The Infinite Presence

Excerpt from The Infinite Presence Kant said that two things were sublime: the starry heavens above, and the moral law within. Upon reflection, the stars suggest to the natural man but a crude, vague, and far from infinite idea of infinity, and many experts have explained the moral law as a utilitarian and evolutionary product. The philosophers reverence serves, nevertheless, to divide the infinities into two classes like all other phenomena, those without and those within, objective and subjective, or macrocosmic and microcosmic. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Presence of the Infinite sheds new light on the important subject of spiritual experience. Using the emerging insights of evolutionary spirituality, integral philosopher Steve McIntosh enlarges readers’ capacity to have spiritual experience more abundantly and use it more effectively to improve their lives and the world around them. The Presence of the Infinite starts by providing a timely cultural analysis and critique of the various forms of spirituality that are vying for influence in contemporary American society. Building on this context, McIntosh shows how evolutionary spirituality overcomes the limitations of religious, secular, and New Age spirituality by better harmonizing science and spirit. Evolutionary spirituality’s transcendent potential is found in its deepening realization of the essentially spiritual qualities of beauty, truth, and goodness. McIntosh then uses evolutionary spirituality’s enlarged understanding of what spiritual experience is and how it works to consider the question of ultimate reality. This leads to an examination of conflicting ideas that regard spirit as either formless and nondual, or as loving and creative. By working to harmonize and integrate these alternative conceptions of ultimate reality, McIntosh shows how evolutionary spirituality can achieve a synthesis of nondual and theistic teachings of truth that can produce a spiritual renaissance in America and beyond. The Presence of the Infinite is destined to become a definitive text in the exciting new field of evolutionary spirituality.

An excerpt from CHAPTER I THE INFINITE PRESENCE. Kant said that two things were sublime: the starry heavens above, and the moral law within. Upon reflection, the stars suggest to "the natural man" but a crude, vague, and far from infinite idea of infinity, and many experts have "explained" the moral law as a utilitarian and evolutionary product. The philosopher's reverence serves, nevertheless, to divide the infinities into two classes, like all other phenomena, those without and those within, objective and subjective, or macrocosmic and microcosmic. It will be found that a third class must be added which will comprise a number that belong to neither world exclusively, but are the joint product of both. In a rigid Berkeleian or Hegelian analysis all would be subjective; in a looser one all equally more or less composite; and especially if one accepts language at its par value, and common sense at its own rating. The eye of the mind that does not infer sees the starry firmament simply as light points in a dark blue setting. Distant these points are indeed, but any very great distance is a teaching of hearsay, or inference, and only the astronomer, or one he has taught, has more than a vague and extremely finite conception of their immeasurable distance. The shepherds thought the guiding-star of Bethlehem moved and stood over the manger in which lay the wonderful child. They had no hint of the amazing distance, even of the nearest star, and possibly even Kant's thought of it was vague as compared with that we now hold. How many Americans and Europeans to-day suppose that a meteor is truly a "falling star"? That a star could not move, or point out a locality upon the earth, or the earth itself, is not to be understood by the shepherd mind. If a newspaper reader has seen a long string of figures expressing a guess at the distances of stars, they of course express to him no idea more definite than if the numbers were one tenth or ten times as many. It becomes at once the something non-finite, as do all such things not cognizable by his assumed finiteness. The infinite is thus to most a mere negative, whatever its nature, an impatient naming of the unexplored and unnamable. If one attempts to bring to the ordinary mind a somewhat more adequate thought or picture of the infinite, trying to replace its negative by a positive idea, he is met by a smile of incredulity or of shrinking wonder, confessing renunciation and the inability to follow. Should one bravely persist and endeavor to show that the so-called "light" of the stars exists only, and is created, in a tiny, wholly dark space six inches or more behind his own eye, there is a risk of a not flattering answer. Add that not only light, but color also, sound, hardness, heat, cold, odors, etc., -all the "things" our senses tell us of, are sensations, mind creations, unknown products of unknown things by unknown methods and mechanisms. That would be unkind to him, and worse than useless.

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The Presence of the Infinite reveals more clearly than ever before what spiritual experience is and how it works. Integral philosopher Steve McIntosh expands our capacity to have such an experience often and use it effectively to improve our lives and the world around us. Within this expanded understanding, conflicting ideas that regard spirit as either formless and impersonal or as loving and creative are harmonized. McIntosh, the inventor of the Zen Alarm Clock, transcends pluralistic relativism and soft-headed New Age thinking. His concentration on America's need for more effective forms of spiritual leadership keeps the discussion practical and culturally relevant while also being profound and inspirational. Destined to become a definitive text in the exciting new field of evolutionary spirituality, his book presents a vision that can help us move forward in the twenty-first century.

In this landmark volume, Blanchot sustains a dialogue with a number of thinkers whose contributions have marked turning points in the history of Western thought and have influenced virtually all the themes that inflect the contemporary literary and philosophical debate today. "Blanchot waits for us still to come, to be read and reread. . . I would say that never as much as today have I pictured him so far ahead of us." Jacques Derrida