The Presence of the Infinite

Table of Contents

Available excerpts linked in blue

  • Introduction
    • How I Came to Write This Book
    • The Rise of Evolutionary Spirituality
    • Integral Philosophy and the Evolution of Worldviews
    • Where I Stand and What I Assume on the Part of the Reader
    • Overview of the Chapters
  1. Spirituality in America: In Search of Leadership
    • What Is Spiritual Leadership?
    • Major Types of Spirituality: What’s on Offer in the Spiritual Marketplace
    • Shortcomings of Each Type of Spirituality: Why They Cannot Lead
    • Potential Benefits of Spiritual Leadership: A More Unified Culture
  2. The Spiritual Teachings of Evolution
    • Lessons from the Structure of Evolutionary Emergence
    • The Evolutionary Impulse
    • Beauty, Truth, and Goodness—An Introduction
    • Purpose and Progress
    • Panentheism—From Finite to Infinite
    • The Practice of Evolutionary Spirituality
    • Evolutionary Spirituality’s Current State of Emergence
  3. Spiritual Experience from an Evolutionary Perspective
    • Experience and Its Limitations Contact with Transcendence Mystical Spiritual Experience
    • Meditation and Prayer
    • Psychedelic Spiritual Experience
    • Spiritual Experience and the Brain
    • Spiritual Experience and Natural Theology
  4. The Spiritual Experience of Perfecting the Universe
    • The Interaction of Infinite Being and Finite Becoming
    • The Practice of Perfecting the Universe Revisited
    • What Are Beauty, Truth, and Goodness?
    • The Essential Role of Consciousness in Perfecting the Universe
    • Our Emerging Understanding of the “Physics” of Spirit
  5. Contemporary Spiritual Currents: Progressive and Nondual
  6. A Constructive Critique of Nondual Spiritual Teachings
    • Dialectical Steps of Progress
    • Transcending Progressive Spirituality: Inherent Challenges
    • The Evolutionary Necessity of a Spiritually Real Evolving Soul The Evolutionary Necessity of Free Will
    • The Evolutionary Necessity of a Spiritually Real Finite Universe
    • The Evolutionary Necessity of Ultimate Reality’s Self-Awareness
  7. Toward the Further Evolution of Spirituality
    • In Search of an Evolutionary Synthesis of
Nondual and Theistic Truth 194 Previous Moves Toward Synthesis
    • Practicing Each Pole with Reference to the Other
    • Gardening for Synthetic Emergence
    • Glimmers of Integration
    • Speculating on a Future Synthesis
  8. Toward a Method for Evolving Consciousness
    • The Emergence of a New Stage of Culture—From Antithesis to Synthesis
    • Almost Every Human Problem Is a Problem of Consciousness Underlying Premises for an Evolutionary Method
    • Examples of Emergence in Consciousness and Culture
    • Social Psychology and the Evolution of Consciousness
    • Spiritual Leadership Revisited
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Steve McIntosh Political Philosopher