Asteroids, Randomness and the Absolute Truth About God ~ Rabbi Gil Steinlauf

When asteroid 2012 DA14 makes its perilously close encounter and near miss with Earth, there will be plenty of people who will thank God. We all know that one hit from a big asteroid, and life on earth as we know it could be wiped out. But, as some may reason, God is not letting that happen to us. Not now. For now, God is still merciful.

As a deeply religious Jew, I must admit that I cringe when I hear people express certitude that God chooses to avert asteroids or hurricanes or any random destructive force of nature — especially if we pray hard enough. The God I pray to is a God of a 13.7-billion-year-old universe. My God is a God whose majesty and greatness only deepens for me as we collectively discover the ever-expanding mystery of the cosmos. My God is a God of a universe that includes randomness and accidents. And yes, my God is a God of a universe where, sometimes, tragically, bad things happen to good people despite our prayers, and asteroids might hit the earth and wipe almost all life out.

It’s not that my religious traditions and texts don’t affirm the classic omnipotent, infallible God who runs the show. I have come to see, however, that religious texts and rituals exist not so much to shape hardened, dogmatic beliefs about God or the universe.

The judgmental Heavenly Monarch-on-the-Throne imagery isn’t there to be taken literally. It’s there to capture the awe and mystery of our experience of life itself. When I contemplate a 45-meter-wide boulder hurtling to earth at 17,500 miles-per-hour, I am terrified and humbled. When I hear it will come right in line with the orbits of some GPS satellites — and then miss us — yes, I’m relieved. But I’m also further humbled and awe-struck that life as we know it is so precious and tenuous. And it’s right in that moment, in that uncanny experience of fear and wonder, that I truly find God. My God arises not in arrogant assertions of Absolute Truth, but in those life-experiences that inspire the greatest of doubt and a multiplicity of more questions.

In Judaism, there is a tradition that when someone survives a near-miss brush with death, they are called up before the congregation to “bensch gomel,” to say a blessing acknowledging their survival. They say, in effect, Although I am unworthy, I bless God who has been good to me. And the congregation responds together: May God continue to be good to you, Selah! On the surface, this ritual smacks of the conventional benevolent-despot God, a God who might not choose to be so nice to us next time, especially if we misbehave. But if you look deeper at that ritual, you begin to find that the imagery of a God meting out goodness to the unworthy is actually just a vessel, a technology. It’s a technology that fashions a moment in time, a moment of an individual acknowledging their humility and wonder together with their people. It’s a moment of no illusions, no answers, no certainties — only the Truth that we are together in this uncertain, imperfect, miraculous moment of being alive. The moment becomes sacred not so much in the words recited, but in our mutually felt connection to each other. I am comfortable calling such a moment, “an experience of God.” And I fully respect those who might choose not to name it at all.

The meteorite which fell in Russia’s Urals on Feb 15, 2013 injuring more than 1,000 people.

So when Earth’s gravitational field sends 2012 DA14 hurtling away from us faster than a speeding bullet, it will be a moment for all life on Earth to collectively “bensch gomel,” no matter what our religion, even if we don’t believe in God at all. It’s a moment for us to acknowledge the power of prayers, rituals, blessings and yes, even age-old notions of God — however we conceive of God — in the service of what is really Divine: In this often frightening, chaotic, deeply imperfect and perilous universe, here we are! We’re alive, and what’s more–we are affirming that life can be Good even as it is so precious and fleeting. And most importantly, 2012 DA14 reminds us that despite the terrible uncertainty of it all, we are so blessed to have each other for the time that we’re here.

Three Steps to God: Awakening Your Evolutionary Creativity by Marc Gafni

It is time to change the game. To uplevel the great Integral evolutionary project of reconstruction—the reconstruction and evolution of God. And, make no mistake about it: Integral is a reconstructive project. We seek to unfold a vision of World Spirituality based on Integral principles, a trans-lineage path. This is the path that we have forgotten. It is the memory of the future. No ancient tradition, no pre-modern tradition by itself can address us, yet without the core insights of the traditions, life becomes a flatland of dreary emptiness without eros or telos. We make a reverential bow to the great traditions, and open ourselves to receive their wisdom in humility, even as we uplevel and evolve them in integral consciousness.

I’d like to identify for us three steps—three insights and realizations—that lead us to God. In the next blog, I will outline for you a process to awaken these realizations, which come from the practice of the greatest heart, mind and body mystics from all ages–pre-modern, modern and post-modern. All three steps manifest themselves through the three faces of God.

Move Beyond the Mythic God
Before you begin this three step process into the heart of the divine you must first move beyond the mythic God. You must shatter the Idols, or kill the Buddha. The God you do not believe in does not exist. The reconstruction of God is nothing less the reconstruction of self as Self. But it is not only that. It is no less the reclaimed depth of delight as we devotionally bow, in Rumi-like rapture, before the personal face of the Beloved.

It is the realization that wherever and whenever we fall, we fall into the arms of the Beloved. The ethnocentric mythic God that lives solely outside the Kosmos has passed away in the evolution of consciousness. We reclaim the depths of the divine post-mythic consciousness. The depths of the divine reveals itself in three faces, in the three major perspectives that are the building blocks of reality. In Integral terms we call these the First, Second and Third Person of God or the Three Faces of God. The divine is both beyond{second person}and within{first person}, everything and no-thing, the ground and suchness of all that is{third person} as well as the beloved that lives in us, as us and through us{first person}, even as she holds us{second person}. The Divine is both the awakened divinity that lives as us{first person}, the evolutionary process and power of the Kosmos{third person}, as well as the God who knows our name {second person}.

The Three Steps

Step One: Awaken to your True Nature

Engage in continual daily practice to evolve beyond exclusive identity with ego. It is crucial to recognize that, from an Integral perspective, this practice must be done both in first person and second person. In other words, we need to engage both the first and second person faces of God. These are the two paths that invite, demand and delight in your Unique Creativity, which gifts the world with your Unique manifestation of love-intelligence and sacred activism.

So let’s touch in to each path so you can feel it and taste it.

First-person Evolution Beyond Ego: To incarnate the God that lives in you, as you, and through you, you must first evolve. Not beyond your ego. You never evolve beyond your ego. You evolve beyond exclusive identification with your ego. You realize that you are an indivisible part of the seamless coat of the universe. You move beyond your limited identity as a separate self, and access your True Self, which is not apart, but an inextricable part of the one, of all that is, of the seamless coat of divinity. When you evolve beyond ego and awaken to your true self you realize with joy and delight that your true nature beyond any physical expression is consciousness. And you feel the alive and awakened nature of consciousness is creative.

Second-Person Evolution Beyond Ego: Feel yourself held in the arms of the Mother who desperately cares about you and knows your name. Experience all of the infinity of divine power and intelligence (God in the third-person, or the third face of God) sitting in a chair in front of you pouring divine personal love into you and caring about every detail of your life even as she calls you to your fullest and highest life. Your highest life is to engage in the creative act of the evolution of your consciousness.

The mystics and realizers from every great pre-modern, modern and post-modern tradition yearn to know the heart of reality. They yearn to know God. But what do we know of the unknowable God? The second-person mystics all say something stunningly simple and wondrous. There is one thing we do know about God: God is creative. Consciousness is creative. The Tao is creative. How do we know? Because here we are, right now. Just open your eyes and look around. Or, if you prefer, just close your eyes and look around. We live in a world of manifestation, infinitely complex and beautiful manifestation. Creativity is an essential quality of the divine.

Step Two: Awaken to Your Unique Creative Self

Then, you take the next step. Your awakening deepens. In First Person, you awaken to your Unique Self. This is the realization that the coat of the Universe is seamless but not featureless, and that you are a unique feature of that seamless coat. You realize that while the total number of true selves is only One, every manifestation of True Self sees through a unique set of eyes. This is Your Unique Self. Through Your Unique Self, God’s creativity lives in you, as you, and through you. In Second Person, you realize that God loved you so much that he signed his name all over you. Your Unique Self is the personal face of essence, unlike any other, utterly unique, emanated by God. You are God’s special beloved even as you are God’s creative partner in the evolutionary healing and transformation of all that is.

Step Three: Awaken to Your Unique Gift, Obligation and Vow of Creativity

Your Unique Self creates your Unique Obligation and Unique Vow. First Person: In the Buddhist tradition, the bodhisattva is one who seeks buddhahood through practicing noble action. The bodhisattva vows to postpone his or her complete awakening and fulfillment until all other beings are awakened and fulfilled. The determining factor in his or her actions is compassion, moved by the highest insight and wisdom. The realization of Unique Self may be regarded as bodhisattva activity – your unique creative manifestation of wisdom and guidance. The Unique Self bodhisattva vow is an expression of evolutionary joy and responsibility, even as it is a commitment to the fulfillment of your evolutionary obligation.

A note on Obligation at the 2nd-tier of consciousness

Now we need to pause for a second and in these brackets talk about the strange and unpopular word “obligation.” Many of us recoil when we hear the word “obligation.” We identify obligation with arbitrarily imposed limitations by church or state that suffocate the naturally free human being. Let’s enquire for a moment what obligation might mean at a higher level of consciousness than the obligation imposed by an authority external to you.

This inquiry yields the deeper truth that obligation is the ultimate liberation. Obligation frees you from ambivalence and allows you to commit one thousand percent to the inherent invitation that is the Unique Obligation present in every unique situation. Obligation at this level of consciousness is created by the recognition that there is an authentic need that can be uniquely addressed by you and you alone. For example, let’s say you are stuck on a lush tropical island with and old, boorish ugly man who has no obvious redeeming features. You are absolutely certain that you will never be rescued. The two of you are stuck on this island forever. There is abundant food on the island. The problem is, due to a physical ailment, this man with no obvious redeeming features that are easily discernible is unable to feed himself. Are you obligated to feed him?

The question is not whether it is noble or even good to feed him, but whether you are obligated to feed him. I have posed this question to thousands of people in audiences over the years. Virtually everyone agrees that in this situation you have an absolute obligation to feed him. This obligation is substantively different then the external obligation imposed by a fundamentalist or what Jean Gebser calls a mythic consciousness. This is not the obligation imposed by a mythic god, king, state or government. This is an obligation to help preserve life that is inherent to consciousness itself. In articulating the demand of consciousness inherent in this freely assumed obligation I have developed the fourfold doctrine of “higher obligation.” Higher obligation is the obligation that wells up from the higher structure-stages of consciousness.

The fourfold doctrine of obligation is directly based on the fourfold structure of need. Need creates obligation. First there is a need. But not only is there a need, it is an authentic and not a contrived need.

Second, you clearly recognize the need.

Third, you have the skills and creative capacity to meet the need.

Fourth, the need can be effectively addressed only by you. The matrix of these four factors creates the matrices of your Unique Self Obligation.

Essentially, you are obligated to give the Unique Creative Gifts that can be uniquely given only by you in this moment. While most of our gifts address more subtle hungers than food, there is no person who does not possess Unique Gifts that respond to unique needs.

This is precisely the awakened realization of Unique Self in first person. It is the powerful recognition that there is a Unique Gift, a direct function of your Unique Self that can and must be given only by you. It is your gift to the good and to the evolution of consciousness. It is both the reason for your life and the joy of your existence. From a non-dual perspective, it is your Unique Gift that creates your Unique Obligation. To live your Unique Self and offer your Unique Gifts is to align yourself with the evolutionary impulse and fulfill your evolutionary obligation. The realization of your Unique Self awakens you to the truth that there is a Unique Gift that your singular being and becoming offers the world, which is desperately needed by all that is, and can be given by you and you alone. There is no more powerful and joyous realization available to a human being. It is the meshwork of meaning that fills your life and is the core of your Unique Self enlightenment.

As we said, this awakening to Unique Self happens in first person and second person.

In First-Person, when you awaken to your unique self as the I AM, you realize that you are both a part of the seamless coat of the universe, and unlike any other as a unique emanation of the divine. You realize that you have Unique Gifts to give, as part of your most essential nature as a Unique Self. You experience your unique obligation to give those unique gifts. Because you are the only person in the word capable of giving those unique gifts of being and becoming, if you do not give them, there will be a corner of the world that is left unloved.

Your creativity is ultimately and infinitely necessary for the continuing great project of evolutionary creativity—the evolution of consciousness towards the place where all of the good is experienced and known as the fullest depth of all that is displayed in the wondrous magnificence of the divine symphony. Knowing that, you feel it, you taste it, and you rock it out for God with the creative depth of genius that lives in you. Giving your gift might be private or public, quiet or loud, but the universe desperately needs and yearns to experience it.

Second person: Up till now in step three we described awakening to your Unique Self as your Evolutionary Creativity – in first person. You awakened to incarnate your Unique Creativity – which is your Unique Self – the Unique Expression of love that lives as you. Now we move to the call to Unique Divine creativity through the face of God, God in the second person.

You can awaken to your Unique Self not only through a first person recognition of yourself as a unique expression of the love-intelligence of the Universe, but also through a second person encounter with the Divine. Here, through practice or as a gift of divine love, you can experience yourself being held in the arms of the Mother who both loves you and obligates you. This was the great realization of the Mother, central to the spiritual way of Hindu mystics, Kabbalists, Sufis, Christian mystics, and so many more.

In Hebrew the same root word means both Love and Obligation. What that simply means is that to be loved is to be obligated. To be loved by the divine does not mean, as religions used to teach, that man is freed of obligation. Rather, it means that God loves and holds the human being as his/her partner in the creative process. To be loved is to be obligated. In the language of the second person mystics – the human being is obligated as the core essence of being alive to engage in imatatio dei – the imitation of god. The second person mystics now go the next step (and this is Rumi Hafiz, Ibn Arabi, Akiva, Luria, Augustine, Aquinas and the whole gang.)

We are commanded by consciousness itself to be “like god”. To partner with God in the healing and transformation of all that is. But, how can you be like God if we do not know God? Ahhh. Remember there is one thing we DO KNOW about God. God is Creative. Consciousness is Creative. Creativity is the essential manifest quality of Consciousness. So therefore: Just as God is creative so you be creative. To use biblical language, just as God stood as the abyss of darkness and said “Let there be light”- so too shall you stand creatively at the abyss of darkness and say let there be light. Just as God creates worlds, so too shall you as God’s partners be a creator of worlds.

God in the second person, who holds you and loves you, has but one wild, ecstatic, rigorous and uncompromising demand: “Be my creative partner in the healing and transformation of the world. Evolve consciousness, and fix the broken places with Me – because I cannot do it without you. I need your service. My gift to you in love,” whispers God in our ear even as She caresses our heart, “My gift to you is to make you my partner and allow Myself to be – at least in part – dependent on you!”

Marc Gafni

Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University and has direct lineage in Kabbalah. He is a Rabbi, spiritual artist, teacher, and a leading visionary in the emerging World Spirituality movement. He is a co-founder of iEvolve: The Center for World Spirituality, a scholar at the Integral Institute, the director of the Integral Spiritual Experience, the guest editor of the JITP academic series of journals on Integral Spirituality, and a lecturer at the Integral program at John F. Kennedy University. The author of seven books, including the national bestseller Soul Prints and Mystery of Love, Gafni’s teaching is marked by a deep transmission of open heart, love and leading edge provocative wisdom. Gafni is considered by many to be a visionary voice in the founding of a new World Spirituality.

The Evolution of God By Robert Wright

Thank God for agnostics. Over the past decade, our public conversation about religion has all too often degenerated into a food fight between the religious right and the secular left. Now comes journalist Robert Wright with a gentler approach: a materialist account of religion that manages (sort of) to make room for God (of a sort).

“The Evolution of God” is a big book that addresses a simple question: Is religion poison? Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, much ink and many pixels have scrutinized the late Harvard professor Samuel Huntington’s prophesy of a coming “clash of civilizations” between the Christian West and the Islamic world. Is Islam a religion of war? What about Judaism and Christianity?

The assumption underlying many answers to these questions — an assumption shared by fundamentalists and “new atheists” alike — is that religions are what their founders and scriptures say they are, rather than what contemporary practitioners make them out to be.

Wright rejects this assumption. No religion is in essence evil or good, he writes. Scriptures are malleable. Founders are betrayed. At least for historians, there is little provocation here. The provocation comes when Wright claims that religious history seems to be going somewhere, as if guided by an invisible hand. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all appear to have a “moral direction,” and that direction is toward the good.

Christians have contended for centuries that Jesus replaced the Jewish God of wrath with the Christian God of love. Wright argues that this evolution from malevolence to benevolence happens in each of the Abrahamic religions. In each case, God starts out with a whip in his hand and a sneer on his lip.

So score one for the new atheists. But the God of vengeance who cares only about his own people gradually evolves into a God of compassion who cares about us all. In the process, the Western monotheisms advance from belligerence to tolerance. Religion’s original sin of violence is redeemed.

To explain how this “salvation” (his word) occurs, Wright draws from his prior books on evolutionary psychology (“The Moral Animal”) and game theory (“Nonzero”).

The key argument is that, ever since hunters and gatherers have been hunting and gathering, the invisible hand guiding human history has been working (largely through advances in technology and communication) to create non-zero-sum situations that force historical actors, often against their own inclinations, into ever-widening circles of moral concern.

Jews, Christians and Muslims are led (gradually and in fits and starts) toward moral universalism not because religions are inherently good but because believers are inherently flexible — flexible enough to see when they and their enemies are in the same boat.

All this happens, it should be emphasized, on entirely naturalistic grounds. Wright, a self-described “materialist,” believes that history is driven not by fiat from on high but by natural selection via “facts on the ground.”

In his account, Judaism gives rise to Christianity and Islam without even a whiff of the supernatural. And the Apostle Paul — “the Bill Gates of his day” — is “just another savvy and ambitious man who happened to be in the religion business.”

Yet all Wright’s talk of “business models” and “algorithms” and “positive network externalities” somehow opens up the conversation about God rather than closing it down. In this oddly old-fashioned book, which recalls Hegel more than anyone else, Wright speaks repeatedly of “design” and “goals” and “purposes” in human history.

In the end, Wright allows himself to wonder whether the evolution of “God,” the concept, might provide evidence for the existence of God, the reality. “If history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral truth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer,” he writes, “then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe — conceivably — the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity.”

Whether this Gospel of Maybe will make many converts is doubtful. There are bones thrown here and there to atheists and believers alike, but no red meat. So the final judgment may be that the book is too hard on faith to please religious folk and too easy on dogma to please secularists.

Still, it is hard not to envy Wright for his Obamaesque hope. There is reason to hope, he writes, that the Abrahamic religions can get along with one another, with science and with the modern world. But Wright also exhibits an even more radical hope: that human beings might learn to talk about religion in a manner that is both civil and intelligent.

For decades the faithful and the faithless operated in the United States under a gentlemen’s agreement to leave one another alone. Yes, we had our Bryans and our Menckens during the Scopes trial in the 1920s, but after that, belief and disbelief retreated to their respective corners. Then came the religious right and church buses for Reagan, to which Harris and Hitchens and Dawkins and Dennett rightly cried foul.

If God is going to be used to prop up Republican policies, it is perfectly legitimate for people with different politics to try to cut the Republican God down to size. And so we find ourselves in the sort of scuffle between believers and unbelievers that hasn’t been seen since evolution and the Bible went toe to toe in Dayton, Tenn.

In American religion, as in U.S. politics, however, the middle is far bigger than the extremes combined. Most Americans don’t believe God and evolution are at war. And only fools want another crusade against Islam.

So thank God or “God” or whatever matters most to you for this book, not so much for its arguments as for its tone, which offers the sort of hope even unbelievers can believe in: that we can somehow learn to talk about religion without throwing our food.

Stephen Prothero is a religious studies professor at Boston University and the author of “Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn’t.”

Robert Wright discusses his book, “The Evolution of God”

Three Faiths, One God: Judaism, Christianity, Islam [updated]

Three Faiths, One God: Judaism, Christianity, Islam captures a fascinating interreligious dialogue on film. The documentary explores the similarities between scriptural texts and religious practices as well as the historical conflicts and differences between the three faiths, and the crisis of the fundamentalist approach to religious pluralism. The bottom line: Individuals of the Abrahamic faiths share basic, human values.

As Karen Armstrong, author of The History of God, states at the opening of the film: “Jews, Christians, and Muslims have developed markedly similar notions of the divine though often working in isolation and hostility with one another.”

The filmmakers highlight the many different ways that the Islamic way of life parallels the Jewish way of life, the fact that all three religions worship a compassionate deity and that all adhere to the Ten Commandments.

The lively dialogue also focuses on common misperceptions amongst practitioners of these religions. A major stumbling block for Muslims, for example, is the Christian belief in the Trinity. To many Muslims, this connotes a Christian belief in three Gods.

There are many illuminating references to history. The Golden Age of Spain under Muslim rule involved true collaboration between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in commerce, art and academia. Maimonides philosophized in both Arabic and Hebrew and, when the Jews were exiled from Spain, many sought to dwell in lands ruled by Muslims.

Judea Pearl, father of Danny Pearl, the Wall Street Journal investigative reporter who was murdered in Pakistan by Muslim extremists, calls in Three Faiths, One God for interfaith efforts to reach the Muslim teachers who train students in the teachings of the Koran. He notes that interfaith dialogue with fundamentalists needs to be based on Islam.

Karen Armstrong adds: “If we wish to neutralize the fundamentalists of any religion, we need to guarantee them a place under the sun.”

A partial list of the distinguished participants in this dialogue include: Bishop John Chane, National Cathedral, Diocese of Washington, DC Dr. Krister Stendahl, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Divinity School Dr. Marc Gopin, Director, Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution, Akbar Ahmen, Chair of Islamic Studies, American University, Dr. Diana Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion, Harvard Divinity School, Rabbi Irving Greenburg, Former Chairman, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, Dr. Maria Menocal, Professor of Medieval Studies, Yale University, Eboo Patel, Executive Director, Interfaith Youth Core, Chicago, ILL, Dr. Jane Smith, Hartford Seminary, Dr. Reuven Firestone, Author of Children of Abraham: Introduction of Judaism for Muslims, Bishop Kenneth Cragg, Church of England, Alma Abdul Hadi Jadallah, Institute for Conflict Analysis, Washington, DC, Rev. John Mack, United Congregational Church of Christ, Washington, DC, and Imam Feisal Rauf, Author of What’s Right with Islam.

Reuven Firestone, Professor of Medieval Judaism and Islam at Hebrew Union College notes that “The film does not shy away from discussing the tensions between our competing religious systems. It does not try to paper over real differences. But it treats these in a non-polemical way that encourages real consideration of how the great monotheistic religions have interrelated with one another over centuries and millennia.” As Chaplains who minister to these three faiths, you will be drawn in.

Part 2
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