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 Newsletter Nr. 660   
 Amsterdam, June 3rd, 2017


RATIONAL REASONS TO BELIEVE IN SPIRIT? - Evaluating Ken Wilber's Case for A Spiritual Worldview - FRANK VISSER

In his latest book The Religion of Tomorrow (2017) Ken Wilber foresees a future, unavoidably and certainly so, in which spirituality will stage a stunning come-back. This time God will no longer be seen as the old-fashioned and proverbial Old Man in the Sky—or any fundamentalistic religious notion you prefer—but as a pervasive cosmic spiritual force (called "Eros" by Wilber) behind natural and cultural evolution. Even a rationalist person, he argues, will have reasons to believe in such a notion of spirituality. We will evaluate these reasons given (assuming they are the most strong ones that Wilber can think of) in this current essay.

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/visser103.html

CONNECTED SPIRITUALITY - Belonging to the World We Live In - GARY STOGSDILL

This is the final essay in a series of three that began with “A Critique of Perennialism: Problems with Enlightenment, Gurus, and Meditation,” which highlighted substantial problems with the spiritual path of the second half of the 20th century, followed by “Perennialism and the Myth of Narcissus: Falling in Love with Mind,” which identified a possible underlying cause of these problems: the falling in love with our own disembodied mind. This current essay explores implications of the first two essays regarding a healthy expression of spirituality.

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/stogsdill3.html


TOWARDS AN INTEGRAL THEODICY - MIKE MCELROY

I live in Toronto. I've just published a book called Notes From Aboveground. I look at the legacy of Dostoevsky and Camus and how they help us understand our choices between theodicy (the meaning of our sufferings) and nihilism (suffering too often lacks meaning). I also look at Ken Wilber's work and what it can offer to help us create a theodicy. Or does it?
Part One: Contra is a first person monologue of a character I call the Aboveground Man—an amalgam of Dostoevsky's Underground Man and his Ivan Karamazov. Part Two: Pro goes into detail about the issue of theodicy and that's where I look at Wilber's work (as well as the Russian existential religious philosopher Lev Shestov). Part Three: Pro and Conra looks at the notion of “adversary culture” and how modern/postmodern art (which came out of the Romantic Movement) reflects these issues of theodicy vs. nihilsm.

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/mcelroy1.html