Synopses & Reviews
This book details the vision of interspirituality within a comprehensive and powerful synthesis of world religions and spirituality, the discoveries of modern science, and the developmental and evolutionary view of history. It is the first book to review and predict the ongoing history of world religions and spirituality in the context of developmental history, the evolutionary consciousness movement, and current scientific understandings of anthropology, human cognitive development, brain/mind and scientific consciousness studies.
This book addresses Brother WayneTeasdales vision of The Interspiritual Age,” a vision that parallels the equally well-known and publicized visions of the worlds developmental and evolutionary consciousness movements (known therein as coming Integral Age” or Age of Evolutionary Consciousness”) and the international humanist movement (known therein as the emerging international Ethical Manifold”). As such The Coming Interspiritual Age is the first synthesis of interfaith and interspirituality with the popular writings of integral leaders Ken Wilber and Don Beck.
The book includes provocative sections regarding the inherent unity within the worlds religious and spiritual understanding (especially their shared mystical understandings), the relationship of these and modern scientific studies of consciousness and brain/mind, the developmental and evolutionary views of history, the inevitable ongoing processes of world globalization and multiculturalism, the emergent understanding of the Divine Feminine, the nature of spiritual experience and the reputed spirit realms, and the various predictions around and surrounding the year 2012. The book concludes with extensive how-to” sections regarding the development and practice of interspirituality as it can happen both within the worlds current religious traditions as well as in new, creative and entrepreneurial settings worldwide.
About the Author
Kurt Johnson, PhD, is well known internationally as a scientist, comparative religionist, social activist and former monastic. PhD in evolution, ecology, systematics and comparative biology and extensive training in comparative religion and philosophy. Author of 7 books on ecology and evolution.
David Robert Ord is a former Presbyterian (USA) minister and Graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary. Coauthor with Dr Robert B. Coote of The Bible's First History, In the Beginning, Is the Bible True, Understanding the Bible Today, Your Forgotten Self.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
1 The Horizon
An Uptick in Consciousness
The Arising Globalization and Multiculturalism
Religion and Spirituality
What Is Interspirituality?
Differences
Why Humans Disagree
Healthy Change, Unhealthy Change
2 The Modern Discussion
The Essence of Interspirituality Isn't New
The Core of Deepest Spiritual Experience Is Always the Same
Needed Shifts in Global Awareness
A Final Marker
Taking Wing
3 Everyone Is a Mystic
The Everyday Reality of "I," "We," and "It"
Fruits of the Integrative View
How Religion and Spirituality Differ
It's Ultimately the Same Experience
The Mystical Pursuit
Reversing a Dangerous Course
Centuries of the Materialistic and Mental
4 Framing the Big Picture
Process and Common Sense
The Two Cultures of Knowing
Pattern Versus Process
What's There to See in the Pattern?
5 Fourteen Billion Years in a Few Pages
After the Big Bang
The Arising of Life on Earth
Earth's First Green Revolution
Disaster Leads to new Opportunities
The Advent of Intelligent Life
The Riddle of Humankind
Kinds of Creationism
The God of the Gaps
A Biological Endgame?
A Happy Ending?
6 The Dawn of Spirituality
Consciousnessthe Power of a Name
Toolmaking, Use of Fire, and the Growth of Consciousness
Consciousness and