Alex's question at the end of the podcast:
What do you think it would take for our culture to experience a shift in consciousness and become more "enlightened"?
As part of dealing with this question It should be considered that consciousness has always been and still is shifting, evolving as part of the wider evolutionary process of life on Earth. The evolution of human consciousness has gone through several developmental stages. Note that I say stages not states. More on this distinction later.
To go further with this it is best to defer to the great modern philosopher of consciousness Ken Wilber whose early book “Up From Eden” deals in detail with the evolution of consciousness stages. (Quite frankly in my opinion he makes the materialist commentators on consciousness that we are beset by look intellectually lazy, to put it mildly.)
In another of his books “Eye To Eye - The Quest for the new Paradigm” he draws on many thinkers to summarise these 7 stages:
“ARCHAIC - This includes material body sensations, perceptions and emotions. This is roughly equivalent, for instance, to Piaget’s sensorimotor intelligence, Maslow’s physiological needs, Loevinger’s autistic and symbiotic stages, the first and second chakras, the ananamayakosa (physical food) and pranamayakosa (élan vital).
MAGIC - This includes simple images, symbols, and the first rudimentary concepts, or the first or lower mental productions that are “magical“ in the sense that they display condensation, displacement,”omnipotence of thought” and so on. This is Freud’s primary process, Arieti’s paleologic, Piaget’s proportional thinking: the third chakra. It is correlated with Kohlberg’s pre conventional morality, Loevinger’s impulsive and self protective stages, Maslow’s safety needs.
MYTHIC - This stage is more advanced than magic, but not yet capable of clear rationality or hypothetico-deductive reasoning, a stage Gebser termed “mythic”. This is essentially Piaget’s concrete operational thinking; the fourth chakra, the beginning of manomayakosa (Vedanta) and manovijnana (Mahayana). It is correlated with Loevinger’s conformist and conscientious-conformist stages, Maslow’ belongingness needs, Kohlberg’s conventional stages.
RATIONAL - This is Piaget’s formal operational thinking, propositional or hypothetical-deductive reasoning; the fifth chakra; the culmination of manamayakosa and manovijnana. It is correlated with with Loevinger’s conscientious and individualistic stages, Kohlberg’s post conventional reality, Maslow’s self esteem needs.
PSYCHIC - “Psychic” does not necessarily mean paranormal although some texts suggest that certain paranormal events may more likely occur here. Rather it refers to the “Psyche” as a higher level of development than the rational mind per se (e.g. Aurobindo, Free John). Its cognitive structure has been called “vision logic”. or integrative logic; the sixth chakra; the beginning of the manas (Mahayana) and vijnanamakosa (Vedanta). It is correlated with Loevinger’s integrated and autonomous stages, Maslow’s self actualisation needs, Broughton’s integrated stage.
SUBTLE - This is basically the archetypal level, the level of the “illumined mind” (Aurobindo); the culmination of mana and vijnanamayakosa; a truly transrational (not prerational and not antirational) structure: intuition in its highest and most sober sense; not emotionalism or merely bodily felt meaning; home of Platonic forms; bijamantra, vasanas, beginning of seventh chakra (and subchakras); start of Maslow’ self transcendence needs.
CAUSAL - Or the unmanifest ground and suchness of all levels; the limit of growth and development: “Spirit in the highest sense, not as a big person but as the “ground of being” (Tillich), “Eternal Substance” (Spinosa), “Geist” (Hegel); at or beyond the seventh chakra; the anandamayakosa (Vedanta), alayavijnana (Mahayana), kether (Kabbalah).
These seven general structure-stages of development can be further reduced to three general realms: the prerational (subconscious), the rational (self conscious), and the transnational (superconscious).”
(Thanks Ken).
It is important to note that this developmental process has occurred on the collective level of humans through history as well as occurring on the individual level of a human being in its progression from infancy to adulthood. The lower stages up to mythic-rational (where we seem to be collectively at present) we have all experienced in our progression as individuals. The higher stages not so much perhaps - yet.
And so in summary maybe we are all in possession of this evolutionary heritage and it is present and ongoing within ourselves and within our culture. Despite our problems.
Enlightenment is a state of consciousness that is linked to this development of stages of consciousness but not necessarily dependent on it. Throughout history there are certain individuals that have transcended the general stage of consciousness development that is the general background and achieved heightened states of consciousness -ie enlightenment. This is because it is an actual potential of the evolutionary process of consciousness development.
So what does it take for our culture to experience a shift in consciousness and become more enlightened? I think it is a process that began with the big bang and is still a work in progress. And we are that process and it doesn’t help us at all to hear that this process is woo woo. Maybe what it takes is simply to continue to fight this worldview.
And some meditation - as Roshi Dennis Merzel has famously said “Enlightenment is an accident, but meditation makes you accident prone”.