Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Baby, it's Magic

At the next level along the line of spiritual development, the hapless and chaotic spirits that possess everything become interactive. Instead of feeling helpless about their plight, people begin to bargain with the forces of nature and the universe. They start to believe and realize that the universe operates like a machine, and that by pushing certain buttons they can get it to do things. Sometimes this button pushing amounts to no more than the random thumping of a chimp on a typewriter, but other times people in this stage figure out what a couple of the buttons do and start using them over and over.

In today's world, these are the "shamanic" or tribal religions. Mainstream examples of religions that occupy this stage would be Santeria and Voodoo.

Commonly, adherents in this stage see the world as a place of conflict, in which they occupy one side, i.e. Good or Evil. Their actions are thought to further their perceived nature of either good or evil, whichever they favor at the time.

Notice something, however. This stage does not do away with anything in the stage before it. Instead, this stage represents a flowering or unfolding of the Preconventional stage. In the first stage, there are spirits. They are still there in the second stage, even though they may grouped together or renamed as other spirits.

That makes this a good example of how Stages work in Integral Philosophy. Each successive stage enfolds and includes the one before it.

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