5.+Spiritual+Consciousness+Factors

As technological innovation often serves as the symbol of modernity’s progress, another question that some educators ask is how does technology impact the psycho-spiritual development of students; to what extent might the digital age inform the evolution of their consciousness? Prior to delving into this inquiry we need to first explore the concept of psycho-spiritual development. Theorist Ken Wilber’s meta-system maps what he interprets as the directionality of human consciousness. For Wilber, the evolution of consciousness, or overall psycho-spiritual development, involves a steady decline in narcissism (or an increase in empathy and compassion). In his color coded system (Figure 2, link), the levels of consciousness of Infrared through Red underlay “egocentric” worldviews (the psycho-spiritual capacity to be concerned with “Me”); Amber structures “ethnocentric” worldviews (the capacity to empathize and resonate with a specific “Us”); Green through Turquoise informs “worldcentric” conceptual lenses (the capacity to empathize and resonate with “All of Us”) and Indigo through Clear Light is “kosmocentric” (the capacity to empathize and resonate with “All that Is”). According to Wilber, these levels of consciousness that inform our cultural worldviews also include and transcend other “lines” of human development; while different areas of development (e.g., cognition, values, etc.,) largely grow independently of each other, the directionality of each move towards greater complexity. For example, while Piaget’s research on children’s development primarily tracked their cognition and Graves’ research tracked the development of values in college aged adults, both systems revealed the same phenomena of an increased capacity to either think with greater sophistication (Piaget) or care for more complex human systems (Graves). This psycho-spiritual development and directionality is what Wilber calls the “secret impulse of evolution,” and is a useful concept for understanding the worldviews that enact our institutions and educate our youth (Wilber, 1996, p.28). The dominant worldview existing within most modern institutions, including our schools, is the materialist paradigm influenced by what Wilber calls the “Orange” or rational/scientific level of consciousness (Tarnas, 2006, pp. 16-36). While this materialist cosmology has contributed to the development of a more autonomous sense of self and technological innovation, it has also fostered a growing sense of alienation and existential angst, or what cultural historian Richard Tarnas calls “the pervasive projection of soullessness onto the cosmos by the modern self’s own will to power” (Tarnas, 41). This modern worldview that largely equates technological innovation with progress also operates from the same level of consciousness that has largely dismissed spirituality as myth or pre-rational, and in doing so, disenchanted institutions of learning/education. And while worldviews aligned with living systems, worldcentric compassion and spiritual curiosity are becoming more prevalent in industrialized nations (worldviews informed by Wilber’s “Green” through “Turquoise” levels of consciousness), the ritualized student practices informed or mediated by current technologies (e.g., participation in social networks such as Facebook) still leaves one wondering to what extent they serve youth’s overall psycho-spiritual development. Historically, youth of traditional cultures have participated in what Stan Grof calls “technologies of the sacred”: rituals and rites of passage that involve non-ordinary or spiritual states of awareness (Grof, 2000, p. 4). These spiritual or transpersonal states can be understood as “experiences in which the sense of identity or self extends beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche, and cosmos,” and the technologies that help evoke these non-ordinary states include contemplative practice, meditation, chanting, trance dancing, drumming and/or the ingestion of psychoactive substances (Walsh and Vaughn, 1993, p. 3). In addition to meaning making and helping to solidify the existing social order, engaging in technologies of the sacred have also helped youth develop the capacity for greater empathy and compassion. In short, ongoing practice with these technologies can help to evolve one’s consciousness (Grof, pp. 317-319). In traditional cultures, these spiritual rituals are integral to a youth’s learning, sanctioned by recognized elders and performed in a relational field of support – a sacred space held and led by those already initiated, spiritually competent practitioners.
 * Psycho-spiritual Development and Technology **
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To what extent can contemporary technologies be considered as the “technologies of the sacred” that Grof describes? For some developmentalists like Dan Goleman, the digital world in which modern youth inhabit limits their ability to develop compassion and empathy - two indicators of evolving consciousness or spiritual development. Goleman, known for his popular work in emotional and social intelligences, believes that youth engagement with technology “deadens them to those who are actually nearby” resulting in a “social autism [that] adds to the ongoing list of unintended human consequences of the continuing invasion into our daily lives” (Goleman, 2003, p. 8). As with other developmentalists such as Dan Siegel and Jon Kabat-Zinn, Goleman has researched the effects in which both intentional social interactions and spiritual practice (mindfulness/meditation) have on the evolution of consciousness. Their research has indicated that face-to-face engagement in mindfulness practice unmediated by contemporary technologies has helped students’ psycho-spiritual development, not unlike the sacred ritual spaces cultivated by traditional cultures (http://www.mbaproject.org/index.php?s=Research).

While there is a case to be made for psycho-spiritual development catalyzed by person-to-person engagement, the use of contemporary technology has been used as a means to also facilitate spiritual development. For example, I-Thou.org is the unofficial website for the students of the Esalen Institute, an alternative humanistic education center. I-Thou.org serves as a social networking site for the students of the institute, and has organized worldwide “attunements” (a form of meditative practice similar to mindfulness) in which students can simultaneously practice if they are connected with the site. Additionally, there are numerous internet driven telecourses where spiritual teachers lead students through experiential practice, like meditation or yoga, practices that have proven to help one develop psycho-spiritually (Grof). Finally, some educational institutions offer their students audio technology specially designed to “exercise” the theta and delta brain waves that are involved in meditative and trance states (Harris, 2010, pp. 4-5).

To summarize: while the development of students’ psycho-spirituality is enhanced with the face-to-face “technologies of the sacred” that have served traditional cultures for generations, similar practices can be offered to students either directly through technological interface (brain wave machines) or by teachings mediated through contemporary communication technologies. As with other sections of this paper, it appears that hybrid learning environments or multimodal offerings can be most useful during this “technophilia” era.