PRINCIPLES OF SPIRITUAL HUMANISM
Möller de la Rouvière
AUTHOR OF: SPIRITUALITY WITHOUT GOD
SPIRITUAL HUMANISM DECLARES THAT:
1) To be a Humanist in the fullest sense of the word, is to embrace
both the potential and direct experience of non-duality or wholeness
as an integral aspect of human life.
2) The non-dual truth of the living moment is contained as potential
within all aspects of human experience, and therefore does not exist
as a metaphysical Self, Brahman, Godhead, or any other Unifying
factor - all which are projected as having Their presumed existence
both prior to, and after, the appearance of human life.
3) Wholeness or non-duality is neither the experience of one nor two.
4) Wholeness or non-duality is the mere sense of non-dual reality
which remains alive as a human experience when the inner, fragmented
and alienated sense of `I'-consciousness has been recognized as
fundamentally false, and transcended through right practice and right
living.
5) The word `spiritual' in the term `Spiritual Humanism' reflects the
total field of subtle human experiences such as love, compassion,
wholeness or non-duality, intelligence, pure emotional response-
ability, emotional equanimity, reasonableness, softness of heart,
human warmth, altered states of conscious awareness, insight,
intuition and deep states of inner absorption. It further includes
the appropriate use of instruments such as memory, attention, the
sense of awareness and rational thinking in their relation to the
diversity of that which appears in the human field of present
arising.
6) No sustainable emotional equanimity or the functioning of the
deeper intelligence associated with the non-dual revelation is
possible without addressing and transcending the deep emotional
shadow material which fundamentally controls and prejudices
intelligent human behavior in general and, more specifically,
responsive and dependable human relationships .
7) No sustainable intelligent and creative interaction with the world
is possible without observing and transcending mental conditioning
which projects and transfers itself onto the simplicity of human
experience.
8) Non-duality is not to be found as an exclusive property
somewhere `within' the bodymind. Non-duality or wholeness is the
complete identification between the sense of being aware and the
content which appears as form within this awareness. In this regard,
no distinction could be made between the content of awareness and the
awareness of content.
9) In the human context, there is no such experience as content-less
awareness. Awareness can therefore not be an object of inner
contemplation, neither can it contemplate itself.
10) Awareness is not a `thing' to be come upon `inwardly' or anywhere
else. Awareness is the mere sense of being aware, which makes it a
process and not the Ultimate Unifying Principle (or Great
Metaphysical Thing) as projected by traditional Advaita Vedanta.
11) Meditation is a gradual movement through the disorder of the
fragmented, conditioned and emotionally scarred human psyche to the
unfolding of the natural non-dual potential within human nature.
12) Human life itself is the path, the practice and the fulfillment
of the practice. The completion of spiritual life reflects the
fulfillment of human life as a whole, and nothing Else.
13) A re-look at, and a radical re-cognition of, the entire process
of the spiritualization of human life are required to free this
enquiry from the binding and distorting dogmas of traditional
religious and spiritual conformity.
14) A new, truly Humanistic vision of spiritual life, based on
nothing but the unfolding and development of humankind's deepest
potential for integral living, has to be explored as a matter of
profound urgency.
15) God, as the ultimate projection of human well-being, order,
beauty and happiness, should no longer, in any form whatsoever, be
the basis of an uncompromisingly humanistic enquiry into the inherent
spiritual nature of human existence.
16) Mind as the slayer of truth, is nothing other that the
indiscriminate, conditioned, habitual and uninspected use of human
faculties such as attention, thought, emotional response and the
functioning of awareness in relation to these.
17) The `I'-conscious state is fundamental to fragmented living and
many other forms of inner and outer disorder. As mere self-projection
and self-focus this presumed inner entity creates a distinct and
clearly observable destiny of suffering in its attempts to minimize
the felt dis-ease of its own supposed separateness both from itself
and life in general.
18) The path is a conscious inversion upon every aspect of inner
contraction within the body-mind, and not a projected movement
towards that which is presumed to exist as an Ultimate State
eternally free, and thus fundamentally
