Spirituality and Human Development

I have been reflecting strongly recently on the utter improbability of the existence of each life here on Earth or indeed anywhere else in the Universe! Even when we concede in the present context of our evolution the inevitably of new human life being born - seemingly at an ever increasing rate - this in no way lessens the enormous improbability of any one of us having actually come into existence. For example without my parents having met I would not be in existence. And then when one looks at the chance sequence of events leading to their eventual meeting I am keenly aware that if any preceding event had unfolded in a different manner (where they did not meet) that I could not exist. Of course in different circumstances both could well have met other partners and had families. However these would represent other human beings (and not me). And then in terms of conception if any other sperm had been involved fertilising the egg in my mother's womb, again a new baby infant wo

With respect to spiritual experience, I continually have emphasised the complementary nature as between transcendence and immanence. Transcendence implies spiritual understanding as beyond all (phenomenal) form. Thus the truly infinite field which properly represents spiritual reality is necessarily limited in a finite manner through identification with phenomenal notions. Immanence by contrast implies spiritual understanding as a priori to our understanding of phenomenal form. So from this perspective spiritual notions of immanence are already inherent in finite understanding. So strictly all such understanding implies the relationship of finite and infinite notions. Thus conventional science unfortunately, for example, in its approach to evolution gravely reduces the true experiential nature of understanding in merely finite phenomenal terms. Worse still it then so often attempts to ridicule the inclusion of authentic spiritual notions through using such reduced understand