The Paula Gordon Show |
Enlightenments | |||
Ignorance and Illusion have Enlightenment in common.
The Western Enlightenment promised liberation from the former, the Eastern
Enlightenment promises liberation from the later. Scholar and author Walter
Truett Anderson reports that both Enlightenments call on essentially the
same cognitive process: Question Everything. |
Conversation 1 Walter Truett Anderson introduces Paula Gordon and Bill Russell to a variety of ways to be liberated. Enlightenment -- Eastern and Western -- is about human nature, the human mind, “growing up,” and stretching the definition of “normal human consciousness,” Dr. Anderson says. |
Conversation 2 Eager to avoid subcultures, Dr. Anderson describes a natural psychological growth process inherent in humans and the planet. Both Western psychology and Eastern spiritual traditions, he says, are interested in how we go through stages, reconstruct ideas about ourselves and fit into our surroundings. Globalization is at the center of this confluence of Western and Eastern Enlightenments, Dr. Anderson observes, confident that human beings, individually and as a species, have room to mature. |
Conversation 3 Recognizing that challenges to any perceived fundamental verity -- cultural, political, social, economic or religious -- reinforce fundamentalisms, Dr. Anderson shows how both Eastern and Western Enlightenments share the same essential cognitive process: “Question everything.” We need to use scientific terms to ask many of the questions religions ask, he says, confident that psychotherapy, Western psychology and most spiritual traditions address an unmistakable need to grow and grow up, even though the process can be scary. “Change” is at the core of everything, he says, convinced life’s everyday “little deaths” are as important as life’s inevitable conclusion. |
Conversation 4 The Enlightenment/Growing Up/Liberation process includes becoming increasingly aware of how inseparable we are from everything else in the universe, Dr. Anderson insists, with examples of enormous consistencies between Western science and Eastern spiritual traditions. “Change,” “Connections,” and “Complexity” are woven together. People are still coming to terms with being one species, he says, then points to discoveries that have helped people move closer to the non-local Enlightenment he’s talking about. When we embrace what complexity is telling us about our universal connections, Dr. Anderson is confident that it is quite possible to be at peace. |
Conversation 5 Dr. Anderson calls us all to be engaged in the world in whatever way we are able -- it’s going to take all the work that any of us can do, individually and collectively, to “grow up.” He expands. Then he uses a metaphor of “having his windshield cleaned” to describe his own unmistakable physical experience in this realm, an experience so common, he says, that every culture has a word for it, including “peak experience,” “satori,” “aha!” and “metanoia.” Language itself is examined. Dr. Anderson considers the ossification process that seems to affect all religions, then accounts for what he thinks makes our current era both uncomfortable and interesting. |
Conversation 6 Since both Enlightenments offer liberation -- one from illusion, one from ignorance -- Dr. Anderson says that now the questions are: What are we ignorant about? and How do we go about getting liberated? His suggestion: Ask really hard questions about things that seem obvious. It’s those hard questions that the two Enlightenments share, Dr. Anderson says, then offers a final word on language and concludes with a story. |
Acknowledgements Walter Truett Anderson first caught our eye when we
happened onto his wonderful book The Truth About The Truth
a number of years ago at KramerBooks&Afterwards, our friend Bill
Kramer’s former bookstore in Washington, D.C. It was a most fortuitous
encounter. |
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