Moral Hierarchy and Singularity

Another item from the new issue of What Is Enlightenment?

In an article called "Moral Hierarchy: The Key to Evolving Consciousness," Jason Hill argues in favor a new and improved understanding of moral hierarchy. For him, moral hierarchy seems to be more of a process and relationship than a static object.

He distinguishes between the hierarchee, the one who is seeking a wise teacher to whom one can voluntarily surrender the self for the evacuation of its "twisted inner logics, justifications, rationalizations, and obsessions," and the hierarcher. In this approach, surrender to the guru is not simply "passive submission," but rather becomes "a form of radical intersubjectivity."

The hierarcher is the guru, the wise one, the teacher who possesses, through direct experience of nondual consciousness, an inner moral compass superior to other mortals. "His moral center of gravity is a seat of compassion and humble gratitude for the blessings of being a high-order being." Further, "he is driven by a burning desire to evoke the discovery of the God that exists in the Great Beyond in us."

At this point, a more extensive quote is necessary in order to introduce Hill's variation on the notion of "singularity."

Noble spiritual cartographers that they are, moral hierarchers relieve us of the need to play hide-and-seek with ourselves. At various times in meditative reflection, I find myself asking: "Why are you playing hide-and-seek with yourself?" "Why do those you know intimately play such games?" The answer, I believe, is that we play this game because the hiding grants us solace from the burden of that which we are intermittently driven to seek: our raw, naked singularity. Our singularity terrifies us. It is not the same as individuality, which we often conflate with the type of music we like, the values and principles we self-righteously cling to, or our deepest sense of self-image. Singularity is the embodiment of our entire being--down to the smallest cellular and microscopic aspect of our corporeal bodies--as well as the nonsubstantive immaterial spirit that is both contained in and outside our bodies.

Our singularity terrifies us because we know that there is no other like it. To live a life faithful to its architectural spirit, to live in accordance with the demands of its identity (which is singularly our own but has a share in a greater singularity--The One--from which our indubitable version derives its imprint) is to live a life alone in the midst of others.

The moral hierarcher as spiritual teacher is like the brave bodhisattva reconciling us to this blessed aloneness by pointing a path toward our own singularity.

I like the idea of singularity as Hill presents it here. The only problem for any widespread use and adoption of this term is that the futurist people have already appropriated the term in reference to their notion of a coming time "when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity." Renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil has just published The Coming Singularity. The AI people think this leap will involve human-machine hybrids.

What fun!?

So, back to Hill's version of singularity. His conception gives us a way to conceptualize Wilber's Atman Project, the evolutionary principal in Spiral Dynamics, and just about any other model that proposes the evolution of human consciousness into the nondual realm.

One last quote:

The moral hierarcher as spiritual teacher, however, is ultimately dealing with the immaterial as he engages us in the path toward evolutionary consciousness. Ultimately, to compromise would be to act as if the God in the Great Beyond in all of us exists as a different God in the corporeal house of each. This is the difference between New Age spirituality and an authentic guide toward evolutionary consciousness. Unassailable dignity is the location of one's singularity. In that inviolate space resides the God in the Great Beyond.

This is the paradox. This is the mystery to be contemplated. And this is the eternal gift of the moral hierarcher as spiritual teacher: The discovery and practice of singularity requires an unbreachable uniformity and implacable non-compromise.

Hill is positing a "one, true God" in this quote, but it is stripped of the religious baggage such claims usually carry. He is speaking of God as nondual consciousness, ungendered, fully manifest in matter as well as ineffable. This is the transcendent divinity--pure Spirit--so many of the world's great mystics have described.

I think this is a useful concept for our discussions. I hope to explore this idea further in future posts. Any thoughts any of you have would be appreciated.