Jeff Carreira: Hello Steve and thank you for speaking with me today. The theme of the issue is “Visions of the Future and the Evolution of Spirituality.” I wanted to speak with you because I know that you have been very involved with the discipline known as evolutionary spirituality. So, I would like to ask you to start today by speaking about what evolutionary spirituality is.

Steve McIntosh: First of all, I want to say that evolutionary spirituality is not a tradition like Buddhism or Christianity. There can be an evolutionary Buddhism or an evolutionary Christianity or an evolutionary Hinduism. When embracing an evolutionary view, there will of course be some doctrines of the pre-existing tradition that need to be altered to accommodate the new worldview.

I would say that, in the most general terms, evolutionary spirituality is an attempt to integrate and harmonize science and spirituality without reducing one or having one be incorporated into the other. Evolutionary spirituality gives us a powerful spiritual truth that is revealed by the story of evolution. This involves attempting to understand what evolution implies about our spiritual practice, our identity, our sense of responsibility to the world. It leads to an increased sense of optimism and creates a context for the cultivation of virtues like hope, faith and love.

Evolutionary Spirituality is at least partially predicated on the idea that the universe, or at least part of it, is good. In spite of all the bad things that happen, if you pull back into a deep time, big picture point of view, it's hard to deny that something valuable is unfolding. The expanded view of an evolutionary time frame allows us to talk about progress, while acknowledging the inevitable outcomes of selfish motivations and violent tendencies that inevitably negatively color much of what happens in human history.

Certainly, the idea of progress deserves to be critiqued, and critiqued continuously, because progress is always partial and can easily be hijacked in dangerous ways.

Any ways that we think of progress toward the good will be partial, which means that our attempts to make things better will always be colored by what was wrong before. In trying to make things better, we can certainly sometimes make things worse. That's why a sense of humility is crucial.

Still, the fact that we live in a universe where there are so many beautiful, true and good things, and we have the opportunity to participate in the creation of more of those beautiful, true, and good things is like a spiritual blessing. When we wake up to the fact that the universe is good, even though bad things happen (threats, tragedies, suffering), our perception of inherent goodness allows us to imagine the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible.

We don’t need to pour acid on our highest aspirations, we just need to be adults and realize that the good is still partial and that it is up to us to bring more goodness into the world. And we can take solace in the fact that, in spite of the negative aspects of the world, the history of the evolving cosmos reveals the workings of a positive creativity.

So, I would say that there is progress that occurs through the process of evolution, but of course, tying the notion of the universe's development to any spiritual conclusions about the purpose of human life must be done delicately and with a great deal of nuance and self-reflection. We need to be somewhat tentative in our conclusions and maintain a kind of epistemological humility when we attempt to interpret the scientific story of evolution in human terms.

Jeff Carreira: You just mentioned that there can be evolutionary forms of different pre-existing spiritual traditions. Sri Aurobindo, for instance, created an evolutionary form of Hinduism, and the Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin did the same for Christianity.

I believe that part of the reason that these evolutionary forms arise is because there is something thrilling and refreshing about evolutionary spirituality and it has to do with the closely associated term of conscious evolution. The idea is that while the evolutionary process begins by progressing blindly through methods of trial and error, once we understand the mechanisms of evolution, we can consciously participate in the process. That brings us back to the idea of creativity and I would love to hear you speak about that.

Steve McIntosh: Conscious evolution tells us that we are agents of our own becoming, and our becoming is tied in with the larger becoming of the universe. In the recognition of this, we can feel a calling to be liberated beyond smaller interests to participate in the process of evolution. Hearing this call gives us a sense of purpose, direction and fulfillment.

Evolutionary spirituality provides a perspective that can help us tap into the larger truths of the universe, the path of its overall becoming, and the opportunity of our personal fulfillment in terms of offering our unique gifts to the world.

Jeff Carreira: I have a sense that there is something important about the evolutionary view and that it offers something that is critically necessary, especially in this historical moment. I think that is why so many people have gotten excited about it. Can you speak a little to this?

Steve McIntosh: In 2008, after my first book came out, I went on a silent retreat by myself for a week because I felt I was being called to dedicate the rest of my life to something and I wanted to see if I could get some insight as to what it was. What hit me during that week was that our unfolding discovery of what's true about the universe has revealed an important new truth, namely that consciousness and culture co-evolve together.

Human culture and human consciousness are parts of a systematic unfolding that work together to improve the human condition. Of course, as we make improvements to the human condition in some ways, we create new challenges and problems in others. Still, we can recognize that a big part of the meaning of our lives is to work toward greater goodness in a world of trouble and suffering. Our new understanding of the process of evolution supercharges this sense of purpose by revealing its universal scope.

The study of evolution shows us how something more keeps coming from something less, and also why sometimes things go wrong—why there are regressions and stagnations. Being able to see how human history has unfolded can show us so much about what is possible for the future.
I like to compare the more recent emergence of evolutionary spirituality with the emergence of the new worldview of modernism that arose with the Age of Enlightenment. When we do, we see that the modernist worldview brought with it new powers and capacities for humankind, even though modernity’s new truth itself was partial.

Descartes' vision of an objective world, and the subsequent reframing of the universe in objective terms, gave us powerful new ways of unpacking nature's secrets. These were essentially new superpowers that were brought about by the emergence of a new worldview. If we compare that to the current times, we see that as the new evolutionary worldview emerges, it will bring in its own set of superpowers.

The philosophical powers of modernity gave rise to democracy, liberal values, science, technology and modern medicine. Despite the many problems that arose with these innovations, we can see that they have improved the human condition immensely. I think the evolutionary worldview holds a similar promise of new superpowers for the future.

Just as the worldview of modernity has given us new powers over the objective world of things, the emerging evolutionary worldview provides new access to the intersubjective world of human relationships and culture. And this new ability to work with cultural evolution promises to give us similar new powers that can help heal the wounds of history. In the same way that scientific medicine has improved the world, we are now on the cusp of a new kind of social medicine that can increase both our liberty and our equality like never before.

I think the promise that an evolutionary worldview holds for the improvement of the human condition is immense. It's extremely exciting to think of this new way of thinking gaining traction and becoming an accepted understanding that illuminates the minds of more and more people. I believe we will begin to see the flowering of a major new worldview.

Jeff Carreira: That’s beautiful and it’s a perfect note to end on.