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Newsletter Nr. 724
Amsterdam, July 24th, 2018


COLLECTIVE ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH POSTMETAPHYSICAL EYES - MICHEL BAUWENS AND EDWARD BERGE

Enlightenment has had broadly different definitions is the East and West. In the East it is seen as an individual accessing meditative states that transcend the world of form in a metaphysical reality. In the West it is more about individual development to abstract reasoning, which can accurately represent empirical reality but is itself an a priori, metaphysical capacity. Enlightenment in either case is based on metaphysical individual achievements. However the postmetaphysical turn has questioned such premises, instead contextualizing both meditative states and abstract reasoning within broader socio-cultural contexts. Enlightenment itself has thereby been redefined within this orientation and is seen more as a collective endeavor that is collaboratively enacted.

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/berge9.html


SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY AS SOULMATES - How Ken Wilber's Eros Can Be Legitimate - GARY STOGSDILL

Such a warm and fuzzy word, soulmate. Common spiritual lore suggests that a soulmate is someone who will complete and make us whole. In real life, however, I suspect that whoever we think of as a soulmate is more often the person who ends up shattering our illusions about anyone else ever being able to make us whole. But for this essay I do intend to suggest that science and spirituality complete one another and bring a measure of wholeness to the uncommon person who is able to value both as complementary ways of knowing and being.

This, I believe, is the needed role of spiritual inquiry in complementing scientific inquiry: to add metaphysical considerations of meaning and purpose, as well as ethical values, to the valid knowledge that science can tell us about reality, while being clear that we are operating from subjective spiritual inquiry and not monkeying with established science. When spiritual philosophers do this, and when scientists stay in their appropriate domain of peaceful but separate coexistence with spirituality, then science and spirituality can become soulmates and those of us who value both can grow in the fullness of human life. 

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/stogsdill7.html