One of the main findings of my two volumes Meditative Reason: Toward Universal Grammar and Between Worlds: The Emergence of Global Reason (Peter Lang Press) is that all life, experience, discourse and worlds arise from a common primal principle. These works were composed over three decades in the context of explorations, in the foundations of discourse in the quest for the common ground between diverse worlds. I have proposed the word Logos for this primal principle—the Infinite Word—through which all possible worlds (religious worldview, cultures, disciplines, ideologies...) arise. Logos as the Infinite Word constitutes an infinite Unified Field or Force wherein the boundless diversity of the universe is held together in an ever changing interactive drama.
Meditations on Logos reveal that the abysmal source of Unity is the very source of this boundless diversity, which is the signature of this Infinite Force. It becomes clear that this dynamic play of reality is a dialogical process, which is the common ground between worlds. And one of the striking disclosures in the evolution of cultures through the ages is that Logos cannot be approached in the conventional ways of egocentric thinking and discourse. The unfolding drama of Logos at the heart of all worlds shows that humanity has been in a painful evolution from egocentric habits of thinking to a more mature dialogical form of life and mind.
From the Logos perspective—the global perspective between worlds—it is clear that the great teachers through the ages, in diverse religious, philosophical, and cultural traditions, have been speaking out of the awakened mind, out of the force field of Logos, and facilitating this difficult evolutionary advance from egocentric life to our corporate rational maturation in dialogical ways of being. In this global drama, it becomes clear that how we conduct our mind is of the utmost importance in nature and in the quality of our life. And, it is found by the great teachers of Logos through the ages, that egocentric minding is the source of diverse forms of human and cultural pathologies. This global drama of Logos teaches that when we re-center our lives in Logos and shift to the more coherent, rational or dialogical ways of minding we flourish both individually and corporately. This unfolding narrative of Logos reveals a deeper global evolution of cultures wherein cultural life matures to its natural and inherent dialogical or global or awakened force of life.
In the case of Christianity we find that Jesus, as the Logos made flesh, is a unique historical event in which the Law of Logos—the law of Love, compassion, the dialogical imperative—finds embodiment. Jesus as Christ is here seen as a living embodiment of the Logos principle, so as Christianity in its many forms mature and develop the dialogical essence of the Christ principle finds expression. This means of course that being in creative open dialogue (authentic deep dialogue) with other religious worlds, with diverse cultural perspectives, expresses the very essence of Christianity. And as this authentic deep dialogue between worlds unfolds in the presence of Logos the global significance of the Christ Principle matures in the human condition. This recognition that the Christ is the living Logos principle of love, of Being-in-dialogue, points the way to the most authentic and effective way for Christians to engage other religious worlds.
We are living in a very exciting moment in history. Something profound and wonderful is happening, which can be seen only if we stand back and observe the spectrum of cultures and religions that have been evolving over the centuries. If we can do this and enter into alternative religious and cultural worlds, something amazing begins to show itself, a deep pattern that has been centuries in the making. It appears that the different religions and cultural consciousness, a new humanity. We see as we look across religious worlds that they are all deeply concerned with a stage of being human that needs to be overcome.
In one way or another, we have seen how people have lived an ego-centered life. The different religious teachings agree that this egocentric life is the source of diverse human problems. The great world teachers through the ages have attempted to show that the essence of being human is in overcoming the ego-centered way. This can be seen, for example, deep in the Judaic tradition with the ultimate command to love God with all our heart and all our being. That injunction calls upon humans to open themselves in the deepest way to place the Divine Presence first and foremost in all life. This calls for a deep re-centering that transforms our being This revolutionary re-centering in our innermost Self demands that we overcome an ego-centered view that places the ego consciousness as the center of our human reality.
If we look at the teachings of Jesus, the deepest concern and command to love one another, to awaken spiritually, and to go through a profound rebirth calls for a renovation of our being and the move to a dialogical consciousness. Thus, in the Judeo-Christian roots we find this call for the awakening of a new awareness that centers upon God and the Presence of God as the primary concern for human beings, which in turn calls for the deepest change in our lives. When we scan across the spectrum of cultures and look, say, into the Hindu worldview, clearly here too we find a different scenario, that relentlessly focuses on the same point, that the essence of our awakening has to do with overcoming ego-centered consciousness. In the Bhagavad Gita, for example, Lord Krishna takes Arjuna, who embodies the ego-consciousness, on the deep transformation and existential awakening into the higher consciousness that centers on the Divine Principle, one that really sees a profoundly interconnected reality, very different from the one shown in ego awareness.
So also the essence of the Buddha’s awakening (and even the word “buddha” means “awakened one”) turns upon seeing through the emptiness and futility of living in a world that objectifies everything and creates artificial “entities,” especially where the self is concerned. The Buddha’s great awakening shows that humans are not entities or objects of any kind and that this ego-self is empty or vacuous, an artificial construction of the ego will. This ego construction of the self that seems to take itself as a separately existing entity is profoundly wrong and wrongful and is in fact the source of the deepest human suffering. So that the themes of sin and suffering in our human condition are directly traced to our ego-centered way of being, and the deepest call of these religious visions moves us to dramatically transform our being to an open, interactive, unified, and holistic way of being a human.
So too if we look into the Chinese origins of the Tao or of the Confucian Mandate of Heaven. These moral origins call us equally to awaken to a higher consciousness that we can see the inter-relationship of humans and the Higher Law as the centering principle in human life. Equally in certain African traditions, the “Nommo,” the call of the Original Word or Name in the Dogon worldview, and the Vital Force found to flow through all nature call us to honor and respect the principle of life that pulsates through every being and all of Nature. And so on.
When we stand back and take a truly global perspective, it is easier to see the deeper pattern of evolution of cultures and religions through the ages. This deeper pattern reveals that what is distilled and what survives in this evolution is the theme that human beings have been in a profound awakening of a global awareness that is nothing less than the birthing of what we are as human beings. So let us contrast these two models or two paradigms of the human being—the egocentric human and the “dialogical human,” the person who enters into dialogue with other people and with all creation. It is as if all history and cultural evolution are the interplay of these two paradigms or forces in the human nature.
On the one hand the ego-centered human takes itself to be a separately existing entity and centers its life and world and culture around that “reality.” On the other hand the dialogical human somehow awakens to the realization that to be human is a profoundly interrelational, interconnected, interactive way of living and being. This means that everything in human life requires the living through of this interactive—the Buddhist would say “co-arising”—principle of reality itself. At this deepest level, we see a contrast and tension playing out through history between the ego-centered culture and the dialogical way of life.
This brings us to the question of the importance of interreligious dialogue. For religions are deeply established patterns of life that have been distilled over centuries and millennia of ongoing cultural evolution and experimentation. Religious worldviews attempt to get to what is most fundamental in human culture and human reality. They are alternative, narrative, corporate expressions of what is profoundly first, the vital core of our cultural life. As we look across the spectrum of religions we find profoundly alternative ways of recognizing something primordial that is the common source of our diverse worldviews.
This Primal Reality is so profound and deep that there is no one name that can approach it or exhaust it and no name has emerged in the evolution of global cultures to presume to name it. And yet it is important to have a word that may function to help us focus our thoughts and attention on this deep common ground that emerges out of interreligious dialogue.
A religion is a way of life that shapes a culture, so if we understand the interactions and interplay between and among religions we see that there is a profound common reality emerging from this creative encounter, found right at the core of the diverse religions. I use the world “Logos” to indicate this profound, primordial word, from the Greek meaning “the Word, the infinite Word.” We need a truly global interreligious and intercultural Primal Word to help focus our experience on the common foundation and source of all religions and cultures. One remarkable insight, that emerges out of the interplay of world religions in dialogue, is the recognition that there is a profound Logos—beyond any single narrative, beyond any single name, so profound in its infinitude, so deep in its Unity—that it spawns a multiplicity of infinite possibilities and diversity. So Primal Unity in its infinitude plays out in infinite diversity, plurality, multiplicity, particularity, and individuality. There is not the slightest contradiction between the Unity of Logos and the bottomless diversity and multiplicity in the unified Field of Reality.
This to me is one of the greatest lessons of the centuries of interreligious dialogue and interaction_that Logos is so deep in its Unity that multiplicity and plurality and diversity are of its essence. Here we see the deepest roots of the origin of dialogue and the evolution of dialogical consciousness. If we rise to the global perspective between worlds we more readily see this historic pattern evolving. In this historic drama of Logos we see that human evolution inexorably moves beyond the egocentric culture to the awakening of global consciousness through dialogue. This deeper story of human evolution could not be seen clearly until we advanced to the global perspective that comes from creative dialogue between worlds. It comes down to the ultimate principle of reality itself. The painful awakening of human life in dialogue comes with this emergence of Logos in the human condition.
This Logos, this common ground at the source of all religious worlds, is the source of dialogue. Why? Because this Primal Word in its infinite depth and presence is so deep that nothing can stand outside of its sphere of influence and jurisdiction. This profound, primordial Logos, which is at the source of all religious worlds and cultures, places all things profoundly in mutual encounter and interrelationship. The Space of Logos, the Field of Reality itself, holds all things in original interaction. Nothing can stand apart or alone. Nothing is atomic or existentially independent, as egocentric reason imagines.
Perhaps the deepest lesson that we might learn from the evolution of cultures is that human beings are essentially beings in dialogue. We do not stand alone. The vision of human as an ego-centered, independently existing entity has simply been shown to be unacceptable and disastrous in the evolution of cultures.
This brings us to the condition in which we are living, an exciting moment in this evolution over centuries. The birthing of this dialogical consciousness is accelerating and peaking in contemporary times. And yet at the same time the counter ego-centered forces of culture are also peaking, so something very urgent and critical is happening in our cultures that puts our very survival and future sustainability at stake.
It all turns on the question of our coming to a deeper awareness and practice of this awakening to dialogue in our lives. In this global story of Logos it is clear that humanity must now make the creative corporate turn to dialogical culture if we are to survive. We have arrived at a historic showdown between the two ways of being human. We must find the way to make the corporate transition from egocentric culture to awakened dialogical life. This is why the special skills that come from the creative play of global dialogue, of interreligious and intercultural dialogue, are vital now for our future flourishing.
I now want to connect the dialogical evolution and the new global consciousness that emerges from it with what I call the global mentality or the global mind. Of course when we hear the world “global,” we tend first to think more of the physical dimension, the globe, the geographical sphere, as well as the political sphere composed of the different nations spread across the globe. We usually speak of “global” in this sense. But the wider cultural sense, “global” means a mentality that recognizes the plurality of profoundly different cultural and religious worldviews and perspectives. In this philosophical and cultural dimension the term “global” means having to do with the relations and differences between multiple worlds, with the mutual encounter of the plurality of divers worldviews and cultural forms of life in human evolution. This is what we call the “global context” and “global consciousness.” Now it is easier to see that global awareness is based in dialogue. When we speak here of “global ethics,” for example, it is clearer that the essence of “global” is dialogical.
I want to stress that living in dialogue is a deep change in our being. It is not simply standing where we are in our particular worldviews and speaking it out to others and listening to others from afar. The dialogical turn in living calls for a true risk, a willingness to let ourselves be vulnerable in our deepest being. This awakening to dialogue calls upon us to open our selves and our patterns of interpreting reality, and a willingness to question, reconsider, and revise at the deepest level the worldview in which we live. This of course includes all of our presumptions and assumptions that have been at the source of our way of life. Thus there is something deeply risky that can feel threatening to our very identity, our very “self,’ and to our most cherished habits of mind when we truly open ourselves in this way.
At this point I want to connect the global mind or mentality with the dialogical or global ethics. The term “global ethics” is being used in many ways right now, but to me global ethics indicates this consciousness of dialogue—the essential connection. And when we look at the evolution of ethics through the religious worlds it becomes clear that the most important advances in moral consciousness through the ages, from Moses to Jesus to Buddha to Krishna to Lao Tsu, has been the moving to a deeper dialogical being. In other worlds, ethics points to the deepest way in which we conduct our life and our mind and our thinking. It is not only an external behavior, but the external behavior reflects a deeper inner transformation. So the moral awakening of humanity over the past three thousand years has been pressing to this global awakening and dialogical way of being. This is why, for example—whether it is in the Judaic injunction to love God with all one’s heart, or Jesus’ version of the global moral principle that we should love one another, or Buddha’s principle of Dharma as compassion to love all beings and all creatures and to tend to their suffering—we get many different formulations, and different takes on what might be considered a principle of global ethics.
Ethics is profoundly global and universal across cultures and religions. It is perhaps redundant
to call it “global” ethics. Ethics is global ethics. So I would like to speak of the principle of dialogue that
is at the heart of global ethics and all moral consciousness. If, for example, we had a principle that we are responsible
for the wellbeing of all creatures, and we propose it as a possible formulation of a principle of global ethics,
one might naturally ask, why? Why should I be responsible for all creatures or anyone else other than myself and
perhaps my immediate family? The answer is in this global consciousness that has been emerging.
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