Secular and Mystical Spirituality

In this episode I review two significant - even seminal - books: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Both books convey a message of our need to recover a relationship with Nature by drawing inspiration from how organisms work (in Merlin's case fungi) and to go beyond a reductionist approach outwardly manifest in ecocidal destruction in the name of growth. Here is what Robin says that we all need to remember in terms of ‘original instructions’: land is a gift not a commodity, we have kinship with all forms of life, flourishing is mutual, everything is relationship, gratitude is the currency of life, offerings are made with reverence, leadership is rooted in service and wisdom, gardening is a partnership, take only what is given, invest in abundance, unlearn hurrying, sit in circles of stillness, listen deeply. So listen and be inspired!

In this episode I review three books concerned with the human-machine interface in relation to consciousness and spirituality. Kingsley Dennis and James Tunney are well-versed in the implications of the advent of technocracy as a form of social control and engineering. This view is underpinned by exclusively materialistic and mechanistic philosophy that sees humans as hackable animals to be manipulated and controlled for commercial gain and political hegemony. As Jung indicated over 60 years ago, the individual is the cultural carrier of moral and spiritual life, so it is now crucial to affirm the ontological primacy of soul and spirit as we do in our Call for a Renaissance of the Human Spirit on www.galileocommission.org

In this episode I review three books discussing our evolutionary potential and the collective choices we need to make in order to co-create a flourishing, regenerative and genuinely sustainable future. First, Choosing Earth by Duane Elgin (see www.choosingearth.org), then The Call to Uniite, edited by Tim Shriver and Tom Rosshirt. Finally, Our Moment of Choice, edited by Robert Aktinson, Kurt Johnson and Deborah Moldow. They make for challenging reading but do give reasons for hope if we can manage a radical change of course and reorientation.

In this episode I review two highly significant new volumes on a post-materialist science of consciousness - Is Conscious Primary? sponsored by the Academy for the Advancement of Post-Materialist Sciences (www.aapsglobal.net) and Consciousness Unbound, emanating from the Esalen Institute and the Department of Perceptual Sciences at the University of Virginia. Both books provide persuasive evidence and cogent arguments (and the first some accounts of personal experiences) to challenge the dominant scientific materialism that cannot adequately account for such evidence, choosing instead to ignore or dismiss it - without realising its congruence with quantum physics.

In this episode I review two books about the marginalisation and return of gnosis. The first is a masterpiece by classical scholar Peter Kingsley – Catafalque – subtitled ‘Carl Jung and the End of Humanity’ about the inner decay of Western culture that has lost touch with its primordial roots. The second – The Gnosric New Age – by Rice University scholar Prof April DeConick describes how a countercultural spirituality and way of knowing has acted as a transgressive but creative impulse for spiritual renewal. 

In this episode I review three books on health and healing – the first an extraordinary autobiographical account by Dr Erica Elliot about her time with the Navajo – Medicine and Miracles in the High Desert. Then a book by Maria and Istvan Sagi entitled Healing with Information building on the work of Erich Korbler and advancing the field of vibrational medicine. Finally, another autobiographical account of Janet Edwards healing journey through the cancer minefield – Choosing to Heal. Each of these books contains powerful messages about our capacity to heal ourselves.

This episode reviews two significant books giving wider historical and philosophical understandings of technology and technological patterns of thinking. The first is The Metaphysics of Technology by David Skribina and the second In the Shadow of the Machine by Jeremy Naydler, who has recently published a sequel entitled The Struggle for a Human Future. The key question is: what does it mean to be human? And in our time I regard it essential to reaffirm our spiritual nature and the validity of spiritual experience giving us deeper insights into the nature of reality.

In this episode I review an important book published in 2012 - Global Awakening, by Michael Schacker. This follows on from a webinar last week with Dr Jim Garrison of Humanity Rising where he spoke of the need for regenerative, not simply sustainable development. He echoes the call by Sir David Attenborough in his recent 'witness statement' A Life on our Planet' for the restoration of the biodiversity that we as the human species have destroyed. The book sets out a roadmap for the necessary Regeneration Revolution as an evolutionary imperative for future human flourishing in the biosphere we share with the whole of life.

In this episode I review a magisterial biography of Hesse by Gunnar Decker, discussing Hesse's influence on my life and my communication of his message to my pupils at Winchester College in the 1980s. Themes include beginnings and endings, nationalism and internationalism, and the spiritual quest as an inner journey home. Then I read a wonderful short essay on the wisdom of trees in terms of stillness and endurance: "home is within you or home is nowhere at all."

In this episode I review two books on spirituality, the first, Secular Spirituality, by Harald Walach, and the second, Belonging to God, by Will Keepin. Both books are important contributions to the field of science and spirituality with an emphasis on inner experience as a means of accessing other levels of reality, as one sees for instance in near-death experiences. Harald's book provides a lot of historical background, with fascinating insights into Roger Bacon, while Will draws of 35 years of spiritual practice while referring to classic mystical texts in a number of traditions.