CyberGroup Discussion - Spiritual Innovators

	24% of the Spiritual Innovators are characterized by the sense of mystery that called them to their purpose. For some it was a moment, for others half a lifetime. To each, there came a unique insight and conviction which they then laboured to share with others. These 6 people then are a microcosm of this aspect of spirit - that the light of God illuminates all things. That in prayer, meditation and silence we find this light inside ourselves.
	Billy Graham "All over the world I have been privileged to see people respond in faith to the simple - yet profound - message of God's love in Jesus Christ. They have come from every conceivable social, racial, political, and ideological background, for Christ transcends the boundaries that divide us."
	Carl Gustav Jung. Carl Gustav Jung will, no doubt be remembered as one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. He developed a new vision of the human mind, and was able to reconcile psychology with spirituality. His ideas cover fields as far apart as the Yi Jing, the Grail Legend, dreams, archetypes, and mythology.
	Evelyn Underhill A prolific writer on the spiritual life, a sane and encouraging spiritual director, and a promoter of the retreat movement who has been highly influential in the Anglican tradition. She was a woman whose own spiritual journey was long and painful, but who in her life mixed mysticism with common sense and has helped many to grow in faith.
	Martin Buber. At the beginning of Buber's thought, there is the discovery of Hasidic tradition, which coincided with Buber's discovery of his own religiousness. Meeting Hasidism meant for him his "re-entry into tradition", he learned that tradition is not preserving the past, but passing on, providing the human being of today with the access to the primary source from where the stream of life flows.
	Black Elk "I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth,--you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.." Closing words of Black Elk Speaks. See how this man's life and vision in fact live on - a remarkable story, all stemming from a child's vision - what some have called a classic near-death experience.
	Maharishi Mahesh Yogi founded his world-wide movement in Madras, India in 1957. His purpose was to spread a simple and profound message: the basis of life is unbounded bliss and every individual can experience it without effort. To this end, Maharishi began teaching a mental technique that became known as Transcendental Meditation.

Enlightenment - A Summary Introduction by Wayne Holst

The path to spiritual enlightenment is usually very difficult. It is frequently conceived and borne out of difficult circumstances - both personal and cultural.

The two spiritual innovators that I wish to talk about represent very different backgrounds and faced different challenges. Yet both of them were deeply committed to the cultural heritage of their respective peoples and retained a vision for their respective futures. While grounded in tradition, the enlightened message they envisioned become a message to be shared with the entire human, indeed cosmic, family.

My brief presentation will focus on the lives of Black Elk the Native American medicine man/spiritual visionary and Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher. Black Elk offers a vision of a restored humanity. Martin Buber's gift is the vision of the significance of dialogue to bring about human and cosmic restoration.

Hehaka Sapa, or Black Elk (c. 1863 - 1950) was a holy man, shaman and healer; a member of the Oglala band of the Lakota (Sioux) nation in what is present day South Dakota. He had an early vision of his peoples bright future, then witnessed its near destruction as a result of the incursion of the euro-American industrial culture in the late 19th century.

The original vision, the loss and the recovery, he recounts in a book entitled Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, (1961, reprinted 2000). It was edited from a series of interviews conducted by cultural anthropologist John G. Neihardt.

This book has become sacred literature for Native American peoples of many backgrounds. Originally received from a pre-literate culture which carried its message via oral tradition, this book has helped the American First Nations to become aware of the importance of the written word in modern societies. It has also been one of the most important inspirations in the survival and renewal of primal/aboriginal cultures, world-wide.

In aboriginal cultures, the holy man or shaman was looked to as both a spiritual guide and political advisor. When Black Elk first experienced his vision, he was a young boy. He dreamed of a sacred hoop, a medicine wheel that was once a beautiful hope for the future of his people. But then, that hoop was severed and a difficult wilderness period was to be experienced. "... the nation's hoop is broken and scattered," he said. "There is no centre any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."

Black Elk had quite a bit of exposure to the White Man. In mid-life he joined Buffalo Bill's traveling show. He visited Omaha, Chicago and New York. Later he also visited London UK and a number of other European cities. He thought that perhaps by visiting the great world of the White Man he could learn from their wisdom and find new ways to help his people. But alas, he did not find that wisdom from the White Man.

He saw the White people as "unrightly related to each other." They had no concern for the poor and needy. They were also "unrightly related to the land, or Mother Earth, and showed disrespect for creaturely life, especially for the bison" which they killed en masse for no apparent reason except to slaughter them. He came to the conclusion that the White Man's way of living was unhealthy, often misdirected, disrespectful to God (or Wakan Tanka as he knew God). White people appeared to him as insane, and not following the Spirit that had been given to them.

However, Black Elk believed that his own people could be restored to new life and health if they followed the precepts of the Red Road, or traditional Native way. Near the end of his life he called for a return to that tradition.

For Black Elk, the purpose of sharing his great vision was to preserve the hope that someday the original vision would come to pass.

Like the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, Black Elk had not only dire predictions for the human race, including his own people. He proclaimed that if the people allowed themselves to be transformed by God's spirit there was hope for an alternate, more favourable future.

While the Hebrew prophets called upon the Jewish people to return to the Word of the Lord, Black Elk's message of enlightenment in the midst of darkness was that the Lakota Nation "go back into the sacred hoop, and find the good red road." Interestingly, Black Elk reflected both traditions in his person. He was both a Roman Catholic catechist, and a Native shaman. He saw no problem blending the sacred traditions of his people with his new Catholic faith. Black Elk died in 1959, aged 87.

Martin Buber was born February 8, 1878 in Vienna as a child of a Jewish family; his grandfather, in whose house in Lvov Buber spent much of his childhood (his parents' marriage had broken apart), was a very renowned scholar in the field of Jewish tradition and literature. Buber studied in Vienna, Leipzig, Berlin, Zurich and soon entered the Zionist Movement, more for religious and cultural than for political reasons. He was the editor of a renowned Jewish magazine and lectured Jewish in Jewish religion philosophy at the University of Frankfurt from 1924 to 1933. During that time, he worked together with Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) and translated the Hebrew Bible into German.

In the first years of Hitler's rule, he stayed in Germany until he had to emigrate in 1938, and from then on he lectured, interrupted by numerous journeys, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He made many efforts at improving the understanding between the Israelis and the Arabs, in the postwar period and also at reestablishing the dialogue with German thinkers and institutions. He died on June 6, 1965.

CHASSIDISM This religious movement within Judaism emerged around 1750 in the Ukraine and in Poland; it represents (like the German Pietist movement) the protest against legalist faith. It was a popular movement with deep religious sentiment and longing for God. It emphasized emotional values, piety, but also joy and active love. This movement influenced Buber's thought.

PHILOSOPHY OF DIALOGUE Buber's philosophy of dialogue views the human existence in relations, and that in two fundamentally different kinds of relations: I-It and I-Thou

An I-It relationship is the normal everyday relation of a human being towards the things surrounding himself or herself. We can also consider our fellows as an It - and that is what we do most of the time, we view "the other" from a distance, like a thing, a part of the environment, objectively and mechanistically.

Radically different is the I-Thou relationship. The human being enters into it with his or her innermost and whole being, in a meeting, in a real dialogue this is what both of the partners do. For Buber, interhuman meetings are only a reflection of the human meeting with God. The essence of the biblical religion consists for Buber of the fact that - regardless of the infinite abyss between them - a dialogue between humanity and God is possible.

RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY The foundations of Buber's religious philsophy lie in his Chassidic work and his philosopy of dialogue. The basis of belief is the relation between humanity and God, the relation to the eternal Thou. In an unparalleled consistent way there is no statement about God which does not at the same time state something about humanity. For Buber, the biblical history of Israel is a living tradition, a dialogical history between God and humanity: from calling Abraham out of his environment, the covenant at Mount Sinai up to the prophets, a dialogical history that engages anyone who joins it.

The basis for all statements about faith is the dialogical relation of trust, not the belief in dogmatic contents. "One can believe that God is and live in his back (observing only the backside of God) but he who trusts God lives facing God."

I and Thou: A Tree
By Martin Buber

I contemplate a tree.

I can accept it as a picture: a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of the blue silver ground.

I can feel it as movement: the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core, the sucking of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air--and the growing itself in its darkness.

I can assign it to a species and observe it as an instance, with an eye to its construction and its way of life.

I can overcome its uniqueness and form so rigorously that I recognize it only as an expression of the law--those laws according to which a constant 5. opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or those laws according to which the elements mix and separate.

I can dissolve it into a number, into a pure relation between numbers, and eternalize it.

Throughout all of this the tree remains my object and has its place and its time span, its kind and condition.

But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. The power of exclusiveness has seized me.

This does not require me to forego any of the modes of contemplation. There is nothing that I must not see in order to see, and there is no knowledge that I must forget. Rather everything is, picture and movement, species and instance, law and number, included and inseparably fused.

Whatever belongs to the tree is included: its form and its mechanics, its colors and its chemistry, its conversation with the elements and its conversation with the stars--all this in its entirety.

The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no aspect of a mood; it confronts me bodily and has to deal with me as I must deal with it--only differently.

One should not try to dilute the meaning of the relation: relation is reciprocity.

Does the tree then have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree, but the tree itself.

Would that the Jews and Palestinians living in the Holy Land today would heed the spiritual wisdom of Martin Buber and learn again to engage each other in dialogue as persons. Would that the two-leggeds of this world would heed the spiritual wisdom of Black Elk and join with the four-leggeds and the rest of nature in celebration of their mutuality and common createdness!

Transformation - A Summary Introduction by Jock McTavish

Our second study aspect of Spirituality is the Still Voice. In all the traditions of humankind, certain people have experienced a rare something often expressed as a message from God. And when such a message has been heard, those that hear it act in consequence. This energy of conviction seems in part due to their certain knowledge that the experience is true. We use the words "belief" and "believe" a lot in the context of spiritual concern. But those that have heard the Still Voice don't speak of belief, they speak of knowing. The mystics of every tradition speak of this.

In the West we have tended to use the term "conversion". In the East they have tended to the term "transformation". It might be useful to consider these terms in light of the lives of Billy Graham and Carl Jung. In a sense these 2 words are interchangeable, but the first has a connotation of sudden change while the second has a connotation of gradual change. Both depend upon acceptance and intention.

Billy Graham has earned much respect in our society for he has shown high integrity throughout his career. In consequence of his success, his is often the principle image (in America?) of what Christianity is about. The Christian Formula of Salvation that is rejected by many moderns as inexplicable is the very one every citizen has heard him preach on TV these many years. He did not invent it, it is very biblical, but he is identified most thoroughly with "believing in Jesus". Millions of people have found Graham's offer of Christ's Gospel has brought them peace and purpose. There seem two principle contributing reasons for this success, and how conversion has become the dominant model of becoming authentically Christian.

First. The New Testament is layered with a language of change. The Gospels lay the message of Jesus out. But Paul invented Christianity as we know it. Paul's own conversion experience was so powerful that it continues to this day to be the expected model for the Evangelical Christian of what he might expect. The fact that Paul planted the Christian Church all over the Mediterranean world meant that the New Testament story is one of preaching a "Gospel" and inviting people to change their lives in dramatic fashion by joining this new religion, Christianity. Billy Graham himself has said that his own conviction comes from such a personal experience. He has not seen a new light. He shows people a very old light.

Second. The modern evangelist faces a population not so different from Paul. In this last century, the influence of the Church has waned, familiarity with Bible images in the population has seriously diminished, and the stress of our modern world creates much spiritual havoc. It is then, meaningful for many people today, to hear the Gospel of Good News as a welcome life-changing message. It is a certain element in the exponential growth rate of the Pentacostal movement in the Third World.

What then for those that don't experience great guilt from great sin, and so a great need and a great appreciation of "salvation"? What then for those who grow more temperately in understanding, and whose circumstances and nature are less precipitous? In the culture of the Evangelical Christian Church, they are made to feel lesser stars in the heavens, and often learn to speak a language that makes no connection to their understanding or daily lives. Reg Bibby has spoken of the constant harvest of souls in such churchs that do not bring new persons to church but cause a circulation among the churchs.

William James well expresses this when in his study of conversion phenomena, he points out that sudden conversion is characteristic of some but not all people, that it often doesn't "take" and that there are other "Varieties of Relgious Experience" (the name of his opus). His work was ahead of his time, and most appropriate now when inter-spiritual interest is real and we have neighbours and friends with different perspectives and backgrounds.

Carl Jung is well known as one of the 3 Fathers of Psychology. It is also known that he split from Freud on the issue of spirituality. What is less known were his actual spiritual experiences and esoteric interests.

The son of a Lutheran minister, he never joined the secular trend. As he explored the psychological wildreness of his time and the distress of his patients, he tended always to see in the turmoil and in the depths, the eternal resonances of our race. He coined new words for old understandings. Archetype for those common subliminal images that make up the mythology of all peoples. Synchronicity for those inexplicable coincidences that thread our lives with wonder. The Collective Unconscious for that connection that makes life holy. In this he shared his spiritual experiences and gave us a better language to understand our own spiritual journey.

Jung was willing to follow any path into the spiritual domain. He "talked to the dead". He describes his lifelong discourse with Philemon - an eternally wise spirit companion he described as teaching and talking to him. Yet he also identified these spirits as archetypes, so some caution and prudence is suggested. I have posted a web link of Chris King in New Zealand that discusses such issues.

Jung studied astrology with great passion, not for future telling, but to search in its deep waters for such truth that had made astrology an aspect of human spirituality since civilization's very beginnings in Sumer.

Jung called himself a Gnostic. In its simplest sense it means someone who knows. As one of the most common heresies of Christian history, it had this - that people searched out mystical knowing themselves - outside of the authority of priests. Jungs Gnostic inclination caused him to be a player in the Nag Hammadi Texts, and we are indebted to him for purchasing that part of the find that was lost to the Cairo museum. And from that find we have the Gnostic Gospels. How curious that Jung invented the word synchronicity.

Similarly he embraced alchemy. Our modern image of alchemy is one of superstition and magic pretense. Actually, alchemy is the root of science for it first searched out true cause outside religious thinking. It was the secret and constant river of human knowledge when historical events caused clever heads to be chopped off and anarchy to reign. It is sometimes said of Isaac Newton that he was the first scientist and the last alchemist. Name a creative spirit in the tradition of the west before Newton and he would also be a student of Hermes. Alchemy's goal of change was the alchemist himself, and the term that was used was "transmutation" or "transformation".

This brings us full circle. For it is the gift of the spirit to transform us if we are willing.

Discussion Highlights:

Spirituality was for all, not for some Joanne observed Underhill to say. The group felt this to be very true. Spirituality was a characteristic part of everyday life. Not just something for others in a time and place away from daily life, but something for each of us to experience. Spirituality seemed an experience that was right at hand. It was a matter of being attuned to it.
I-Thou and I-It difference was not only personalization against depersonalization, but had another aspect said Art Hoffer. Buber intended also to express a living present quality to I-Thou and a static yesterday quality to I-It. A resonant appreciation expressed in the group on this sharing.
The "Red Road" of Black Elk that was the true path of his people has a parallel in this increasingly interspiritual time, that other peoples might best travel the "road" of their time and place as the most natural expression of spirituality for themselves. Forcing others to walk our road is wrong. Thinking our own road the only road also. Appreciating other roads, and perhaps travelling a bit down them is best.
Eastern/Western church history has elements not dissimilar to these spiritual comparisons of Asian and European philosophy. The western church has represented proclamation whereas the eastern church represented witness - as in the instance of Mother Theresa. Eastern traditions, often longstanding though outside our general knowing, favoured dialogue more than our own tradition. As the majority position in our culture there has been much arrogance expressed. The church today in India and Africa being in a minority position in consequence has a more open stance.
Secularity discussed a bit since Buber and Underhill both came from secular family and tradition to a spiritual life as adults. The meaning of secularity was discussed a bit. A lot of Jewish and Christian philosophers are secular and not religious yet are still very much Jewish or Christian in the sense of theri culture and identity

Meeting closed with a reading by Art Hoffer of some excellent Buber quotes.

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