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With Plant Medicine Pioneer David Crow, LAc

12-week Training Starts Thursday, August 3, 2017

In the modern West, weve been raised to think of plants as objects that exist chiefly for our pleasure and consumption. We use them to nourish our bodies and beautify our gardens and homes.

The truth is that plants are so much more than that. They are multi-dimensional, living beings with whom we have a sacred relationship that can help us evolve on many levels.

They can detoxify our bodies, purify our minds, rebalance our emotions, and reboot our energy. They can help us heal diseases and expand our vision.

They can also open up an entirely different relationship with the natural world.

As you learn to open to the deeper blessings of plants, you can receive more of their healing and medicinal powers and put yourself on a path to radiant health and even spiritual illumination.

Plants are actually conscious, sentient life forms connected in complex and mysterious ways to the health of our bodies and minds.

On the most basic level, the human race is dependent on plants just to survive. But they can also helps us truly thrive.

When we relate to plants with gratitude, humility and reverence, they can teach us a great deal about ourselves, our connection to each other and the art of living.

When combined with meditative practices and mindfulness, plants can serve as a foundation for a spiritual practice that transforms negative conditions and creates exciting new opportunities for manifesting our greater life purpose.

Ancient seers, mystics, and healers discovered many of these secret properties and passed down this knowledge in lineages such as Ayurveda and Chinese medicine in the East and herbalism in the West.

Now you can harvest the best of these healing traditions, marry them with spiritual practice and create a new paradigm for your health and wholeness, in the 12-week Medicinal Plants & Spiritual Evolution 2.0.

The prospect of creating a new-paradigm relationship with plants can be intimidating. It could take a lifetime to study and master multiple disciplines from botany and medicine to sacred traditions and spiritual practices.

Rather than sifting through and distilling this endless array of information on your own, what if you could take a 3-month virtual journey with a master guide who has dedicated his life to exploring, classifying and documenting the practical, medical, psychological and spiritual powers of plants?

Such a guide can navigate you through the hype and misinformation common in this field. Science tends to view the esoteric healing lore of plants with skepticism, preferring the cold, clinical certainty of pharmaceutical drugs.

The major botanical medicine traditions, while infused with great wisdom, tend to have blind spots and knowledge gaps.

Floracopeia founder David Crow, LAc is one of todays greatest synthesizers of the vast knowledge contained within the plant kingdom. He not only has assimilated the research, he has spent decades immersed in the ancient healing arts.

David has journeyed deep into Chinese and Ayurvedic traditions and studied with masters the world over. This hard-earned wisdom and knowledge is now available to you in a powerful virtual format.

In Medicinal Plants & Spiritual Evolution 2.0, David has synthesized proven techniques, tips, and strategies for accessing the profound healing, restorative, medicinal and spiritual powers of plants, in 12 information-rich modules.

The course is labeled 2.0 because it builds upon and expands on Davids original Medicinal Plants & Spiritual Evolution program by adding a wealth of specific practices for detoxification, rejuvenation and manifestation. You do not need to have taken that program to receive the full benefit from this course.

Youll learn about the critical role plants play in the purification of the world and your body, as well as which medicinal plants protect against environmental toxicity. Youll discover how Ayurvedic, Tibetan and Chinese medicine use plants to detoxify the body and mind.

Youll understand why detoxification whether of environmental poisons or toxic addictions promotes health, happiness and fulfillment and contributes to individual and collective spiritual evolution.

Youll receive clear-cut instructions for combining medicinal plants with meditation practices, using illness, trauma, pain and addiction as a springboard for spiritual growth.

Youll gain knowledge about the ways plants can revitalize your body, mind and spirit and learn practical rejuvenation therapies that enhance cognitive function, longevity and spiritual development.

Youll also study the relationship between flowering plants and the health of the biosphere, and how GMOs affect the pranic intelligence of food plants, human health, and consciousness.

Youll be given specific strategies for obtaining high-quality nourishment in this age of food and chemical sensitivities and for using nutrient-rich plants to boost your immune system, overcome fatigue and slow aging.

The final modules comprise a master class in ecological spirituality. Youll see how medicinal plants can help you deepen your meditation practice, cultivate spiritual awareness and manifest your life purpose.

Youll discover that spiritual traditions are rooted in nature and that plants are the bridge between spirit and matter. And youll learn about the energetic intelligence of medicinal plants that supports your bodys healing intelligence.

Finally, youll discover the ancient and modern uses of visionary power plants, how to use aromatic plants and essential oils to calm, balance and uplift your entire being and how to apply the immunological and psychological benefits of sacred scents.

David will escort you across the threshold of an enthralling new world that empowers effective healing and nourishment of your body, mind and soul and those of your loved ones.

Youll never look at plants the same way, again. You will open to a whole new realm of allies and companions for your life.

When you choose take this journey with David, youll gain a profound understanding of medicinal plants that links biology, ecology and spirituality with a felt sense of connection with all of life.

There is perhaps no better guide for opening you to a new paradigm of relating to the plant kingdom than Floracopeia founder David Crow, who integrates wisdom from multiple streams of healing practices into a coherent and cohesive body of teachings.

For more than 30 years, hes pioneered a path that draws from strands as diverse as Ayurveda, Chinese medicine and essential oils to shift our perspective that plants are mechanistic objects to one in which we recognize and honor them as wise, sentient allies.

Youll receive a profound understanding of working with medicinal plants, food plants, flowers, mushrooms, aromatic ceremonial plants and essential oils as an entryway into understanding health, spirituality and true wellness.

David will balance high-level theoretical and spiritual insights alongside specific remedies and protocols you can immediately put into practice. Youll learn how to eat more healthfully and joyfully in a way that truly nourishes your body. Youll learn about specific therapeutic herbs, plant essences and oils that can rebuild your energy and clarify your focus.

You can envision this new relationship with the plant kingdom as growing new and deeper roots for a richer, fuller life. This strengthened root system allows you to weather metaphorical storms, droughts and other life challenges from health crises to aging to the loss of loved ones.

By seeking unity with the wisdom, healing power and, yes, consciousness within the plant kingdom, we awaken to new domains of knowledge. We view and relate to our bodies and lives and the earth itself in ways that enable us to become passionate advocates for individual and collective wellbeing and consciousness.

In every class, youll gain important information about medicinal plants that can enhance your physical and emotional wellbeing. Ultimately, youll see that each and every plant, herb and flower can open a pathway into a deeper relationship with your body, mind and soul and thus serve as a portal to spiritual awakening.

During this 12-week program, youll:

This program is appropriate for anyone intrigued by the healing and evolutionary benefits of botanical medicine as well as professionals in any discipline that work with herbs, plants, oils or energy.

Youll benefit from Davids more than 30 years of studying the healing powers of plants in various cultures with many gifted teachers from the shamanic traditions of the Amazon to the alchemical mysteries of the Himalayas and the ancient wisdom of Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine.

Course sessions are on Thursdays at 5:00pm Pacific.

In this 12-week transformational intensive, David will guide you through the fundamental skills and competencies to become attuned and aligned to your deeper biological interconnectedness with the plant kingdom. Youll develop a broader spiritual lens that will support a deconstruction of false notions about your relationship with plants, and youll learn how to work with energy, consciousness and healing in new ways.

Each weekly contemplation and training session will build harmoniously upon the last, so that youll develop a complete, holistic understanding of the practices, tools and principles of evolutionary healing with plants as you connect to the greater biological realities of creating a sustainable culture that supports all.

Please note that course lectures are pre-recorded followed by David leading LIVE Q&A sessions to address your questions directly.

Plants detoxify the biosphere of the earth; many medicinal plants are also highly effective for detoxifying the inner biosphere of the human body, something that pharmaceutical drugs cannot do.

As levels of environmental toxicity rise, associated health challenges are multiplying and increasing in seriousness, making the purifying powers of plants even more valuable and necessary. When used properly, medicinal plants can be highly effective for cleansing the body and mind of negative habits and physical addictions.

When combined with meditative practices and mindfulness, the use of these plants can become a spiritual practice that transforms negative conditions and creates new opportunities for manifesting our greater life purpose.

Module 1: Medicinal Plants & Purification (August 3)

Detoxification is an ongoing process in the human body supported by nutrients from food plants. Medicinal plants, when used wisely and according to the individual body type, season and health condition, can gently and safely support detoxification of the organs and tissues, just as plants cleanse the elements of the biosphere.

In this module, youll discover:

Module 2: Detoxification & Spiritual Evolution (August 10)

Detoxification, whether of environmental poisons or toxic addictions, has profound implications for our health, happiness and fulfillment and can play an important role in our individual and collective spiritual evolution.

In this module youll discover:

Module 3: Freedom & Fulfillment Pain & Spiritual Growth (August 17)

Pain and suffering are both a catalyst and an obstacle to spiritual evolution, and medicinal plants can be highly effective in not only treating illnesses and addictions, but also in transforming pain into a spiritual path.

In this module, youll discover:

Just as pharmaceutical drugs cannot remove toxicity in the body, they are incapable of replenishing the bodys nutrients and increasing vitality. Throughout time, plants that support mental functions, enhance memory and improve concentration have been regarded as having a unique and special place in the botanical pharmacopeia for nourishing spiritual development.

Module 4: Ojas & Rasa The Essences of Nutrition, Vitality & Spirituality (August 24)

Rasa is the vitality of plants concentrated in their juices, flavors and smells; Ojas is the refined nutritional essence of the body that supports immunity and vitality and gives happiness and contentment. Knowing how to use plants that are rich in Rasa to support Ojas is the basis of rejuvenation, which in turn is the foundation for long life and spiritual accomplishment.

In this module, youll discover:

Module 5: The Feast of Nectars Food Plants & Spirituality (August 31)

The foundation of the food chain is flowering plants. Agriculture, food plants and the quality of nutrition in a society are both causes and results of its level of collective consciousness, and therefore an opportunity to develop a deeper spiritual relationship with plants and the soil they come from.

In this module, youll discover:

Module 6: Rasayana Elixirs for Rejuvenation, Meditation & Longevity (September 7)

Classical medical systems such as Ayurveda and Chinese medicine offer sophisticated, systematic approaches for rejuvenating the body and mind. Using nurturing therapies and medicinal plants rich in nutritive compounds, we can restore strong immunity, overcome fatigue, and increase the length, quality and enjoyment of life.

In this module, youll discover:

Spiritual traditions arose from our relationship to the cycles of nature and its powers; developing awareness of our intimate relationship with plants and the elements of the earth develops ecological spirituality, which is the basis for natural compassion and a collective effort to protect and restore the life-sustaining powers of the biosphere. Medicinal plants can support every type of meditation practice, as well become the focus of meditation, and are therefore agents that help us cultivate and actualize spiritual awareness and manifest our life purpose.

Module 7: Eco-spirituality Plants & the Manifestation of Spiritual Consciousness (September 14)

Spirituality, health and the wellbeing of the earth are intimately connected. Spiritual practices develop sensitivity, insight, empathy and other qualities that are necessary for ecological sustainability, which in turn provides the conditions for individuals and humanity to develop and manifest spiritual qualities.

In this module, youll discover:

Module 8: The Evolution of Light Into Consciousness (September 21)

Human life is dependent on sunlight photosynthesized by plants, and plants are dependent on the energies of the sun and moon. Understanding this biological dependency develops reverence and spiritual sensitivity toward plants and the elemental sources of life.

In this module youll discover:

Module 9: Botanical Prana Plants as Agents of Natures Self-organizing Intelligence (September 28)

By understanding the intelligence of medicinal plants and how this intelligence functions in the biosphere and human body, we can bring these plants into our lives to enhance our immunological, neurological and emotional intelligence, medically empower ourselves and support our spiritual evolution both individually and in communities.

In this module, youll discover:

Module 10: Soma Vision Plants for Wisdom & Transcendence (October 5)

Many plants are legendary for their abilities to produce visionary states, profound insights, and reveal transcendent realities. Because of their great power these plants can damage the body and mind if used improperly, but if used wisely they can be important allies for spiritual growth.

In this module, youll discover:

Module 11: The Perfumed Garden Aromatic Plants, Olfaction & Consciousness (October 12)

The olfactory system transmits the intelligence of botanical aromatic molecules directly to the brain. The link between the breath, the limbic system and the healing powers of plants provides us with a powerful, yet easily accessible tool to enhance meditation, concentration and memory, and to reinforce positive mental and emotional states.

In this session, youll discover:

Module 12: Wish-fulfilling Gems Ceremonial Plants for Removing Obstacles, Creating Synchronicity & Attracting Good Fortune (October 19)

Many plants have been used for millennia for their aromatic powers to uplift the mind, balance the emotions, enhance immunity and counteract pathogens, thereby removing various kinds of negativity, stimulating creativity, manifesting intentions and supporting spiritual evolution.

In this module, youll discover:

In addition to Davids transformative 12-week online training, youll receive these powerful training sessions and bonus materials. These bonuses are being offered to complement what youll learn in the course and deepen your understanding and practice.

Spiritual Beliefs & Practices in Indigenous Agriculture 3-hour Lecture and Guided Photo Journey With David Crow

Join us for an in-depth lecture and guided photo journey around the world and through time to discover and remember what may be one of the most crucial dimensions of our relationship with the natural world that has disappeared from modern life, at our own loss and peril. There is a vast and deep knowledge of plants that has been an integral part of human history and has left a rich legacy of art, song, myth and ethnobotanical wisdom. From the traditions of preparing the soil to methods of planting to the techniques of harvesting, spiritual beliefs and practices have been the basis of agriculture since humanity first began planting seeds.

In this bonus, youll discover:

Floracopeias Essential Oils Reference Guide A Full Color 24-page Ebook With Guidance on Using Essential Oils

This Essential Oils Reference Guide is a beneficial addition to your essential oils education. Learn how to use essential oils effectively in many different applications. Learn about the safety considerations when using essential oils. Learn about the uses and applications of 20 of the most popular essential oils.

How Medicinal Plants Work According to Ayurvedic Knowledge & Wisdom Audio Dialogue With Vasant Lad Hosted by David Crow

In this session from thePlant Medicine Summit 2016, Ayurvedic expert and physician Dr. Vasant Lad explains how Ayurveda has profound knowledge of the interaction of the world around us and how it contributes to health or disease.

View post:
Medicinal Plants & Spiritual Evolution 2.0 with David Crow ...

After more than 30 years of managing the Willow Creek Hatchery in Edmonds, the local chapter of Trout Unlimited has decided to turn over its stewardship.

Edmonds Parks and Recreation Director Carrie Hite confirmed that Sound Salmon Solutions, a nonprofit organization and regional leader in salmon conservation, has agreed to take over management of the hatchery operations and expand educational programming and outreach activities.

Also operating on site is the volunteer-run Wildlife Habitat Native Plant Demonstration Garden run by the Pilchuck Audubon Society.

Our feeling is that rather than taking it over, we are carrying on the work that Trout Unlimited has done for the past 30-plus years, said Executive Director Rodney Pond of Lake Stevens-based Sound Salmon Solutions, a nonprofit working to ensure the future of healthy salmon runs in the Snohomish, Stillaguamish and Island county watersheds.

The nonprofit has a picnic at Willow Creek Hatchery Aug. 26.

We will be transitioning the current group of volunteers running the hatchery; they will continue to do so. Were going to take over operations and development of the hatchery. They want to see programs at the hatchery grown and built upon.

A professional services agreement was signed in February to cover staff time for training and grant writing, and Sound Salmon Solutions staff has been working closely with Trout Unlimited with the goal of fully taking over operations at the facility in 2018.

Weve been doing 10-year leases with Trout Unlimited, Hite said. In 2014, we sat down with them and looked at their goals and their operations. They said they didnt have an interest in another 10-year lease; they said they were all getting old, the job was very physically demanding and they thought they were at the end of their life at the fish hatchery.

Trout Unlimited agreed to stay on until a successor was found.

They are a large, energetic group that will be able to continue the work we began nearly 30 years ago, said John Hjord, a past president of Trout Unlimited.

Hatchery manager Walter Thompson agreed.

Theyll do the nuts and bolts of the operation, said the Edmonds resident, 73. The volunteers where will continue on, but Sound Salmon Solutions is a younger group much more comfortable with social media, that sort of thing, and recruiting volunteers.

"Our membership is getting very old, and its difficult to get people to come on board and volunteer time for these kind of activities. Weve turned a corner, and our vision is more of an educational outreach program to the local school districts as opposed to focusing on salmon enhancement programs.

Hite said she and her staff did plenty of research of hatcheries before agreeing on Sound Salmon Solutions.

There are two schools of thought if the hatcheries are helpful or not, she said. After the research, we decided we thought the hatchery would be helpful from an educational point of view. So our No. 1 priority is to continue salmon education by running the hatchery. And who better than Sound Salmon Solutions to take it over?

That education includes hundreds of Edmonds and Shoreline elementary school students who have participated in Willow Creek Hatchery and Edmonds Fishing Pier field trips. Today, the Edmonds-Woodway High School group Students Saving Salmon meets at the hatcherys main building.

To be clear, the city of Edmonds owns the hatchery, but does not provide money, resources or staff to run it. Throughout the years, Trout Unlimited has provided volunteer labor and paid for utilities there.

The city, which provided a $1,500 grant to help Sound Salmon Solutions work with Trout Unlimited on the transition, it will charge Sound Salmon Solutions $1 per year for its lease.

Founded in 1974

The Edmonds/Laebugten Salmon Chapter of Trout Unlimited is affiliated with the Washington Council of Trout Unlimited. It was founded in 1974 by 17 concerned sport fishermen in response to diminishing salmon available to recreational fishermen.

Since 1979, the chapter has sponsored a Coho salmon net pen-rearing project under the Edmonds Fishing Pier. It has been on hold since the piers rehabilitation in March 2016, and Sound Salmon Solutions is not interested in continuing its operation.

Thompson said he is seeing if Puget Sound Anglers, a conservation group, is willing to take over the project.

After years of fundraising and contributions, the Trout Unlimited chapter built the Willow Creek Hatchery and Aquatic Education Center in 1985. It is one of the largest privately maintained and volunteer operated hatcheries in the state.

Under the supervision of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, it has raised and planted an average of 100,000 salmon each year.

Sound Salmon Solutions

Ponds organization is familiar with Edmonds streams and wetlands.

In November 2016, thanks to the Rose Foundations Puget Sound Mitigation and Restoration, it provided a grant to Students Saving Salmon and Stream Team student groups.

It enabled students to continue water-quality testing at Willow, Shell and Shellabarger creeks in Edmonds, as well as at the Edmonds Marsh.

At the Willow Creek Hatchery, at Pine Street and State Route 104, Sound Salmon Solutions will work on writing grants and securing donations while recruiting new volunteers to work alongside Trout Unlimited members.

Edmonds Trout is unusual in terms of other Trout Unlimited chapters in that its always had a salmon focus, Pond said. Its a bunch of old white guys who arent recruiting new members. It would have been a shame if the hatchery were mothballed after all these years.

My understanding is that those guys are still very much invested in volunteering for the hatchery, and we are absolutely going to need them. I know some of those guys. Its just part of their life. Theyre retired, they love raising the fish, love working with the kids. Its a home away from home for them.

Ironically, while Trout Unlimited is all about salmon education and raising salmon, Pond said Trout Unlimiteds national stance is more or less against hatcheries.

It focuses on wild-fish populations, with a position that supports healthy wild fish population, Pond said. We agree its healthy all around for the species. We need diversity thats wild, thats subject to natural evolutionary forces and the changing of the environment.

However, salmon are very different. Its absolutely essential to the sustenance and spiritual lives of our local tribes. Theres a big investment to keep these hatcheries running. If we didnt have hatcheries, we wouldnt have salmon. Wed have salmon, but there would be so few of them here in Puget Sound.

Pond pointed out an incongruity: Hatcheries do muddy up the genetics of wild populations. Its basically running semi-domesticated species into the same environment as wild species. Its like running domestic goats with wild goats. Its going to bring down the genetics of the wild salmon population.

With that in mind, its pertinent to point out that Willow Creek Hatchery which used to be called Deer Creek Hatchery for reasons that remain murky has never been strictly a production hatchery.

Its been for educating kids about the salmon lifecycle, salmon release and getting them interested in the watershed and the environment. It contributes very little to salmon that return, if any at all.

Pond said details of the stewardship succession of the hatchery will be worked out in a meeting next month.

Were thrilled to be doing this, he said. This place is an Edmonds institution.Theres been so much community involvement going on. Theres generations of people. Adults bring their kids and grandparents bring their grandchildren.

I dont see any reason to change, just add to it. Our ambition is build a more comprehensive education center, and the hatchery will be part of that.

Original post:
New group to run Willow Creek Hatchery - Edmonds Beacon

This is an article by Mark Kolsen. It appears in the current issue of American Atheist magazine, which is sold at Barnes & Noble, Book World, and Books-A-Million bookstores in the United States and at Chapters/Indigo bookstores in Canada. To find a store near you or to subscribe, go to atheists.org/magazine.

In November, ten minutes after walking into a hospital emergency room, I lay on a bed, completely surrounded by medical staff preparing me for a catheter. My left anterior descending artery (a.k.a. the widow maker) was completely blocked, and I needed a stent to restore my blood flow.

Just beyond the staff encircling me, I noticed a middle-aged man wearing a Hospital Chaplain sign. (And it was a sign, not a name tag or ID badge. It was about five by eight inches and held around his neck by a string.) When someone asked me about relatives, the hospital chaplain offered to call my first mate, and he was the one who took my clothes and valuables and assured me that they would be safe during my surgery. And just before I was carted off to the operating room, the chaplain asked, What denomination of clergy would you like me to call?

Somewhat surprised, I said that I was an Atheist.

You want to be an Atheist at a time like this? he replied.

Time like this? For a moment the question baffled me. Should I worry because its Friday afternoon, a reputedly bad time to check in to a hospital? Then I snapped to and realized that even though I didnt think that my life was in danger, the chaplain did. And if I were to die, well

Sorry, but I know the science, I responded with a smile. Thanks for your help, anyway. At that, the chaplain slithered away.

Later, as I reflected on my experience, two things struck me. First, the hospital chaplain never offered me non-religious options, such as the secular humanist chaplains now available in the U.S. military. Such options exist elsewhere. In Belgium, non-denominational institutions have a team of usually Catholic and atheist spiritual care givers. In 2015, Britains National Health Service mandated equal treatment of those without a religion in the receipt of pastoral care. Shortly thereafter, Jane Flint became the first secular humanist hospital chaplain in Great Britain. Her job is to offer emotional support to terminally ill atheist patients and their relatives. In the Netherlands, spiritual caregivers in hospitals comprise both humanist and non-aligned chaplains. And in Scotland, with policy guidance from the Scottish Humanist Association, chaplains are expected to work with different faiths and those of no faith.

Chaplains, after all, are not just for theists. There is widespread agreement that all people have spiritual, as opposed to religious, needs. In a recent article for the online journal Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine, Marcelo Saad and Roberta de Mediros define spirituality as the search for ultimate meaning, purpose, and significance in relation to oneself, family, others, community, nature and sacred, expressed through beliefs, values, traditions and practices. And regarding hospital patients, a recent white paper on ProfessionalChaplains.org states that while serious illness is a biological event, it frightens patients and isolates them from their support communities when they need them most. Losses such as physical and cognitive capacities, independence, work or family status, and emotional equilibrium, along with the accompanying grief, can seriously impact their sense of meaning, purpose and physical worth.

Recognizing that sick and terminal hospital patients especially have spiritual needs, the World Health Organization (WHO) International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems includes billing codes for diseases, signs and symptoms, abnormal findingsand for some spiritual interventions. Here in the U.S, Medicare and Medicaid have agreed to let hospitals claim reasonable costs for clinical pastoral education, and will pay for end-of-life conversations, during which terminal patients can articulate to their providers what kind of medical interventions they do or do not want.

However, unlike other nations, no hospital is required by law or accreditation fiat to provide pastoral care in the United States. And, in contrast to the WHO, the National Uniform Billing Committee has refused to provide billing codes for chaplains. Nevertheless, in 2003, the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations said hospitals should demonstrate respect for patient needs, including the need for pastoral care and other spiritual services. Hospitals appear to have responded. Although a 2008 study reported that only 59% of American hospitals had chaplains, a more recent study reported that 70% of community hospitals employ chaplains today.

Online, many hospitals advertise spiritual services. However, I found none that advertise non-religious i.e. secular humanist or Atheist chaplains. This is ironic for several reasons. In metro areas, fewer than half of hospital patients identify themselves as church members when admitted, hospitals serving primarily pediatric patients have a higher prevalence of religiously unaffiliated family members, and the number of non-religious millennials continues to grow.

Atheist chaplains do exist in a few hospitals. But rarely are they paid staff members, despite the fact that chaplains services cost very little, and many hospitals advertise their services for no charge. Recognizing the problem and seeking to increase employment opportunities for their members liberal theist organizations are training their own chaplains to care for Atheists. Acknowledging that hospitals do not usually hire humanist or Atheist chaplains, one veteran theist chaplain puts it bluntly: As the number of unaffiliated and nonreligious persons climb, [theist] chaplains become by default the primary spiritual care givers in a hospital community.

Not all medical groups are oblivious to Atheists needs. According to Toni Van Pelt, nursing home directors have approached the Institute of Science and Human Values for advice on how to meet the needs of their secular residents. Likewise, a recent joint commission report focused on the language, racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of hospital populations. Cultural diversity, the report points out, includes religious preferences. As non-religious patients increase in number, hospitals must start to recognize that Atheists need staff who share their beliefs.

Theist chaplains, well-meaning as they may be, do not meet Atheists needs. Dr. Jason Heap, who has filed suit seeking to become the first humanist chaplain in the military, has trained other humanist chaplains. He says, If the chaplain with whom you are confiding offers theistic-based reflections or prayers to your existential questions, what practical value does this have in your situation?

Stephanie Wernek, an Atheist hospital chaplain in Rio Grande Valley, points out she has met many people under the age of forty who were adamant non-theists. Even in this deeply theistic part of the country, there exist many people who feel silenced and atomized by their lack of affiliation with a religious group that believes in a deity.

Vanessa Gomez Brake, Director of the Chaplaincy Institute, says, a need for atheist chaplains exists [A]t its core, chaplaincy is about taking the sacred out of the church, mosque, synagogue and temple, to bring it to the people, whatever their circumstances.

In addition to not being offered an Atheist chaplain, my hospital experience raised another issue. Why, I wondered, was a chaplain mingling with the medical team attending to me? I had not requested his presence; like many other people, I felt no need for a chaplain. In fact, upon reflection, his lurking around my body, and his overhearing my conversation with the medical team, was an intrusion into my privacy.

I am not the first to ask this question. As more hospitals employ chaplains, their precise role, especially their access to patient information, is now a subject of contentious debate. Chaplains, supported by some academics, argue that they provide a range of services, making them part of the medical team. Many also reject the assertion of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) that health care does not include methods of healing that are solely spiritual and that practitioners that provide solely religious healing services are not health care providers.

This debate is not just about semantics or chaplains searching for employment. Under the DHS Privacy Rule, chaplains access to patient records without a patients permission depends on whether the hospital considers them medical providers and some do. Without your consent, chaplains considered medical providers could access information about your general condition, spiritual affiliation, and anything else related to your medical history or treatment. In short, they could know as much as your doctor would about you.

Encouraged by the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, which is the main accrediting agency for chaplaincy in the U.S., hospital chaplains are already stepping beyond their bounds. Some chaplains and chaplaincy programs have begun to engage in activities that have ranged from initiating conversations with and perusing the medical records of patients who have not requested their services to suggesting that, because they are chaplains, they be permitted to do spiritual assessments on patients whether or not the patients are explicitly informed and agree to this beforehand. In some hospitals, especially religiously affiliated ones, a chaplain functions as a full member of the healing team.

As a result, some academics and doctors are sounding an alarm. Pointing to the fact that members of healthcare teams are not equal in education, experience, and status, Roberta and Erich Loewy state that hospital chaplains are not considered healthcare professionals either in fact or in principle and, arguably, not even allied healthcare professionals. Rather, they are considered an ancillary part of the healthcare team that is generally classified under the further, functional descriptor, patient support services.

The Loewys argue convincingly, in my view that while hospital chaplains may serve some critical functions in the healthcare of patients, it is a breach of confidentiality to allow a chaplain access to a patients medical records unless the patient is fully informed, understands the implications of such access, and either wholeheartedly acquiesces or initiates such a request. Otherwise, chaplains and doctors may have access to information, including conversations, which patients assumed to be private and confidential.

Moreover, the Loewys believe that chaplains should encounter patients only if patients request their presence because the unsolicited appearance of a chaplain may range from innocuous simply embarrassing or uncomfortable to intrusive or even threatening. As I think back to my ER experience, their words resonate.

The proper role of hospital chaplains will continue to be debated. Right now, Atheists need to be aware that, like me, you may unexpectedly face chaplains after entering a hospital, especially at your most vulnerable moments. These individuals are likely to be theists. If a hospital considers them to be healthcare professionals, they may have access to a lot of information youd rather not share.

Mark Kolsen recently retired from teaching high school in Wheaton, Illinois. He is an avid fan of the Four Horsemen, the late Victor Stenger, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He strives to understand all facets of scientific cosmology and evolutionary biology.

[Hemants note: All footnotes and citations for this article can be found in the print edition.]

(Image via Shutterstock)

Read the original:
Atheist Hospital Chaplains: The Time Has Come - Patheos (blog)

Spiritual evolution is the philosophical, theological, esoteric or spiritual idea that nature and human beings and/or human culture evolve: either extending from an established cosmological pattern (ascent), or in accordance with certain pre-established potentials. The phrase "spiritual evolution" can occur in the context of "higher evolution", a term used to differentiate psychological, mental, or spiritual evolution from the "lower" or biological evolution of physical form.[1]

The concept of spiritual evolution is also complemented by the idea of a creative impulse in human beings, known as epigenesis.[2]

Within this broad definition, theories of spiritual evolution are very diverse. They may be cosmological (describing existence at large), personal (describing development of an individual), or both. They can be holistic (holding that higher realities emerge from and are not reducible to the lower), idealist (holding that reality is primarily mental or spiritual) or nondual (holding that there is no ultimate distinction between mental and physical reality). One can regard all of them as teleological to a greater or lesser degree.

Philosophers, scientists, and educators who have proposed theories of spiritual evolution include Schelling (1775-1854), Hegel (1770-1831), Carl Jung (1875-1961), Max Thon (1848-1927), Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), Henri Bergson (1859-1941), Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), Jean Gebser (1905-1973), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), Owen Barfield (1898-1997), Arthur M. Young (1905-1995), Edward Haskell (1906-1986), E. F. Schumacher (1911-1977), Erich Jantsch (1929-1980), Clare W. Graves (1914-1986), Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), Terence McKenna (1946-2000), and P.R. Sarkar (1921-1990). As of 2015[update]William Irwin Thompson (born 1938), Victor Skumin (born 1948), Ken Wilber (born 1949), and Brian Swimme (born 1950) work in this field.

Mircea Eliade has suggested that in many pre-modern cultures one finds the concept of the Fall and a "nostalgia for paradise". However, for those cultures that have a cyclic cosmology, the concept of a progressive deterioration of the universe (as in the Hesiodic, Hindu, and Lurianic cosmologies of a degradation from a Golden Age to an Iron Age or Kali Yuga) might be balanced by a corresponding ascent to more spiritual stages and a return to paradisical conditions. This is what one finds in Buddhist and especially Jain cosmologies.

Many premodern cosmologies and esoteric systems of thought are based on an emanationist view of reality. If the Cyclic view is temporal, then emanation is a non-temporal precursor to the theory of spiritual evolution.

According to this paradigm, Creation proceeds as an outpouring or even a transformation in the original Absolute or Godhead. The Supreme Light or Consciousness descends through a series of stages, gradations, worlds or hypostases, becoming progressively more material and embodied, before finally turning around to return to the One, retracing its steps through spiritual knowledge, contemplation and ascent.

A supreme example of this form of thinking is the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and his successors. Other examples and interpretations might be found in the Hindu sect of Kashmir Shaivism and Tantra in general, Gnosticism, Sufism, and Kabbalah. The Hindu idea of the Chakras might also considered here as the "microcosmic" counterpart of macrocosmic involution and evolution. The Yogi raises the Kundalini or life force through and thus transcends each chakra in turn, until he reaches the crown chakra and liberation.[3]

An early example of the doctrine of spiritual evolution is found in Samkhya, one of the six systems of Hindu philosophy, that goes back more than two and a half thousand years (although its present form dates to around the 4th or 5th century c.e.). Unlike most types of classic Hinduism, the traditional Samkhyan philosophy is atheistic and dualistic. Pure spirit (called purusha) comes into proximity with prakriti (psychophysical nature), disturbing its equilibrium. As a result, the original root-prakriti (mulaprakriti) undergoes a series of progressive transformations or unfoldings, in the form of successive essences called tattvas. The most subtle tattwas emerge first, then progressively grosser ones, each in a particular order, and finally the elements and the organs of sense. The goal of evolution however is, paradoxically, the release of purusha and the return to the unmanifest condition. Hence everything is tending towards a goal of spiritual quiescence.[4]

The concept of the great chain of being developed by Plato and Aristotle whose ideas were taken up and synthesised by Plotinus. Plotinus in turn heavily influenced Augustine's theology, and from there Aquinas and the Scholastics. The Great Chain of Being was an important theme in Renaissance and Elizabethan thought, had an under-acknowledged influence on the shaping of the ideas of the Enlightenment and played a large part in the worldview of 18th century Europe. And while essentially a static worldview, by the 18th and early 19th century it had been "temporalized" by the concept of the soul ascending or progressing spiritually through the successive rungs or stages, and thus growing or evolving closer to God.[5] It also had at this time an impact on theories of biological evolution.

E. F. Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful, has recently proposed a sort of simplified Great Chain of Being, based on the idea of four "kingdoms" (mineral, vegetable, animal, human).[6] Schumacher rejects modernist and scientific themes, his approach recalling the universalist orientation of writers like Huston Smith,[7] and likely contributing to Ken Wilber's "holonomic" hierarchy or "Great Nest of Being".[8]

The concept of spiritual evolution has been taught in Buddhism. William Sturgis Bigelow - a physician and Buddhist - attempted to merge biology with spirituality. He accepted the existence of both material and spiritual realms, and many of his ideas were discussed in his book Buddhism and Immortality (1908). Bigelow used the concept of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution. According to the author, spiritual evolution involves an individual emerging from "unconditioned consciousness" and moving "up the scale of evolution guided by natural selection". Then the individual moves to a level of celestial experience, and finally is able to "return to the unconditioned consciousness from which all things emerge". Bigelow accepted both material and spiritual evolution and he also believed that Buddhism and science were compatible.[9]

Albert Low a Zen master and author of The Origin of Human Nature: A Zen Buddhist Looks at Evolution (2008) opposes neo-Darwinism and the selfish gene theory as he claims they are materialistic. He also opposes creationism for being dogmatic and instead advocates spiritual evolution.[10]

In Vajrayana, spiritual evolution is equivalent with the development of the three bodies of Trikaya.

Theories of spiritual evolution are important in many Occult and Esoteric teachings, which emphasise the progression and development of the individual either after death (spiritualism) or through successive reincarnations (Theosophy, Hermeticism).

Spiritualists reacted with uncertainty to the theories of evolution in the late 19th and early 20th century. Broadly speaking, the concept of evolution fit the spiritualist thought of the progressive development of humanity. At the same time, however, a belief in the animal origins of man threatened the foundation of the immortality of the spirit, for if man had not been created, it was scarcely plausible that he would be specially endowed with a spirit. This led to spiritualists embracing spiritual evolution.[11]

In the 19th century, Anglo-American Spiritualist ideas emphasized the progression of the soul after death to higher states of existence, in contrast to Spiritism which admits to reincarnation.

Spiritualism taught that after death, spirits progressed to new spheres of existence. According to this idea, evolution occurred in the spirit world at a rate more rapid and under conditions more favorable to growth than encountered on earth.[12]

The biologist and spiritualist Alfred Russel Wallace (18231913) believed that qualitative novelties could arise through the process of spiritual evolution, in particular, the phenomena of life and mind. Wallace attributed these novelties to a supernatural agency.[13] Later in his life, Wallace was an advocate of spiritualism and believed in an immaterial origin for the higher mental faculties of humans. He believed that evolution suggested the universe had a purpose, and that certain aspects of living organisms are not explainable in terms of purely materialistic processes. In a 1909 magazine article entitled The World of Life, which he later expanded into a book of the same name[14] Wallace argued in his 1911 book World of life for a spiritual approach to evolution and described evolution as creative power, directive mind and ultimate purpose. Wallace believed natural selection could not explain intelligence or morality in the human being so suggested that non-material spiritual forces accounted for these. Wallace believed the spiritual nature of man could not have come about by natural selection alone, the origins of the spiritual nature must originate in the unseen universe of spirit.[15][16]

Robert Broom in his book The Coming of Man: Was it Accident or Design? (1933) claimed that "spiritual agencies" had guided evolution as animals and plants were too complex to have arisen by chance. According to Broom there were at least two different kinds of spiritual forces, and psychics are capable of seeing them.[17] Broom claimed there was a plan and purpose in evolution and that the origin of Homo sapiens is the ultimate purpose behind evolution. According to Broom "Much of evolution looks as if it had been planned to result in man, and in other animals and plants to make the world a suitable place for him to dwell in.[18]

The Anglo-American position recalls (and is presumably inspired by) 18th century concepts regarding the temporalization of The Great Chain of Being. Spiritual evolution, rather than being a physical (or physico-spiritual) process is based on the idea of realms or stages through which the soul or spirit passes in a non-temporal, qualitative way. This is still an important part of some spiritualist ideas today, and is similar to some mainline (as opposed to fundamentalist) Protestant Christian beliefs, according to which after death the person goes to "summerland" (see Spirit world)

Theosophy presents a more sophisticated and complex cosmology than Spiritualism, although coming out of the same general milieu. H. P. Blavatsky developed a highly original cosmology, according to which the human race (both collectively and through the succession of individual reincarnation and spiritual evolution) passes through a number of Root Races, beginning with the huge ethereal and mindless Polarian or First Root Race, through the Lemurian (3rd), Atlantean (4th) and our present "Aryan" 5th Race. This will give rise to a future, Post-Aryan 6th Root Race of highly spiritual and enlightened beings that will arise in Baja California in the 28th century, and an even more sublime 7th Root Race, before ascending to totally superhuman and cosmic states of existence.

Blavatsky's ideas were further developed by her successors, such as C.W. Leadbeater, Rudolf Steiner, Alice Bailey, Benjamin Creme, and Victor Skumin each of whom went into huge detail in constructing baroque cycles of rounds, races, and sub-races. Skumin elaborated on the theosophical conceptions of spiritual evolution, he proposed a definition and classification of Homo spiritalis (Latin: "spiritual man"), the sixth root race, consisting of eight sub-races (subspecies): HS0 Anabiosis spiritalis, HS1 Scientella spiritalis, HS2 Aurora spiritalis, HS3 Ascensus spiritalis, HS4 Vocatus spiritalis, HS5 Illuminatio spiritalis, S6 Creatio spiritalis, and HS7 Servitus spiritalis.[19]

Although including elements of the science of her day as well as both eastern and western esoteric thought, Blavatsky rejected the Darwinian idea that man evolved from apes, and most subsequent esotericists followed this lead. Darwinism, with its explanation of evolution through material factors like natural selection and random mutation, does not sit well with many spiritual evolutionists, for whom evolution is initiated or guided by metaphysical principles or is tending towards a final spiritual or divine state. It is believed by Theosophists that humans are evolving spiritually through a series of esoteric initiations and in the future humans will become esoteric masters themselves as their souls gradually rise upward through the spiritual hierarchy over the course of eons as they reincarnate.

Despite this, recent Theosophists and Anthroposophists have tried to incorporate the facts of geology and paleontology into their cosmology and spiritual evolution (in Anthroposophy Hermann Poppelbaum is a particularly creative thinker in this regard). Some have attempted to equate Lemuria with Gondwanaland, for example. Today all these ideas have little influence outside their specialised followings, but for a time Theosophical concepts were immensely influential. Theosophy-like teachings also continue today in a group of religions based on Theosophy called the Ascended Master Teachings.

Theurgy has a clear relationship to Neoplatonism and Kabbalah and contains the concept of spiritual evolution[citation needed] and ultimately unification with God or the Godhead at its core. Theurgy is considered by many to be another term for high magic and is known to have influenced the members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn many of whom considered the order to be Theurgic in nature. Aleister Crowley also considered his Thelemic system of magical philosophy to be a Theurgic tradition as it emphasized the Great Work, which is essentially another form of spiritual evolution. The Great Work is believed to result in communication with one's personal angel or higher self.

Epigenesis is the philosophical/theological/esoteric idea that since the mind was given to the human being, it is the original creative impulse, epigenesis, which has been the cause of all of mankind's development.

According to spiritual evolution, humans build upon that which has already been created, but add new elements because of the activity of the spirit. Humans have the capacity, therefore, to become creative intelligencescreators. For a human to fulfill this promise, his training should allow for the exercise of originality, which distinguishes creation from imitation. When epigenesis becomes inactive, in the individual or even in a race, evolution ceases and degeneration commences.

This concept is based on the Rosicrucian view of the world as a training school, which posits that while mistakes are made in life, humans often learn more from mistakes than successes. Suffering is considered as merely the result of error, and the impact of suffering on the consciousness causes humans to be active along other lines which are found to be good, in harmony with nature. Humans are seen as spirits attending the school of life for the purpose of unfolding latent spiritual power, developing themselves from impotence to omnipotence (related also to development from innocence into virtue), reaching the stage of creative gods at the end of mankind's present evolution: Great Day of Manifestation.[20]

Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin both describe a progression from inanimate matter to a future state of Divine consciousness. Teilhard de Chardin refers to this as the Omega Point, and Sri Aurobindo as the Supermind.[21][22]

Teilhard, who was a Jesuit Paleontologist who played an important role in the discovery of Peking Man, presented a teleological view of planetary and cosmic evolution, according to which the formation of atoms, molecules and inanimate matter is followed by the development of the biosphere and organic evolution, then the appearance of man and the noosphere as the total envelope of human thought. According to Teilhard evolution does not cease here but continues on to its culmination and unification in the Omega Point, which he identifies with Christ.

Meher Baba has used the term involution to describe the inner journey of consciousness after transcending the physical or gross state up to the attainment of Self-consciousness, or merging with God. According to Meher Baba, the consciousness of the soul in duality first goes through the long process of evolution of form, then, upon reaching the human form, consciousness enters the process of reincarnation, and finally reaches the process of involution, which culminates in God-realization.

Surat Shabda Yoga esoteric cosmology depicts the whole of creation (the macrocosm) as being emanated and arranged in a spiritually differentiated hierarchy, often referred to as eggs, regions, or planes. Typically, eight spiritual levels are described above the physical plane, although names and subdivisions within these levels will vary to some extent by mission and Master. (One version of the creation from a Surat Shabda Yoga perspective is depicted at the Sant Ajaib Singh Ji Memorial Site in The Grand Scheme of All Creation.)

The constitution of the individual (the microcosm) is an exact replica of the macrocosm. Consequently, the microcosm consists of a number of bodies, each one suited to interact with its corresponding plane or region in the macrocosm. These bodies developed over the yugas through involution (emanating from higher planes to lower planes) and evolution (returning from lower planes to higher planes), including by karma and reincarnation in various states of consciousness.[23]

Arthur M. Young and Edward Haskell have each independently incorporated the findings of science into a larger theory of spiritual evolution, and extended the traditional human, animal, vegetable, and mineral categories with kingdoms representing photons, atoms and molecules.[24][25] Arthur M. Young goes further in considering the human state as a subset of a larger kingdom of "Dominion", of which the sixth stage is represented for example by Christ and Buddha, and the seventh (final) stage an even higher level of Enlightenment or God-realisation.[24] Moreover, both Haskell and Young present profound accounts of evolution through these kingdoms in terms of cybernetic principles. A more "mainstream" scientific presentation of this same idea is provided by Erich Jantsch in his account of how self-organising systems evolve and develop as a series of "symmetry breaks" through the sequence of matter, life, and mind.[26] Although abiding strictly by the understanding of science, Jantsch arranges the various elements of cosmic, planetary, biological, psychological, and human evolution in a single overall framework of emergent evolution that may or may not be considered teleological.[26]

New Age thought is strongly syncretic. A common theme is the evolution or the transcendence of the human or collective planetary consciousness in a higher state or higher "vibratory" (a metaphor taken from G. I. Gurdjieff) level.

David Spangler's communications speak of a "New Heaven and a new Earth", while Christopher Hills refers (perhaps influenced by Sri Aurobindo) to the divinization of man.[27]

Jonathan Livingston Seagull narrated the idea of evolution in a fascinating fashion. James Redfield in his novel The Celestine Prophecy suggested that through experiencing a series of personal spiritual insights, humanity is becoming aware of the connection between our evolution and the Divine. More recently in his book God and the Evolving Universe: The Next Step in Personal Evolution (2002) co-written with Michael Murphy, he claims that humanity is on the verge of undergoing a change in consciousness.

An interpretation of social and psychological development that could also be considered a theory of spiritual evolution is spiral dynamics, based on the work of Clare W. Graves.

More recently the concept of spiritual evolution has been given a sort of respectability it has not had since the early 19th century through the work of Ken Wilber, in whose writings both the cosmological and the personal dimensions are described. In this integral philosophy (inspired in part by the works of Plotinus, Hegel, Sri Aurobindo, Eric Jantsch, and many others) reality is said to consist of several realms or stages, including more than one of the following: the physical, the vital, the psychic, (after the Greek psyche, "soul"), the causal (referring to "that which causes, or gives rise to, the manifest world"), and the ultimate (or non-dual), through which the individual progressively evolves. Although this schema is derived in large part from Tibetan Buddhism, Wilber argues (and uses many tables of diagrams to show) that these same levels of being are common to all wisdom teachings. Described simplistically, Wilber sees humans developing through several stages, including magic, mythic, pluralistic, and holistic mentalities. But he also sees cultures as developing through these stages. And, much like Hegel, he sees this development of individuals and cultures as the evolution of existence itself. Wilber has also teamed up with Don Beck to integrate Spiral Dynamics into his own Integral philosophy, and vice versa. Spiral Dynamics posits a series of stages through which human's cultural development progresses from a survival-based hunter-gatherer stage to a magical-tribal-agrarian stage to a city-building-invading stage to a mythic-religious-empire stage to a rational-scientific-capitalist stage to a green-holistic-inclusive stage and then ascending to a second tier where all the previous stages are contemplated and integrated and a third transpersonal tier where a spiritual unity or Omega point is eventually reached, which all the other stages are struggling to embody. He feels that individuals in each of the meme-plexes/stages can ascend to the peak of consciousness these being the prophets, visionaries and leaders of any region/age.

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Spiritual evolution - Wikipedia

In many religious, philosophical and mythological traditions, the soul is the incorporeal essence of a living being.[1]

Soul or psyche (Greek: "psych", of "psychein", "to breathe") are the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception, thinking, etc.

Depending on the philosophical system, a soul can either be mortal or immortal.[2] In Judeo-Christianity, only human beings have immortal souls (although immortality is disputed within Judaism and may have been influenced by Plato).[3] For example, the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas attributed "soul" (anima) to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal.[4] Other religions (most notably Hinduism and Jainism) hold that all biological organisms have souls, as did Aristotle, while some teach that even non-biological entities (such as rivers and mountains) possess souls. The latter belief is called animism.[5]

Greek philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, understood that the soul ( psch) must have a logical faculty, the exercise of which was the most divine of human actions. At his defense trial, Socrates even summarized his teaching as nothing other than an exhortation for his fellow Athenians to excel in matters of the psyche since all bodily goods are dependent on such excellence (Apology 30ab).

Anima mundi is the concept of a "world soul" connecting all living organisms on planet Earth.

The Modern English word "soul", derived from Old English swol, swel, was first attested in the 8th-century poem Beowulf v. 2820 and in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50. It is cognate with other German and Baltic terms for the same idea, including Gothic saiwala, Old High German sula, sla, Old Saxon sola, Old Low Franconian sla, sla, Old Norse sla and Lithuanian siela. Further etymology of the Germanic word is uncertain. The original concept is meant to be 'coming from or belonging to the sea/lake', because of the German belief in souls being born out of and returning to sacred lakes, Old Saxon sola (soul) compared to Old Saxon so (sea).

The Koine Greek word psych, "life, spirit, consciousness", is derived from a verb meaning "to cool, to blow", and hence refers to the breath, as opposed to ("soma"), meaning "body". Psych occurs juxtaposed to , as seen in Matthew 10:28:

In the Septuagint (LXX), translates Hebrew nephesh, meaning "life, vital breath", and specifically refers to a mortal, physical life, but is in English variously translated as "soul, self, life, creature, person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion"; an example can be found in Genesis 1:21:

Paul of Tarsus used and specifically to distinguish between the Jewish notions of nephesh and ruah (spirit) (also in LXX, e.g. Genesis 1:2 = = spiritus Dei = "the Spirit of God").

The ancient Greeks used the word "alive" for the concept of being "ensouled", indicating that the earliest surviving western philosophical view believed that the soul was that which gave the body life. The soul was considered the incorporeal or spiritual "breath" that animates (from the Latin, anima, cf. "animal") the living organism.

Francis M. Cornford quotes Pindar by saying that the soul sleeps while the limbs are active, but when one is sleeping, the soul is active and reveals "an award of joy or sorrow drawing near" in dreams.[6]

Erwin Rohde writes that an early pre-Pythagorean belief presented the soul as lifeless when it departed the body, and that it retired into Hades with no hope of returning to a body.[7]

Drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, Plato considered the psyche to be the essence of a person, being that which decides how we behave. He considered this essence to be an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. Socrates says that even after death, the soul exists and is able to think. He believed that as bodies die, the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies and Plato believed this as well, however, he thought that only one part of the soul was immortal (logos). The Platonic soul consists of three parts:[8]

The parts are located in different regions of the body:

Plato also compares the three parts of the soul or psyche to a societal caste system. According to Plato's theory, the three-part soul is essentially the same thing as a state's class system because, to function well, each part must contribute so that the whole functions well. Logos keeps the other functions of the soul regulated.

Aristotle (384 BC 322 BC) defined the soul, or Psch (), as the "first actuality" of a naturally organized body,[9] and argued against its separate existence from the physical body. In Aristotle's view, the primary activity, or full actualization, of a living thing constitutes its soul. For example, the full actualization of an eye, as an independent organism, is to see (its purpose or final cause).[10] Another example is that the full actualization of a human being would be living a fully functional human life in accordance with reason (which he considered to be a faculty unique to humanity).[11] For Aristotle, the soul is the organization of the form and matter of a natural being which allows it to strive for its full actualization. This organization between form and matter is necessary for any activity, or functionality, to be possible in a natural being. Using an artifact (non-natural being) as an example, a house is a building for human habituation, but for a house to be actualized requires the material (wood, nails, bricks, etc.) necessary for its actuality (i.e. being a fully functional house). However, this does not imply that a house has a soul. In regards to artifacts, the source of motion that is required for their full actualization is outside of themselves (for example, a builder builds a house). In natural beings, this source of motion is contained within the being itself.[12] Aristotle elaborates on this point when he addresses the faculties of the soul.

The various faculties of the soul, such as nutrition, movement (peculiar to animals), reason (peculiar to humans), sensation (special, common, and incidental) and so forth, when exercised, constitute the "second" actuality, or fulfillment, of the capacity to be alive. For example, someone who falls asleep, as opposed to someone who falls dead, can wake up and live their life, while the latter can no longer do so.

Aristotle identified three hierarchical levels of natural beings: plants, animals, and people. For these groups, he identified three corresponding levels of soul, or biological activity: the nutritive activity of growth, sustenance and reproduction which all life shares; the self-willed motive activity and sensory faculties, which only animals and people have in common; and finally "reason", of which people alone are capable.

Aristotle's discussion of the soul is in his work, De Anima (On the Soul). Although mostly seen as opposing Plato in regard to the immortality of the soul, a controversy can be found in relation to the fifth chapter of the third book. In this text both interpretations can be argued for, soul as a whole can be deemed mortal and a part called "active intellect" or "active mind" is immortal and eternal.[13] Advocates exist for both sides of the controversy, but it has been understood that there will be permanent disagreement about its final conclusions, as no other Aristotelian text contains this specific point, and this part of De Anima is obscure.[14]

Following Aristotle, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Ibn al-Nafis, a Persian philosopher, further elaborated upon the Aristotelian understanding of the soul and developed their own theories on the soul. They both made a distinction between the soul and the spirit, and the Avicennian doctrine on the nature of the soul was influential among the Scholastics. Some of Avicenna's views on the soul include the idea that the immortality of the soul is a consequence of its nature, and not a purpose for it to fulfill. In his theory of "The Ten Intellects", he viewed the human soul as the tenth and final intellect.

While he was imprisoned, Avicenna wrote his famous "Floating Man" thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantial nature of the soul. He told his readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argues that in this scenario one would still have self-consciousness. He thus concludes that the idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance. This argument was later refined and simplified by Ren Descartes in epistemic terms, when he stated: "I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own consciousness."[15]

Avicenna generally supported Aristotle's idea of the soul originating from the heart, whereas Ibn al-Nafis rejected this idea and instead argued that the soul "is related to the entirety and not to one or a few organs". He further criticized Aristotle's idea whereby every unique soul requires the existence of a unique source, in this case the heart. al-Nafis concluded that "the soul is related primarily neither to the spirit nor to any organ, but rather to the entire matter whose temperament is prepared to receive that soul," and he defined the soul as nothing other than "what a human indicates by saying "I".[16]

Following Aristotle and Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas (122574) understood the soul to be the first actuality of the living body. Consequent to this, he distinguished three orders of life: plants, which feed and grow; animals, which add sensation to the operations of plants; and humans, which add intellect to the operations of animals.

Concerning the human soul, his epistemological theory required that, since the knower becomes what he knows, the soul is definitely not corporealif it is corporeal when it knows what some corporeal thing is, that thing would come to be within it.[17] Therefore, the soul has an operation which does not rely on a body organ, and therefore the soul can exist without a body. Furthermore, since the rational soul of human beings is a subsistent form and not something made of matter and form, it cannot be destroyed in any natural process.[18] The full argument for the immortality of the soul and Aquinas' elaboration of Aristotelian theory is found in Question 75 of the First Part of the Summa Theologica.

In his discussions of rational psychology, Immanuel Kant (17241804) identified the soul as the "I" in the strictest sense, and argued that the existence of inner experience can neither be proved nor disproved. "We cannot prove a priori the immateriality of the soul, but rather only so much: that all properties and actions of the soul cannot be recognized from materiality". It is from the "I", or soul, that Kant proposes transcendental rationalization, but cautions that such rationalization can only determine the limits of knowledge if it is to remain practical.[19]

Gilbert Ryle's ghost-in-the-machine argument, which is a rejection of Descartes' mind-body dualism can provide a contemporary understanding of the soul/mind, and the problem concerning its connection to the brain/body.[20]

Psychologist James Hillman's archetypal psychology is an attempt to restore the concept of the soul, which Hillman viewed as the "self-sustaining and imagining substrate" upon which consciousness rests. Hillman described the soul as that "which makes meaning possible, [deepens] events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern", as well as "a special relation with death".[21] Departing from the Cartesian dualism "between outer tangible reality and inner states of mind", Hillman takes the Neoplatonic stance[22] that there is a "third, middle position" in which soul resides.[23] Archetypal psychology acknowledges this third position by attuning to, and often accepting, the archetypes, dreams, myths, and even psychopathologies through which, in Hillman's view, soul expresses itself.

In the ancient Egyptian religion, an individual was believed to be made up of various elements, some physical and some spiritual.

Similar ideas are found in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian religion. Kuttamuwa, an 8th-century BC royal official from Sam'al, ordered an inscribed stele erected upon his death. The inscription requested that his mourners commemorate his life and his afterlife with feasts "for my soul that is in this stele". It is one of the earliest references to a soul as a separate entity from the body. The 800-pound (360kg) basalt stele is 3ft (0.91m) tall and 2ft (0.61m) wide. It was uncovered in the third season of excavations by the Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute in Chicago, Illinois.[24]

The Bah' Faith affirms that "the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel".[25]Bah'u'llh stated that the soul not only continues to live after the physical death of the human body, but is, in fact, immortal.[26] Heaven can be seen partly as the soul's state of nearness to God; and hell as a state of remoteness from God. Each state follows as a natural consequence of individual efforts, or the lack thereof, to develop spiritually.[27] Bah'u'llh taught that individuals have no existence prior to their life here on earth and the soul's evolution is always towards God and away from the material world.[27]

Buddhism teaches that all things are in a constant state of flux: all is changing, and no permanent state exists by itself.[28][29] This applies to human beings as much as to anything else in the cosmos. Thus, a human being has no permanent self.[30][31] According to this doctrine of anatta (Pli; Sanskrit: antman) "no-self" or "no soul" the words "I" or "me" do not refer to any fixed thing. They are simply convenient terms that allow us to refer to an ever-changing entity.[32]

The anatta doctrine is not a kind of materialism. Buddhism does not deny the existence of "immaterial" entities, and it (at least traditionally) distinguishes bodily states from mental states.[33] Thus, the conventional translation of anatta as "no-soul"[34] can be confusing. If the word "soul" simply refers to an incorporeal component in living things that can continue after death, then Buddhism does not deny the existence of the soul.[35] Instead, Buddhism denies the existence of a permanent entity that remains constant behind the changing corporeal and incorporeal components of a living being. Just as the body changes from moment to moment, so thoughts come and go, and there is no permanent state underlying the mind that experiences these thoughts, as in Cartesianism. Conscious mental states simply arise and perish with no "thinker" behind them.[36] When the body dies, Buddhists believe the incorporeal mental processes continue and are reborn in a new body.[35] Because the mental processes are constantly changing, the being that is reborn is neither entirely different from, nor exactly the same as, the being that died.[37] However, the new being is continuous with the being that died in the same way that the "you" of this moment is continuous with the "you" of a moment before, despite the fact that you are constantly changing.[38]

Buddhist teaching holds that a notion of a permanent, abiding self is a delusion that is one of the causes of human conflict on the emotional, social, and political levels.[39][40] They add that an understanding of anatta provides an accurate description of the human condition, and that this understanding allows us to pacify our mundane desires.

Various schools of Buddhism have differing ideas about what continues after death.[41] The Yogacara school in Mahayana Buddhism said there are Store consciousness which continue to exist after death.[42] In some schools, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, the view is that there are three minds: very subtle mind, which does not disintegrate in death; subtle mind, which disintegrates in death and which is "dreaming mind" or "unconscious mind"; and gross mind, which does not exist when one is sleeping. Therefore, gross mind is less permanent than subtle mind, which does not exist in death. Very subtle mind, however, does continue, and when it "catches on", or coincides with phenomena, again, a new subtle mind emerges, with its own personality/assumptions/habits, and that entity experiences karma in the current continuum.

Plants were said to be non-sentient (),[43] but Buddhist monks are required to not cut or burn trees, because some sentient beings rely on them.[44] Some Mahayana monks said non-sentient beings such as plants and stones have Buddha-nature.[45][46]

Certain modern Buddhists, particularly in Western countries, rejector at least take an agnostic stance towardthe concept of rebirth or reincarnation, which they view as incompatible with the concept of anatta. Stephen Batchelor discusses this issue in his book Buddhism Without Beliefs. Others point to research that has been conducted at the University of Virginia as proof that some people are reborn.[47]

Most Christians understand the soul as an ontological reality distinct from, yet integrally connected with, the body. Its characteristics are described in moral, spiritual, and philosophical terms. Richard Swinburne, a Christian philosopher of religion at Oxford University, wrote that "it is a frequent criticism of substance dualism that dualists cannot say what souls are. Souls are immaterial subjects of mental properties. They have sensations and thoughts, desires and beliefs, and perform intentional actions. Souls are essential parts of human beings". According to a common Christian eschatology, when people die, their souls will be judged by God and determined to go to Heaven or to Hell. Though all branches of Christianity Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Evangelical, and mainline Protestants teach that Jesus Christ plays a decisive role in the Christian salvation process, the specifics of that role and the part played by individual persons or ecclesiastical rituals and relationships, is a matter of wide diversity in official church teaching, theological speculation and popular practice. Some Christians believe that if one has not repented of one's sins and has not trusted in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, he/she will go to Hell and suffer eternal damnation or eternal separation from God. Some hold a belief that babies (including the unborn) and those with cognitive or mental impairments who have died will be received into Heaven on the basis of God's grace through the sacrifice of Jesus. [48]

Other Christians understand the soul as the life, and believe that the dead are sleeping (Christian conditionalism). This belief is traditionally accompanied by the belief that the unrighteous soul will cease to exist instead of suffering eternally (annihilationism). Believers will inherit eternal life either in Heaven, or in a Kingdom of God on earth, and enjoy eternal fellowship with God.

There are also beliefs in universal salvation.

Augustine, one of western Christianity's most influential early Christian thinkers, described the soul as "a special substance, endowed with reason, adapted to rule the body". Some Christians espouse a trichotomic view of humans, which characterizes humans as consisting of a body (soma), soul (psyche), and spirit (pneuma).[49] However, the majority of modern Bible scholars point out how spirit and soul are used interchangeably in many biblical passages, and so hold to dichotomy: the view that each of us is body and soul. Paul said that the "body wars against" the soul, "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit" (Heb 4:12 NASB), and that "I buffet my body", to keep it under control. Trichotomy was changed to dichotomy as tenet of Christian faith at the Council of Constantinople in 869 regarded as the 8th Ecumenical Council by Roman Catholics.[50]

The 'origin of the soul' has provided a vexing question in Christianity. The major theories put forward include soul creationism, traducianism, and pre-existence. According to creationism, each individual soul is created directly by God, either at the moment of conception or some later time. According to traducianism, the soul comes from the parents by natural generation. According to the preexistence theory, the soul exists before the moment of conception. There have been differing thoughts regarding whether human embryos have souls from conception, or there is a point between conception and birth where the fetus acquires a soul, consciousness, and/or personhood. Stances in this question might more or less influence judgements on the morality of abortion.[51][52][53]

The present Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the soul as "the innermost aspect of humans, that which is of greatest value in them, that by which they are in God's image described as 'soul' signifies the spiritual principle in man".[54] All souls living and dead will be judged by Jesus Christ when he comes back to earth. The Catholic Church teaches that the existence of each individual soul is dependent wholly upon God: "The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God."[55]

Protestants generally believe in the soul's existence, but fall into two major camps about what this means in terms of an afterlife. Some, following Calvin,[56] believe in the immortality of the soul and conscious existence after death, while others, following Luther,[57] believe in the mortality of the soul and unconscious "sleep" until the resurrection of the dead.[58] Various new religious movements derived from Adventismincluding Christadelphians,[59]Seventh-day Adventists[citation needed] and Jehovah's Witnesses[60][61]similarly believe that the dead do not possess a soul separate from the body and are unconscious until the resurrection.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the spirit and body together constitute the Soul of Man (Mankind). "The spirit and the body are the soul of man."[62] Latter-day Saints believe that the soul is the union of a pre-existing, God-made spirit[63][64][65] and a temporal body, which is formed by physical conception on earth. After death, the spirit continues to live and progress in the Spirit world until the resurrection, when it is reunited with the body that once housed it. This reuniting of body and spirit results in a perfect soul that is immortal and eternal and capable of receiving a fulness of joy.[66][67] Latter-day Saint cosmology also describes "intelligences" as the essence of consciousness or agency. These are co-eternal with God, and animate the spirits.[68] The union of a newly created spirit body with an eternally-existing intelligence constitutes a "spirit birth"[citation needed] and justifies God's title "Father of our spirits".[69][70][71]

In Hinduism, the Sanskrit words most closely corresponding to soul are jiva, tman and "purusha", meaning the individual self. The term "soul" is misleading as it implies an object possessed, whereas Self signifies the subject which perceives all objects. This Self (tman) is held to be distinct from the various mental faculties such as desires, thinking, understanding, reasoning and self-image (ego), all of which are considered to be part of prakriti (nature).

The three major schools of Hindu philosophy agree that the jiva (individual self) is related to Brahman (Self/God) but they differ in their explanations of the nature of this relationship. In Advaita Vedanta, the individual self and the Self are deemed to be one and the same. Dvaita rejects this concept of identity and instead identifies the self (jiva) as a separate but similar part of Self, that only becomes one with the Absolute Atman upon Self Realisation (Moksha). Visishtadvaita explains that the nature of the self (jiva) and Brahman (God) is that the jiva is God with attributes; this essentially means that the jiva is both different and the same as God concurrently. Visishtadvaita (Attributive Monism) is thus similar to Achintya Bhedbeda Tattva (Inconceivable Difference-Non difference Reality). For an atheistic and dualistic view of the jiva and tman in ancient Hindu philosophy, see Samkhya one of the six schools of Indian Philosophy.

The jiva becomes involved in the process of becoming and transmigrating through cycles of birth and death because of ignorance of its own true nature. The spiritual path consists of self-realization a process in which one acquires the knowledge of the self (brahma-janam) and through this knowledge applied through meditation and realization one then returns to the Source which is Brahman.

The qualities which are common to both Brahman and atmam are being (sat), consciousness (chit), and bliss/love (ananda). Liberation or moksha is liberation from all limiting adjuncts (upadhis) and the unification with Brahman.

The Mandukya Upanishad verse 7 describes the atman in the following way:

"Not inwardly cognitive, not outwardly cognitive, not both-wise cognitive, not a cognition-mass, not cognitive, not non-cognitive, unseen, with which there can be no dealing, ungraspable, having no distinctive mark, non-thinkable, that cannot be designated, the essence of the assurance of which is the state of being one with the Self, the cessation of development, tranquil, benign, without a second (a-dvaita)[such] they think is the fourth. That is the Self. That should be discerned."

In Bhagavad Gita 2.20 Lord Krishna describes the atman in the following way:[72]

na jayate mriyate va kadacin 'nayam bhutva bhavita va na bhuyah 'ajo nityah sasvato yam purano 'na hanyate hanyamane sarire

"For the atman there is neither birth nor death at any time. He has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. He is unborn, eternal, ever existing and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain". [Translation by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (Srila Prabhupada)][73]

Srila Prabhupada, a great Vaishnava saint of the modern time further explains: "The atman does not take birth there, and the atman does not die... And because the atman has no birth, he therefore has no past, present or future. He is eternal, ever-existing and primeval that is, there is no trace in history of his coming into being."[74]

Since the quality of Atma is primarily consciousness, all sentient and insentient beings are pervaded by Atma, including plants, animals, humans and gods. The difference between them is the contracted or expanded state of that consciousness. For example, animals and humans share in common the desire to live, fear of death, desire to procreate and to protect their families and territory and the need for sleep, but animals' consciousness is more contracted and has less possibility to expand than does human consciousness.

When the Atma becomes embodied it is called birth, when the Atma leaves a body it is called death. The Atma transmigrates from one body to another body based on karmic [performed deeds] reactions.

In Hinduism, the Sanskrit word most closely corresponding to soul is Atma, which can mean soul or even God. It is seen as the portion of Brahman within us. Hinduism contains many variant beliefs on the origin, purpose, and fate of the atma. For example, advaita or non-dualistic conception of the atma accords it union with Brahman, the absolute uncreated (roughly, the Godhead), in eventuality or in pre-existing fact. Dvaita or dualistic concepts reject this, instead identifying the atma as a different and incompatible substance.

There are 25 coverings wrapped on our Atma (Reference Taken from Vaikunta Varnane written by Sanyasi Vadiraja Swami) 1. Iccha avarka, 2. Linga deha, 3. Avyakta Sharira, 4. Avidya Avarna, 5. Karma avarna, 6. Kama avarna, 7. Jeevacchadaka, 8. Paramacchadaka, 9. Narayana rupa avarna, 10. Vasudeva rupa Avarna, 11. Sankarshana rupa avarna, 12. Pradhyumna Avarka, 13. Anniruddha avarka, 14. Anniruddha Sharira, 15. Vasudeva Kavaca, 16. Narayana Kavaca, 17. Anandamaya kosha, 18. Vignanamaya kosha, 19. Manomaya kosha, 20. Vangmaya kosha, 21. Shrotrumaya kosha, 22. Chakshurmaya kosha, 23. Pranamaya kosha, 24. Annamaya kosha, 25. Gross Body.

According to Brahma Kumaris, the soul is an eternal point of light, resides between forehead.

The Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, distinguishes between the immortal r (soul) and the mortal nafs (psyche).[75] The immortal r "drives" the immortal nafs, which comprises temporal desires and perceptions perceptions necessary for living.[76]

Two passages in the Qu'ran that mention rh occur in chapters 17 ("The Night Journey") and 39 ("The Throngs"):

And they ask you, [O Muhammad], about the spirit [rh]. Say, "The spirit is of the affair of my Lord. And mankind have not been given of knowledge except a little.

Qur'an 17:85

It is Allah that takes the rh at death: and those that die not (He takes their rh) during their sleep: then those on whom He has passed the Decree of death He keeps back (their rh from returning to their bodies); but the rest He sends (their rh back to their bodies) for a term appointed. Verily in this are Signs for those who contemplate

Qur'an 39:42

In Jainism, every living being, from a plant or a bacterium to human, has a soul and the concept forms the very basis of Jainism. The soul (Jva) is basically categorized in two based on its present state.

Irrespective of which state the soul is in, it has got the same attributes and qualities. The difference between the liberated and non-liberated souls is that the qualities and attributes are manifested completely in case of Siddha (liberated soul) as they have overcome all the karmic bondages whereas in case of non-liberated souls they are partially exhibited.

Concerning the Jain view of the soul, Virchand Gandhi quoted "the soul lives its own life, not for the purpose of the body, but the body lives for the purpose of the soul. If we believe that the soul is to be controlled by the body then soul misses its power".[77]

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that is wise winneth souls.

The Hebrew terms nephesh (literally "living being"), ruach (literally "wind"), neshama (literally "breath"), chaya (literally "life") and yechidah (literally "singularity") are used to describe the soul or spirit. In Judaism the soul is believed to be given by God to a person as mentioned in Genesis, "And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." Genesis 2:7. Judaism relates the quality of one's soul to one's performance of the commandments, mitzvot, and reaching higher levels of understanding, and thus closeness to God. A person with such closeness is called a tzadik. Therefore, Judaism embraces the commemoration of the day of one's death, nahala/Yahrtzeit and not the birthday[78] as a festivity of remembrance, for only toward the end of life's struggles, tests and challenges could human souls be judged and credited - b'ezrat HaShem ("with God's help") - for righteousness and holiness.[79][80] Judaism places great importance on the study of the souls.[81]

Kabbalah and other mystic traditions go into greater detail into the nature of the soul. Kabbalah separates the soul into five elements, corresponding to the five worlds:

Kabbalah also proposed a concept of reincarnation, the gilgul. (See also nefesh habehamit the "animal soul".)

The Scientology view is that a person IS a soul. They do not 'have' a soul. A person is immortal, and may be reincarnated if they wish. The Scientology term for the soul is "thetan", derived from the Greek word "theta", symbolizing thought. Scientology counselling (called 'auditing') addresses the soul to improve abilities, both worldly and spiritual.

According to Nadya Yuguseva, a shaman from the Altai, "'A woman has 40 souls; men have just one[.]'"[82]

Sikhism considers Soul (atma) to be part of God (Waheguru). Various hymns are cited from the holy book "Sri Guru Granth Sahib" (SGGS) that suggests this belief. "God is in the Soul and the Soul is in the God."[83] The same concept is repeated at various pages of the SGGS. For example: "The soul is divine; divine is the soul. Worship Him with love."[84] and "The soul is the Lord, and the Lord is the soul; contemplating the Shabad, the Lord is found."[85] The "Atma" or "Soul" according to Sikhism is an entity or "spiritual spark" or "light" in our body because of which the body can sustain life. On the departure of this entity from the body, the body becomes lifeless No amount of manipulations to the body can make the person make any physical actions. The soul is the driver in the body. It is the roohu or spirit or atma, the presence of which makes the physical body alive. Many religious and philosophical traditions, support the view that the soul is the ethereal substance a spirit; a non material spark particular to a unique living being. Such traditions often consider the soul both immortal and innately aware of its immortal nature, as well as the true basis for sentience in each living being. The concept of the soul has strong links with notions of an afterlife, but opinions may vary wildly even within a given religion as to what happens to the soul after death. Many within these religions and philosophies see the soul as immaterial, while others consider it possibly material.

According to Chinese traditions, every person has two types of soul called hun and po ( and ), which are respectively yang and yin. Taoism believes in ten souls, sanhunqipo () "three hun and seven po".[86] The p is linked to the dead body and the grave, whereas the hn is linked to the ancestral tablet. A living being that loses any of them is said to have mental illness or unconsciousness, while a dead soul may reincarnate to a disability, lower desire realms, or may even be unable to reincarnate.

In theological reference to the soul, the terms "life" and "death" are viewed as emphatically more definitive than the common concepts of "biological life" and "biological death". Because the soul is said to be transcendent of the material existence, and is said to have (potentially) eternal life, the death of the soul is likewise said to be an eternal death. Thus, in the concept of divine judgment, God is commonly said to have options with regard to the dispensation of souls, ranging from Heaven (i.e., angels) to hell (i.e., demons), with various concepts in between. Typically both Heaven and hell are said to be eternal, or at least far beyond a typical human concept of lifespan and time.

According to Louis Ginzberg, soul of Adam is the image of God.[87]

In Brahma Kumaris, human souls are believed to be incorporeal and eternal. God is considered to be the Supreme Soul, with maximum degrees of spiritual qualities, such as peace, love and purity.[88]

In Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy, the soul is the field of our psychological activity (thinking, emotions, memory, desires, will, and so on) as well as of the so-called paranormal or psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, out-of-body experiences, etc.). However, the soul is not the highest, but a middle dimension of human beings. Higher than the soul is the spirit, which is considered to be the real self; the source of everything we call "good"happiness, wisdom, love, compassion, harmony, peace, etc. While the spirit is eternal and incorruptible, the soul is not. The soul acts as a link between the material body and the spiritual self, and therefore shares some characteristics of both. The soul can be attracted either towards the spiritual or towards the material realm, being thus the "battlefield" of good and evil. It is only when the soul is attracted towards the spiritual and merges with the Self that it becomes eternal and divine.

Rudolf Steiner differentiated three stages of soul development, which interpenetrate one another in consciousness:[89]

In Surat Shabda Yoga, the soul is considered to be an exact replica and spark of the Divine. The purpose of Surat Shabd Yoga is to realize one's True Self as soul (Self-Realisation), True Essence (Spirit-Realisation) and True Divinity (God-Realisation) while living in the physical body.

Similarly, the spiritual teacher Meher Baba held that "Atma, or the soul, is in reality identical with Paramatma the Oversoul which is one, infinite, and eternal...[and] [t]he sole purpose of creation is for the soul to enjoy the infinite state of the Oversoul consciously."[90]

Eckankar, founded by Paul Twitchell in 1965, defines Soul as the true self; the inner, most sacred part of each person.[91]

The findings of science may be relevant to one's understanding of the soul depending on one's belief regarding the relationship between the soul and the mind. Another may be one's belief regarding the relationship between the soul and the body.[92] Science has neither proved nor disproved the existence of a soul.

Neuroscience as an interdisciplinary field, and its branch of cognitive neuroscience particularly, operates under the ontological assumption of physicalism. In other words, it assumesin order to perform its sciencethat only the fundamental phenomena studied by physics exist. Thus, neuroscience seeks to understand mental phenomena within the framework according to which human thought and behavior are caused solely by physical processes taking place inside the brain, and it operates by the way of reductionism by seeking an explanation for the mind in terms of brain activity.[93][94]

To study the mind in terms of the brain several methods of functional neuroimaging are used to study the neuroanatomical correlates of various cognitive processes that constitute the mind. The evidence from brain imaging indicates that all processes of the mind have physical correlates in brain function.[95] However, such correlational studies cannot determine whether neural activity plays a causal role in the occurrence of these cognitive processes (correlation does not imply causation) and they cannot determine if the neural activity is either necessary or sufficient for such processes to occur. Identification of causation, and of necessary and sufficient conditions requires explicit experimental manipulation of that activity. If manipulation of brain activity changes consciousness, then a causal role for that brain activity can be inferred.[96][97] Two of the most common types of manipulation experiments are loss-of-function and gain-of-function experiments. In a loss-of-function (also called "necessity") experiment, a part of the nervous system is diminished or removed in an attempt to determine if it is necessary for a certain process to occur, and in a gain-of-function (also called "sufficiency") experiment, an aspect of the nervous system is increased relative to normal.[98] Manipulations of brain activity can be performed with direct electrical brain stimulation, magnetic brain stimulation using transcranial magnetic stimulation, psychopharmacological manipulation, optogenetic manipulation, and by studying the symptoms of brain damage (case studies) and lesions. In addition, neuroscientists are also investigating how the mind develops with the development of the brain.[99]

Physicist Sean M. Carroll has written that the idea of a soul is in opposition to quantum field theory (QFT). He writes that for a soul to exist: "Not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics. Within QFT, there cant be a new collection of 'spirit particles' and 'spirit forces' that interact with our regular atoms, because we would have detected them in existing experiments."[100]

In contrast, Princeton Professor Hans Halvorson has highlighted a conceptual difficulty in making quantum mechanics logically consistent. His 2016 debate with Sean Carroll at Caltech on this subject is available from several sources on the web. Halvorson points out that some interpretations of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics seem to require an observation by a mind or conscious agent (see quantum mind) to collapse the wave function to obtain a determinate result. Since quantum mechanics posits a superposition as the normal state of matter, a material brain should also be in an indeterminate state much like Schrdinger's Cat. How then can it produce a determinate result? Halvorson argues that this logically necessitates something very like an immaterial soul that can make the observation and collapse the wave function.[101] This general problem was first pointed out by physicist Eugene Wigner, who thought wave function collapse occurred due to the activities of mind. Theoretical physicist Roger Penrose and others have developed a similar outlook.

Quantum indeterminism has been invoked by some theorists as a solution to the problem of how a soul might interact with the brain but neuroscientist Peter Clarke found errors with this viewpoint, noting there is no evidence that such processes play a role in brain function; and concluded that a Cartesian soul has no basis from quantum physics.[102]

Biologist Cyrille Barrette(fr) has written that "the soul is a word to designate an idea we invented to represent the sensation of being inhabited by an existence, by a conscience".[103] Barrette explains, using simple examples in a short self-published article, that the soul is a property emerging from the complex organisation of matter in the brain.[104]

Some parapsychologists have attempted to establish, by scientific experiment, whether a soul separate from the brain exists, as is more commonly defined in religion rather than as a synonym of psyche or mind. Milbourne Christopher (1979) and Mary Roach (2010) have argued that none of the attempts by parapsychologists have yet succeeded.[105][106]

In 1901 Duncan MacDougall conducted an experiment in which he made weight measurements of patients as they died. He claimed that there was weight loss of varying amounts at the time of death, he concluded the soul weighed 21 grams.[107][108] The physicist Robert L. Park has written that MacDougall's experiments "are not regarded today as having any scientific merit" and the psychologist Bruce Hood wrote that "because the weight loss was not reliable or replicable, his findings were unscientific."[109][110]

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(ThyBlackMan.com)Being a father is an amazing experience. I know there is a tendency in our culture to make a distinction between being a father and a dad. I do not choose to placate such judgmental positions. Call me father, call me dad, whatever term you use does not define for me the sentiment of raising a boy or girl into a man or a woman. For me, fatherhood refers to the evolutionary experiences which shape a man and prepares him for the journey.

Regardless of terms, how do we extract the most meaning from what we experience? I pose this question because the years fly by; our little man or little girl are halfway to adulthood virtually overnight. We look up and the years have flown by. Someone much wiser than me once said, Dont count the years, make the years count. How do we accomplish this? We ask questions. And we try our best to supply meaningful, well-thought out answers.

What Do I Really Want from Fatherhood?

The first question is a probing one. The answer may sound obvious: most dads want to be the best father they can be. But that response may also be too simplistic. In most cases, its a given that you want to be the best father. Go deeper. What personal quality do you want to extract from your experience? Project yourself into the future and imagine your offspring has written a letter to you thanking you for how your commitment to fatherhood made them better. Read that letter in your imagination. What would you want it say? What actions described in the letter would make you proud and bring a smile to your face? Whatever it is, begin to work on that.

Whats Preventing Me from Getting What I Want from Fatherhood?

Now, based on the aforementioned letter, begin to think about how to bring about those qualities. What is it that you must do to attain the greatness that the letter describes? Do not focus on eliminating your weaknesses, but rather turn your energy toward making your strengths stronger. Youre just a step away from becoming the father your offsprings future letter describes. Sure, you may have some daunting obstacles to overcome; your finances may not be where you need it to be; you may be dealing with a difficult co-parent; or you might be facing effective communication challenges.

The only thing you may really need to adjust is your attitude. In spite of all of the aforementioned challenges, the one thing you can control is your response. Make certain you possess an I can do all things approach and use every opportunity to bring it into focus.

What Strategies Can I Implement to Get What I Really Want from Fatherhood?

We all want to be the best father, as I wrote earlier. It usually just requires a little tweaking to achieve this goal. Empathy, listening skills, effective feedback are things we can do to establish a deep bond with our children. The most needful strategy is personal growth and development; do your very best to deepen your spiritual discipline. Reading Holy Scripture, meditation and worship are effective in strategic and long-term personal development. Exercising, making better nutrition choices and eliminating self-destructive habits such as smoking or excessive drinking also help.

In the end, its your willingness to make every day count that will leave you with the greatest satisfaction.

Staff Writer; W. Eric Croomes

This talented brother is a holistic lifestyle exercise expert and founder and executive coach of Infinite Strategies LLC, a multi-level coaching firm that develops and executes strategies for fitness training, youth achievement and lifestyle management. Eric is an author, fitness professional, holistic life coach and motivational speaker.

In October 2015, Eric released Lifes A Gym: Seven Fitness Principles to Get the Best of Both, which shows readers how to use exercise to attract a feeling of wellness, success and freedom (Infinite Strategies Coaching LLC, 2015) http://www.infinitestrategiescoaching.com.

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A Three-Step Formula for Getting the Best from Fatherhood ... - ThyBlackMan

Anthroposophy is a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner that postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world that is accessible by direct experience through inner development. More specifically, it aims to develop faculties of perceptive imagination, inspiration and intuition through the cultivation of a form of thinking independent of sensory experience,[1][2] and to present the results thus derived in a manner subject to rational verification. Anthroposophy aims to attain in its study of spiritual experience the precision and clarity attained by the natural sciences in their investigations of the physical world.[1] The philosophy has double roots in German idealism and German mysticism[3] and was initially expressed in language drawn from Theosophy.

Anthroposophical ideas have been applied practically in many areas including Steiner/Waldorf education, special education (most prominently through the Camphill Movement), biodynamic agriculture, medicine, ethical banking, organizational development, and the arts.[1][4][5][6][7] The Anthroposophical Society has its international center at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

Modern critics, particularly Michael Shermer, have termed anthroposophy's application in areas such as medicine, biology, and biodynamic agriculture to be pseudoscience.[8][9] Anthroposophy has also been termed "the most important esoteric society in European history."[10][11]

The early work of the founder of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, culminated in his Philosophy of Freedom (also translated as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path). Here, Steiner developed a concept of free will based on inner experiences, especially those that occur in the creative activity of independent thought.[1]

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Steiner's interests turned to explicitly spiritual areas of research. His work began to interest others interested in spiritual ideas; among these was the Theosophical Society. From 1900 on, thanks to the positive reception given to his ideas, Steiner focused increasingly on his work with the Theosophical Society becoming the secretary of its section in Germany in 1902. During the years of his leadership, membership increased dramatically, from a few individuals to sixty-nine Lodges.[12]

By 1907, a split between Steiner and the mainstream Theosophical Society had begun to become apparent. While the Society was oriented toward an Eastern and especially Indian approach, Steiner was trying to develop a path that embraced Christianity and natural science.[13] The split became irrevocable when Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society, began to present the child Jiddu Krishnamurti as the reincarnated Christ. Steiner strongly objected and considered any comparison between Krishnamurti and Christ to be nonsense; many years later, Krishnamurti also repudiated the assertion. Steiner's continuing differences with Besant led him to separate from the Theosophical Society Adyar; he was followed by the great majority of the membership of the Theosophical Society's German Section, as well as members of other national sections.[12][13]

By this time, Steiner had reached considerable stature as a spiritual teacher.[14] He spoke about what he considered to be his direct experience of the Akashic Records (sometimes called the "Akasha Chronicle"), thought to be a spiritual chronicle of the history, pre-history, and future of the world and mankind. In a number of works,[15] Steiner described a path of inner development he felt would let anyone attain comparable spiritual experiences. Sound vision could be developed, in part, by practicing rigorous forms of ethical and cognitive self-discipline, concentration, and meditation; in particular, a person's moral development must precede the development of spiritual faculties.[1]

In 1912, the Anthroposophical Society was founded. After World War I, the Anthroposophical movement took on new directions. Projects such as schools, centers for those with special needs, organic farms and medical clinics were established, all inspired by anthroposophy.

In 1923, faced with differences between older members focusing on inner development and younger members eager to become active in the social transformations of the time, Steiner refounded the Society in an inclusive manner and established a School for Spiritual Science. As a spiritual basis for the refounded movement, Steiner wrote a "Foundation Stone Meditation" which remains a central meditative expression of anthroposophical ideas.

Steiner died just over a year later, in 1925. The Second World War temporarily hindered the anthroposophical movement in most of Continental Europe, as the Anthroposophical Society and most of its daughter movements (e.g. Steiner/Waldorf education) were banned by the National Socialists (Nazis);[16] virtually no anthroposophists ever joined the National Socialist Party.[17]:250

By 2007, national branches of the Anthroposophical Society had been established in fifty countries, and about 10,000 institutions around the world were working on the basis of anthroposophy.[18] In the same year, the Anthroposophical Society was called the "most important esoteric society in European history."[10]

Anthroposophy is an amalgam of the Greek terms (anthropos = "human") and (sophia = "wisdom"). An early English usage is recorded by Nathan Bailey (1742) as meaning "the knowledge of the nature of man."[19] Authors whose usage of the term predates Steiner's include occultist Agrippa von Nettesheim, alchemist Thomas Vaughan (Anthroposophia Theomagica), and philosopher Robert Zimmermann.

Steiner began using the term in the early 1900s as an alternative to the term theosophy (divine wisdom), a term central to the Theosophical Society, with which Steiner was associated at the time, and to a long tradition of European esotericists. Steiner probably first encountered the word "anthroposophy" in the work of Zimmermann, some of whose lectures in the University of Vienna he had attended while a student.[20]

Anthroposophical proponents aim to extend the clarity of the scientific method to phenomena of human soul-life and to spiritual experiences. This requires developing new faculties of objective spiritual perception, which Steiner maintained was possible for humanity today. The steps of this process of inner development he identified as consciously achieved imagination, inspiration and intuition.[6] Steiner believed results of this form of spiritual research should be expressed in a way that can be understood and evaluated on the same basis as the results of natural science:[4] "The anthroposophical schooling of thinking leads to the development of a non-sensory, or so-called supersensory consciousness, whereby the spiritual researcher brings the experiences of this realm into ideas, concepts, and expressive language in a form which people can understand who do not yet have the capacity to achieve the supersensory experiences necessary for individual research."[21]

Steiner hoped to form a spiritual movement that would free the individual from any external authority: "The most important problem of all human thinking is this: to comprehend the human being as a personality grounded in him or herself."[21] For Steiner, the human capacity for rational thought would allow individuals to comprehend spiritual research on their own and bypass the danger of dependency on an authority.[21]

Steiner contrasted the anthroposophical approach with both conventional mysticism, which he considered lacking the clarity necessary for exact knowledge, and natural science, which he considered arbitrarily limited to investigating the outer world.

In Theosophy, Steiner suggested that human beings unite a physical body of substances gathered from (and that ultimately return to) the inorganic world; a life body (also called the etheric body), in common with all living creatures (including plants); a bearer of sentience or consciousness (also called the astral body), in common with all animals; and the ego, which anchors the faculty of self-awareness unique to human beings.

Anthroposophy describes a broad evolution of human consciousness. Early stages of human evolution possess an intuitive perception of reality, including a clairvoyant perception of spiritual realities. Humanity has progressively evolved an increasing reliance on intellectual faculties and a corresponding loss of intuitive or clairvoyant experiences, which have become atavistic. The increasing intellectualization of consciousness, initially a progressive direction of evolution, has led to an excessive reliance on abstraction and a loss of contact with both natural and spiritual realities. However, to go further requires new capacities that combine the clarity of intellectual thought with the imagination, and beyond this with consciously achieved inspiration and intuitive insights.[22]

Anthroposophy speaks of the reincarnation of the human spirit: that the human being passes between stages of existence, incarnating into an earthly body, living on earth, leaving the body behind and entering into the spiritual worlds before returning to be born again into a new life on earth. After the death of the physical body, the human spirit recapitulates the past life, perceiving its events as they were experienced by the objects of its actions. A complex transformation takes place between the review of the past life and the preparation for the next life. The individual's karmic condition eventually leads to a choice of parents, physical body, disposition, and capacities that provide the challenges and opportunities that further development requires, which includes karmically chosen tasks for the future life.[22]

Steiner described some conditions that determine the interdependence of a person's lives, or karma.[23][24]

The anthroposophical view of evolution considers all animals to have evolved from an early, unspecialized form. As the least specialized animal, human beings have maintained the closest connection to the archetypal form;[25] contrary to the Darwinian conception of human evolution, all other animals devolve from this archetype.[26] The spiritual archetype originally created by spiritual beings was devoid of physical substance; only later did this descend into material existence on Earth.[27] In this view, human evolution has accompanied the Earth's evolution throughout the existence of the Earth.

The evolution of man, Steiner said, has consisted in the gradual incarnation of a spiritual being into a material body. It has been a true "descent" of man from a spiritual world into a world of matter. The evolution of the animal kingdom did not precede, but rather accompanied the process of human incarnation. Man is thus not the end result of the evolution of the animals, but is rather in a certain sense their cause. In the succession of types which appears in the fossil record-the fishes, reptiles, mammals, and finally fossil remains of man himself the stages of this process of incarnation are reflected.

Anthroposophy took over from Theosophy a complex system of cycles of world development and human evolution. The evolution of the world is said to have occurred in cycles. The first phase of the world consisted only of heat. In the second phase, a more active condition, light, and a more condensed, gaseous state separate out from the heat. In the third phase, a fluid state arose, as well as a sounding, forming energy. In the fourth (current) phase, solid physical matter first exists. This process is said to have been accompanied by an evolution of consciousness which led up to present human culture.

The anthroposophical view is that good is found in the balance between two polar influences on world and human evolution. These are often described through their mythological embodiments as spiritual adversaries which endeavour to tempt and corrupt humanity, Lucifer and his counterpart Ahriman. These have both positive and negative aspects. Lucifer is the light spirit, which "plays on human pride and offers the delusion of divinity", but also motivates creativity and spirituality; Ahriman is the dark spirit that tempts human beings to "...deny [their] link with divinity and to live entirely on the material plane", but that also stimulates intellectuality and technology. Both figures exert a negative effect on humanity when their influence becomes misplaced or one-sided, yet their influences are necessary for human freedom to unfold.[1][4]

Each human being has the task to find a balance between these opposing influences, and each is helped in this task by the mediation of the Representative of Humanity, also known as the Christ being, a spiritual entity who stands between and harmonizes the two extremes.[4]

The applications of anthroposophy to practical fields include:

This is a pedagogical movement with over 1000 Steiner or Waldorf schools (the latter name stems from the first such school, founded in Stuttgart in 1919)[29] located in some 60 countries; the great majority of these are independent (private) schools.[30] Sixteen of the schools have been affiliated with the United Nations' UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network, which sponsors education projects that foster improved quality of education throughout the world.[31] Waldorf schools receive full or partial governmental funding in some European nations, Australia and in parts of the United States (as Waldorf method public or charter schools).

The schools have been founded in a variety of communities: for example in the favelas of So Paulo[32] to wealthy suburbs of major cities;[32] in India, Egypt, Australia, the Netherlands, Mexico and South Africa. Though most of the early Waldorf schools were teacher-founded, the schools today are usually initiated and later supported by a parent community.[33] Waldorf schools are among the most visible anthroposophical institutions.[33][34]

Biodynamic agriculture, the first intentional form of organic farming,[34] began in 1924, when Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures published in English as The Agriculture Course.[35] Steiner is considered one of the founders of the modern organic farming movement.[36][37]

Steiner gave several series of lectures to physicians and medical students. Out of those grew a complementary medical movement intending to "extend the knowledge gained through the methods of the natural sciences of the present age with insights from spiritual science."[38] This movement now includes hundreds of M.D.s, chiefly in Europe and North America, and has its own clinics, hospitals, and medical schools.[1]

One of the most studied applications has been the use of mistletoe extracts in cancer therapy,[39] but research has found no evidence of benefit.[40][41]

In 1922, Ita Wegman founded an anthroposophical center for special needs education, the Sonnenhof, in Switzerland. In 1940, Karl Knig founded the Camphill Movement in Scotland. The latter in particular has spread widely, and there are now over a hundred Camphill communities and other anthroposophical homes for children and adults in need of special care in about 22 countries around the world.[42] Both Karl Knig, Thomas Weihs and others have written extensively on these ideas underlying Special education.[43][44]

Steiner designed around thirteen buildings in an organicexpressionist architectural style.[45] Foremost among these are his designs for the two Goetheanum buildings in Dornach, Switzerland. Thousands of further buildings have been built by later generations of anthroposophic architects.[46][47]

Architects who have been strongly influenced by the anthroposophic style include Imre Makovecz in Hungary,[48]Hans Scharoun and Joachim Eble in Germany, Erik Asmussen in Sweden, Kenji Imai in Japan, Thomas Rau, Anton Alberts and Max van Huut in the Netherlands, Christopher Day and Camphill Architects in the UK, Thompson and Rose in America, Denis Bowman in Canada, and Walter Burley Griffin and Gregory Burgess in Australia.[49][50]

ING House in Amsterdam is a contemporary building by an anthroposophical architect which has received awards for its ecological design and approach to a self-sustaining ecology as an autonomous building and example of sustainable architecture.[51]

Together with Marie von Sivers, Steiner developed eurythmy, a performance art combining dance, speech, and music.[52][53]

Around the world today are a number of banks, companies, charities, and schools for developing co-operative forms of business using Steiner's ideas about economic associations, aiming at harmonious and socially responsible roles in the world economy.[1] The first anthroposophic bank was the Gemeinschaftsbank fr Leihen und Schenken in Bochum, Germany, founded in 1974.[54]Socially responsible banks founded out of anthroposophy in the English-speaking world include Triodos Bank, founded in 1980 and active in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Spain and France. Cultura Sparebank dates from 1982 when a group of Norwegian anthroposophists start to grow the idea of having ethical banking but only in the late 90s the bank starts to operate as a savings bank in Norway. La Nef in France and RSF Social Finance[55] in San Francisco are other examples.

Bernard Lievegoed, a psychiatrist, founded a new method of individual and institutional development oriented towards humanizing organizations and linked with Steiner's ideas of the threefold social order. This work is represented by the NPI Institute for Organizational Development in the Netherlands and sister organizations in many other countries.[1] Various forms of biographic and counselling work have been developed on the basis of anthroposophy.

There are also anthroposophical movements to renew speech and drama, the most important of which are based in the work of Marie Steiner-von Sivers (speech formation, also known as Creative Speech) and the Chekhov Method originated by Michael Chekhov (nephew of Anton Chekhov).[56]

Anthroposophic painting, a style inspired by Rudolf Steiner, featured prominently in the first Goetheanum's cupola. The technique frequently begins by filling the surface to be painted with color, out of which forms are gradually developed, often images with symbolic-spiritual significance. Paints that allow for many transparent layers are preferred, and often these are derived from plant materials.[17]:381382, 1080, 1105

Other applications include:

For a period after World War I, Steiner was extremely active and well known in Germany, in part because he lectured widely proposing social reforms. Steiner was a sharp critic of nationalism, which he saw as outdated, and a proponent of achieving social solidarity through individual freedom.[1] A petition proposing a radical change in the German constitution and expressing his basic social ideas (signed by Herman Hesse, among others) was widely circulated. His main book on social reform is Toward Social Renewal.[1]

Anthroposophy continues to aim at reforming society through maintaining and strengthening the independence of the spheres of cultural life, human rights and the economy. It emphasizes a particular ideal in each of these three realms of society:[1]

According to Steiner, a real spiritual world exists, evolving along with the material one. Steiner held that the spiritual world can be researched in the right circumstances through direct experience, by persons practicing rigorous forms of ethical and cognitive self-discipline. Steiner described many exercises he said were suited to strengthening such self-discipline; the most complete exposition of these is found in his book How To Know Higher Worlds. The aim of these exercises is to develop higher levels of consciousness through meditation and observation. Details about the spiritual world, Steiner suggested, could on such a basis be discovered and reported, though no more infallibly than the results of natural science.[6]

Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe. Anthroposophists are those who experience, as an essential need of life, certain questions on the nature of the human being and the universe, just as one experiences hunger and thirst.

Steiner regarded his research reports as being important aids to others seeking to enter into spiritual experience. He suggested that a combination of spiritual exercises (for example, concentrating on an object such as a seed), moral development (control of thought, feelings and will combined with openness, tolerance and flexibility) and familiarity with other spiritual researchers' results would best further an individual's spiritual development. He consistently emphasised that any inner, spiritual practice should be undertaken in such a way as not to interfere with one's responsibilities in outer life.[6] Steiner distinguished between what he considered were true and false paths of spiritual investigation.[58]

In anthroposophy, artistic expression is also treated as a potentially valuable bridge between spiritual and material reality.[59]:97

A person seeking inner development must first of all make the attempt to give up certain formerly held inclinations. Then, new inclinations must be acquired by constantly holding the thought of such inclinations, virtues or characteristics in one's mind. They must be so incorporated into one's being that a person becomes enabled to alter his soul by his own will-power. This must be tried as objectively as a chemical might be tested in an experiment. A person who has never endeavored to change his soul, who has never made the initial decision to develop the qualities of endurance, steadfastness and calm logical thinking, or a person who has such decisions but has given up because he did not succeed in a week, a month, a year or a decade, will never conclude anything inwardly about these truths.

Steiner's stated prerequisites to beginning on a spiritual path include a willingness to take up serious cognitive studies, a respect for factual evidence, and a responsible attitude. Central to progress on the path itself is a harmonious cultivation of the following qualities:[61]

Steiner sees meditation as a concentration and enhancement of the power of thought. By focusing consciously on an idea, feeling or intention the meditant seeks to arrive at pure thinking, a state exemplified by but not confined to pure mathematics. In Steiner's view, conventional sensory-material knowledge is achieved through relating perception and concepts. The anthroposophic path of esoteric training articulates three further stages of supersensory knowledge, which do not necessarily follow strictly sequentially in any single individual's spiritual progress.[61][62]

Steiner described numerous exercises he believed would bring spiritual development; other anthroposophists have added many others. A central principle is that "for every step in spiritual perception, three steps are to be taken in moral development." According to Steiner, moral development reveals the extent to which one has achieved control over one's inner life and can exercise it in harmony with the spiritual life of other people; it shows the real progress in spiritual development, the fruits of which are given in spiritual perception. It also guarantees the capacity to distinguish between false perceptions or illusions (which are possible in perceptions of both the outer world and the inner world) and true perceptions: i.e., the capacity to distinguish in any perception between the influence of subjective elements (i.e., viewpoint) and objective reality.[6]

Steiner built upon Goethe's conception of an imaginative power capable of synthesizing the sense-perceptible form of a thing (an image of its outer appearance) and the concept we have of that thing (an image of its inner structure or nature). Steiner added to this the conception that a further step in the development of thinking is possible when the thinker observes his or her own thought processes. "The organ of observation and the observed thought process are then identical, so that the condition thus arrived at is simultaneously one of perception through thinking and one of thought through perception."[6]

Thus, in Steiner's view, we can overcome the subject-object divide through inner activity, even though all human experience begins by being conditioned by it. In this connection, Steiner examines the step from thinking determined by outer impressions to what he calls sense-free thinking. He characterizes thoughts he considers without sensory content, such as mathematical or logical thoughts, as free deeds. Steiner believed he had thus located the origin of free will in our thinking, and in particular in sense-free thinking.[6]

Some of the epistemic basis for Steiner's later anthroposophical work is contained in the seminal work, Philosophy of Freedom.[63] In his early works, Steiner sought to overcome what he perceived as the dualism of Cartesian idealism and Kantian subjectivism by developing Goethe's conception of the human being as a natural-supernatural entity, that is: natural in that humanity is a product of nature, supernatural in that through our conceptual powers we extend nature's realm, allowing it to achieve a reflective capacity in us as philosophy, art and science.[64] Steiner was one of the first European philosophers to overcome the subject-object split in Western thought.[64] Though not well known among philosophers, his philosophical work was taken up by Owen Barfield (and through him influenced the Inklings, an Oxford group of Christian writers that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis).[65]

Christian and Jewish mystical thought have also influenced the development of anthroposophy.[66][67]

Steiner believed in the possibility of applying the clarity of scientific thinking to spiritual experience, which he saw as deriving from an objectively existing spiritual world.[59]:77ff Steiner identified mathematics, which attains certainty through thinking itself, thus through inner experience rather than empirical observation,[68] as the basis of his epistemology of spiritual experience.[69]

Steiner's writing, though appreciative of all religions and cultural developments, emphasizes Western tradition as having evolved to meet contemporary needs.[13] He describes Christ and his mission on earth of bringing individuated consciousness as having a particularly important place in human evolution,[1] whereby:[4]

Spiritual science does not want to usurp the place of Christianity; on the contrary it would like to be instrumental in making Christianity understood. Thus it becomes clear to us through spiritual science that the being whom we call Christ is to be recognized as the center of life on earth, that the Christian religion is the ultimate religion for the earth's whole future. Spiritual science shows us particularly that the pre-Christian religions outgrow their one-sidedness and come together in the Christian faith. It is not the desire of spiritual science to set something else in the place of Christianity; rather it wants to contribute to a deeper, more heartfelt understanding of Christianity.

Thus, anthroposophy considers there to be a being who unifies all religions, and who is not represented by any particular religious faith. This being is, according to Steiner, not only the Redeemer of the Fall from Paradise, but also the unique pivot and meaning of earth's evolutionary processes and of human history.[4] To describe this being, Steiner periodically used terms such as the "Representative of Humanity" or the "good spirit"[71][72] rather than any denominational term.

Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic elements:

Rudolf Steiner wrote and lectured on Judaism and Jewish issues for much of his life. In the 1880s and 1890s, he took part in debates on anti-semitism and on assimilation. He was a fierce opponent of anti-semitism and supported the unconditional acceptance and integration of the Jews in Europe.[74] He also supported mile Zola's position in the Dreyfus affair.[74] In his later life, Steiner was accused by the Nazis of being a Jew, and Adolf Hitler called anthroposophy "Jewish methods". The anthroposophical institutions in Germany were banned during Nazi rule and several anthroposophists sent to concentration camps.[75]

Steiner emphasized Judaism's central importance to the constitution of the modern era in the West but suggested that to appreciate the spirituality of the future it would need to overcome its tendency toward abstraction. Important early anthroposophists who were Jewish included two central members on the executive boards of the precursors to the modern Anthroposophical Society,[76] and Karl Knig, the founder of the Camphill movement. Martin Buber and Hugo Bergmann, who viewed Steiner's social ideas as a solution to the ArabJewish conflict, were also influenced by anthroposophy.[77]

There are several anthroposophical organisations in Israel, including the anthroposophical kibbutz Harduf, founded by Jesaiah Ben-Aharon. A number of these organizations are striving to foster positive relationships between the Arab and Jewish populations: The Harduf Waldorf school includes both Jewish and Arab faculty and students, and has extensive contact with the surrounding Arab communities. In Hilf near Haifa, there is a joint Arab-Jewish Waldorf kindergarten, the first joint Arab-Jewish kindergarten in Israel.

Towards the end of Steiner's life, a group of theology students (primarily Lutheran, with some Roman Catholic members) approached Steiner for help in reviving Christianity, in particular "to bridge the widening gulf between modern science and the world of spirit."[1] They approached a notable Lutheran pastor, Friedrich Rittelmeyer, who was already working with Steiner's ideas, to join their efforts. Out of their co-operative endeavor, the Movement for Religious Renewal, now generally known as The Christian Community, was born. Steiner emphasized that he considered this movement, and his role in creating it, to be independent of his anthroposophical work,[1] as he wished anthroposophy to be independent of any particular religion or religious denomination.[4]

Anthroposophy's supporters include Pulitzer Prize-winning and Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow,[78] Nobel prize winner Selma Lagerlf,[79]Andrei Bely,[80][81]Joseph Beuys,[82]Owen Barfield, architect Walter Burley Griffin, Wassily Kandinsky,[83][84]Andrei Tarkovsky,[85]Bruno Walter,[86] and Right Livelihood Award winners Sir George Trevelyan,[87] child psychiatrist Eva Frommer[88][89] and Ibrahim Abouleish.[90]Albert Schweitzer was a friend of Steiner's and was supportive of his ideals for cultural renewal.[91]

Though Rudolf Steiner studied natural science at the Vienna Technical University at the undergraduate level, his doctorate was in epistemology and very little of his work is directly concerned with the empirical sciences. In his mature work, when he did refer to science it was often to present phenomenological or Goethean science as an alternative to what he considered the materialistic science of his contemporaries.[11]

His primary interest was in applying the methodology of science to realms of inner experience and the spiritual worlds (Steiner's appreciation that the essence of science is its method of inquiry is unusual among esotericists[11]), and Steiner called anthroposophy Geisteswissenschaft (lit.: Science of the mind, or cultural or spiritual science), a term generally used in German to refer to the humanities and social sciences;[92] in fact, the term "science" is used more broadly in Europe as a general term that refers to any exact knowledge.[93]

[Anthroposophy's] methodology is to employ a scientific way of thinking, but to apply this methodology, which normally excludes our inner experience from consideration, instead to the human being proper.

Whether this is a sufficient basis for anthroposophy to be considered a spiritual science has been a matter of controversy.[4][94] As Freda Easton explained in her study of Waldorf schools, "Whether one accepts anthroposophy as a science depends upon whether one accepts Steiner's interpretation of a science that extends the consciousness and capacity of human beings to experience their inner spiritual world."[95]Sven Ove Hansson has disputed anthroposophy's claim to a scientific basis, stating that its ideas are not empirically derived and neither reproducible nor testable.[96]

Carlo Willmann points out that as, on its own terms, anthroposophical methodology offers no possibility of being falsified except through its own procedures of spiritual investigation, no intersubjective validation is possible by conventional scientific methods; it thus cannot stand up to positivistic science's criticism.[4] Peter Schneider calls such objections untenable on the grounds that if a non-sensory, non-physical realm exists, then according to Steiner the experiences of pure thinking possible within the normal realm of consciousness would already be experiences of that, and it would be impossible to exclude the possibility of empirically grounded experiences of other supersensory content.[6]

Olav Hammer suggests that anthroposophy carries scientism "to lengths unparalleled in any other Esoteric position" due to its dependence upon claims of clairvoyant experience, its subsuming natural science under "spiritual science", and its development of what Hammer calls "fringe" sciences such as anthroposophical medicine and biodynamic agriculture justified partly on the basis of the ethical and ecological values they promote, rather than purely on a scientific basis.[11]

Though Steiner saw that spiritual vision itself is difficult for others to achieve, he recommended open-mindedly exploring and rationally testing the results of such research; he also urged others to follow a spiritual training that would allow them directly to apply the methods he used eventually to achieve comparable results.[6] Some results of Steiner's research have been investigated and supported by scientists working to further and extend scientific observation in directions suggested by an anthroposophical approach.[97]

Anthony Storr stated about Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy: "His belief system is so eccentric, so unsupported by evidence, so manifestly bizarre, that rational skeptics are bound to consider it delusional.... But, whereas Einstein's way of perceiving the world by thought became confirmed by experiment and mathematical proof, Steiner's remained intensely subjective and insusceptible of objective confirmation."[98]

As an explicitly spiritual movement, anthroposophy has sometimes been called a religious philosophy.[99] In 2005, a California federal court ruled that a group alleging that anthroposophy is a religion for Establishment Clause purposes did not provide any legally admissible evidence in support of this view; the case is under appeal. In 2000, a French court ruled that a government minister's description of anthroposophy as a cult was defamatory.[100]

Anthroposophical ideas have been criticized from both sides in the race debate:

The Anthroposophical Society in America has stated:

We explicitly reject any racial theory that may be construed to be part of Rudolf Steiner's writings. The Anthroposophical Society in America is an open, public society and it rejects any purported spiritual or scientific theory on the basis of which the alleged superiority of one race is justified at the expense of another race.[104]

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SHINING WITH THE LIGHT

"Creating the Golden Head" is a Sufi phrase which comes before Illumination. It refers to the practise of Samadhi (Sam - with, Adhi - the Light) burning out all the Impurities.

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Buddha knew about the golden head too but all World Religion is run by, "Those who came After"

"IF THE MAP IS CORRECT - SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE SURELY FOLLOWS" - SATCHIDANAND

ENERGY ENHANCEMENT MEDITATION COURSE STUDENT REPORTS

GOLDEN LIGHT SURGES INTO MY BRAIN...

"A POINT OF LIGHT EXPLODES, it opens and golden light surges in to my brain from the center of my head. Like liquid light it fills me up and at the same time the universe is born, the light expands forming energies that divide and merge forming particles eventually forming atoms, molecules which form stardust stars solar systems galaxies, planets and the they form life, living cells that connect to form a physical brain, manifestation of the cosmic mind and consciousness, eventually reaching my cortex and I open my eyes and remember my self.

My center is the center of the universe, the circle is complete! I am absolutely everything. All time is curved around me, all galactic systems are me, all life is me and I am through this small body I am complete. My personal mind goes in to absolute shock, into hysterical laughter that I cannot stop. I am overflowing billion times billion. Infinite amount of information fills me in a timeless time, my consciousness is flowing from the beginningless beginning of all reaching the final destination of all.

The grand cycle is complete and I encounter all the infinite forms of existence as well as the formless forms of enlightenment beings, the future. I am, one with my self from the future! From the times of conscious creation. There is only space, all of my meridians are ONE! Stretching through all the creation. Then I leave my body and I am guided through many things that I cannot explain or remember in my current state."

As we were talking well into the night at the end of our Energy Enhancement Course at Iguassu together.

After he has removed many energy blockages over the last four weeks. Blockages above the crown chakra in the Antahkarana which were preventing him from re-connecting with the Source of all Life. He described one of the blockages between one million and Infinity of chakras above the head as a dense translucent crystal which was incredibly difficult to remove, different from the other blockages which he had found below it which were dense and covered with a black tarry substance or blood and which were more easy to transmute and dissolve.

We eventually get into a state of energy transfer. We both feel it as white light flowing from one to the other in an incredibly intense way which lasts for two hours. At the end of that time I perceive an initiation which is taking place on the astral plane. Surrounded by a group of ascended masters I introduce him to the chief initiator who uses the rod of initiation to touch his third eye with the intense energies of initiation so that his energies can never again drop into that state we call normal waking consciousness.

Never to lose the Light of Enlightenment, ever again!!

ENERGY ENHANCEMENT STUDENT IN IGUASSU - the Tao with two Poles

THE FOUNDATIONS - THE ANCIENT ROOTS - OF ENERGY ENHANCEMENT - SYNTHESIS OF AND SECRET OF ALL RELIGIONS, ALL SPIRITUAL PATHS, THIS FOUNDATION IS THE ANTAHKARANA

"IF THE MAP IS CORRECT - SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE SURELY FOLLOWS" - SATCHIDANAND

IF WE CAN GET OUR BODIES SQUARE TO THE EARTH, BASE CHAKRA ROOTED IN THE EARTHS CENTER, HEAD IN THE CENTRAL SPIRITUAL SUN

AXIS MUNDI

BY GERRY BANNAN

This circulation of Energy between Heaven and Earth - one flow going up, the other flow of energy coming down, is a guided meditation found in traditions from all over the world.

THE KUNDALINI KRIYAS

THE MASONIC JOACHIM AND BOAZ

THE EGYPTIAN EMERALD TABLET OF HERMES TRISMEGISTUS

THE HINDU ANTAHKARANA

THE TAOIST MEDITATIONAL ORBITS

THE BUDDHIST STUPAS AND STREAM ENTERERS

GURDJIEFF RECIPROCAL MAINTENANCE

THE GURDJIEFF RAY OF CREATION

ANCIENT GREEK AXIS MUNDI

NORSE YGGDRASIL

HERCULES IN THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES

THE CHRISTIAN IONA CROSS

THE SWORD IN THE STONE

"IF THE MAP IS CORRECT - SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE SURELY FOLLOWS" - SATCHIDANAND

STUDENT REPORT September 2013 - The Energy Enhancement Course Level One, Initiation Three, Streaming Video..

KUNDALINI PURIFICATION..

Further notes:

Also I noticed as soon as Satchidanand emailed me, I got a down-pouring of light from above the crown which kept charging me up the rest of the day and my cravings died out! Then I realized the cravings were ego-blockages and that I did not want them.

This meditation 3 - The Energy Enhancement Course Level One, Initiation Three Streaming Video... is great! I've done it some more and it's incredibly powerful. I don't know why it isn't more well known or taught?

It's really bringing up little blockages which are complaining while being pushed down into the earth's core to get purified. The hot fire energy has gotten much stronger in my body while doing the practice, mostly the base of the spine heats up, but also the middle of the spine. There are lots of little blockages being noticed. But I'm pushing them out.

I think this is my new favorite meditation practice! It's far more powerful than the normal orbit practice.

Have practiced it some more my body gets very hot during the practice just like the video says.

"JUST LIKE IT SAYS ON THE TIN!!"

"DRAIN THE LAST DREGS OF YOUR, "VITRIOL""

My mother came into the room and told me she 'couldn't be near me' because I was giving off too much heat like a radiator! After this I noticed that by thinking about certain areas of my body I could send the intense heat to that area!

So now this meditation is definitely the most powerful one I have got. Very impressive. I do an in breath/out breath orbit and then hold for a moment at the earth-core. Then I bring up the energy again.

I've had another experience today, which is light surrounding a part of my selfish ego, and my ego submitted. The light has won for this issue. It is no longer possible to tolerate some of my selfish behaviours.Now I feel very peaceful.

ILLUMINATION, ENLIGHTENMENT..

THE TOTAL MASS OF ENERGY BLOCKAGES IS WHAT MAKES UP THE EGO

ENERGY ENHANCEMENT DHARMA MEGA SAMADHI REMOVES THE ENERGY BLOCKAGES OF THE SELFISH COMPETITIVE PSYCHOPATHIC EGO ONE BY ONE, KNOT BY KNOT UNTIL, "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE" ONLY ONE SOUL INFUSED PERSONALITY REMAINS.

THE LIGHT OF THE SOUL IS THE SILVER LINING

"DO NOT LOOK UPON MY FINGER, INSTEAD LOOK TOWARDS THE SOUL TO WHICH IT POINTS" - BUDDHA

THE DEATH OF SOCRATES BY DAVID

Thanks! I want to update you. I underwent a profound change in my energy last night after my main ego blockage submitted.

However today I noticed with more light in my system, that there are more, smaller ego blockages which are there and which talk to me. I look forward to resolving them. I'll now paste what I wrote last night.

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Energy Enhancement - Enlighten yourself with our ...

The following is excerpted from Contemporary Spirituality for an Evolving World: A Handbook for Spiritual Evolution, published by Inner Traditions Bear & Company.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Carl Gustav Jung

The 1960s saw an unprecedented reactive kick against the Western establishment. The sixties proved to be a decade steeped in rebellion, revolution, experimentation, reaction, liberation, and reevaluation. Even though the foundation stones of mainstream society and established religion withstood the powerful undercurrents of revolutionary change, substantial cracks appeared marking a moment in human history, which revealed how the manipulation and control of the masses, by the few, had entered the earliest stages of breakdown.

At first, evidence of this was subtle. However, fifty years on, those underground rumblings have resurfaced into a world now ready for a new conscious infrastructure within society, politics, media, religion, and spirituality.

Psychological Evolution

In the late nineteenth century came the timely arrival of Freuds work, with a message that his twentieth-century protg, student, and successor Jung evolved and profoundly refined. However, the emerging psychological mind dates back to Plato (ca. 424348 BCE), Pliny the Elder (2379 CE), and Paracelsus (14931541 CE). Moving forward once again to the twentieth century, further evolutionary contributions to psychological development have hailed from those such as Roberto Assagioli, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and more.

Many years ago, I sat with an accomplished psychotherapist and supervisor who was well versed in the ways of the First Nations Peoples. I always recall him saying to me that the psychological is the second gateway, the first being the physical. I have no idea what the other levels of such a model might be composed of as we never discussed it further and yet, this statement really struck a chord within me, ringing true at a more deeply felt level of knowing. What I do know is that psychological exploration is an initiatory gateway to self-actualization. We could say that it stands as a gateway to the Self.

By the mid-1900s Roberto Assagiolo, an Italian psychiatrist, had developed a spiritual psychology known as psychosynthesis, which began to be internationally recognized in the 1950s and 60s. The focus of this psychotherapy is the means by which the psyche can and does synthesize all parts of the personality to work together to reach the highest human potentials. Assagioli drew upon both Eastern and Western philosophies in developing the core concepts of psychosynthesis, and his work has been continued and further developed by others in the field since his death in 1974.

My own personal introduction to this psychotherapy has had a profound impact upon my life.

When I first encountered the psychological arena, I had been looking to engage in some psychological self-exploration and had been searching for a psychology with a soul. I was seeking a psychology that was not going to label me or put me in a box and was not going to offer me textbook answers to the questions I was asking about myself. I was looking for a psychology that held a holistic approach and viewed a human being through the lens of body, feelings, mind, heart, soul, and spirit. I spent several weeks of searching and finally discovered the transpersonal psychotherapy known as psychosynthesis. So, aged twenty-nine, I arranged an appointment with a psychosynthesis psychotherapist and began a revelatory and transformational journey of my Self.

By the end of the first session I was hooked. It was one specific insight that resulted in never viewing life again without using the lens of psychological awareness. I had been asked a question by the therapist, How do you feel about that? in relation to something I had shared with her about my earliest experience of trauma. My response was to spiritualize and rationalize, which was something I had done for years about this core trauma. She asked me again, How do you feel about that? Confused, I continued to recite my well-rehearsed script, which at the time I believed to be my actual true feelings.

Recognizing how out of touch I was with the authentic-feeling level of my experience of this core trauma and myself, she invited me to close my eyes and imagine myself at the age I was when the trauma occurred. She encouraged me to share with her how the infant in me was feeling. This was a light bulb moment! Suddenly and unexpectedly I connected with a level of feeling and realization that I had no idea existed. It was an evolutionary leap in the journey of my Self.

Several months later, experiencing a noticeable personal transformation taking place within me, I signed up for the psychosynthesis psychotherapy training. The first year covered what was termed the Fundamentals of Psychosynthesis. One year later at the end of this process of self-exploration, I found myself wishing that everyone could be given the opportunity to make the one-year journey of the Self. It was truly incredible. The discoveries, the realizations, and the breakdown in order to breakthrough that occurred during this one year alone contained all the possibilities necessary to catalyze a personal shift of consciousness and support peace in the world.

At the close of that year I felt profoundly changed. I was experiencing my life force as being stronger than ever; my skin was warm and full of color, my eyes were shining, and my heart was opening with a sense of wonder because of who I was discovering myself to be. What inspired me even more was the promise of who I could become if I continued on this journey of psychological awakening and healing. I had stumbled upon my Self and there was no turning back.

I embarked upon a further two years of intense training and continued in weekly therapy throughout the three years I was studying psychosynthesis. By year four I decided to leave the psychosynthesis training, having a strong sense that whatever I had needed from it had been completed. However, three intense years of continual training, group work, client work, ongoing supervision, and therapy had set the groundwork for what was to come.

After leaving the training, I still felt there was something core that I had yet to heal and integrate in my psychological healing journey up to that point and so I found myself searching for what I knew I needed in order to become healed and more whole in my Self. My search did not take long, and just weeks after leaving my former training course, I found myself with a leaflet in my hand, intrigued by a title that had really grabbed my attention. The course advertised was titled, The Mustering of the Warrior Angels. This was not a terminology particularly representative of the psychological, yet gnosis told me to follow it through and contact the organizers.

I called the number on the leaflet and a very, very gentle yet strong voice answered. I made inquiries and the woman who answered listened with great patience and sensitivity before responding to my many questions. At the end of the call I had to raise the inevitable subject of the cost of the nine-month course, which I realized I would not be able to afford. This humble woman responded with deep understanding and a willingness to support and enable me to attend the course. I informed her that I would consider it and would get back in touch with her. The course was due to commence within one week.

During that week I battled with myself in terms of my worthiness to merit the kind offer and unconditional support of this woman who was facilitating the course. Her approach was unlike any I had ever encountered in my life. And so, I wrestled with myself, reeling at the new experience of really feeling seen, heard, valued, acknowledged, and validated for the first time. Even though the part of me that represented my then unhealed and unintegrated ego resisted the willingness of this woman to meet my need to attend this course, I was able to find my yes and accept the hand that was reaching out to me. That nine-month course transformed my life.

For the first time I experienced what it felt like to be unconditionally loved and at all times be held in unconditional positive regard, deep love, empathy, understanding, and compassion. For the first time, I experienced the kind of love an integrated, psychologically healthy and spiritually balanced mother would bestow upon her child. For the first time, I experienced what it felt like for someone to continually find ways of saying yes to me, when my experience of cultural conditioning and family history repeatedly said no.

Throughout those nine months, in the presence of this woman, I was exposed to a way of being that prioritized the needs of all concerned. This was done in groundbreaking and unconventional ways that entirely respected the morals, values, and ethics of each individual present.

When I look back over the past fifteen years and contemplate the single most profound and transformational experience I have had the blessing and grace to undergo in this lifetime, my thoughts always turn to that woman and that nine-month course I had the courage to say yes to. I am blessed to say that when the course finished, the ongoing unconditional love and support of the woman who facilitated my deepest healing continued. This was a woman whose humble wisdom ways and truly authentic spiritual example proved to be the most powerful healing force and influence in my own self-actualization process. This was a woman who eventually became my mentor, and ultimately one of my dearest, closest, and most cherished friends. Her name is Wendy Webber.

Conscious Evolution

In essence, conscious evolution represents our capacity to evolve consciously and not merely by chance. Humanity is consciously evolving at an exponential rate and it is doing so through the wide-scale spread of expression, connection, love, compassion, innovation, co-creation, and recognition that has been made possible by advances in technology that have initiated a viral awakening of personal and collective consciousness. It was the great futurist and pioneer of free energy, Nikola Tesla, who first introduced the idea of a global brain when he said, When wireless is fully applied the Earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of response in every one of its parts. It was indeed Tesla who first introduced the concept of what Jose Arguelles later termed the noosphere.

Humanity has evolved a highly sophisticated and vastly upgraded global nervous system and brain known across the world as the Internet. This online phenomenon has given birth to a social media gone viral that has connected people, communities, countries, nations, and the world. Extraordinary advances in technology have enabled the covert and secret governmental agendas regarding interplanetary, off-planet, and extradimensional experiments and research to be made possible. These include the reality of other life-forms within the cosmos, wormholes, time travel, and extraterrestrial contact and communication.

This new global nervous system and brain, also known as the noosphere, has given people choice, a collective voice, and the capacity for empowerment. This is a fact that global agenda authorities have recognized and are now seeking to control, as humanity campaigns for human, animal, and planetary rights, including the replacing of existing power resources, such as oil, electricity, and gas, with free energy. This becomes possible with online freedom technology.

The consciousness model of human beings is changing from one of dysfunctional instant gratification to that of a more healthy and functional model of instant manifestation. This proves how we can indeed become manifesters and co-creators. It is new technology that has made this potential a reality. It is critical that we campaign and seek to eliminate the government agendas to control the new global nervous system and brain, and protect the rights of the individual and the collective.

Conscious evolution is an aspect of human evolution that has been slowly but surely emerging in this past decade. Those who run the major self-development training institutions and organizations are now studying conscious evolution in order to introduce it as a new training module into their curriculums, training programs, and educational teaching models.

The woman most renowned as the matriarch of conscious evolution is futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard who, at eighty-two years of age, has dedicated her entire adult life to the conscious evolution of humanity and the world. American systems theorist, architect, engineer, author, designer, inventor, and futurist Buckminster Fuller said of her: There is no doubt in my mind that Barbara Marx Hubbardwho helped introduce the concept of futurism to societyis the best informed human now alive regarding futurism and the foresights it has produced. And her good friend and biographer Neale Donald Walsch refers to her as The Mother of Invention.

Barbara Marx Hubbard defines conscious evolution as the following:

Conscious evolution is the evolution of evolution, from unconscious to conscious choice. While consciousness has been evolving for billions of years, conscious evolution is new. It is part of the trajectory of human evolution, the canvas of choice before us now as we recognize that we have come to possess the powers that we used to attribute to the gods.

We are poised in this critical moment, facing decisions that must be made consciously if we are to avoid destroying the world as we know it, if we are instead to co-create a future of immeasurable possibilities. Our conscious evolution is an invitation to ourselves, to open to that positive future, to see ourselves as one planet, and to learn to use our powers wisely and ethically for the enhancement of all life on Earth.

Conscious evolution can also be seen as an awakening of a memory that resides in the synthesis of human knowing, from spiritual to social to scientific. Indeed, all of our efforts to discover the inherent design of life itself can be seen as the process of one intelligence, striving to know itself through our many eyes, and to set the stage for a future of immense co-creativity.

This awakening has gained momentum as three new understandings (the 3 Cs) have arisen:

Cosmogenesis: This is the recent discovery that the universe has been and is now evolving. As Brian Swimme puts it, time is experienced as an evolutionary sequence of irreversible transformations, rather than as ever-renewing cycles.

Our New Crises: We are faced with a complex set of crises, most especially environmental. We are participating in a global system that is far from equilibrium, conditions that are known to favor a macroshift. This kind of dramatic repatterning can be a sudden shift toward devolution and chaos, or it can be an evolution toward a higher more complex order. At this moment in evolution the outcome depends on our choices, and time is running out. We must change, or suffer dire consequences. Our crises are acting as evolutionary drivers pressuring us to innovate and transform.

Our New Capacities: The advent of radical evolutionary technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, quantum computing, space exploration, etc., offer us the possibility of profound change in the physical world. At the same time that we are facing the possible destruction of our life support systems, we can also see that the tools are there to transform ourselves, our bodies, and our world. We can and are actually moving beyond the creature human condition toward a new species, a universal humanity, capable of coevolving with nature.*

*Barbara Marx Hubbards official website, accessed March 18, 2013, http://www.barbaramarxhubbard.com/site/node/10. Spiritual Evolution

For millennia humans have been engaged in varying forms of spiritual practice, be they sacrificial or reverential. Many have immersed themselves, for better or worse, in the aspirational or dogmatic interpretations of world religions, spiritual ideals, and philosophies. Throughout history, religion has been grossly distorted beyond all recognition. Humanity has been exposed to a version of worship and religion that has had the pure heart ripped out of it. However, a true religion is seeking to emerge now, a religion in which the heart remains intact.

For many thousands of years, from the worship of Sun Gods, Mystery religions, Paganism, and more (with Hinduism being the oldest of the existing major religions), humans have been guided (controlled) by external moralistic, authoritative, retributive, punishing, distorted, judgmental, accusative, warring, and misrepresentative unearthly Gods. Sacred texts have been delivered with misinterpretation and distortion in contradictory sermons paraded as rules and regulations to a vulnerable global congregation.

Mainstream religion and spiritual practice dates back to the Vedas, which predate Hinduism in India. For the Abrahamic religions, Judaism is the mother religion, established around 1500 BCE. Christianity was established in the first century CE and Islam around the eighth century CE. Billions of people have perished throughout human history as a result of ancient worship, which caused wars and entailed human sacrifice. Untold millions of men, women, children, and animals have lost their lives in the name of religion in the past four to five thousand years.

The most peaceful spiritual practices in modern history appear to be Buddhism and Hinduism, yet even these have ancient roots in battles and war. However, over time, they do seem to have evolved a more authentic expression of their fundamental spiritual teachings based upon love. It is also interesting to note that both encourage and practice vegetarianism, as regard for all life is a fundamental value and ethic.

As the psychological and conscious evolution of the individual and collective begins to establish a firm foothold as a reality, we find ourselves in the midst of a global evolution. Our relationship with our own spirituality is subject to radical questioning as we sense the rumblings of change beneath the surface of the spiritual and religious ground we have stood upon for thousands of years.

As psychologically and consciously evolving individuals, we are seeking and needing a more authentic expression of spirituality that speaks to who we are now in the twenty-first century. As the many layers that hide the heart of the true Self are peeled away through psychological processing and conscious awakening, so too are we now seeking to align with an authentic spiritual and religious practice for the new consciousness and the new world paradigm that is also emerging.

The time is upon us to strip away the many layers that have hidden the heart of religionlayers that were put in place in order to control and manipulate our ancestors who had not attained the degree of conscious evolution that is possible and can become a reality for the twenty-first-century awakened human being. Twenty-first-century humanity seeks a spiritual path that reflects our present time and one in which the heart of religion is laid bare. Our conscious evolution calls for a new spiritual practicea contemporary spirituality for an evolving worlda religious practice, an authentic teaching of what has lain at the heart of all religion. Just as all rivers lead to the ocean, what takes us to the heart of all religion is love.

Conscious evolution began with spirituality. Yet, owing to the adoption of the widespread distortion and misrepresentation of original religious and spiritual teachings over millennia, the conscious evolution of the human being became buried, along with the pure, peace loving, and peace seeking heart of true religion and spiritual practice.

Following the explosion onto the human evolutionary scene of the psychological Self, some forty or more years ago, we find we have now arrived at the gateway of individual and collective conscious evolution. As the psychologically integrated self establishes within the personal, cultural, and collective fabric of human reality, so too rises the star of conscious evolution, lighting the way ahead for our ongoing evolutionary development. Psychological evolution is followed by conscious evolution and then spiritual evolution, or more accurately, a spiritual reevolution, which reflects the consciousness of the twenty-first-century human being and a new world paradigm.

Standing upon the bridge of conscious evolution, we remain at the same time connected to both the psychological and spiritual. By simultaneously remaining connected to all three, an unprecedented evolutionary leap becomes possible within the human being. Never before, in the history of humankind, have we stood upon such a threshold that, for the first time, allows us to experience and manifest the greater potential we each hold as consciously evolving human beings. Our full capacity for the expression of this has remained dormant. We use just 8 percent of the human brain. In the words of Roberto Assagioli, just imagine What we may be. This is the promise of the times we are living in.

The gateways of psychological, conscious, and spiritual evolution are wide open and invite each and every one of us to align with a consciousness and a new world that reflects a twenty-first-century personal and collective shift from an old to a new paradigm. To do so will initiate and activate the vastly unrealized human template we are each born with and, until this century, have barely touched upon.

These three gateways present us with a new human experience and a world that, until this time, has been just a fantasy or a dream. The glimpse we have seen of a utopian world in which all are equal, all are abundant, all are peaceful, and all are well is now within our grasp. We have only to step through these psychological, conscious, and spiritual gateways to realize and manifest a utopian world as a reality.

The Three Foundational Levels of Human Evolution: Psychological, Conscious, and Spiritual

The time is upon us now to align and harmonize these three foundational levels of our intrinsic evolutionary naturea process I often refer to as realigning the personality with the Soul, and not the other way around, which is primarily the case in the unintegrated individual.

The most profound and transformational journey any of us will ever experience is the conscious evolutionary journey of the Self. The journey of true awakening is catalyzed when we turn our attention to our psychological level, which enables us to evolve in a more conscious way. This in turn profoundly influences and accelerates our conscious and spiritual evolution.

Self-awareness and self-realization lead to self-actualization. When we embody and live the Truth of who we really are, this enables global evolution and the attainment of the utopian ideal of a world at peace to become a tangible reality.

When enough of us are psychologically, consciously, and spiritually awakened, we can and will coevolve and co-manifest a new golden age and a thousand years of peace. This has been prophesied by ancient indigenous wisdom keepers for millennia, a fact that rare astronomical alignments and momentous Earth changes indicated would unfold post-2012.

The rise of conscious evolution as an intrinsic developmental reality for the twenty-first-century human being marks the arrival of the new human. This human being is not randomly shaped by circumstances of chance and current themes within society, but one who is conscious and fully engaged in their own evolutionary process as well as working toward the evolution of humanity.

The individual and collective psyche is now ready for a personal and global progressive evolutionary awakening. The twenty-first-century new human seeks a contemporary spirituality that reflects an evolving world. The psychological aspect of human evolution first entered the public domain in the late nineteenth century with Freud and then exploded onto the scene in the 1970s, at which point we entered into the era of psychological evolution. Now as we move further into the twenty-first century, we find we have arrived at a bridge that invites us into a new era of human evolutiona new epoch of conscious evolution. The twenty-first century will catalyze an exponential shift in this in both the individual and the collective and so materialize an aligned spirituality, a twenty-first-century global-spiritual evolutiona contemporary spirituality for an evolving world.

Teaser image by garysan97, courtesy of Creative Commons license.

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Psychological, Conscious, and Spiritual Evolution ...