In an article republished in What is Enlightenment magazine entitled Awakening to Total Revolution, Indian lady guru and political activist Vimala Thackar makes a strong call for a new world view based on oneness and wholeness and the unity of all things.

A healthy life, she asserts, cannot be lived in the context of fragmentation. A healthy society cannot flourish without overcoming fragmentation.

We have to stop seeing the world in fragments. We have to stop compartmentalizing our knowledge in "silos". We have to overcome fragmentating specialization in the sciences and in academia. We have to overcome the separation of spirit and politics. These things are NOT unrelated, nor do they prejudice and distort one another by virtue of connection. In reality, they are absolutely interconnected and mutually influential in direct and significant ways. These connections should be clarified and understood as inherent and natural, and not seen as murky or suspicious or distorting.

"The call is not to one of the revolutionary formulas of the past; they have failed — why drag them out again even in new regalia? The challenge now is to create an entirely new, vital revolution that takes the whole of life into its sphere. We have never dared embrace the whole of life in all its awesome beauty; we've been content to perpetuate fragments, invent corners where we feel conceptually secure and emotionally safe. We could have our safe little nooks and niches were it not for the terrible mess we have made by attempting to break the cosmic wholeness into bite-size bits. It's an ugly chaos we have created, and we try to remedy the complicated situation with the most superficial of patched-together cures.

Today, with the scars of our past failures marring our existence and the fears of the future weighing heavily on our spirits, we can no longer go on with this dangerous game of fragmentation. We can no longer escape the fact that we are all bonded, equal in wholeness. Science and technology have brought each of us into intimate relationship with all others. We are truly a global human family. Yet as a family, we have not learned how to live together in peace, to live without violence and exploitation."

Awakening to Total Revolution

Ken Wilber is popularly regarded as "the world's leading integral philosopher", and has written many books on integral theory and vision. These quotes are taken from his book The Integral Vision.

During the last 30 years, we have witnessed a historical first: all of the world's cultures are now available to us. In the past, if you were born, say, a Chinese, you likely spent your entire life in one culture, often in one province, sometimes in one house, living and loving and dying on one small plot of land. But today, not only are people geographically mobile, but we can study, and have studied, virtually every known culture on the planet. In the global village, all cultures are exposed to each other.

Knowledge iself is now global. This mean that, also for the first time, the sum total of human knowlege is available to us -- the knowledge, experience, wisdom and reflection of all major human civiizations -- premodern, modern and postmodern -- are open to study by anyone.

What if we took literally everything that all the various cultures have to tell us about human potential -- about spiritual growth, psychological growth, socail growth -- and put it all on the table? What if we attempted to to find the critically esssential keys to human growth, based on the sum total of human knowledge now open to us? What if we attempted, based on extensive cross-cultural study, to use all of the world's great traditions to create a composite map, an all-inclusive or integral map that included the best elements from all of them?

Sound complicated, cmplex, daunting? In a sense, it is. But in another sense, the results turn out to be surprisingly simple and elegant. Over the last several decades, there has indeed been an intensive search for a comprehensive map of human potentials. This map uses all the known systems and models of human growth -- the the ancient shamans and sages to today's breakthroughs in cognitive science - and distills their major components into 5 simple factors, factors that are the essential elements or keys to unlocking and facilitating human evolution.

The Ingtegral Vision, p. 17

The key to Brother Wayne’s success in introducing Interspirituality to the world lay in his bringing together deeply Realized beings from virtually every tradition, putting them together in one place, and allowing them to discover their truly fundamental and universal agreements. The key to Integral Theory was putting all the world’s Great Traditions on the table at once, and then creating a Composite Map that covered all the bases and dimensions in a human being, using each Tradition to fill in gaps left by the others. This Composite or World Map allowed each Tradition to see how they were all "true but partial" aspects of Humanity’s Great Spirituality, and thus gave them all a Grid they could easily hang their own Tradition’s spiritual Truths on, without denying or denigrating any others. Thus, embracing a truly Integral Interspirituality allowed each seeker to be a "dual citizen" — embracing both an Integral Map and their own Tradition’s version of that Map — thus being a member of all Traditions as well as one’s own.

As we said, few if any of the Great Traditions cover all these bases. For the Composite or World Map, each was used to fill in the gaps in the others (along with Western psychology and other disciplines). This is why "dual citizenship" is generally so important for any spiritual seeker — it’s important to understand where one is on each of those 5 major dimensions, which are fully compatible with the major tenets of one’s own background Faith. By filling out one’s Faith using the Integral Framework, one can immediately make their Faith "integral" or "comprehensive" or "holistic" or "interspiritual" — as well as bring it up to speed in the modern and postmodern world. Of course, any number of other dimensions and variables can be added to this Framework; it is simply a model of the minimum one needs to generate a World Spirituality.

But in creating a worldwide Integral Framework for spirituality, we have the (or at least a) foundational Framework for an Interspiritual approach to Spirit or ultimate Being. We can see 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-person perspectives on Spirit, and see each of those develop through various levels and lines. Further, we can approach that universal Spirit in direct experiential terms by developing through the various states of consciousness, with each deeper state coming "closer" to ever-present Spirit, and opening us to a deeper Presence in the timeless Now. Meanwhile, the spiritual intelligence structures of consciousness give us higher and wider and increasingly sophisticated and mature interpretations of the various spiritual states, moving from an archaic view to a magical view to a mythic-literal view to a rational view to a pluralistic view to an integral view — with each increasing view capable of taking more and more perspectives, resulting in increasing capacities of love, consciousness, compassion, care, gratitude, and service. Moreover, the Integral Framework allows us to see the many commonalities in the world’s Great Traditions, as well as act to fill in any gaps each of them might have missed. This is truly an Interspiritual approach to the Ground of Being, and one made available only recently in humankind’s history, making this a very exciting time to be alive! And a time to be very grateful to Brother Wayne (and so many other integral pioneers) for making us all more aware of the extraordinary possibilities — and responsibilities—that this entails.

Integral and Interspiritual

William Keepin is a PhD mathematical physicist who has worked with emerging new ideas for thirty years. He is a primary author of the eBook (and print book) Song of the Earth, from which these quotes are taken.

A seamless unity of human thought

At the cutting edge of science today, a powerful new awakening is taking place in many different disciplines. The key insight is this: beyond the physical realm, there exist invisible patterns and principles that somehow organize what we observe and experience in the physical world. Science is discovering that ‘something transpires behind that which appears’. This startling theme is emerging in field after field: including biology, physics, non linear dynamics, artificial life, brain physiology, complexity theory, transpersonal psychology, psycho-neuroimmunology, and ethnobotany – to name a few. This auspicious development points Western science in a remarkable direction toward the existence of a realm beyond the observable, material, empirical world. The stage is steadily being set for another major scientific revolution – one that will eventually weave science and spirituality – matter and spirit – together into a seamless unity.

A unity of spirit, wisdom and religion

At the same time, a parallel awakening is taking place across the world’s spiritual and religious traditions. As East meets West and North meets South, the oneness of all life is being revealed and manifest in unprecedented ways, and the essential unity of human spiritual consciousness is becoming increasingly recognized. The world’s wisdom traditions and religious disciplines are linking together, bringing a convergence and collaboration among previously disparate practices and teachings.

A revolution in consciousness

What is the meaning of these trends, and where are they headed? We are witnessing nothing less than a revolution of consciousness – the birth of a vast, integral worldview that unites and cross-fertilizes East and West, modern and indigenous, human and non-human, contemporary and ancient – all leading us toward a deep collective realization of the seamless oneness of existence. And this auspicious breakthrough is coming not a moment too late, because humanity urgently needs a comprehensive, unifying perspective in order to navigate our way through the challenging waters ahead, and begin building a new civilization of love and harmony. This is not a dreamy mystical vision. It is our destiny as the human family, and it is our birthright to bring this destiny into concrete manifestation.

A universal spirituality

Simultaneous with these discoveries at the frontiers of science, the spiritual and religious traditions of the world are moving slowly yet inexorably closer together – toward a kind of universal spirituality. Leading voices from diverse spiritual and religious traditions are proclaiming the fundamental unity of wisdom from all the traditions.

Human consciousness is becoming widely recognized to be one with the consciousness of the universe. This applies to every human being, and every person has the potential to access this universal consciousness. This is not a dreamy, mystical metaphor – it is a literal truth of consciousness, and has been known by mystics for ages. As Rumi put it in the 13th century, “Let the drop of water that is you become a hundred mighty seas. But do not think that the drop alone becomes the Ocean. The Ocean, too, becomes the drop.” It is every human being’s birthright to discover this inner net of the heart within themselves, and to live from that vast interior foundation of consciousness.

We are the instruments of social change

A key consequence of this worldview is that if we are connected to and led by this larger wisdom of universal consciousness, then our actions and work in the world can become profoundly transformative. Human beings can be used by this larger wisdom as instruments for its work in the world. This is what Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, and many other spiritual activists understood so deeply, as they implemented spiritual law in their work within the secular and political spheres. This is not to say that one has to become a Gandhi to make a difference, just as one doesn’t have to be an Einstein to be a good scientist. Indeed, the transformative principles for social change and cultural evolution that Gandhi and King applied are accessible to us all. By transforming our selves through inner disciplines of consciousness, we become the instruments for a larger wisdom working through us, and this in turn serves the transformation of the world.

The community as avatar

There is an amplified power that operates in groups or communities who work with consciousness practices together. Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn has said that the next Buddha will emerge not in the form of an individual, but rather in the form of a community of people living in loving kindness and mindful awareness. This is because such a community of people – working together with their hearts and minds in alignment around a shared intention of the highest integrity – creates a powerful field of intentionality that functions like a laser beam of coherent consciousness. Tremendous power can be harnessed in this way from deep within the implicate order which, if carried far enough, can tap into the core of creation itself. Thus rooted in the depths of the implicate order, a group of properly aligned human beings can work directly with the creative process of love itself, and thereby have powerful effects on the unfolding manifestations of consciousness. This is one of many ways that the power of community and the conscious alignment of spiritual groups are becoming increasingly important forces in the new emerging humanity, because they dramatically expand the potentialities and possibilities for human society.

Song of the Earth, p. 16