The Second Face of God - Part 1

Some highlights of the latest conversation between Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber, reported in EnlightenNext Magazine, where they discuss why having a relationship to a transcendent God is the only way to bring the postmodern ego to its knees.

From the introduction by Andrew Cohen:

" So a couple of years ago, when my good friend Ken Wilber began to write and speak about what he called the three faces of God, I found the distinctions he was making both thrilling and clarifying. He articulated and put into a simple framework the different dimensions of the Divine that I had encountered. God as our deepest Self, God as the great all-knowing Other, and God as the entire cosmic Process. And he connects these three very different expressions of Spirit to the three fundamental perspectives that integral theory is built upon: first person, second person and third person, or I, You/We and It (see July 24/09 RoadKill Post). Spirit or God can be looked at through all of these perspectives which (as Ken often points out) correspond to the perspectives found in all major languages.

"First-person Spirit", Ken explains, "is the great I AM, the pure radical subjectivity or witness in every sentient being. Spirit in second person is the great Thou, something that is immeasurably greater than you could ever possibly be in your wildest imagination, something before which surrender and devotion and submission and gratitude are the only appropriate responses. And Spirit in third person is the great web of life, the Great Perfection of everything that is arising."

Wilber: Spirit in second-person is extremely important because it is spirituality in its relational form. It's Spirit in a form that can be communicated with.

Cohen: ...you can have an experience of the first face of God as the absolute subject or consciousness itself, but the ego doesn't necessarily have to bend its knee. And one can have an awakening to the third face of God as this Kosmic evolutionary process, and the ego still doesn't have to bend its knee. But when we enter into the subtle or not-so-subtle paradoxical dualism of having an "I/Thou" relationship with Spirit, the ego suddenly has no choice but to bend its knee. That's why, in a truly integral expression and understanding of Spirit, unless the second face of God is given quite a bit of importance, no matter how many experiences of Spirit as absolute subject or Spirit as Kosmic process an individual may have, the postmodern, narcissistic ego can remain firmly behind the wheel. Ultimately, to become an integrally and evolutionarily enlightened individual, the ego is going to have to come down at least on one knee, if not both.

Wilber: Absolutely. It is indeed the easiest thing in the world for the ego, the separate self, the self-contraction, to take up practices that deal with the first perspective of I-AM-ness and the third perspective of the great web of life, because neither of these ultimately demands a conscious surrender of ego ... But when you are orienting to Spirit in second person - to some aspect of Spirit that is Other to this separate self - that is what really breaks the ego down, what forces it to submit its own self-contracting ways. So the integral approach is to include all three of these perspectives ... I've found that since I introduced that notion, so many Buddhists in particular have come up and said guiltily, "I was practicing and practicing but ego was still intact because I didn't really think there was anything fundamentally greater than my own ego."

Coming soon - Part 2, The Post-Modern Predicament
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