we are the revolution.

Interview by Amy Edelstein and Ellen Daly

This article was underwritten by the Trust for the Meditation Process, a charitable foundation supporting contemplative practice among Christians and encouraging dialogue and cooperation among all contemplative traditions.