Embodying Evolutionary Vision: An Action-Based Experiment in Non-Dual Perception

Abstract

This article suggests that “evolutionary vision,” the unifying paradigm of physical, biological, and sociocultural evolution, needs to be fully embodied and deeply experienced in the human being, and that this can be effected by the experience at the heart of the “perennial wisdom tradition,” ¹ that is, that of “non-dual perception.” The article suggests an “action-based” experiment paralleling the method of a “thought experiment,” based on the assumption that one way that one can experience this embodiment is by “trying on” the lens of non-dual perception, as practiced by the many traditions of perennial wisdom.

KEYWORDS:

• Consciousness
• dissipative self-organization
• evolutionary vision
• hermeneutics of contemplative experience
• interconnectedness
• non-dual perception
• science and spirituality
• sociocultural evolution
• unity of being

Notes

1. Aldous Huxley, drawing on the term coined by Leibniz, defined the perennial wisdom tradition as “a universal metaphysic that recognizes a Divine Reality substantial to the world of things, lives, and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, even identical with, Divine Reality; the ethic that places (the human's) final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being” (1945, p. vii).

2. As described in the work of Prigogine and Stengers (1984), dissipative structures are systems able to transform themselves in near-chaos or chaotic regimes, and bring forth a new order by which they would better process and transform energy and information in their environment.

3. For more explorations of “successful” dissipative self-organization, see Jantsch (1980, 83–115).

4. Here Khidr is understood as the archetypal spiritual guide who will lead the student beyond common understanding and perspective in order to grasp an overall “universal” perspective on problem situations. The story of Moses and Khidr illustrates the ways that Moses was continually stretched beyond his interpretations and judgments of events, until which time a broader perspective and understanding was revealed. See Norton and Smith (2009, 10–12).

5. The actual words Plotinus used are more likely closer to “The sensitive eye can never be able to survey, the orb of the sun, unless strongly endued with solar fire, and participating largely of the vivid ray” (see http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Plotinus).

6. The integral connection with potential comes through very clearly in the Tibetan language, where the word used for Buddha, sangye, literally translates as “pure blossoming” or “pure blooming.”