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The Gospel of Aquarius: The Religion of the Future - Richard Smoley
The Gospel of Aquarius: The Religion of the Future - Richard Smoley
Download handouts
Two articles from Enlightenext, a magazine on the future of religion
Lecture notes and summaries by noted astrologers on The Age of Aqua...
"The third millennium will be dominated by the 'religion/spirituality paradox' - the decline of organized religion on one hand coupled with a growing interest in spirituality and wisdom on the other. . . . This demands a reordering of priorities in terms of the spiritual, and an urgent need for a relevant faith. . . . By relevant, I mean a faith that speaks to the current and future concerns of our time."
Caleb Rosado, "What Is Spirituality?"
"The devastation taking place cannot be critiqued effectively from within the traditional religions or humanist ethics. We find ourselves ethically destitute just when, for the first time, we are faced with ultimacy, the irreversible closing down of the Earth's functioning in its major life systems. Our ethical traditions know how to deal with suicide, homicide, and even genocide; but these traditions collapse entirely when confronted with biocide, the extinction of the vulnerable life systems of the Earth, and geocide, the devastation of the Earth itself. . . . The human is at a cultural impasse. . . . Radical new forms are needed."
Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future
“The fulfillment comes through doing what one can, not in wasting time predicting outcomes.” –Huston Smith
There is a lot to cover in this final class of the Theosophy and Religion section, and so your study group may want to break this one up in to two separate days. The previous seven classes were in many ways all leading up to this final class, and in many respects helping to shape the future of organized spiritual belief may be as important a question as any for Theosophists to consider.
Some take the stance of being anti organized religion, period. However, the survival of our planet requires new paradigms in nearly every arena, and one of the keys to creating those paradigms is the idea of co-creation, i.e., creating in partnership with God, in partnership with each other, in partnership; with our higher selves, in partnership with Creativity itself. Thus if an individual or group (sangha) comes to some significant enlightenment experience and realizations it is essentially their duty to find ways to pass that energy and wisdom on to others. Without this attempt to share the process, however spiritual it may seem, it is finally just a process of ego. Whether one calls this organizing and communicating of spiritual practice and wisdom “religion” is really irrelevant. Finding ways to encourage these spiritual experiences of bliss and wisdom individually and collectively and then to transfer that transforming energy to the planet, the community, and others is quite relevant.
Discussion questions
1- Prophets, psychics, astrologers, scholars and analysts of all shapes and sizes have all taken their turns at predicting the future.
What factors do you think are important to consider when trying to predict the long-term future for, not just an individual, but for the shape of the spiritual future of the planet?
2- Read through the short summary predictions by various astrologers concerning the Age of Aquarius from Handout A.
2a- Which points especially ring true to you?
2b- Ray Grasse states, "How do we know if the Age of Aquarius will be a utopia or an Orwellian nightmare?” What do you think--how do we know?
3- “Now, there's another thing: all of the sacred traditions make a strong point of the fact that we are flawed beings. In Christianity, they call it original sin. In Islam, they call it ghafla, forgetfulness of our real nature. In Asia, they call it avidya. I think they're right in saying the fault isn't God. God didn't make us that way. It's a mistake that we made somewhere along the line. And if we get right down to the source, it is that, the basic problem of our egocentricity, which keeps us from doing what desperately needs to be done.”—Huston Smith
3a- Do you agree that we are all essentially flawed beings and egocentricity is our essential flaw? Why or why not?
3b- How do you, in your life and with your spiritual practice, balance having a healthy ego with egocentricity?
4- “It really seems that a new spirituality with a higher reach and a deeper embrace is necessary at this time, one that will enable us to discover our true identity, the timeless source of our being, while simultaneously compelling us to face the actuality of the world context that we're living in.”- Andrew Cohen
“My experience is that people tend to err on one side or the other. Either they get into this transcendental purity that doesn't care about the earth and Gaia, or they merely identify with Gaia and they forget the unborn.” -Ken Wilbur
Do you agree with Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilbur that a spirituality must encompass both of these facets equally to be truly viable and relevant?
5- “You know, there were a lot of people, particularly us boomers, who felt we had the new paradigm that was going to be the greatest transformation in the history of the world—this holistic, "everything is one, Gaia great Goddess" kind of thing. And that can be a wonderful turquoise belief [For an explanation of the basic stages of Spiral Dynamics, see www.wie.org/spiraldynamics]. But unfortunately only a half of a percent of the population is at a cognitive level that can actually comprehend that turquoise conception. The rest of the world is at red (egocentric) and blue (absolutist) and orange (scientific/rational) and is just nowhere near that kind of thing. So we're not going to get some future spiritual orientation that's going to save this planet. The chances of that happening are virtually nil. So an enlightened society wouldn't just be one that had its governance systems coming from an integral level of development. It would also need to include sane ways that people could be at these earlier stages of development.” –Ken Wilbur
5a- Do you agree that a hopeful spiritual vision for humanity must be able to reach those who are at “earlier stages of development”?
5b- How does Theosophy treat the question of addressing those at earlier stages of spiritual development?
6- Wilbur does a nice job of grounding futuristic visions in the reality of acknowledging the fact that mass-scale human development is highly varied. A small percentage of humanity imagining a nearly utopian vision may be little more than creating a pretty image. That being said, just as with the individual who first must imagine a reality before it can be realized, there must be the visionaries who imagine first and then try to guide the rest of the body of humanity in that direction.
6a- Do you think visionaries planning for a new spirituality should consider the abilities and limits of the less spiritually advanced, or should they imagine possibilities at the highest level and encourage others to, as much as they are able, follow their example?
6b- Concerning question 6a above, what path did the guiding Masters of Theosophy choose?
7- For a hopeful vision of humanity to be relevant and graspable by a significant portion of the population, what factors need to be present? What will this transcendent blueprint for humanity have to have to keep it real and to make it resonate with enough people?
8- “I think that we may also need to redefine what the meaning of enlightenment itself is for the time we're living in. We may need, as Caleb Rosado mentioned, a more "relevant" definition. Traditionally, the emphasis has been on transcendence or the discovery of and abidance in the empty ground of being beyond the world and beyond time. But at the beginning of the twenty-first century, I question whether this kind of orientation is really relevant or appropriate. In fact, I feel that the whole purpose of enlightenment or going beyond ego, in our own time is to enable us to finally be truly available to participate in the transformation of the manifest world from a position of higher consciousness or development. Right now, this is truly what is needed more than ever. Indeed, and this is what's so important to understand, as long as there remains in the seeker of enlightenment any clinging to a posture of transcendence, even if it's a subtle one, the effect will be that one will still, to some degree, be divided. And that division will inhibit one's ability to act because one will still be holding on.” -- Andrew Cohen
8a- What does Cohen mean when he says that we need to redefine the meaning of enlightenment for the time we are living in?
8b- In your own words, how does Cohen define enlightenment for the time we are living in?
8c- Traditionally, we have used the world and its environment as a tool for enlightenment. Wilber and Cohen are suggesting we do the opposite: use enlightenment as a tool for engaging with the world and its environment. Cohen and Wilber say that a pure transcendent enlightenment which sort of bypasses this world is not the appropriate enlightenment for this age and is essentially irresponsible, an ignoring of one’s spiritual obligation. Usually we speak of holding on to this world, but Cohen and Wilber declare the holding on as clinging to transcendence.
Do you think this re-defining of enlightenment can work? Why or why not?
8d- If you do not agree with the basic premise of Cohen and Wilber’s engaged enlightenment, what would you prescribe instead?
Proposed activities
Read these three quotes from Smith, Cohen and Wilber out loud, as a class:
“All of them [religions] come down with one voice on advocating charity and compassion over selfishness and egocentricity. And that's the right foundation. But in the times when the great sacred texts were revealed, people were isolated, living by themselves, and they did not realize that institutional structures are man-made. Their social and institutional structures, like slavery, for example, were the way they conceived of natural law. "We can't change them. We didn't make these institutions." And, therefore, their love, compassion, and charity had to do with face-to-face relationships— the cup of water given in my name to the thirsty person there. But it never occurred to them that they ought to work on changing institutions, injustices, slavery, and so on.”—Huston Smith
“Our ethical traditions know how to deal with suicide, homicide, and even genocide; but these traditions collapse entirely when confronted with biocide, the extinction of the vulnerable life systems of the earth, and geocide, the devastation of the earth itself. . . . The human is at a cultural impasse. . . . Radical new forms are needed.”—Huston Smith
“That introduces, I think, a point that's been important to me. I picked it up from Czech president Vaclav Havel. When he was asked, "Are you optimistic?" he said, "No." But then he added, "I am hopeful." Now that's profound. What's the difference? Optimism is the belief that the affairs of our society will come out well and we've been given ample reasons to doubt that that is going to happen. Hope is quite different. To hope is to see our efforts expended in the right direction as being meaningful, despite what the outcome will be. Does the care doctors give to patients require that they think that they are thereby ridding the world of disease? The fulfillment comes through doing what one can, not in wasting time predicting outcomes. So yes, we should do everything we can, but if that fails, that doesn't close the doors to a meaningful and, in that sense, hopeful existence—the hope, in this case, deriving from the meaning we find in just putting our efforts in the right direction.”—Huston Smith
“When one is actually engaging with the evolution of consciousness in the way we've been discussing, there is literally the sense that—God, I don't know what metaphor to use to describe this, but—it's almost as if a thing (if we can call consciousness a thing) is being "cooked" by the individuals who are consciously realizing it. In fact, as those individuals would move in and out of this state of conscious realization, it seemed like it was informing them and they were informing it. And then at a later point in time, when they awakened to it again, it literally seemed as if the thing—consciousness itself—had moved forward, evolved.” –Andrew Cohen
“It seems like a transcendental freedom or purity, and certainly at the beginning it has more freedom than a mere immersion in passing finite domains. But when you get in and sort of look around, there's very subtle tension that actually represents a contraction and that holds samsara, the manifest world, at bay, as if it's some sort of disease—very subtly. But that is the final barrier to radical love or radical release or radical embrace—an embrace that then finds itself both prior to the manifest world but not other than the manifest world in any way whatsoever. It really is a sort of radical embrace of evolutionary form as its own body, its substance, its own vitality, its own manifestation.” --Ken Wilber
A common assertion in enlightenment discussions assumes that this world of Samsara is but a dream of illusion to be seen beyond, to be gone beyond, etc. However, close examination, as exhibited by Wilber above, reveals that to subtly try to separate from Samsara, that is this time and place, to keep Samsara at bay by taking a stance of separating from it or going beyond it, “represents a contraction” which itself “holds Samsara at a distance as if it is some sort of disease.” In reality, enlightenment which does not include Samsara is not complete; Samsara and Nirvana are one and the same. Thus the Cohen and Wilber view is finally not so much a new definition of enlightenment as much as a more precise definition.
For religions to be positive forces in the future they have to do more than not try to marginalize each other’s sacred beliefs and texts, do more than stop making war in the name of their religion, they have to work in concert to promote and realize significant compassionate social change. Co-existing is not enough. Evolved, energized, passionate co-creation is necessary, a co-creation which actually realizes the compassion that the various religions claim to be at their core. Effective co-creation begins with focusing and imagining.
1- You will work on this activity as individuals for thirty minutes. In as much detail as possible, write a detailed mission statement for the fictitious Future of Religion shaping organization. This will encourage the sort of co-creative enlightenment, re-defined by Cohen and Wilber, and guided by the hopeful and stark ideals of Huston Smith. Discuss the goals and objectives of your organization which will help individuals to reach a sort of spiritual enlightenment and or deep spiritual insights that will necessarily have an impact on the world as well. Your mission statement should have as much detail as possible, and since it does not necessarily have to be long (certainly not longer than one page), in the thirty minutes given there should be time to rewrite it for the sake of clarity.
2- Share your created mission statements for the fictitious Future of Religion shaping organization.
Download handouts
Two articles from Enlightenext, a magazine on the future of religion
Lecture notes and summaries by noted astrologers on The Age of Aqua...
"The third millennium will be dominated by the 'religion/spirituality paradox' - the decline of organized religion on one hand coupled with a growing interest in spirituality and wisdom on the other. . . . This demands a reordering of priorities in terms of the spiritual, and an urgent need for a relevant faith. . . . By relevant, I mean a faith that speaks to the current and future concerns of our time."
Caleb Rosado, "What Is Spirituality?"
"The devastation taking place cannot be critiqued effectively from within the traditional religions or humanist ethics. We find ourselves ethically destitute just when, for the first time, we are faced with ultimacy, the irreversible closing down of the Earth's functioning in its major life systems. Our ethical traditions know how to deal with suicide, homicide, and even genocide; but these traditions collapse entirely when confronted with biocide, the extinction of the vulnerable life systems of the Earth, and geocide, the devastation of the Earth itself. . . . The human is at a cultural impasse. . . . Radical new forms are needed."
Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future
“The fulfillment comes through doing what one can, not in wasting time predicting outcomes.” –Huston Smith
There is a lot to cover in this final class of the Theosophy and Religion section, and so your study group may want to break this one up in to two separate days. The previous seven classes were in many ways all leading up to this final class, and in many respects helping to shape the future of organized spiritual belief may be as important a question as any for Theosophists to consider.
Some take the stance of being anti organized religion, period. However, the survival of our planet requires new paradigms in nearly every arena, and one of the keys to creating those paradigms is the idea of co-creation, i.e., creating in partnership with God, in partnership with each other, in partnership; with our higher selves, in partnership with Creativity itself. Thus if an individual or group (sangha) comes to some significant enlightenment experience and realizations it is essentially their duty to find ways to pass that energy and wisdom on to others. Without this attempt to share the process, however spiritual it may seem, it is finally just a process of ego. Whether one calls this organizing and communicating of spiritual practice and wisdom “religion” is really irrelevant. Finding ways to encourage these spiritual experiences of bliss and wisdom individually and collectively and then to transfer that transforming energy to the planet, the community, and others is quite relevant.
Discussion questions
1- Prophets, psychics, astrologers, scholars and analysts of all shapes and sizes have all taken their turns at predicting the future.
What factors do you think are important to consider when trying to predict the long-term future for, not just an individual, but for the shape of the spiritual future of the planet?
2- Read through the short summary predictions by various astrologers concerning the Age of Aquarius from Handout A.
2a- Which points especially ring true to you?
2b- Ray Grasse states, "How do we know if the Age of Aquarius will be a utopia or an Orwellian nightmare?” What do you think--how do we know?
3- “Now, there's another thing: all of the sacred traditions make a strong point of the fact that we are flawed beings. In Christianity, they call it original sin. In Islam, they call it ghafla, forgetfulness of our real nature. In Asia, they call it avidya. I think they're right in saying the fault isn't God. God didn't make us that way. It's a mistake that we made somewhere along the line. And if we get right down to the source, it is that, the basic problem of our egocentricity, which keeps us from doing what desperately needs to be done.”—Huston Smith
3a- Do you agree that we are all essentially flawed beings and egocentricity is our essential flaw? Why or why not?
3b- How do you, in your life and with your spiritual practice, balance having a healthy ego with egocentricity?
4- “It really seems that a new spirituality with a higher reach and a deeper embrace is necessary at this time, one that will enable us to discover our true identity, the timeless source of our being, while simultaneously compelling us to face the actuality of the world context that we're living in.”- Andrew Cohen
“My experience is that people tend to err on one side or the other. Either they get into this transcendental purity that doesn't care about the earth and Gaia, or they merely identify with Gaia and they forget the unborn.” -Ken Wilbur
Do you agree with Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilbur that a spirituality must encompass both of these facets equally to be truly viable and relevant?
5- “You know, there were a lot of people, particularly us boomers, who felt we had the new paradigm that was going to be the greatest transformation in the history of the world—this holistic, "everything is one, Gaia great Goddess" kind of thing. And that can be a wonderful turquoise belief [For an explanation of the basic stages of Spiral Dynamics, see www.wie.org/spiraldynamics]. But unfortunately only a half of a percent of the population is at a cognitive level that can actually comprehend that turquoise conception. The rest of the world is at red (egocentric) and blue (absolutist) and orange (scientific/rational) and is just nowhere near that kind of thing. So we're not going to get some future spiritual orientation that's going to save this planet. The chances of that happening are virtually nil. So an enlightened society wouldn't just be one that had its governance systems coming from an integral level of development. It would also need to include sane ways that people could be at these earlier stages of development.” –Ken Wilbur
5a- Do you agree that a hopeful spiritual vision for humanity must be able to reach those who are at “earlier stages of development”?
5b- How does Theosophy treat the question of addressing those at earlier stages of spiritual development?
6- Wilbur does a nice job of grounding futuristic visions in the reality of acknowledging the fact that mass-scale human development is highly varied. A small percentage of humanity imagining a nearly utopian vision may be little more than creating a pretty image. That being said, just as with the individual who first must imagine a reality before it can be realized, there must be the visionaries who imagine first and then try to guide the rest of the body of humanity in that direction.
6a- Do you think visionaries planning for a new spirituality should consider the abilities and limits of the less spiritually advanced, or should they imagine possibilities at the highest level and encourage others to, as much as they are able, follow their example?
6b- Concerning question 6a above, what path did the guiding Masters of Theosophy choose?
7- For a hopeful vision of humanity to be relevant and graspable by a significant portion of the population, what factors need to be present? What will this transcendent blueprint for humanity have to have to keep it real and to make it resonate with enough people?
8- “I think that we may also need to redefine what the meaning of enlightenment itself is for the time we're living in. We may need, as Caleb Rosado mentioned, a more "relevant" definition. Traditionally, the emphasis has been on transcendence or the discovery of and abidance in the empty ground of being beyond the world and beyond time. But at the beginning of the twenty-first century, I question whether this kind of orientation is really relevant or appropriate. In fact, I feel that the whole purpose of enlightenment or going beyond ego, in our own time is to enable us to finally be truly available to participate in the transformation of the manifest world from a position of higher consciousness or development. Right now, this is truly what is needed more than ever. Indeed, and this is what's so important to understand, as long as there remains in the seeker of enlightenment any clinging to a posture of transcendence, even if it's a subtle one, the effect will be that one will still, to some degree, be divided. And that division will inhibit one's ability to act because one will still be holding on.” -- Andrew Cohen
8a- What does Cohen mean when he says that we need to redefine the meaning of enlightenment for the time we are living in?
8b- In your own words, how does Cohen define enlightenment for the time we are living in?
8c- Traditionally, we have used the world and its environment as a tool for enlightenment. Wilber and Cohen are suggesting we do the opposite: use enlightenment as a tool for engaging with the world and its environment. Cohen and Wilber say that a pure transcendent enlightenment which sort of bypasses this world is not the appropriate enlightenment for this age and is essentially irresponsible, an ignoring of one’s spiritual obligation. Usually we speak of holding on to this world, but Cohen and Wilber declare the holding on as clinging to transcendence.
Do you think this re-defining of enlightenment can work? Why or why not?
8d- If you do not agree with the basic premise of Cohen and Wilber’s engaged enlightenment, what would you prescribe instead?
Proposed activities
Read these three quotes from Smith, Cohen and Wilber out loud, as a class:
“All of them [religions] come down with one voice on advocating charity and compassion over selfishness and egocentricity. And that's the right foundation. But in the times when the great sacred texts were revealed, people were isolated, living by themselves, and they did not realize that institutional structures are man-made. Their social and institutional structures, like slavery, for example, were the way they conceived of natural law. "We can't change them. We didn't make these institutions." And, therefore, their love, compassion, and charity had to do with face-to-face relationships— the cup of water given in my name to the thirsty person there. But it never occurred to them that they ought to work on changing institutions, injustices, slavery, and so on.”—Huston Smith
“Our ethical traditions know how to deal with suicide, homicide, and even genocide; but these traditions collapse entirely when confronted with biocide, the extinction of the vulnerable life systems of the earth, and geocide, the devastation of the earth itself. . . . The human is at a cultural impasse. . . . Radical new forms are needed.”—Huston Smith
“That introduces, I think, a point that's been important to me. I picked it up from Czech president Vaclav Havel. When he was asked, "Are you optimistic?" he said, "No." But then he added, "I am hopeful." Now that's profound. What's the difference? Optimism is the belief that the affairs of our society will come out well and we've been given ample reasons to doubt that that is going to happen. Hope is quite different. To hope is to see our efforts expended in the right direction as being meaningful, despite what the outcome will be. Does the care doctors give to patients require that they think that they are thereby ridding the world of disease? The fulfillment comes through doing what one can, not in wasting time predicting outcomes. So yes, we should do everything we can, but if that fails, that doesn't close the doors to a meaningful and, in that sense, hopeful existence—the hope, in this case, deriving from the meaning we find in just putting our efforts in the right direction.”—Huston Smith
“When one is actually engaging with the evolution of consciousness in the way we've been discussing, there is literally the sense that—God, I don't know what metaphor to use to describe this, but—it's almost as if a thing (if we can call consciousness a thing) is being "cooked" by the individuals who are consciously realizing it. In fact, as those individuals would move in and out of this state of conscious realization, it seemed like it was informing them and they were informing it. And then at a later point in time, when they awakened to it again, it literally seemed as if the thing—consciousness itself—had moved forward, evolved.” –Andrew Cohen
“It seems like a transcendental freedom or purity, and certainly at the beginning it has more freedom than a mere immersion in passing finite domains. But when you get in and sort of look around, there's very subtle tension that actually represents a contraction and that holds samsara, the manifest world, at bay, as if it's some sort of disease—very subtly. But that is the final barrier to radical love or radical release or radical embrace—an embrace that then finds itself both prior to the manifest world but not other than the manifest world in any way whatsoever. It really is a sort of radical embrace of evolutionary form as its own body, its substance, its own vitality, its own manifestation.” --Ken Wilber
A common assertion in enlightenment discussions assumes that this world of Samsara is but a dream of illusion to be seen beyond, to be gone beyond, etc. However, close examination, as exhibited by Wilber above, reveals that to subtly try to separate from Samsara, that is this time and place, to keep Samsara at bay by taking a stance of separating from it or going beyond it, “represents a contraction” which itself “holds Samsara at a distance as if it is some sort of disease.” In reality, enlightenment which does not include Samsara is not complete; Samsara and Nirvana are one and the same. Thus the Cohen and Wilber view is finally not so much a new definition of enlightenment as much as a more precise definition.
For religions to be positive forces in the future they have to do more than not try to marginalize each other’s sacred beliefs and texts, do more than stop making war in the name of their religion, they have to work in concert to promote and realize significant compassionate social change. Co-existing is not enough. Evolved, energized, passionate co-creation is necessary, a co-creation which actually realizes the compassion that the various religions claim to be at their core. Effective co-creation begins with focusing and imagining.
1- You will work on this activity as individuals for thirty minutes. In as much detail as possible, write a detailed mission statement for the fictitious Future of Religion shaping organization. This will encourage the sort of co-creative enlightenment, re-defined by Cohen and Wilber, and guided by the hopeful and stark ideals of Huston Smith. Discuss the goals and objectives of your organization which will help individuals to reach a sort of spiritual enlightenment and or deep spiritual insights that will necessarily have an impact on the world as well. Your mission statement should have as much detail as possible, and since it does not necessarily have to be long (certainly not longer than one page), in the thirty minutes given there should be time to rewrite it for the sake of clarity.
2- Share your created mission statements for the fictitious Future of Religion shaping organization.
Tags: aquarius, future, future religions, smoley
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