One of the things any good hard scientist can't stand
is when spiritual people start talking about the soul. Just put
yourself in their shoes for a moment. What is it? Where is it?
Show me the data. It just smacks of anti-empiricism. Give a
little space for a soul and the next thing you know, someone
will start trying to save yours. And it's not just the soul,
it's all of those esoteric religious words that point to
something nonphysical, immaterial, ineffable,
transcendent—you know, words like God, emptiness, the
Absolute, the Beyond, the timeless, enlightenment . . .
Enlightenment? Well, wait a minute, not so fast. Enlightenment,
traditionally considered to be the highest goal of the spiritual
life, is actually undergoing a change in our contemporary
culture, and the guys in lab coats are beginning to take an
interest in this mystical ideal. That's right—put away
The Power of Now, stop watching your breath, break out
of that downward-dog pose, and pay attention. There is a new
movement under way in the culture, a new philosophical/spiritual
strain that is a powerful and seductive mix of modern science,
postmodern philosophy, and Asian mysticism. And it is starting
to catch the attention of an intelligentsia curious about
matters spiritual but long suspicious of any new paradigm not
grounded in a rational, scientific, and empirical view of the
world. Celestine Prophecy, move over. This is a new
spiritual anti-theology that even intellectuals can love. We
could call it “enlightenment
unplugged”—unplugged from its religious, spiritual,
and moral roots and repackaged for secular, individualistic
culture. With a little backup from biology and brain science and
some inspiration from evolution, hosts of new theorists are
discarding all nonessential baggage—ritual, belief,
devotion, morality, even God—and trying to get at the core
of the individual enlightenment experience.
So what really is going on here? Are we witnessing the birth
of a new era of spiritual development, finally discovering a
vision of enlightenment truly fit for life in our
twenty-first-century global society? Or are these new purveyors
of enlightenment missing the point entirely, merely subjecting
the mystery of consciousness to the limited perspective of the
microscope, taking God out of the picture, pandering to a
materialistic culture that wants spiritual sustenance with no
strings attached?
Last summer, when an advance copy of The Next
Enlightenment: Integrating East and West in a New Vision of
Human Evolution by Walter Truett Anderson showed up on our
doorstep, it became clear to us that the concept of
enlightenment was indeed breaking into new territory, and that
the question that adorns the cover of our magazine was being
asked by a broader cross-section of the culture than ever
before. In the offices of What Is Enlightenment?, the
book turned some heads. Here was a broad, rational, and
inclusive new spiritual vision that was leaving tradition far
behind. Here was an intriguing enlightenment philosophy that was
incorporating insights from psychology, cosmological evolution,
and cognitive science—many of which we have long
championed in the pages of this magazine. Here was a book that
seemed at first glance to reject traditional religion, reject
much of contemporary spirituality, but at the same time embrace
the mystical dimension of the spiritual life. In a world filled
with enlightenment paradigms either stuck in the strictures of
ancient traditions or languishing in the I'm-okay-you're-okay,
be-here-now world of self-help spirituality, Anderson's book was
a step forward, and his work seemed representative of this
emerging philosophical movement in the culture. Moreover, it
raised a crucial question. Could these new theorists deliver a
genuinely workable spiritual vision for our globalizing world?
And even more importantly, could they do it without falling too
far under the spell of a contemporary intellectual ethos that
has little understanding of, or appreciation for, the ways of
the spirit?
MODERN ENLIGHTENMENT
Even the fact that a book by Walter Truett Anderson should
address the question of enlightenment says something quite
important. A longtime chronicler of the philosophical trends at
the leading edge of culture, Anderson's reputation as a
journalist with a unique sensitivity to the ebbs and flows of
modern life is well established. With a bio that is both
impressively eclectic and simply impressive, he has tracked the
emerging edge of human thought in the last decades with books
ranging from The Upstart Spring, his look at the saga
of the Esalen Institute, to Evolution Isn't What It Used to
Be, a wide-ranging journey through the new worlds of
evolutionary science, to Reality Isn't What It Used to
Be, an introduction to postmodern thinking. He holds PhD's
in both political science and social psychology, and has not
just observed California's human potential gold rush but
participated deeply in it—going so far as to lead his own
encounter groups in the late sixties and early seventies.
Anderson begins The Next Enlightenment, his tenth
book, by describing a new “enlightenment project,”
as he calls it, emerging in our culture, and he walks the reader
through the basic elements of this new project. This endeavor,
he tells us, is just now coming into focus, and it will need to
draw upon a wide array of humanity's scientific and spiritual
knowledge, East and West. It will need to build on the
achievements of the European thought of the past few centuries
and incorporate a number of recent developments in science and
psychology that Anderson feels are crucial to understanding
where the notion of enlightenment is currently headed. In a book
that follows the bouncing ballpoint of his pen through
cosmology, history, psychology, biology, existentialism, the
human potential movement, religious tradition, and back once
again to enlightenment, it's understandable that he wants to set
a big context at the outset. Indeed, Anderson's enlightenment
project will need, as he puts it, “enough breadth of
vision to encompass both the core concepts of the Asian
enlightenment traditions and the rational/scientific heritage of
the European Enlightenment.” While the Asian enlightenment
traditions do get fair mention in Anderson's work, the European
Enlightenment is clearly where his deeper loyalties lie.
Anderson is truly a child of the scientific age and feels little
philosophical obligation to the religious traditions of our
past. “I want to explore in these pages,” he writes,
“a view of enlightenment that is illuminated by science
and rooted in the rational traditions of Western thought.”
Perhaps the most exciting result of this new illumination by
science is Anderson's incorporation of the cosmological sweep of
our evolutionary heritage into his enlightenment project. In
fact, he feels that the terms “enlightenment
project” and “evolutionary project” are
interchangeable. “Enlightenment,” he writes at the
outset of the book, “is an evolutionary project, one that
was begun long before evolution itself was understood.”
Placing the next enlightenment within an evolutionary context, a
context where the focus is primarily on the development of the
species rather than of any particular individual, is a point
that cannot be overstated. Given the near-crisis state of
affairs in today's world, we urgently need a culturewide
discussion of human development and human potential that lifts
our attention beyond the narcissistic norms of our
society—one that has relevance both west of Hindu ashrams
and east of the California border. Linking the spiritual
questions of enlightenment to the pragmatic questions of our
collective evolutionary future provides just such a context, and
it is heartening to see Anderson picking up the theme and
playing it so prominently.
Still, Anderson's refreshing science-friendly outlook and his
emphasis on Western rationalism also have a disconcerting side,
particularly as it becomes clear that he is doing much more than
just adding a dose of science and rationality to the
contemporary spiritual smorgasbord. In fact, if you read between
the lines, a subtext begins to emerge in The Next
Enlightenment, an underlying theme that goes something like
this:
Enlightenment, the evolutionary breakthrough crucial to the
development of our species, has been captured and is being held
hostage in a prison of dogma and superstition by an evil force
called religion. In this narrative, Anderson sees himself as a
liberator, and the rational disciplines of science, postmodern
philosophy, and psychology are his weapons of freedom. Like
Voltaire and Diderot battling the priests of the Catholic
Orthodoxy, Anderson is intent on freeing the higher reaches of
human development from their association with the dogmas of our
religious heritage. There is some truth to this scenario, but
like an overenthusiastic soldier, Anderson is so intent upon
killing the bad guy that he accidentally harms the hostage in
the process of liberation. He releases enlightenment from the
outdated religious structures of the past, only to subject it to
a new, less obvious tyrant—a postmodern, secular ethos
where scientific materialism and rampant individualism reign
supreme.
This is the scenario that plays itself out over and over
again in The Next Enlightenment. Anderson wants to
bring enlightenment down off its religious pedestal and take
away its elitist image as a secretive “religious
experience,” only “achievable by limited numbers of
people within the boundaries of certain ancient
disciplines.” For Anderson, religion is clearly a
thoroughly unpleasant concept, and he spends a significant
amount of time impugning the many failings of the wisdom
traditions of humanity. Even the term “religion”
itself, he writes, immediately brings to mind “so much
hierarchy, so much mythology left over from dead cultures, so
many doubtful dogmas, so many cranky old men bearing armloads of
Thou Shalt Nots.”
Now, you'll rarely find the editorial voice of this magazine
going out of its way to defend the modern relevance of ancient
tradition, and in many respects I appreciated Anderson's
willingness to put himself out on a limb and state what so few
are willing to say directly—that the spiritual traditions
are falling far behind the spiritual curve in today's global,
pluralistic society. But he overplays his hand. His criticism
comes across as overzealous, and even more importantly, it lets
him off the hook of the greatest challenge of his enlightenment
project: How do we bring enlightenment into a secular age
without compromising its transcendent dimension, the sacred
dimension that religion, for all its obvious faults, has sought
to preserve? How do we demystify enlightenment without
desacralizing it? You see, Anderson, along with many of the
philosophers, scientists, and academics who are helping to
define the contours of this new enlightenment paradigm, is
absolutely right that enlightenment must evolve, and evolve
quickly, if it is to meet the demands of a twenty-first-century
world. But given that reality, how do we update the premodern
notion of enlightenment for a society firmly entrenched in the
postmodern age and not throw the sacred baby out with
the religious bathwater? For all of us Westerners whose
spiritual sensibilities were weaned on a rational age, it is no
small question. And in the end, the answer may come down to the
way in which we understand enlightenment itself.