Today is a fitting day to make sacred announcements. Christians and many others the world over are commemorating the ancient birth of the God-man Jesus. And, since prehistoric times, humans in the northern hemisphere have celebrated the annual rebirth of the Sun-God beginning at the winter solstice. This day is still early in that hope-filled, festive time when light and heat begin their seasonal return, heralding new life beyond the wintry few months ahead.
So today is a good day to announce auspicious increases in the radiance of spiritual things. There are two I feel pressing their way out of my heart. I, or Linda and I together, may make another audio recording for my “15th Anniversary of Awakening” gifts page here on our site, to develop these themes. I’ll just write about them briefly here today — we’re off to a family Christmas dinner very soon.
The first is not so much something new as something new to say about our times and our own work. The term “Axial Age” was coined by the 20th century German philosopher Karl Jaspers. “Axial” simply means pivotal, “at the axis.” Jaspers saw that in the period of 800 to 200 B.C., an extraordinary flowering of new religious, spiritual, and philosophical understanding took place under the influence of major figures in disparate locations and cultures throughout Asia and the Middle East. These figures, including Gautama the Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates, “simultaneously and independently” laid the religio-spiritual and philosophical foundations “upon which humanity still subsists today.”
I feel the argument can now well be made that humanity is at least potentially entering into something that may well be considered, in the advanced future from now, a “Second Axial Age.” As was the case in the cultures most profoundly central to that original Axial transition, we now have a situation of immensely complex challenges facing our (now-global) society on multiple levels. It remains to be seen whether, as then, the primary source of the present and coming Axial transition takes a form similar to what Jaspers called the “paradigmatic personalities” of the founders of what have now become generally known as Great Religions and principal philosophical currents for the last more than two millennia. But that paradigmatic changes of an Axial magnitude are in the offing is something I am now confident of. So the first part of my first announcement of the day is simply that: I believe we are entering a Second Axial Age, and it’s worth saying so, without qualification. Whether it can yet be proven or properly documented to any serious questioner’s satisfaction is another matter entirely.
The second part of that first announcement is my strong feeling that this post-hypermasculine, White-Hot Way work I have founded will, over time, be more and more widely recognized as “a quantum revelation for this Second Axial Age.” I am commiting the rest of my life to further elaborating and creating the legacy of this revelation. I understand that as a revelation it is still young and barely articulated, much less culturally established on Earth. We’ve got major work ahead. But I am utterly convinced the work has that Axial potential — that it stands in such radical, fundamental distinction from all the philosophies and religio-spiritual currents set in motion in the original Axial Age and before that it must be considered in such a light. And my sense is that the “paradigmatic personalities” of this emergent Axial Age will be recognized primarily in “both/and” conjunctions of individuals and communities of individuals. They won’t just be immensely charismatic, forceful individual founders. They will also take the form of paradigmatic collectives.
I use the term “quantum” here in a conscious, deliberate way, not lightly. As Linda and I develop our teachings over the years to come, I think you will see how well the term applies to the White-Hot, post-hypermasculine worldview we transmit and teach. It reaches down into a far deeper and more cellular, material integration of our total reality than I think is even possible in the relatively mental and affirmational notions of a quantum perspective that have become fashionable in recent years. But I’ll save more of that discussion for another occasion.
The second announcement I want to make today is more personal, concrete, and immediate. Linda and I have recognized that the time has come to make our post-hypermasculine, White-Hot Heart-transmission available to people at earlier stages of evolutionary development than those we have mostly reached and helped so far. In 2008 we’re going to begin developing a much more vigorous, direct approach to reaching out to such people, in great numbers. We want to find ways to nurture them spiritually right where they are, while also gently attracting them toward a more advanced transformational life.
This impulse is something we’ve always felt, yet its new force in us is partly inspired by our experience with Ken Wilber’s Integral Spiritual Center. We were both deeply moved, at the ISC retreat in October, by Rollie Stanich and Ken’s presentation on Dr. James Fowler’s “Stages of Faith.” I have since found in Fowler’s books a highly nuanced orientation toward creating what he calls “a climate of developmental expectation.” This view, which Wilber has fully incorporated into and built upon in his current elaborations of Integral theory, goes far beyond crude black and white distinctions such as “exoteric and esoteric.” It helps us see much more precisely where our White-Hot Way/Waking Down in Mutuality work in general locates itself in today’s most comprehensive understanding of the process of total human development. And it will help us develop well-informed ways to reach those whose hearts, souls, and bodies are ready for our transmission, encouragement, and discernment but aren’t yet at the advanced stage of evolution that we all refer to, with tender affection and respect, as “the Rot.”
All of this dovetails with the intention I spoke of in the conference call I held on my Awakening anniversary, December 3rd, when I indicated we are looking in effect to put our own work into a kind of “turnaround.” We want to create a “first-class, world-class” enterprise that links this extraordinary transmission-Dharma with the kinds of talent, resources, and innovations on many levels that will permit it to take its most auspicious place in human culture in our time and beyond. Anything less will disserve this Dharma itself and jeopardize its potential expression. That in turn would sabotage its possible healing and transformational impact on all human culture. And these outcomes are simply unacceptable.
We’re not in a position to know what forms the new expressions of our transmission and teaching might take. There’s a lot more I can say about it. When I first spoke of this with Linda, she commented that she has for a long time been speaking her own recognition that our transmission can reach many, many more people, and people of many different backgrounds, than it has so far.
So, stay tuned. I just wanted to post these announcements on the anniversary of a special spiritual event that much of humankind honors in our epoch. Truly, “Thank You, Jesus!” Though the founder of Christianity appeared after the Axial Age proper, the global religion that has arisen in his wake certainly establishes him in humanity’s pantheon of paradigmatic personalities.
I’m well aware that I’ve opened up lots of possible questions. More to come in due course.