In this dialogue, Brother David and Ken Wilber discuss the concept of Integral panentheism—the belief that God immanently exists within the manifest universe, interpenetrating all that we can touch and see, while simultaneously existing infinitely beyond the universe in timeless transcendence.  Contrasted with theistic, deistic, and pantheistic belief systems, Integral panentheism brings new life to traditional Christian practices and doctrine, such as gratefulness, prayer, and the Holy Trinity, while also offering a stable foundation for truly inter-religious conversations in the modern and post-modern worlds.

"I am a little concerned that so many people who have discovered the One simply eradicate their sense of the Many, or consider it unimportant...." - Br. David Steindl Rast

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Who: Brother David Steindl-Rast has been a practicing Benedictine monk for over half a century and was one of the first Vatican-sanctioned delegates to participate in Buddhist-Christian dialogue. He is a recipient of the Martin Buber Award for his outstanding role in building bridges between religious traditions, and serves as a senior member of the Mount Savior Monastery in Elmira, New York.

Summary: As human beings continue to evolve, so do our conceptions of God.  In fact, some would go so far as to say that as human beings evolve, God evolves right along with us, and with every small step humanity takes toward wider care and deeper consciousness, God takes another step toward its own perfection and the divinization of the universe.  And it is through our very conceptions of the divine that God's voice can speak to and through us, finding more volume and resonance as the architecture of thought becomes more sophisticated and inclusive. 

This is why our theoretical understanding of spirituality is just as important as our actual experiences of God, or Buddha, or Spirit of any name.  There is an aspect of God, our selves, and the universe that is best described as being ultimately “One,” and there is an aspect that is best described as the “Many.”  And while we may all be looking at (and as) the very same ultimate Oneness, it is our interpretations of that Oneness that determine our relationship with the Many.

Central to the discussion is the notion of panentheism as a foundation to anchor our conceptions of God.  This is not to be confused with the idea of pantheism, in which the divine is completely immanent within the physical world itself, but is without transcendent qualities whatsoever.  Panentheism also offers a way to step beyond merely deistic conceptions of Spirit, in which God is credited with the creation of the universe but remains eternally removed from it, with no immanent qualities whatsoever—the "great clockmaker in the sky," as deists often describe the divine, able to be perceived only through the light of reason.  Panentheism also frees us from the typically mythological conceptions of God that are found in traditional forms of theism, in which one particular group of people claim an exclusive knowledge of God's nature—usually a single, monolithic, omniscient God who reveals himself only through faith and revelation, which more often than not resembles the "great superego in the sky."

Rather than saying "the universe is God," as the pantheists would, or that "God is beyond the universe," as the deists and even theists likely would, the panentheistic view would more likely state that "the universe is in God, and God is in everything in the universe."  In this conception, God is the universe, while being infinitely beyond the universe—that is, to borrow terms from Nagarjuna, there is a sense in which God represents Absolute unmanifest perfection, while simultaneously becoming increasingly more perfect in the relative world.   It is precisely this divide between God transcendent and God immanent that, in the modern and post-modern worlds, only panentheism can seem to bridge.  As  American philosopher Charles Hartshorne put it, "panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism" (the synthesis of deism and pantheism, in which God preceded the universe and created it, but is now equivalent with it), "except their arbitrary negations."

One of the most important contributions Christianity has to offer the world's discussion of spirituality is the idea of the Holy Trinity: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  This unique conception of God as "three persons, one substance" has been a central part of Christian doctrine since the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.  And when viewed through the lens of Integral panentheism, the Trinity truly comes alive in our minds as three very different ways of experiencing God:

- The God that is the great, unknowable, Absolute Mystery, from which we come and to which we shall return—God transcendent, or God the Father.

- The God that we recognize in everything that we see, everything that we touch, everything that is—the entire universe as the Body of Christ; God immanent; or God the Son.

- The God that exists through doing, creating, knowing, understanding—the dynamic aspects of God; God as verb; or God as Holy Spirit.

The Holy Trinity is just one of many traditional religious symbols from around the world that take on renewed life, relevance, and significance in the light of a panentheistic conception of the physical and spiritual worlds. As such, the panentheistic model is an almost ideal place to begin any Integral discussion of religion and spirituality, as it not only helps to reconcile some of the apparent contradictions within the Christian tradition (e.g. transcendence vs. immanence), but also provides a common foundation upon which we can begin a truly inter-religious discussion, revealing many of the essential similarities (and important differences) between a multitude of different religions and faiths, as well as with the secular and scientific worlds.  In a panentheistic universe, there is no need for conflict between spirituality and science, between God and evolution, or even between consciousness and biochemistry.

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Daniel O'Connor | Integral Ventures, LLC Continued from Integral Praxiology: Introduction Inspired in part by Wilber’s (2007) recent proposals regarding Integral Perspectivism, my first proposal is to consider that action can only be understood from some perspective and that this leads to a worthwhile inquiry into what perspectives are possible and, furthermore, what perspectives are truly universal to all action. In other words, what perspectives must be pre-supposed by people in order for them to act in any situation? The first part of my answer is based on my interpretation of Jürgen Habermas’s (1979, 1984, 1987, 1992) Formal Pragmatics, which is the core of his Theory of Communicative Action and his Critical Theory of Society. Habermas (1979, p. 1) introduced this research program as an effort “to identify and reconstruct the universal conditions of possible understanding. In other contexts one also speaks of ‘general presuppositions of communication,’ but I prefer to speak of general presuppositions of communicative action because I take the type of action aimed at reaching understanding to be fundamental. Thus I start from the assumption that other forms of social action—for example, conflict, competition, strategic action in general—are derivatives of action oriented toward reaching understanding. Furthermore, as...

Daniel O'Connor | Integral Ventures, LLC Integral Praxiology is an inquiry into the possibility of an integral science of human action. My approach to the study of human action is a form of integral reconstruction. As a reconstruction, my intent is to clarify and formalize the tacit knowledge and intuitive competencies that must, logically, be pre-supposed by people in order for them to act in any situation. In other words, I am attempting to make theoretically explicit those pre-theoretical perspectives, practices, and propositions that appear, on very close examination, to be governing the actions of people in the full variety of worldly contexts. As a distinctively integral reconstruction, my intent is to acknowledge and integrate all the essential pre-conditions necessary for a theory of human action that honors the full potential of the human experience. Hence, I will attempt to demonstrate that these distinctively integral perspectives, practices, and propositions are themselves pre-supposed by people in all their actions, however unrealized their full human potential may be expressed in these actions, and therefore unavoidable elements of this theoretical reconstruction. Integral Praxiology, therefore, represents an attempt to make theoretically explicit those pre-theoretical perspectives, practices, and propositions that appear to be governing the...

Daniel O'Connor | Integral Ventures, LLC Continued from Integral Praxiology: Integral Perspectives Having thus clarified what essential perspectives must be pre-supposed by people in order for them to act in any situation, I now turn to the second portion of the inquiry concerned with the essential practices that constitute such action. If my interest was limited to framing an integral meta-theory with the capacity to describe human action in its many forms, then Triadic Quadratic Perspectivism would suffice. But the conditions that must be pre-supposed by people in order for them to act in any situation must be more than descriptive in nature, as descriptive conditions take as a given whatever it is that is animating this multi-perspectival action. Any theory of human action that merely describes action, regardless of how integral that description may be, falls short of its inherent potential if it does not also prescribe action that can guide people toward a direct, personal experience of that which has been so clearly described. Moreover, any integral meta-theory comprised entirely of descriptors, whether they be perspectives, archetypes, holons, fields, or some other type of construct, seems to contain an inherent self-contradiction in that it does not account for...