Wilber's 3 faces of God

[earl]

Ken Wilber, the ever prolific transpersonal/integral philosopher had come up with an interesting way to view experiences of the Spirit recently, what he termed the "3 faces of God," as broken down into first, second, and third-person means of describing it. In his words: "First person spirit is the great 'I Am,' the pure radical subjectivity or witness in every sentient being...then Spirit in the second person is the great 'Thou,' something that is immeasurably greater than you could ever possibly be in your wildest imagination, before whom surrender and devotion and submission and radiant release and gratitude is the only appropriate response, and from whom all blessings and all goodness flow unreservedly....And Spirit in third-person is the great Web of Life, the Great Perfection of everything that's arising." Wilber apparently believes an integral spirituality must honor all 3 faces and it is my impression that while any given religion may emphasize only 1 or 2 of the faces, if one closely examines them, most may have all 3 faces in some way. How do you see your tradition addressing this? have a good one, earl

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

Ah, Wilber has that great talent for analytical tools and clarifying perspectives.

I think the second and third person 'faces of God' are well catered for with Tao Chia and its associated practices. Its much weaker with the first though.

The Thou would easily equate with the ineffable mystery & power of the Tao and the Web of Life its great manifestation revealed in the harmony of the li (pattern) of the cosmos. I am simply wasn't represented until the Neo-Taoist Kuo Hsiang put some emphasis on the 'exhalation of being' - the unassailable vibrancy of Tao in every individual diverse being. But the bias was still and has always been towards Thou and the Web of Life with Taoism. Influences from Buddhism and others can help and have helped translate Spirit/Tao into I am.

 

[earl]

To me some faces are "hidden" within a religion in that a particular face may not be explicitly expounded in their "theology," but may be discovered in their practice nonetheless. For example in Christianity, obviously it's very much a "second-person" religion. However, as to the non-dual "witness," certainly in such meditative Christian disciplines as hesychasm, that state may emerge. Here to me is an example of that state in the words of the 14th cent. Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart:

"While I subsisted in the ground, in the bottom, in the river and fount of Godhead, no one asked me where I was going or what I was doing; there was no one to ask me. When I was flowing, all creatures spoke God. If I am asked Brother Eckhart when went ye out of your house? Then I must have been in. Even so do all creatyures speak God. And why do they not speak Godhead? Everything in Godhead is one and of that there is nothing to be said...on my return to God, where I am formless, my breaking through will be far nobler than my emanation. I alone take all creatures out of their sense into my mind and make them one with me. When I go back into the ground, into the depths, into the wellspring of Godhead, no one will aks me whence I came or whither I went. No one missed me; God passes away."

As to Spirit in the third person in Christianity, (the Web of Life). the clearest example of that is in Celtic Christianity where the early Christians appeared to absorb the pre-existing indigenous connection to nature as in this section from the prayer known as St. Patrick's breastplate:

"I bind onto myself today
the virtues of the star-lit heaven,
the glorious sun's life-giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lightening free,
the whirling wind's tempetuous shocks,
the stable earth, the salt sea around the old eternal rocks."

2 faces hidden in Christianity, but there if you know where to look. earl

 

[earl]

It seems too that each "face" might compensate for a subtle impediment on a spiritual path. As to "non-dual" paths that seek to transcend a limiting sense of self, bowing in awed gratitude to a holy Other may compensate for very subtle forms of self-grasping involved in paths emphasizing "self-power" to see through self, while a "non-dual" aspect to an "Other power" religion may compensate for tendencies to inadvertantly alienate one from oneself, immanent and transcendent poles of Divinity at play. take care all, earl

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

It seems too that each "face" might compensate for a subtle impediment on a spiritual path. As to "non-dual" paths that seek to transcend a limiting sense of self, bowing in awed gratitude to a holy Other may compensate for very subtle forms of self-grasping involved in paths emphasizing "self-power" to see through self, while a "non-dual" aspect to an "Other power" religion may compensate for tendencies to inadvertantly alienate one from oneself, immanent and transcendent poles of Divinity at play. take care all, earl

Not sure I understand what you mean or can see this as a pattern. Could you give an example?

Also, am curious as to which faces of God people on the forum have personally encountered most of all. Please tell

Earl have you read much of Wilber's work?

 

[earl]

Read much of his earlier work but only smatterings of his later stuff. By some faces compensating for subtle impediments, 1 example I could give comes from Buddhism and the school of Zen. There there is so much focus on one putting in great effort to achieve insight into the created and ephemeral sense of the self. However the irony can be that when one is involved in such intensely "self-"powered efforts, one can subtly reinforce a sense of self as Wilber points out. A number of Zen roshis have spoken of this dilemma and how as a result they can appreciate Pure Land Buddhism as a counter-balance to self effort. have a good one, earl

 

[Moses the God Archetype*]

m: Lord krishna(God himself) manifested this three faced thorey in the activitys of his lila, thus being the personal form of the surpreme cause it was nesessary for full understanding of the Godhead within the community of devotees.:meditate:

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

Read much of his earlier work but only smatterings of his later stuff. By some faces compensating for subtle impediments, 1 example I could give comes from Buddhism and the school of Zen. There there is so much focus on one putting in great effort to achieve insight into the created and ephemeral sense of the self. However the irony can be that when one is involved in such intensely "self-"powered efforts, one can subtly reinforce a sense of self as Wilber points out. A number of Zen roshis have spoken of this dilemma and how as a result they can appreciate Pure Land Buddhism as a counter-balance to self effort. have a good one, earl

Well Wilber of all people seems to me intimately acquainted with that problem

Good stuff though. Chronologically speaking I've read most of the latter half of his works. At Christmas I got his most recent book and despite the subtle and not-so-subtle self-idolatry it was pretty darn great at times.

MTGA that sounds good. Care to expound?

 

[earl]

Yeah I've read in recent years just how ego-maniacal Wilber can be-really personally attacks anyone who challenges his theories however deferentially.:yes: have a good one, earl

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

Yeah I've read in recent years just how ego-maniacal Wilber can be-really personally attacks anyone who challenges his theories however deferentially.:yes: have a good one, earl

*nods* Another thing to watch for, and this is directed at anyone who has read or is likely to read his work in the future, is his excessive use of straw man arguments and the often simplistic/skewed representation of theories he uses (e.g. holism).

Luckily the AQAL system as an analytical tool and much of the enormously useful language he's introduced to discern and recognise patterns in psycho-spiritual development can work independently of the cult-like phenomena that has sprung up around him and will likely outlive it.

 

[Windwalker]

It seems too that each "face" might compensate for a subtle impediment on a spiritual path. As to "non-dual" paths that seek to transcend a limiting sense of self, bowing in awed gratitude to a holy Other may compensate for very subtle forms of self-grasping involved in paths emphasizing "self-power" to see through self, while a "non-dual" aspect to an "Other power" religion may compensate for tendencies to inadvertantly alienate one from oneself, immanent and transcendent poles of Divinity at play. take care all, earl

I realize this thread is over 7 years old, but the new site software brought it up as a related thread. It has some remarkably good insights in it to resurrect.

What is being said above here comes to some recent thoughts of my own in regards to these 3 faces of Spirit Wilber pointed out (a very important contribution to the subject of religious experience). It is true that each face might compensate for other subtle forms of grasping on a path. As Zen was mentioned earlier as seeking first person experience to the exclusion of any other "illusion" such as theistic apprehensions. As Wilber points out, in first person practices, ego can "hide out" from view. But not so in 2nd person, where it is laid bare before the Holy Other! But in 2nd person paths, like Christianity, 1st person ends up being avoided, even demonized. It also ends up demonizing valid 3rd person perspectives as well, the Web of Life views as seeing the creature as the creator when spoken of as God itself.

In my view, and I agree with Wilber about an Integral spiritual practice, that each should get equal attention, deliberately. The progression I see that occurs is a scale within each of the three perspectives, or Face of God. It begins in 3rd person, then moves to 2nd, and realized in 1st, which then is transcended as well into nonduality as it loops back down into each of these, back into 1st, then 2nd, and then 3rd. In each other these on the upward spiral, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st, there are degrees that are further away from the previous and closer to the next Face.

For instance, in 3rd person it begins with an observation of the natural world. A moment of pondering the significance of what is beheld, evokes a spiritual response of wonder, a sense of something greater than oneself, that envelopes themselves. "There's something there", is the thought. This leads to deeper and deeper connections with it and oneself within it in a Nature mysticism. This becomes a sort of pantheism. This is now moving up against 2nd person perspective, where there is a personal relationship of self with the Other.

In 2nd person, there is a recognition or faith-sense of the Other in relationship with the self. It becomes this I-Thou relationship, with God "above", and you below, separate. What was sensed in 3rd person is now seen as the "Glory of God manifest," but not God itself. Beauty is still seen, felt, and experienced, but it is not God. God transcends this, as is "altogether lovely", as the poets express.

Within 2nd person as one continues on this as a path, the relationship between I-Thou migrates to that hyphen mark, into a communion. This is Deity Mysticism. As that knowledge of the Other and self in relation becomes more illuminated, the Other and the self begin to merge into We, the 1st person plural. 1st person plural We of 2nd person paths, become so tight, so indistinguishable where God and self begin and end, that 1st person plural becomes 1st person singular!

In 1st person singular, you know the Self. You are God. There is no self, there is no other. Who you were is no more. Who God was is no more. Who you are Is. "I AM that I AM". The identification as a separate self is taken up into Divinity, into Godhead. All perception of the world of objects, the world of dualities, including God, are absorbed into this condition of Being itself. It is pure Consciousness. And as we rest in this conditionless condition, our knowledge of Self moves further and further within this Causal state that it emerges out of the Self back into the world of form, the world of dualities, the world of the subtle, of spirit and God, and the gross material word of earth and sky and others, embracing God and Godhead, the world and God, the self and the world in nonduality.

We peel back the layers of the onion, like layers of clothing we wear to protect us from the elements, unzipped and unbound one by one, layer by layer, until there is the naked Core, unclothed and exposed. And from this, then we freely move through all the layers we wear, the layers that the entire cosmos wears in its own clothed reality. We embrace them all in the Core, in Spirit, in Godhead, in Emptiness, and in the layers of all its clothing. This is the nondual. This is embracing All, form and formless, Self and self.

"And the illumined Soul moves freely up and down all these worlds, taking whatever form it wants, eating whatever food it desires, chanting, "Oh wonderful! Oh wonderful! Oh wonderful!"

 

[Orbit]

In 1st person singular, you know the Self. You are God. There is no self, there is no other. Who you were is no more. Who God was is no more. Who you are Is. "I AM that I AM".

I have had one experience like this, years ago. God was irrelevant--I simply *was*. I was a disembodied consciousness, a noun/verb hurtling through the universe.

I have not really ever seen someone else describe it. I never, however, interpreted it as me "being God", but your description fits the experience. I was aware of being Self, deep, core Self.

 

[nazz]

Ken Wilber, the ever prolific transpersonal/integral philosopher had come up with an interesting way to view experiences of the Spirit recently, what he termed the "3 faces of God," as broken down into first, second, and third-person means of describing it. In his words: "First person spirit is the great 'I Am,' the pure radical subjectivity or witness in every sentient being...then Spirit in the second person is the great 'Thou,' something that is immeasurably greater than you could ever possibly be in your wildest imagination, before whom surrender and devotion and submission and radiant release and gratitude is the only appropriate response, and from whom all blessings and all goodness flow unreservedly....And Spirit in third-person is the great Web of Life, the Great Perfection of everything that's arising." Wilber apparently believes an integral spirituality must honor all 3 faces and it is my impression that while any given religion may emphasize only 1 or 2 of the faces, if one closely examines them, most may have all 3 faces in some way. How do you see your tradition addressing this? have a good one, earl

All three