Andrew Cohen the man behind WIE and self proclaimed Spiritual Guru was in Israel last September on some kind of teaching tour. During his visit he took some time out to participate in an interesting interview which discussed among other things, Israel and what Cohen refers to as “Evolutionary Spirituality“.

I’ve known of Andrew Cohen and his work for about six or seven years thanks to a friend who talked me into buying an issue of his What Is Enlightenment magazine. Coincidentally (or maybe not, who knows) that issue also turned me on to Don Beck and Spiral Dynamics which is something I’m hugely interested in but that’s a topic for another post.

While I’m off-topic I might as well mention that Ken Wilber also recently did an interview (phone) with a journalist from Israel. I meant to post about it while Tamara was here but to be honest several of his comments aggravated me so much I decided not to bother for the time being. Let’s just say that I didn’t feel he came off all that “Integrally Informed” about Judaism and I basically figured that if I didn’t have anything positive to say, I might as well not say anything at all. However maybe I can come back to it later on this week and try tying it into this post. Who knows?

Okay let’s try to get back on track with this here post…

At least on the surface much of Cohen’s Evolutionary Enlightenment shtick resonates with me and I believe that many aspects of his Evolutionary Spirituality are quite compatible with Judaism, at least the more liberal/progressive expressions of it. However many things about the man and the way he personally manifests in the world just doesn’t work for me. I suppose there are several reasons for my cautiousness about him but they aren’t relevant to this post, so I won’t bother going into them. For me the bottom line is that Andrew Cohen is right on the mark about a few things which are IMO both important and worthy of exploration. I don’t have to accept him as enlightened or as my spiritual teacher in order to benefit from his views, so I see no need to throw the guru out with the bath water.

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This weekend as I have previously mentioned was pretty intense and was dotted with several of those ah-ha kind of moments, which is a nice thing. To borrow Carl Jung’s term it was a synchronicity filled weekend to say the least.

Having said that maybe I’m just neurotic and delusional but what the hell that can be fun too.

It all started by watching the entire Joseph Campbell series “The Power of Myth” as well as the first episode of a BBC mini-series entitled “What We Still Don’t Know” featuring Sir Martin Reese. Both are excellent and I highly recommend checking them out if you have the time.

Both Campbell and Reese in their documentaries seemed to clearly be making the point that there is a commonality which occurs within both biological evolution and human myth creation. Let me just clarify by saying that neither of them were drawing the comparison between biological evolution and mythological creation. In the case of Reese his documentary discussed how “Convergence Theory” occurs within biological evolution and in Campbell’s documentary he discussed how there is almost always a common theme contained in all religious myth.

I’m the one suggesting the parallel between what’s going on in biological evolution and what apparently occurs in mythological development.

The term used to describe this phenomenon is Convergence Theory which according to Wikipedia is defined as the following.

In evolutionary biology, convergent evolution is the process whereby organisms not closely related, independently evolve similar traits as a result of having to adapt to similar environments or ecological niches.

In cultural evolution, convergent evolution is the development of similar cultural adaptations to similar environmental conditions by different peoples with different ancestral cultures.

So basically my ah-ha moment, which I openly admit as being hugely assumptive and poorly researched on my part goes something like this.

Although one generally argues that genetic evolution is based on random mutations and random responses to environmental factors, it would seem that there is a consistent potentiality at least some of the time for independent and largely unrelated organisms, to adapt to their environments in exactly the same way or a bare minimum a similar fashion. That being the case things may be less random than previously believed.

Also if Joseph Campbell is right in suggesting that the significance and meaning contained within Catholic mythology is ultimately the same as that contained within the mythologies of a small tribe in the Amazon rain forest. One could argue that this is the same sort of thing that’s taking place in evolutionary convergence theory.

So basically at this point I’m beginning to get the sense that there may be an underlying and consistent directive, influencing evolution whether it is biological or social. That regardless of the fact that organisms and cultures have evolved independent and/or isolated from one in other there may be some sort of convergent momentum attempting to push everything towards the same direction and outcome.

This is really all in (at least at this point) the realm of ideas and personal mythology and so obviously I’m not claiming anything as scientific fact. It is however certainly interesting enough to think about and even share with others.

Now add to this another little piece of synchronicity which I received in an e-mail today thanks to Shane of the Educational TV blog. He sent me an excellent New York Times article entitled “Darwin’s God” and although it’s extremely long, well worth the read.

Okay the following does stray away a little bit about the idea of convergence theory but it certainly ties into the idea of saying that religion is part of evolutionary process therefore; this can be seen as further evidence supporting the idea of convergence theory being applied to religion and mythology.

Without going into too much detail the article basically discusses the possibility that religion itself may be something wired into our evolutionary process. That religion may actually play a purposeful evolutionary function.

Like I said it’s a huge article but here are a few quotes which struck me as most interesting and relevant to what I’m discussing in this post.

So trying to explain the adaptiveness of religion means looking for how it might have helped early humans survive and reproduce. As some adaptationists see it, this could have worked on two levels, individual and group. Religion made people feel better, less tormented by thoughts about death, more focused on the future, more willing to take care of themselves. As William James put it, religion filled people with a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life . . . an assurance of safety and a temper of peace and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections.

Such sentiments, some adaptationists say, made the faithful better at finding and storing food, for instance, and helped them attract better mates because of their reputations for morality, obedience and sober living. The advantage might have worked at the group level too, with religious groups outlasting others because they were more cohesive, more likely to contain individuals willing to make sacrifices for the group and more adept at sharing resources and preparing for warfare.

I found the above very interesting and it demonstrates an argument worthy of consideration.

This final quote which I’m going to include is by far my favorite because it ties perfectly to a third little synchronistic piece of the puzzle which I discovered last week. But I’ll get to that after the quote.

The study of evolution is largely the study of trade-offs, Wilson wrote in Darwin’s Cathedral. It might seem disadvantageous, in terms of foraging for sustenance and safety, for someone to favor religious over rationalistic explanations that would point to where the food and danger are. But in some circumstances, he wrote, a symbolic belief system that departs from factual reality fares better. For the individual, it might be more adaptive to have highly sophisticated mental modules for acquiring factual knowledge and for building symbolic belief systems than to have only one or the other, according to Wilson. For the group, it might be that a mixture of hardheaded realists and symbolically minded visionaries is most adaptive and that what seems to be an adversarial relationship between theists and atheists within a community is really a division of cognitive labor that keeps social groups as a whole on an even keel.

Last week I spent a fair amount of time listening to a series of lectures by Karen Armstrong on several topics related to religion. One thing she seemed to keep coming back to was the importance of integrating both logos and mythos any culture or civilization. In fact she more or less suggested that without both of them society was hindered.

It would seem that the above quote supports her position rather well, even backing it up with an example or two.

Anyhow I’ve been working on this post for almost an hour and a half and I have tons of stuff to do so I’m going to need to quickly wrap it up.

I personally like what I’m picking up on this weekend; it seems holistic in very healthy. I’ve maintained for sometime now that science and religion are not mutually exclusive and in fact are the opposite, they need to be mutually inclusive for the overall health of our species. And watching documentaries like the ones mentioned in this post, or reading articles like this brilliant piece by the New York Times it would seem that I’m not the only person who’s moving in this direction, which is all the more reassuring.

So on that note have a nice day and as usual if you read this I would love to know what your thoughts are on the subject.

Technorati tags: Religion, G-D, Evolution, Convergence Theory, Joseph Campbell, Atheism, Theism, Sir Martin Rees, Darwin’s G-D, Integral Theory

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Today I stumbled across a great little find. It’s an online version of a five-part radio series looking at science and religion which aired earlier this year on Public Radio International. I’ve only listened to the first episode so far but I’m very impressed with it. It’s hard to tell just where the series is going to go but I can say that this first episode was really interesting. It focused on science versus religion and I suppose also those who are trying to bridge the schism.

Episode one featured a slew of interesting thinkers from both sides of the debate, including two of my favorites Karen Armstrong and Ken Wilber as well as Richard Dawkins who is a guy that just rubs me the wrong way. Read the rest of this entry »

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For a while now I have had the good fortune to be engaged in a casual dialogue with William of Integral-Options-Café. For those of you who have no idea of who or what I am talking about. William runs a great blog focusing on a variety of topics related to Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics, as seen through his eyes in daily life. It’s a great blog and has been a real help in terms of assisting me in upping my Integral Literacy level.

This week we seem to have formalized our discussion at least in terms of a theme. And it would seem that we are going to look into various aspects of Judaism as a religious (& evolving?) civilization through the perceptual lenses of Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics, which arguably are both part of the same Integral framework.

Neither of us are Jewish scholars or experts and so this obviously wont be academic but IMO will be interesting none the less. Having said that William is IMO very well versed in both Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics, without being locked into either an Orthodox Understanding or fully buying into the Institutional Branding aspects of Integral.

As for myself, I’m no expert on Integral Theory but I have been applying many aspects of it to my schoolwork, specifically in terms of how value based political ideologies influence social policy. I guess that’s to say that I may not be an expert but I am familiar with the subject. And as for Judaism I am by no means a scholar but I’m a Jew by choice, meaning that I certainly had to work hard and study in order to join the tribe. Therefore IMO at a bare minimum I consider myself to be fairly Jewishly literate.

Anyhow one of the things that William asked me to do was help provide some Jewish context for us to work from because he’s not all that well versed in contemporary liberal Jewish thought. So I suggested that a good place to start would be in looking at the CCAR 1999 Statement of Principles as well as the related Commentary on it. Neither of these documents are really definitive in any absolute sense, however I believe they will be sufficient in terms of providing a foundational framework for us to begin our discussion from.

I also suggested that another possible source for providing a framework might be Arthur Green’s book ”Seek My Face - a Jewish Mystical Theology“.

I am now going to suggest two more possible sources which might be valuable in terms of providing a Jewish context for our discussion. The first is a lecture series by Dr. Michael A. Meyer on several topics related to Progressive Judaism. The second also a lecture series this time by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, is more focused on Mystical Theology in what I would call a postmodern context. Both of these audio’s are available in a streaming online format as part of a free trial, so there’s no cost involved. In fact not even a credit card is required just a valid e-mail address and a password.

It’s hard to tell just where this conversation will go but I’m confident that wherever it winds up its going to be interesting and is going to make for some great blogging. Provided that William is okay with it I will hopefully be doing regular updates on the blog regarding our ongoing/evolving dialogue.

Let me end by saying that I’m very excited about the opportunity here in terms of deepening my understanding of Integral Theory as well as my understanding of Judaism and possibly even my own sense of Jewishness.

So stay Tuned.

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