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HEP at Work
Archetypal Activism and Integral Culture

List of Contents

1 Political Psychology – Archetypal Activism p.2

1.1 Archetypal/Political Distinctions p.2

1.2 Archetypal Activity in the World p.4

1.3 How is Archetypal Activity Accomplished? p.8

1.4 Archetypal Activist Tasks p.11

1.5 God’s Not On Our Side p.14

2 The Servant Leader – Integral Culture p.15

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1 Political Psychology – Archetypal Activism

From April 12th – 14th, 2002, Pacifica Graduate Institute presented a
conference entitled The World Behind the World – Reflection, Reconciliations
and Renewal as a response to 9/11 and subsequent events, including the War on
Terrorism. The conference presented an archetypal/mythological and
psychodynamic perspective on the situation. The brochure for the conference
presented the theme in this way. “The events of our recent past, still unfolding,
have brought us all-individually and collectively-to a solemn turning point. What,
at this juncture in time and place is life asking of us? Who, from our deepest
sources calls us to respond? How do we embody the wisdom of our individual
psyches, our collective imagination, our cultural mythologies, our living planet?
From the wells of our soul’s deepest desires we yearn to heal our Selves, each
Other, and the world. Where is our lifeline, our myth, the larger meaning for our
time?”
At the conference the theme of “archetypal activism” emerged – how to be
politically and culturally active in this time from an archetypal point of view.
Archetypal activism presents a possibility for political action that draws on the
archetypal, existential and psychodynamic models of human nature, individuality
and culture. The following is an elaboration of material from the conference.

1.1 Archetypal/Political Distinctions

Robert Romanyshyn has pointed out a basic contradiction between the
archetypal and activist themes. Archetypal implies metaphoric attunement,
resonance, reverie, receptivity, reflection, understanding, depth, non-linearity,
holism, dialectic complexity, tentativeness, a play of dark and light. Activism
comes from political activism. Politics tends to be strongly solution oriented,
definitive, linear, reductionist, forward looking, somewhat unreflective, leader
oriented, authority based, legalistic. It idealizes bright, well lit places. It is sound
bytes and slogans. The KISS directive (Keep It Simple Stupid) rules. James
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Carver’s “It’s the Economy Stupid” got Clinton elected. Politics sees the world in
black and white, good guy/bad guy terms. In “The War on Terrorism”, fighting
“the Axis of Evil”, “we will hunt them down and burn them out”. What is precisely
missing is that complex archetypal reflective quality. Even in the counterculture,
which is critical of mainstream politics, activist politics are still political, focalizing
around polarization, protest, incidents, causes, idealism, bite size chunks. This
linear action orientation is apparently antithetical to the archetypal reflective way
of being. How we could make this polarity dialectic is a fundamental theme we
must explore.
The archetypal/political polarity extends through a number of different
cultural parameters. In terms of ways of understanding, archetypal prefers
seeing symbolic connection through pattern and metaphor, drawing on history as
depth illumination. Politics prefers factual reasons that provide cause and effect
information, through which blame can be attributed, guilt determined, punishment
meted out and solutions found. In the archetypal model, taking responsibility
means showing understanding – it is self affirming and evolutionary. In politics
taking responsibility means either self aggrandizing and glorifying or resignation
in disgrace. In politics, emotions are stereotyped as position statements
justifying action whereas, in an archetypal context, emotions are subjectively
compelling. Politics clings to hope as an intensive care victim clings to life, while
archetypalists live with doubt and faith. Politics values definitive action based on
reasons, carried out with will power and determination, in which the actors
original (usually simplistic) position does not change, but is tenaciously
maintained until “he” (sic) prevails. Archetypalists value tentative action arising
from non linear metaphoric thinking, feeling, intuition and complex, changing
motivation holding the tension of opposites through dialectic attunment. Politics
values achievement, success, triumph, attainment based on an idealistic
platform. Archetypalists struggle with principles that are characteristic, rather
than simplistic direct bases for action – principles of beauty, destiny, participation
and connection, respect for failure and loss, holism, surrender, emergent self
definition, context driven action. Politics is a legalistic mode of operation
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whereas archetypalists prefer justice as a principle. While politics promotes

legalistic factual finding of guilt and consequent punishment, archetypalists prefer
truth and reconciliation that encourages forgiveness.
Archetypalists understand and accept mistaken repetition rather than
strive for decisive victory, so that the full details of unrecognized, forgotten
identity emerge. Archetypalists understand how repetitious mistakes fully unfold
and elaborate depth so that what is not mistaken can be seen, the gifts in the
wound realized and the more robust health in the disease manifest. Politicians
who wish to remember the past as the basis for creating a perfect future may be
creating other problems – such as iatrogenic diseases (from medicine’s fascistic
desire to control and eliminate disease and to protect against death) and the
ecological crisis (from the culture’s desire to have an easy, secure world full of
cheap fast food and consumerist recreational entertainment, with a nature that is
contained and controlled). Archetypalist remembrance of the past takes us into
the depths of understanding failure with forgiveness and provides a tendency to
include the weak, the diseased, the malformed, the complainant – the alien other
as the basis of an evolved, integrated, emergent, more complete sense of self.
These distinctions, of course, are not absolute. They provide an analytic
and descriptive way to look at polarities. As archetypal activists we are called to
be synthetic (i.e. dialectical) in order to facilitate bringing together the fragmented
polarities of the culture in such a way that the existential tension of opposites is
maintained while the opposites interact mutually, engaging without definitive
dominance. In this way polarities may reflectively energize and activate each
other, reflecting through distinction.

1.2 Archetypal Activity in the World

What then is an archetypal activity in the world? We must first recognize that the
archetype itself is phenomenal – it is in the world, even as it points beyond itself
to the world behind the world. What action might we say constellates around
archetypal presence in the world?
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Deep action, complex action, dialectic action, receptive action, action that
affirms polarity and brings polarities into relationship, metaphoric action (action
whose genesis is based in metaphoric understanding and whose activity reveals
the metaphoric nature of life). In Michael Meade’s words archetypal action would
speak the unspeakable and mourn openly – not simply as a means of returning
to where we were before or as a genesis of vengeful retaliation. Archetypal
activism would encourage the acceptance of the breaking in of tragedy, of the
collapse into terror at the conflict within the culture, rather than simply enacting a
War on Terrorism, out there, as a means of managing this inner conflict. Lionel
Corbett focuses also on this deep ambivalence within American culture. Meade
goes so far as to suggest America must look for evil within, and in its own
actions, as also does Corbett.
Archetypal activism would find ways to bring acceptance of the profoundly
changing identity of American (really Western) culture and recognize that “the
centre cannot hold” and that to hysterically and rigidly attempt to shore it up by
acting out will constellate only more extreme and unmanageable fragmentation
and hinder a necessary evolution. Corbett suggests something is dying in North
American culture even as the new struggles to be born. Grof’s perinatal images
echoed this. It seems that the archetypal experience of birth/rebirth is inherently
attended by experiences of dying, violence, brutal penetration, crushing, torture,
imprisonment, poison and that, to accomplish emergence into a new world, we
must accept this.
Meade and Corbett both speak of loss of innocence, specifically of the
necessary and inevitable loss of innocence in a young, idealistic and self
idealizing culture. Meade points out that the word noxious is the etymological
core of innocent i.e. innocence is dialectically noxious.
A central motif of 9/11 is the collapse of the twin towers. Meade points out
that the falling towers are a terrible, tragic lifting of the veil between the worlds,
profoundly revealing the world behind the world. The fact that this revelation
constellates as a terrifying “end of the world” event, rather than an inner
experience of evolutionary terror, reflects the hard core rigidity of military
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industrial consumerist globalization and the cultural imperialism of the good guy
world saviour Logos. Because of the loss of the mediating institutions of the
mesocosm in this revelation, we stand raw against the macrocosm. Surely the
second coming is at hand.
As Jung and Edinger point out, in Western culture (specifically, perhaps,
North American culture), a humanization of God is taking place (has been
especially so since the Renaissance, according to Tarnas) with an accompanying
reification of the human capacity to create (e.g. the self created human and
genetic engineering) and destroy (e.g. the atomic bomb and planetary ecological
crisis). This is portentous, but dangerous and explosive. We have expected the
end of the world momentarily since World War II – the slow apocalypse is upon
us, in Meade’s words.
Chris Downing spoke of the uncanny – the unfamiliar in its frightening
aspect of the return of something terrible that has been forgotten. This alien
other is the very axis of evil, almost by definition. The uncanny is therefore
threatening. But also promising, in that, in Lacan’s terms, it brings a return of the
Real – the radically excluded original ground of being that we have forgotten in
order to become who and what we are, in our world of everyday being and
action. A coming home. A homecoming, however, that is also a death threat. In
fact a terrible attack on our accomplished, successful sense of self. This is of
course precisely the homecoming that Homeland Defense is supposed to defend
against, psychologically.
We may reflect on the possibility that as activists, archetypalists are
terrorists – not in the manner of blowing up people and buildings but in the
manner of radically and terribly undermining and deconstructing the cultural ego.
Returning us, in Meade’s words, to ground zero as a grounding in zero, with the
concomitant grief, sadness, despair, shame, guilt and terror. According to
Corbett the archetypal evolutionary task is to contain these emotions and not act
out in narcissistic, infantile, fragmented and fragmenting rage. To contain the
borderline tendency to moralistic vengeance and, instead, take the hit and
collapse inward rather than acting outward.
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Downing suggests that instead of asking “Why me?” we might ask, “Why
not me?” This might enable us to reclaim the most profoundly unfamiliarly
familiar, that which we are able to repress most of the time in order to be able to
go on – the awareness of death, the precariousness of life, the mystery of being
and non being.
Henrieka de Vries quotes her World War II Resistance mother who
explained why she risked her family’s safety to hide a Jewish woman in Holland.
“Either we are all safe or not one of us is safe”. She also quoted Margaret
Meade: “You can no longer save your family, you tribe, your nation. You can
only save the world “.
She suggests a way to understand the events of 9/11 is through a critique
of the patriarchal social structure in which terrorism would seem to be inevitable
in a world based on male sibling rivalry and treachery (Cain/Abel, Jacob/Esau),
and father dominance (of sons, of women and of the other). She suggests
however, that fundamentalists everywhere, East and West, want to reinstall the
absolute dominance of the military industrial clerical father. In a world at war, in
the midst of profound explosive economic and cultural change, the military
industrial clerical father and his heroic sons “save the day”. Archetypally then,
could we say that this father/son team are actually content to be in charge again?
They, of course, are saddened and outraged at the tragic loss of life, the
“unprovoked” attack. But now they have a mission and it is clear – at least to
them. It is the age old war between ”good” and “evil”, and they are the good
guys – on both sides.
I would like to suggest that it is precisely the war between good and evil
that is the issue, not evil per se. What alternative is there to war on evil? A
psychological perspective can suggest a self questioning that deliteralizes the
view of evil and questions the location of evil in “the other”, in the enemy.
For now the enemy is no longer the enemy. The enemy now is enmity –
non-relational, absolute, annihilating conflict on a global scale. The enemy now
is the war itself. As the twentieth century has so brutally demonstrated we can
no longer afford this dualistic Titanic global battle between “good” and “evil”. In
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what John Ralston Saul calls the Second Hundred Years War around 100 million
people have died in the twentieth century (Voltaire’s Bastards – The Tyranny of
Reason in the West). This war between good and evil threatens to destroy the
biosphere – life as we know it on this planet. A new approach of reconciliation
and integration, while maintaining dialectic differentiation, is called for.
This means moving from a dynamic of mechanistic, linear, controlling,
idealistic duality to one of complex, emergent, pragmatic, dialectic aliveness.
This means moving from a formalized, politicized, legalistic model of social
relations to one of personal responsibility, freedom, negotiation and mediation.
This means moving from politics and religion to psychology and spirituality. This
means moving from ruthless competitiveness to cooperative competitiveness,
from a politics of divide and conquer to a politics of differentiated inclusion and
empowerment and from a model of striving for victory at all costs to one of
accepting failure and mistakes as part of an evolution in which we share the gold.
This means moving from a culture of moralistic conformity and oppression to one
of liberation and freedom, from a culture of reductionist mechanism to one of
holistic aliveness and from a culture of idealism and excellence to one of
pragmatism and muddling through. This means moving from a military industrial,
skill oriented educational model to a more individualistic, humanistic one oriented
toward consciousness and creativity. This means moving from “living lives of
quiet desperation”, adaptation and “getting by” to lives of existential intensity on
the cutting edge, where creativity, resourcefulness, innovation and the
Bodhisattva motif of “doing what needs to be done” prevail.

1.3 How is Archetypal Activism Accomplished?

According to de Vries, because the origins of aggression are rooted in failure of
connection, we have arrived at a moment of decision between a sibling rivalry,
father domination tribal consciousness and an interconnected web
consciousness. 9/11 is an emergency wake up call from Kali. The dark truth is
that we are inseparable and must live in the world with anger, frustration and the
broken grieving heart that our actions engender.
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de Vries gives guidance as to how to accomplish the archetypal

awareness she suggests is necessary. Listen to the wisdom of the body.
Women must speak up. Listen to the world through dreams and oracular
perceptions. In this time of darkness we may see mythically by utilizing a lunar
consciousness, such as Psyche’s gathering of the golden fleece by the light of
the moon while the aggressive rams sleep.
Downing counsels the acceptance of fateful inevitability through attuning
to the meaning conveyed in repetition – “each assault is both new and old”. We
remember (re-member i.e. put the members of the body of knowledge back
together) what we have forgotten. She resounds the question “What good are
poets?” by way of recommending poets and poetry as a way of opening up the
soul, in a way political rhetoric cannot. She suggests that through literature (by
which we may also understand the arts in general, including music, media and
movies) we can reflect myth back into its historical and political context. In the
service of deconstructing American innocence she suggests the establishment of
museums of perpetration as well as museums of victimization and liberation.
Specifically she suggests a museum of the Native American genocide.
Remember what we would like to forget.
Sobonfu Some suggests that the way tribal culture values elders could be
deeply relevant. Elders carry that archetypal theme of listening and resonating,
facilitating management of polarization and sitting with tension rather than acting
out. They carry the wisdom of the past and of the depths.
From Corbett’s call for recognition of psychodynamic and archetypal
themes in 9/11 comes an implied call for a public airing of these sentiments.
Public discourse. Public debate. In newspapers, magazines. On TV and radio.
Meade, along with Sobonfu Some, suggests that action very clearly
follows from an archetypal awareness that is grounded in community. We need
mythic stories and public ritual – on Main Street, in the town square. Meade tells
of one such event two days after 9/11 which brought together accountants,
retired generals, housewives and homeless kids. We can draw on multicultural
wisdom in this. We must tell the stories and enact the rituals so that we can
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consult and question them anew, so that they can speak to us and guide us. We
can converse with myth through ritual imagination, private reverie, simply slowing
down, stopping-looking-listening, taking the impact, looking for a larger context,
understanding the place of brokenness, splitting and overwhelm in creation, and
holding the tension without collapsing into the good/evil dichotomy. Through
telling a White Apache story of “Why the World Doesn’t End” he encouraged
acceptance of the creation, maintenance, destruction cycle as inherent to life.
Not something that must be opposed, controlled or eliminated, but rather attuned
to as a rhythm. Find the rhythm, and life will sing along and dance with us. He
counselled to not become fanatically and rigidly obsessed with creating world
peace. This can perpetuate the fascistic ideal of the elimination of opposites and
constellate even more brutal non-relational darkness. We can more importantly
get on with our lives by living out our gifts through cultivation of the seeds of
destiny in the garden of our soul – what Rumi calls “the one thing we must do”.
From Stephen Aizenstat’s introductory remarks we may infer that an
archetypal way of looking at life is to see the mythological dimension in life by
looking at it as a waking dream. This would involve four activities.

Surrender into the event by taking the impact and translating it into metaphor.
For 9/11 this might be the metaphors of collapse, terror, evil, war, the alien
other (both within and without) and returning to new fundamentals.

Compassion through withholding moralizing judgment in favour of resonance –

understanding the different parts from their point of view. Feeling with and
reflective self questioning.

Curiosity in being fascinated by particularity, using intuition to let go of habitual

ways of seeing so that we look softly and expect an unexpected outcome,
letting go of the immediate oppositional reactive tendency.

Presence – having accomplished 1, 2 and 3 hold the tension of conflictual

opposites as George Mitchell did for 700 days, thus enabling the
possibility for peace to emerge in Northern Ireland.
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In The HEP Method there is the “knock knock” principle – when there is a
knock at the door, look inside as well as outside. This way we may have a
transformational experience and not a catastrophic event.

1.4 Archetypal Activist Tasks

When archetypalists speak among themselves, many others cannot understand
the language and the ideas the language refers to. Here then is an archetypal
activist task. Translation without losing essence. How to stick to the phenomena
while making common sense. Some writers and activists have done this from
within the archetypal tradition. John Ralston Saul is a Canadian writer. He is not
associated with the archetypal tradition but in Voltaire’s Bastards – the Tyranny
of Reason in the West he nevertheless archetypally critiques Western culture’s
fascistic idealization of rationality and technological efficiency in language that he
precisely intends to be commonly understandable. As the husband of Canada’s
Governor General he is a high profile cultural critic who has endured public
criticism for speaking up from such a structured place of traditional power. The
place of the Queen’s representative speaks in a voice critical of the foundation of
mainstream Western culture. It can be done. It wants to be done. And not only
in literature.
We bemoan the fact that in consumerist culture, entertainment has
replaced religion. Let’s be phenomenological and focus archetypal activism
through the new religion of consumerist entertainment. I would like to give an
account of this seemingly debased form which actually highlights archetypal
themes, by focusing on movies and music. Music and movies are two powerful
cultural streams where we can recognize archetypal, Romantic, existential,
mythological themes in the culture. In the Mystery Tradition in the West, because
the esoteric does not easily directly translate to the exoteric, there has been a
tendency toward subtle indirect influence. There are already archetypally active
elements in both music and movies: Could we become focalizers and amplifiers
of “Artists for Archetypal Activism” and conveners of performance events in an
archetypal manner?
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Much twentieth century music already enacts archetypal themes.

Sophianic troubadour musicians such as Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Laurie
Anderson, Marianne Faithful, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Jane Sibbery, John
Lennon, Jefferson Airplane, Jim Morrison, Robbie Robertson, Aimee Mann and
Bjork all personify archetypal artistic, creative, revolutionary, existential,
redemptive themes. Adolescent culture is archetypal in its identity quest,
rebellion, shame, awakening sexuality, aggression, creativity, passion and desire.
Rock ‘n’ roll concerts and raves are archetypally intoxicating Dionysian/Sophianic
boundary dissolving embodiment acts that challenge established authority. Youth
in particular would be drawn in by music
In addition, conceptual frame breaking movies in the style of romantic
irony enact the archetypal theme of deconstructing our everyday common sense
reality. In these movies there is an interpenetration of the functions of author and
character, of the definition of fantasy and reality, of the waking/dreaming
distinction. Movies such as Robert Altman’s “The Player” and “Short Cuts”, Sally
Potter’s “The Tango Lesson”, Baz Lurman’s “Moulin Rouge”, Peter Weir’s “The
Last Wave” and “Fearless”, Tom de Cilo’s “Living in Oblivion”, Jim Jarmusch’s
“Dead Man”, Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers”, Emir Kusturica’s “Arizona
Dream”, George Roy Hill’s “Slaughterhouse Five”, Christopher Nolan’s
“Memento”, David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet”, “Lost Highway” and “Mullholland Drive”,
and Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life” all convey a visceral experience of the
dream like constructed nature of our everyday sense of reality. Psychological,
existential, identity quest movies have also portrayed archetypal themes
fundamental to twentieth century Western culture. Antiheroic, Film Noir movies
that reveal the seamy underbelly of the constructed nature of socially mediated
reality are also archetypally active.
Another fertile area for the application of archetypal activism is in the field
of organizational development. Over the last ten years in this field there has
been the beginning of a fundamental change in values. Various traditions,
disciplines, ideas and practices come together in what has been called integral
culture (by Paul H. Ray and others). In general this involves the application of:
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chaos theory; dialectic polarity management; paradoxical thinking; trans

competition; holism; dynamic web models; quantum uncertainty models; non-
linearity, co-dependent arising and emergent self organization models; change
convergence and “hyperchange” models; authenticity, responsibility, connectivity
and the search for meaning; “servant leaders”. These are all elements of an
emerging step toward new forms of organization in business and government
particularly, but also culture in general. Integral culture could also be termed
archetypal culture. Naropa offers course work in these fields, calling it Authentic
Leadership, providing a one-week and a three month programme. The California
Institute of Integral Studies calls it Transformational Learning and offers an
MA/PhD programme. There are many individuals and organizations already
working in this field with books, journals and magazine articles being published.
An archetypal critique of the philosophy of science might be attempted
based in the Romantic qualitative epistemology of the Nature Philosophers and
other hermetic practitioners. Science’s powerful but limited unreflective grip on
the cultural definition of truth and how we find truth is under challenge. The
Institute of Noetic Science is particularly active in this area. Archetypal activists
might add their voice.
The Living Institute in Toronto is soon to begin publishing the ARC –
Archetypal Review of Culture – in which archetypalist would highlight and
comment upon cultural events, providing a perspective that others could draw on
in understanding the world, so that this perspective shades and modifies their
attitudes, epistemology, models and methods. The Harvard affiliated Center for
Psychology and Social Change “Cross Roads at the Centre” online “roundup of
news and opinions that shape our world” is a model for this. So also is Marilyn
Ferguson’s “Brain Mind Bulletin”, published in the ‘80’s and early ‘90’s in hard
copy.
Finally, as archetypal activists we might need to do something that to date
has been uncharacteristic – engage in marketing activity. Hopefully with an
archetypal edge, in an archetypal manner. In our consumerist entertainment
based culture, if entertainment has replaced religion, then marketing has
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replaced ministry. If we want to reach out and be effective then we may need to
consider a marketing approach to archetypal activism. The poetic metaphoric
nature of archetypal thought could easily translate into marketing aphorisms.
The marketing industry, in some ways, aspires to be archetypal (in its capacity to
tap into collective concerns) and phenomenological (in marketing methods for
conveying the message, when the medium is the message, the message is
conveyed phenomenologically). Archetypal activists are already there.

1.5 God’s Not on Our Side

As archetypal activists we must not imagine that “God’s on our side”. The same
split that exists in the sociopolitical world between the linear, reductionist,
rationalistic, idealistic, technocratic fundamentalists (let’s call them “fascists”) and
“archetypal activists” et al exists in the archetypal world. I am using the word
fascist here to characterize a particular theme in Western culture that is not
simply a German/Italian militaristic phenomenon. It is a theme in Western culture
that dates back several thousand years. I will identify it mythologically. The
human interpretation of the will of God, the Divine right of kings as the basis of
territorial and cultural imperialism are all foundational themes in the history of
western cultural fascism. The Yawhist tendency to personalistic idealization and
moralizing control is an essence of fascism. From Greek mythology, the
Apollonian drive to purity and perfection, Zeus’ predilection for authoritarian
behaviour and Chronos’ devouring of his children also contribute to Western
culture’s fascism, as does the Roman idealization of family and state and
ruthless military efficiency. To this mix Christianity has particularly added the
cosmological Logos principle of a world saviour, a supreme valuing of rationality
and technological efficiency and the willingness to persuade through absolute
moral terror. Fascism in this sense, has an archetypal foundation. We should
not expect it to be an exception from the interpenetration of worlds. Given that
fascism has been so dominant in Western culture, we must see this same
dominance in the archetypal world.
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Just as in the sociopolitical world the fascists will act to protect their turf
(because by nature they are action and turf oriented), so also in and from the
archetypal world. Mythologically the war between “good” and “evil” is a war “in
Heaven” as well as “on earth”. Let us be aware that even though, as archetypal
activists, we don’t buy into the reductionism of the war metaphor, we do find
ourselves, by our existence in this time and at this place, in a war zone. Will they
“hunt us down and burn us out” if we threaten to collapse their phallic towers?
By “they” I don’t just mean the powers that be in the sociopolitical world but also
the current prevailing powers in the archetypal world. Even though “the times
they are a changin’”, there is a reactionary trend in North American culture that
says (as the lead character in Tim Robbins’ movie “Bob Roberts” sings) “the
times they are a changin’ back”. The Promise Keepers, a fundamentalist populist
men’s movement, gathered 50,000 members at an early 21 st century rally.. Right
wing fundamentalist politics has significantly influenced the American political
process. In the most recent presidential election, which hung in the balance, the
balance tipped in favour of simplistic, militaristic, reactionary politicians. These
are everyday sociopolitical events that reflect the archetypal world. As archetypal
activists let us be aware of this.

2 The Servant Leader – Integral Culture

An extraordinary amount of evidence suggests that North American
culture is undergoing a spiritual awakening that has fundamental and widespread
implications for society, religion, psychology and business. This section
examines these changes in relation to the workplace.
Since the early 90’s, books, magazine articles and mainstream cover
stories have echoed the spiritual theme. Spiritual books have dominated the
popular market and Gregorian chants outsold Gershwin, Pavarotti and Nirvana.
NDE’s (near death experience) captured popular attention, while UFO’s (in North
America) and crop circles (in the UK) remain dramatic and conceptually
challenging news events. ASC’s (altered state of consciousness), OBE’s (out of
body experiences) and mystical connections to divinity became sought after in
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workshops and popular literature. Yoga, meditation and Asian martial arts have
become almost mainstream.
Paul H. Ray’s book The Rise of Integral Culture (1996) suggests that 24%
of the adult population in the US are “cultural creatives,” whose social values
centre on a sense of integrity and holism, in which body, mind and spirit are
united. Social theorist Theodore Rozak maintains that the current popular
interest in the marvelous is the unfolding of an authentic spiritual quest, and a
transformation of human personality of evolutionary proportions is in progress in
Western culture.
According to Winston Franklin, vice president of the Institute for Noetic
Sciences, the new integral spirituality has several defining features. It views
personality as shaped by dynamic forces of the unconscious. It aims toward an
understanding of extraordinary states of consciousness and expanded human
potential, emphasizing multiple realities and promoting the paranormal as a
reality of human functioning. It perceives a fundamental relationship between a
return to nature and the recovery of basic values, seeking to create healing
spiritual communities based on interconnectedness. It uses modern scientific
paradigms as tools to understand the larger mystery of experience.
Award winning, successful leaders at the cutting edge of organizational
management development echo these sentiments in books, periodicals and
workshops. In After the clockwork Universe, The Science and Culture of the
Emerging Integral Age (1999), Sally J. Goerner suggests that for a long time now
a very large number of people have been working, in public policy, business,
religion and the sciences, driven by a sense that something is not right and that a
new way is needed. Mini-revolutions in physics, brain research, economics and
archaeology are fueling a shift to a type of science that concentrates on how
complex interwoven webs work and in which spiritual values are appreciated.
When you put the pieces of the science together, the result is a picture of the
world that matches closely the one described by great spiritual traditions.
Goerner is past president of the Society of Chaos Theory in Psychology
and the Life Sciences, and holds advanced degrees in computer science,
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psychology and nonlinear dynamics. She sits on the scientific advisory council of
the European Academy of Evolution Research. According to Goerner the new
science of the emerging integral age sees that there is a creative force at work in
the cosmos. All forms are part of one unfolding process which creates us, directs
us ― and to which we contribute. “In us, of us, and more than us, all at the same
time.” This leads to the perception of a web world of subtle causality, where
cooperation is the central theme of evolution, based on dependent co-arising. It
is a learning universe in which integrity counts. To have integrity means to act in
ways that sustain and nourish the whole.
In workplace terms, based on this new integral science and spirituality, the
idea of synergetic webs are replacing traditional theory as the basis for doing
business. Synergetic webs are mutualist, based on reciprocal relationships.
Synergetic self-interest is pursued in conjunction with the well-being of the larger
whole. Competition takes the form of games in which all strive to put forth their
best, where putting forth one’s own genuine contribution is likely to help others as
well as oneself. The key is co-evolving mutualism.
In the world of developed economies much is changing. A major force
driving this subterranean change is the shift from “high-volume” to what Robert
Reich in The Work of Nations (1991) calls “high value” economics. In a high-
value world, human capital ― the knowledge and creative skills of individual
people ― is the key to prosperity. A high-value firm requires a very different kind
of organizational structure. Creative links tend to emerge from frequent and
informal exchanges between team members. In “The Human Moment at Work”
(Harvard Business Review Jan./Feb. 1999) corporate psychiatrist Edward
Hollowell sees virtually all of his patients in their work world as experiencing
some deficiency of human contact. The human moment has two prerequisites:
people’s physical presence and their emotional and intellectual attention. When
human moments are few and far between, toxic worry grows and people begin to
wonder if they can trust their organizations. They begin to question their own
motives, performance and self-worth. When the human moment is valued
people begin to think in new creative ways, mental activity is stimulated, bonding
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and trust are promoted. Participating fully in the human moment requires what
psychologist Daniel Goldberg calls emotional intelligence. A long term study has
shown that emotional intelligence abilities are four times more important than IQ
or entry skills in determining professional success and prestige. Goldberg
suggests that emotional intelligence reflects what Huxley called “the perennial
philosophy,” a spirituality which itself reflects the basic neurological structures
that govern human existence.
Goerner points out that theories based on materialism do not hold for
businesses based on human capital. A high-value enterprise is a dynamic web of
relationships between talented individuals whose combined skills give enterprise
its value. Henry Mintzberg, one of Canada’s most prominent management
guru’s, quoted in Canadian Forum (“Saving the Corporate Soul” by Jamie Swift,
June 1999), says that good organizations are built-up slowly with a lot of caring
and of attention to detail. Care is the Key to Mintzberg’s view of organizations.
Caring organizations have what he describes as “soul.” “There’s an enthusiasm
here, there’s an energy here. People like to work in this place. People are very
dedicated. They really believe in the place and the place believes in them.”
Danah Zohar in Rewiring the Corporate Brain (1997) relates quantum and
chaos thinking directly to current widespread organizational challenges of how to
deal creatively with rapid unpredictable change. By paying attention to emotional
and spiritual themes in the work place, she suggests, business methods can be
in tune with the non-linear, simultaneous emergence of new structures that, in
fact, thrive on the very uncertainty of the apparently imminent catastrophe that so
many people feel we are facing. Zohar is a management consultant who teaches
at Oxford University. She studied physics and philosophy at MIT.
To cope with this sense of potential catastrophe millions, perhaps billions,
are spent each year on large scale social transformation programs. Zohar
makes the point that such deep transformation is not easy. It often hurts and it is
usually terribly slow. It requires that people who experience it feel uncomfortable,
even perhaps that they may feel pain. Nations, organizations or individuals going
through this kind of transformation can experience what the Christian mystics
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called a “dark night of the soul”. Some may feel they are near to “falling off the
edge of the world,” but those who keep their nerve will enter another reality.
They will see the corporate world and its opportunities with fresh eyes, and some
will lay the foundations of tomorrow’s corporate success stories.
Zohar suggests “quantum organization” as a new model for structure,
leadership and learning within organizations that can thrive on uncertainty, deal
creatively with rapid change, and release the full potential of the human beings
who lead, work and live within them. Such organizations, like the human brain,
have the potential for self-organizing creativity just waiting to be unleashed within
them.
The characteristics of quantum organizations are defined in terms of
infrastructure and leadership. New paradigm science is holistic. Its emphasis is
on relationship and integration – the interactions of dynamics in a pattern of
unbroken wholeness. The holistic quantum organization would thus be more
sensitive to its context, both internal and external. It would be aware that no
organization is an island and would seek to build infrastructures with an ethos of
cooperation and integration.
The infrastructures and strategies of the quantum organization would
themselves have to be designed to allow for ambiguity and indeterminacy. This in
turn requires that the quantum leader find a new reliance on trust – trust in the
leader’s own character and intuition, trust in the character, intuition, and abilities
of subordinates, and trust in the dynamics of the organization. And it requires
trust in the emergent potential of “self-organization,” nature’s own most creative
response to chaos. Quantum organization and leadership require infrastructures
that allow the organization to tap into its own collective intelligence which is
larger than the sum of its parts. This must be based on trust and a context
sensitive letting go of control.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, from quantum physics, suggest that
the questions we ask in any situation determine the answers we get. This further
suggests that real success rests on a spirit of co-creativity – listening to clients
and customers, mutually feeling the way toward various possibilities, in dialogue.
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This evokes the image of what Zohar calls a “servant leader.” Such leaders lead
from within. They lead with listening, intuition and gut feeling. They lead in
service to a deeper vision that neither they nor those whom they lead can initially
articulate. Such leadership requires a high tolerance for uncertainty, for
ambiguity, and for loose structure that allows the dynamics of a situation to play
itself through.
In The 500 Year Delta – What Happens After What Comes Next (1997)
Jim Taylor (director of global marketing for Gateway 2000), Watts Wacker
(resident futurist at SRI consulting – formerly the Stanford Research Institute)
and Howard Means suggest we should start planning around the certainty of
uncertainty. Taylor and Wacker are former editors of the Yankelovich Monitor, the
premier US predicting tool. They have advised top executives of nearly every
Fortune 100 company. They say we are in the midst of change so rapid and so
massive that by the early twenty-first century it will have swept away nearly the
entire underpinnings of modern life. They speak of a convergence of changes,
each profound in its own right and collectively so powerful that they can be
thought of only as meta-change – the change beyond which there is no more. In
this “millennial” convergence what is emerging? They suggest the following key
themes: the rise of authenticity and responsibility; a rise in principles as the
driving motivational force of behaviour; an expansion of perspective as borders
disappear; the transformation of communication as the old commercial models
fall to connectivity; the growth in the economic value of information sharing; the
breakup of mass consciousness into individual realities and the emergence of
situational lifestyles; the establishment of a new empathy based on individual
powerlessness; the imperative of corporations to preserve their human energy
resources; revaluing of authenticity, connectivity and the new civility in the search
for meaning; and the shift from reason-based to chaos-based logic in the age of
possibility.
Derm Barret in The Paradox Process (1998) calls this “hyperchange”. He
says it has caught most of us off guard and has ruptures almost every
assumption we had concerning how to survive economically. It has altered the
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definition of employment, redefining what it takes to be an effective employee,

professional, or manager, and has radically changed the climates of both small
and large organizations. Barret holds a PhD from MIT. He is an international
management consultant and academic. In order to survive he says we must
begin thinking in terms of opposites and contradictions – to think paradoxically
and existentially thus activating creative breakthroughs, innovative solutions and
unforeseen opportunities. He has recast the ancient Zen directive “To hit the
target, don’t aim” for business leaders.
Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley (winners of the prestigious Financial
Times/Booz, Allen and Hamilton Global Business Award) in Transcompetition
(1998), take a similar perspective. They suggest that both competition and
collaboration have their use. Individuals and businesses usually opt for one or
the other of these extremes in creating a style of being. With appropriate timing
and contextual reading these polarities may be paradoxically and mutually
integrated, producing the dialectic third of transcendental complementary –thus
creating versatility, flexibility, resilience, richness and strength. Barry Johnson in
Polarity Management (1992) suggest that this same goal may be achieved by
identifying and managing problems as interacting polarities rather than simply
attempting to solve the problem. The capacity to be alive and alert within the
existential tension of an “unsolvable” problem provides an evolutionary challenge
that draws on deep untapped resources of creativity and human potential, both
enriching and enlivening organizational functioning. He suggests new solutions
are to be found in the human ability to create independent thinking and original,
made-at-home answers emerging from this existential tension. Johnson has
been teaching polarity management to major international private and
government clients since 1975, including the Ontario government.
According to these award-winning, successful leaders at the cutting edge
of organizational management, the integral age workplace means creating an
organizational culture that values dynamism, integrity, mutuality and authenticity
in an atmosphere of caring for the human moment. It draws on the new integral
sciences to offer a way of creatively meeting the consistency of change and
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threatened catastrophe through met-perspective and emergent self organization.

This requires a paradoxical acceptance of both competition and cooperation
enabling individuals and companies to thrive within a climate of conflicting views
and values. The existential tension of unsolvable problems then becomes a
source of creativity, aliveness, innovation and evolution.