Hi all, there's a lot of interesting stuff here to read. I now understand your views and Hawkins both more deeply, and this conversation has provoked me to explore these things in greater detail than I could have alone.

I would like to share a little about myself. I became involved in the recovery movement shortly after reading Hawkins recommendation and description of 12 step spirituality. The process of turning up, practicing faith, and actually seeking out such knowledge is the intellectual part for me of spirituality; the other part, of course, relates to the body of faith... that is to say, I am pursuaded that I must literally put my body in the way of a spiritual principle, even to the extent of making it so i cannot move on without coming to understand in the social context of fellowship precisely what it is about the spiritual principle that supports human life. Much to my surprise, I have learnt that the acceptance of fallibility and continual action on behalf of my faith in a higher power turns out to be empowering sources of strength.

It has been fascinating to read about the social, political and religious expressions of spiritual principles. Hawkins work has provided new ways for me to visualise and conceptualize spiritual principles. His work also enables me to borrow his comprehensive conceptual framework and use his "map of consciousness" meme to generate insight I simply could not have otherwise had.

I recall the Tim Leary map of consciousness, which provided his hippy congregation with pernicious facts in out of context ways. I remember how impressed I was by Leary's map and how grand it seemed. But the main proof of Hawkins map of consciousness was always intended to provoke experiental and hermeneutic proof, and the map in reality is little more than an encouraging teaching prop. The key differences between Leary's map and Hawkins' is that Hawkins evokes a moral universe with increasing levels of adequateness and comprehension, layered one above the other, each including the levels below it, whereas Leary's does not.

This is key: the levels below enlightenment are included in enlightenment, for instance. But he says that the each level tends to deny the existence of the other levels. Initially I supposed that this discussion revolved around such denial, but very quickly I realized that nondual states are intelligently discussed here. It would seem that intellectualism is included in spirituality. Hawkins downplays the mind because he perceives his main audience will be intellectuals (by his map, calibrating in the 400s), and so he focuses strongly on the nonintellectual spirituality. But he clearly does not exclude it! Instead, he is quite intellectual about it. I have found that the Dalai Lama, who calibrates above reason in the high 500s, to be a remarkably reasonable person in his writing, logically pointing his readers toward the need for compassion.

I guess the question of salvation versus enlightenment is decided experientally, by surrendering to the Divine. What do you think? Is it possible for a Christian to be enlightened, or for Buddhist to be saved, from within their religion? Or are the non-overlapping magisteria, completely different realms of experience?

And also, Phil, I am curious how you see the mind supports faith. Clearly the mind is fallible and limited by its ability to know only ideas/concepts, but also dangerous by its ability to seduce us into pride. It seems as if the mind is most useful when pointing beyond itself, into a hermeneutic cloud of unknowing. So how does the mind support faith in practice, can I ask?

Johnboy your discourse reminds me of a old time Jesuit :-) . What do you mean by the key phrase, "orthopraxis creates orthodoxy"? I notice you use that a lot. I love this talk about a Yankee catholicity... good, pragmatic stuff!

Thanks for responding to my posts and enquiries.

Paul Bard.

We're up to page 9 on this thread and I'll be closing it soon when we come to a good stopping point. There are a few instances when long threads got mangled by the forum software, so I usually close them around page 8 or so. We can start a Part 2, if necessary, as we have on many other topics.

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from Michael: I am great-full to have the opportunity to run this by you, and God knows how long I may have pursued this if I had not run into you. Hawkins is very sharp and not so easily refuted as some others out there.

I'm glad you've been helped by the discussion, Michael. Some of the issues at stake here are indeed on the grey side, but many are not -- at least not when compared to what Christian theology and spirituality are about.

If Hawkins is trying to make a religion out of a new diagnostic tool or method, it would not be the first time someone had gotten carried away.

Right, and not the first time, either, that a teacher has attracted a following of people disgruntled with their Church experiences yet looking for a deep spirituality. That kind of search needs to be respected, even as we disagree with some of the points being made.

Paul, good to see you continuing to engage in the discussion. Thank you for sharing of your journey and struggles as well. It helps to know where you're coming from, and it sounds like you've found Hawkins' teachings personally helpful.

I think it's significant in many ways that Christianity has avoided putting too much stock in a "map of consciousness" kind of teaching on the spiritual life. Oh, we do have teachings on stages, inner rooms, and so forth, but even with regard to those, we haven't emphasized them much. The central issue in Christian spirituality isn't really how conscious one is, but how loving. I know the two go together . . . generally . . .

This is key: the levels below enlightenment are included in enlightenment, for instance. But he says that the each level tends to deny the existence of the other levels.

I would strongly disagree with that on two counts:
a. Enlightenment, at least as understood in Zen and advaitan branches of Hinduism, isn't a "stage" at the end of a process of development. It's a state that is always potentially open to those who meet the requirements for realizing it. This we have discussed at length in other threads. The distinctions between stage and state, here, are essential.
b. It's not true that in a later stage, we deny the earlier -- at least not in the way I've understood and experienced developmental stages. For one thing, there are transitional periods between them when we are experiencing two or more on and off, and so we can easily compare and contrast them.

Initially I supposed that this discussion revolved around such denial, but very quickly I realized that nondual states are intelligently discussed here. It would seem that intellectualism is included in spirituality. Hawkins downplays the mind because he perceives his main audience will be intellectuals (by his map, calibrating in the 400s), and so he focuses strongly on the nonintellectual spirituality.

Trans-rational experiences do not exclude reason; they go beyond them. I think that's the distinction I find missing in the way some of you discuss Hawkins' work. It almost sounds like he's anti-intellectual! Pointing out the limits of the intellect is one thing, denying its value another. Notice that the more Hawkins' readers buy into this anti-intellecutalism, the less inclined they will be to advance an intellectual critique of his work, or to believe that such has any value. We've seen ample evidence of this during the course of this discussion.

And also, Phil, I am curious how you see the mind supports faith. Clearly the mind is fallible and limited by its ability to know only ideas/concepts, but also dangerous by its ability to seduce us into pride. It seems as if the mind is most useful when pointing beyond itself, into a hermeneutic cloud of unknowing. So how does the mind support faith in practice, can I ask?

The mind knows what it knows. To see how this relates to faith, simply ask yourself how far one would progress along a pathway of faith if the mind did not see something of the truth or value of doing so? Consider, too, how the mind informs the will; you won't even choose to exercise your will in a certain direction unless some guidance from the mind is received. Of course, if one abegnates this basic psycho-spiritual dynamic to another person's guidance or to a "method" of some kind, then there isn't much use for the mind, as the other person and/or the method become the primary influence on the will. Rather than this being a liberation from the mind and its supposedly proud and deluded ways, it is a situation of enslavement to the method and/or other person. That's a cult-like situation.

In Christianity, we speak of a renewal of mind through grace (Rm. 12, 1). That's quite different from what I've just described.

On his October 12 broadcast Hawkins stated that he was in practice fro 50 years and has enough to retire on and recieves no income from his work.

He also stated that personal values need not enter into calibrations if you simply hold the question in mind rather than stating it out loud and that he worked this out 25 years ago.

Something he either said or wrote which I'd have to look up has been bothering me. According to Hawkins, Chief Detroit calibrates over 700 and the United States Constitution was modeled after the Iraquoi Nation. I had heard the rumour before but as far as I know it was modeled after Greek and Roman law and the Judeo-Christian tradition.

caritas,

mm <*)))))><

Hi Phil.

I would see enlightenment as neither a stage nor a state, since the enlightened state arises when conceptual thinking has collapsed, apparently.

Hawkins represents his teaching as a path of the nondualistic devotion, a phrase which neatly encapsulates his lack of a stance on many matters, and his devotedly moderate views on others

I agree with you on that we do not deny developemental stages. I expressed myself poorly. In fact we tend to integrate and utilize previous stages in new ways, and as you say there is significant overlap in developemental stages.

But I would suggest we do tend to deny the existence of stages of spiritual growth above ours. For instance, note the cliche of teenagers feeling as if they know more than they do. Or dishonest and disintegrous folk who speak about honesty and integrity, but with little notion of what they are talking about .

So I would suggest that salvation might encapsulated by enlightenment, (in the absence of scientific knowledge this suggestion is just as valid as suggesting tha salvation is distinct and separate from enlightenment). I would suggest that proponents of salvaion tend to deny the validity of the higher state by reducing, compartmentalising, or otherwise messing with the (admittedly slippery) notion of enlightenment.

This is difficult stuff to talk about responsibly! If enlightenment is a complete collapse of categories into a pre-existing (and also non-existing) reality, then there are numerous notorious difficulties regarding the nature of the individual before and after enlightenment, the cultural variance of the experience, and the valid measurement and understanding of claims of enlightenment. So it is a difficult issue and probably a great deal beyond my understanding to parse out. Nevertheless, I would suggest that it is possible that enlightenment is a stage or state that includes salvation with it, as Hawkins seems to suggest.

Furthermore, the heart-centred work of salvation is integrated with the third-eye centred wisdom or vision. Hawkins would probably say that the heart-centered religions are prone to distortions of spiritual truth because of the imbalance to the spiritual eye of wisdom and discernment. That is not to deny that discernment exists in Christian faith, but simply that the focus is more heart-centered and less centered on the mastery of spiritual wisdom as in the many types of buddhism and in advaitism. It will be seen that popular religions of the people develope devotional mass expressions: for instance, Pure Land Buddhism, the devotional worship of Krishna and Rama, and christian worship, are all more heart-centered expressions. Whereas Zen and Mahayana Buddhism and Advaitism express a nondual wisdom which includes and adds a new and incommensurate dimension to the heart of salvation.

You may find interesting Hawkins words on Jesus' mission. Jesus' goal was the purification of the ego sufficiently for it to express God's unconditional love purely and directly through the heart. He said that once one had experienced this joyful communion, then love tended to be self-resolving, assimilating more aspects of the ego into an ecstacy which culminated in an potential entry point to an enlightenment experience. So the difference between salvation and enlightenment is enormous and yet the two may be seen as natural complements and balancers of one another. In reality, I don't think we can "think it through" and the subtlty and complexity of the two notions is beyond us as individuals. I think the two notions will be worked out on a collective level.

Collectively I do not think Christianity and Buddhism are incompatible; rather I think that both religions are full of pride and unwillingness to suffer insult to that collective pride. Christianity masquerades as faux parental figures, with a mother church and a father god infantalizing their obedient charges with weekly exercises in regular breathing and hypnotic singing. Buddhism has a cerebral sactimoniousness and ritual zeal which I cannot help but imagine would be meaningless to that faith's founder, who seems to have been a very simple man. On the other hand, Christianity is very much the heart-based religion, and I see the wellspring of human dignity and freedom in this. But Buddhism seems to represent our wise recognition of fallibility and also our capacity for complete liberation, which are genuine salves to suffering beyond comparison, in areas where Christianity can at best offer only consolations.

A phrase that strikes my mind as almost magical is the notion of a "postmodern reconstruction". Christianity is presently being deconstructed. Feminist and gay-inspired ideologies already infiltrate genuinely moderate forms of Christianity. But the REconstruction of Christianity seems to me to be a premature act... the whole notion of the spiritual may end by being dissected and decided in the scientific arena in coming decades. But I do not claim any grand narrative for Christianity faling or rising or changing in any large way; instead, I would suggest that the intersection of values and collective interactions is likely to cause discontinuities in significance for the great religions, including Islam.

You said:

"I think that's the distinction I find missing in the way some of you discuss Hawkins' work. It almost sounds like he's anti-intellectual! Pointing out the limits of the intellect is one thing, denying its value another. Notice that the more Hawkins' readers buy into this anti-intellecutalism, the less inclined they will be to advance an intellectual critique of his work, or to believe that such has any value. We've seen ample evidence of this during the course of this discussion."

I could not agree more with your words here!

I don't think this discussion will attract many Hawkins devotees. Last week I posted a link to this discussion to a yahoo group about doctor hawkins' teachings. But the moderator did not post the message with the link in it. I can only speculate why she would not post the message to a group of people interested in Hawkins' teachings and in spiritual truth. And I guess that she and the students of Hawkins are unwilling to evaluate criticisms of his work.

Then I sent an email to Dr Hawkins asking about the problems with the methodology of applied kinesiology. One of Doctor Hawkins' people replied. She wrote me that the methodology is accurate for the reason that Doctor Hawkins has been using it for thirty years. I would have prefered to have been spared the blandishments of kind new age ladies and have asked the good Doctor himself.

I can see a strong influence of Mahayanist thinking in Hawkins work, and it might be fair to say that his accession to Christianity is more of a token gesture of inclusion in his paradigm and respect for the teachings of Jesus.

So in the context of the new age movement, Hawkins represents an attempt to fuse psychiatry with a mahayana metaphysics. Psychiatric notions tend to dominate the lower end of the scale (denial, guilt, shame, etc), and at the top, mahayanist then advaitist notions predominate (allness, unity etc).

But where is Christianity in all this? He manages to squeeze it in the middle at 540 as Unconditional Love. And by adopting the frankly not-very-Christian Course In Miracles view, he can gently massage a nondualistic form of salvation into the schema without too much bother.

I think it might be better to revise the map while holding a different context in mind - say, Christianity. On the other hand, it is instructive that both Jesus and Buddha were concerned with the spiritual growth of their charges, and reflection on the map is definitely able to trigger a deeper engagement with the total human experience, even if it is only through the bias of Hawkins himself.

Warm regards,

Paul Bard.

Paul, thanks for your post above. Lots to think about, there. I'm especially inclined to agree with your assessment of Hawkins' work as a kind of synthesis of psychiatry/mahayana metaphysics. This explains the presumption of viewing the "ascent" in terms of increasing non-duality.

A few comments. . .

You wrote: Hawkins would probably say that the heart-centered religions are prone to distortions of spiritual truth because of the imbalance to the spiritual eye of wisdom and discernment. That is not to deny that discernment exists in Christian faith, but simply that the focus is more heart-centered and less centered on the mastery of spiritual wisdom as in the many types of buddhism and in advaitism.

I would tend to agree, but only with regard to the level of "popular devotion." At the level of "official teaching," Christianity on the whole has its head on straight. The dogmatic tradition of Catholicism, in particular, expresses a deep wisdom, affirming ontological duality, unity, salvation and even what we call natural beatitude -- which has many parallels with teachings on enlightenment.

Christianity is presently being deconstructed. Feminist and gay-inspired ideologies already infiltrate genuinely moderate forms of Christianity. But the REconstruction of Christianity seems to me to be a premature act... the whole notion of the spiritual may end by being dissected and decided in the scientific arena in coming decades. But I do not claim any grand narrative for Christianity faling or rising or changing in any large way; instead, I would suggest that the intersection of values and collective interactions is likely to cause discontinuities in significance for the great religions, including Islam.

You could well be right. OTOH, there is a sense is which Christianity, in its core message, just cannot and will not change. Neither will any of the great religions, for that matter. How they interface with the modern/postmodern world is another matter, however.

Paul, since you are more familiar than I am with Hawkins teaching, how do you regard his view of human nature with respect to God. Is he a monist, for example? That would help to explain the trajectory of his map?

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10483a.htm

Yes, I believe he is a monist, as he has taught The
Course in Miracles, Ramana Maharshi classes and is presently boning up on Greek philosophy. mm <*))))><

Well, that explains a lot, Michael. There's a variety of monists, but they all tend to emphasize an apophatic spirituality of enlightenment/realization, holding that the Ego and our sense of individual existence is an illusion.

Christian theology, otoh, is dualistic (God and a creature are different beings) and makes no apologies for being so. Even in God we affirm the existence of multiple beings who share one nature. Hence, the operative spiritual paradigm in Christianity is relationality, with kataphatic approaches finding affirmation and apophatic ones emphasizing volitional rather than ontological union.

We might also note, here, that monists have a serious problem when it comes to accounting for evil. Either they must hold God complicit or deny its existence. We've seen evidence of this dilemma on this thread.

I am closing this thread as it's quite long and, as mentioned above, the forum softward has mangled very long threads in the past.

I'll open another thread on this topic and we can proceed.