The Intellectual Dark Web — the term was coined by IDW member Eric Weinstein — refers to a loosely bound worldwide internet community of over a hundred major thinkers (and hundreds of millions of views) who do not find any present day intellectual trends to be that inviting. They don’t like the far Right, but they don’t like the far Left either — they’re looking for a much more unified and inclusive ways of thinking. In an article posted on the Rebel Wisdom website — a website that was created in part due to a very positive response to the work of Jordan Peterson — David Fuller makes the following observation: “It was while watching these two interviews in quick succession—Dave Rubin’s talk with Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, and his discussion with Eric and Bret Weinstein—that I came to my conclusion of what the conversation actually represented! It mapped clearly onto a model I was familiar with—the philosopher Ken Wilber’s idea of ‘Integral’ consciousness as an essential evolutionary leap. I’m going to argue that the conversation is an early but spontaneous manifestation of a more advanced way of thinking that Wilber calls ‘Integral.’ I’m going to apply Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory to the Intellectual Dark Web….” Integral Theory — or technically, Integral Metatheory — seems to be applicable here because it is basically an attempt to draw together as many different approaches to truth as we possibly can and integrate them in a unified framework. Integral sometimes refers to all these different truths as ones that include Waking Up, Growing Up, Cleaning Up, Opening Up, and Showing Up.

The Intellectual Dark Web—the term was coined by IDW member Eric Weinstein—refers to a loosely bound worldwide internet community of over a hundred major thinkers (and hundreds of millions of views) who do not find any present day intellectual trends to be that inviting. They don’t like the far Right, but they don’t like the far Left either—they’re looking for a much more unified and inclusive ways of thinking. In an article posted on the Rebel Wisdom website — a website that was created in part due to a very positive response to the work of Jordan Peterson — David Fuller makes the following observation: “It was while watching these two interviews in quick succession—Dave Rubin’s talk with Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, and his discussion with Eric and Bret Weinstein—that I came to my conclusion of what the conversation actually represented! It mapped clearly onto a model I was familiar with—the philosopher Ken Wilber’s idea of ‘Integral’ consciousness as an essential evolutionary leap. I’m going to argue that the conversation is an early but spontaneous manifestation of a more advanced way of thinking that Wilber calls ‘Integral.’ I’m going to apply Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory to the Intellectual Dark Web….” Integral Theory — or technically, Integral Metatheory — seems to be applicable here because it is basically an attempt to draw together as many different approaches to truth as we possibly can and integrate them in a unified framework. Integral sometimes refers to all these different truths as ones that include Waking Up, Growing Up, Cleaning Up, Opening Up, and Showing Up.

Is there intelligent life beyond Earth? Is it possible that alien beings have already contacted us? What do we make of the thousands of testimonials of human-alien contact, including from scientists, diplomats and astronauts? Yet… where’s the proof? And if there is proof, why is alien contact not the biggest story of the millennia?

Fr. Thomas Keating and Ken Wilber discuss the remarkable history and importance of Centering Prayer. Distilled from the profound teachings of the Christian contemplative heritage, Centering Prayer has aimed to bring a living spirituality into an age where God is typically reduced to the New-Age vicissitudes of emotionality, if not simply pronounced dead. Father Thomas Keating has been a key figure in the Centering Prayer movement since its early beginnings in the 1970s. Distilled from the profound teachings of the Christian contemplative heritage, reaching from the early Desert Fathers and Mothers to The Cloud of Unknowing, St John of the Cross, and St Teresa of Avila, Centering Prayer has aimed to bring a living spirituality into an age where God is either reduced to the New-Age vicissitudes of emotionality or simply pronounced dead. Although it would embarrass him to hear it, many people consider Father Thomas Keating to be a living Christian saint in the truest sense of the term. We at Integral Life certainly do so, and it is therefore with honor and humility that we present a conversation with this deeply realized human being. Father Thomas Keating has been a key figure in the Centering Prayer movement since its early beginnings in the 1970s. Distilled from the profound teachings of the Christian contemplative heritage—reaching from the early Desert Fathers and Mothers to The Cloud of Unknowing, St John of the Cross, and St Teresa of Avila—Centering Prayer has aimed to bring a living spirituality into an age where God is either reduced to the New-Age vicissitudes of emotionality or is simply pronounced dead. It was as a freshman in college that Father Thomas was forced to confront “the death of God” in the form of a modern philosophy course. Having been raised a Catholic, but “without a profound understanding of its historical or theological background,” the assaults on religion by the likes of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer were quite unsettling. Having resolved to confront this dilemma through study, Father Thomas returned to the work of the early Church Fathers and their understanding of the Gospel. As a result of this research, It became clearer and clearer to me that the Christian religion was really about transformation…. I got thoroughly convinced that the contemplative dimension of the Gospel is what Christianity is really all about. It’s the heart of the Gospel. But when I started looking around for how I could get some help developing a contemplative life, there wasn’t anybody…. Thus, the seed that would eventually bloom into Centering Prayer was sown deep in Father Thomas’s heart. Even though he has spent the whole of his adult life in monasteries, Father Thomas’s gift to the world has been to help bring God back within reach of the average human soul. As he points out, the contemplative faculty is not a reward for austerity, but is fundamental to human nature. Father Thomas touches on many subjects in this dialogue, ranging from the effects of Vatican II, to the influence of Eastern traditions, to the need for an integration of the contemplative heart and the discursive head. His is a beautiful story, drawing on a lifetime’s worth of experience and yet always grounded in the timeless Mystery of God. As Father Thomas reminds us, “It can’t be expressed as it actually is, but you have to say something!” And may we respectfully suggest that you listen to the soul behind those words, to the depth and presence of one in whom God shines?

Jeff Salzman talks with Dr. Keith Witt about an evolutionary approach that liberates masculinity and femininity into a new integration that features the best of both and makes them available to all. The culture wars heated up last week with two new skirmishes. One was the release of the American Psychological Association’s new Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men. The other is a new ad released by the Gillette razor company: The Best a Man Can Get. Both explicitly criticize traditional views of masculinity; as the APA Guidelines states, “traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful.” And both encourage men to be more sensitive, cooperative and revealing. Predictably, the new ad and report created blowback from people who see them as part of a postmodern project to neuter men by damning masculinity itself as toxic. They maintain that traditional masculine qualities are innate to men and essential to a healthy culture. Could both sides have a point?

Ken and Corey explore how today’s transnational challenges and realities may be hastening humanity’s eventual growth toward increasingly inclusive and global forms of governance, what government might look like at the level of the global holon, and how we might actually be able to get there from here. Excerpted from the full dialogue here: https://integrallife.com/beyond-the-nation-state-globalism-plutocracy-and-the-integral-world-federation/

In this episode of The Ken Show we explore five themes near and dear to the liberal heart — tolerance, nonviolence, power, privilege, and gender — celebrating the healthy aspects of each that we want to include in a more integral embrace, while weeding out the unhealthy regressive narratives that most of these have devolved into. Excerpted from the full dialogue here: https://integrallife.com/the-baby-and-the-bathwater-saving-liberalism/

This conversation sheds clarity on a very confused notion in the area of spirituality today—namely, the “tao of physics” and all its variations, as exemplified by the recent film What the Bleep. So what relationship, if any, does God actually have with quantum physics? Does quantum physics prove God? This question has to do directly with the relation of modern quantum physics and spirituality. In effect, does modern physics prove God? Does the Tao find proof in quantum realities? Ken Wilber’s answer: “Categorically not. I don’t know more confusion in the last thirty years than has come from quantum physics….” Ken goes on to outline the three major confusions that have dominated the popular (mis)understanding of the relationship of physics and mysticism. #1: Your consciousness does not create electrons. Unlike Newtonian physics, which can predict the location of large objects moving at slow speeds, quantum physics only offers a probability wave in which a given particle, like an electron, should show up. But here’s the funny thing: it is only at the moment that one makes the measurement that the electron actually does “show up.” Certain writers and theorists have thus suggested that human intentionality actually creates reality on a quantum level. The most popular version of this idea can be found in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know?!, in which we “qwaff” reality into existence. #2: Quantum vacuum potentials are not unmanifest Spirit. The immediate problem with the notion that certain “unmanifest” or “vacuum” quantum realities give rise to the manifest world, and that the quantum vacuum is Spirit, is that it immediately presupposes a radically divided Spirit or Ultimate. There is Spirit “over here,” manifestation “over there,” and it’s only through these quantum vacuum potentials that Spirit actualizes manifestation—with Spirit set apart from manifestation. “In terms of actual real physics or actual real mysticism, they were incorrect on both counts. And the marriage of bad physics and sloppy mysticism has been a nightmare….”As the great contemplative traditions agree, true nondual Spirit is the suchness, emptiness, or isness of all manifestation, and as such leaves everything exactly where it finds it. Nondual Spirit is no more set apart from manifestation than the wetness of the ocean is set apart from waves. Wetness is the suchness or isness of all waves. By identifying Spirit with quantum potential, you are actually qualifying the Unqualifiable, giving it characteristics—”and right there,” Ken says, “things start to go horribly wrong, and they never recover. These folks are trying to give characteristics to Emptiness. They therefore make it dualistic. And then things get worse from there….” #3: Just because you understand quantum mechanics doesn’t mean you’re enlightened. Physics is an explicitly 3rd-person approach to reality, whereas meditative, contemplative, or mystical disciplines are explicitly 1st-person approaches to reality. Neither perspective is more real than the other, but each perspective does disclose different truths, and you cannot use the truth disclosed in one domain to “colonize” another. The study of physics, as a 3rd-person discipline, will not get you enlightenment; and meditation, as a 1st-person discipline, will not disclose the location of an asteroid (or an electron). The “content” of enlightenment is the realization of that which is timeless, formless, and eternally unchanging. The content of physics is the understanding of the movement of form within time, i.e. that which is constantly changing. And if you hook Buddha’s enlightenment to a theory of physics that gets disproved tomorrow, does that mean Buddha loses his enlightenment?

Empty Spaces is an 80-minute musical meditation created by dj rekluse (Corey deVos), featuring Alex Grey, Ken Wilber, Sally Kempton, and Alan Watts. A soundtrack for Dark Nights. Liberation upon hearing.

Empty Spaces is an 80-minute musical meditation created by dj rekluse (Corey deVos), featuring Alex Grey, Ken Wilber, Sally Kempton, and Alan Watts. A soundtrack for Dark Nights. Liberation upon hearing.