Notes
Notes preface 1. Participants in the Omega Institute think tank met for a week at the Omega campus in Rhinebeck, New York. Participants included Ram Dass, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Carter Williams, Thomas Cole, Robert Atchley, H. R. Moody, Eve Ilsen, Drew Leder, Carole Segrave, Connie Goldman, and several Omega program planning staff persons. The goal of the think tank was to explore what types of educational program might be good next steps. As a result of this experience, I developed a weeklong workshop, “Spiritual Growth in Middle and Later Life,” which I offered with cofacilitators Sheila Atchley and H. R. Moody in the summer of 1996. Planning and offering this workshop gave me important insights into how best to discuss this material. introduction: setting the stage 1. For a listing of more-detailed questions subsumed under these general categories , see Appendix B. 2. Martin Heidegger (1966) used the term region to refer to a place we go in awareness when we leave the world of discursive, calculative thinking. A region is “the trackless and radiant core of Being.” Thus, the spiritual region is more than a mere area; it is suffused by what Heidegger called “holy openness.” 3. Lindsay (2000) found that the proportion of adults who reported being “unchurched ” hovered between 40 and 45 percent over the period from 1978 to 1998, which suggests long-term stability in this factor. 4. For a discussion of the processes through which this occurred, see Robert Wuthnow (1998), chap. 2. 5. The Bhagavad Gita, which was written down several thousand years ago in India, is probably the earliest statement of this principle. For an excellent translation of this work, see Prabhavananda and Isherwood (1944). This idea is present in variants of the major faith traditions. It can be traced through the European literature on mysticism from the Middle Ages. 6. Abraham Maslow’s Toward a Psychology of Being (1968) was probably the most influential statement of this point of view. n o t e s t o pa g e s – 7. This is not to imply that members of the clergy cannot inspire direct, independent , and authentic spiritual experience. Many certainly do. In fact, some of the richest discussions of how to connect directly with the sacred can be found in published sermons. Meister Eckhart is a prime example. However, when religious culture teaches that spiritual connection requires mediation by the clergy, then I think damage can be done to the human spirit. For example, Valerie grew up Catholic , and when she was about 9 she started asking Jesus to talk to her, and she was somewhat surprised when He actually did. She heard a voice that was not her own. When she told her Catholic school teachers about this experience, the response was, “You can’t possibly have talked with Jesus. He has lots more important things to do than to talk to the likes of you. That’s what priests are for.” 8. For a discussion of Blumer’s perspective, see Turner (1991, 403). 9. The American Heritage Dictionary (2006) defines rumination as “the act of pondering; meditation.” This is a perfect definition for my purposes; it is just what I intend. Unfortunately, the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) lists rumination as an eating disorder. What’s a writer to do? I decided I should not avoid ordinary language because some profession or academic specialty has developed a technical meaning for these same words that conflict or sometimes contradict dictionary definitions. 10. I believe both Huxley and Tillich developed this concept of ground following the influence of Martin Heidegger and Meister Eckhart. Eckhart’s idea was that we needed a larger concept of a transcendent God, one that stood as the ground for the manifest God, with the manifest God as figure and the transcendent God as ground. 1. the nature of spiritual experience 1. I use the term ground of being to refer to that which is the supreme context for all other being. Others use God, Allah, Yahweh, the Absolute, and a host of other terms. Some concepts picture the supreme being as a personlike being who thinks, has motives, goals, and aims, has a voice, and speaks to lesser beings. Other concepts see the supreme being as a great oneness, a being that includes all time and space and matter and antimatter and good and evil, a being that our dualistic human minds cannot understand...
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