INTEGRAL WORLD MAILING LIST http://www.integralworld.net Newsletter Nr. 788 Amsterdam, July 28rd, 2019 COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS, MAURICE BUCKE, AND WALT WHITMAN - An Adventure in Narcissism - GARY STOGSDILL Canadian psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke is remembered for authoring the immodestly titled book Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind, published at the end of his life in 1901. Maurice Bucke, as he preferred to be called, became interested in altered states of consciousness at the age of 35 after spending an evening reading the poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and Whitman that resulted in the following spiritual or peak experience: “a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness, accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe”. Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/stogsdill10.html SOCIAL AND INTRASOCIAL TOOLS FOR ESTABLISHING A GLOBAL COMMONS - JOSEPH DILLARD John Heron, a facilitator and trainer in co-operative enquiry and an early contributor to Integral World, presents in "Notes on Spiritual Leadership and Relational Spirituality", an interesting discussion of the problematic nature of spiritual relationships and what can be done to improve them. This essay builds on Heron's foundation by discussing the importance of generating an interior, intrasocial democracy in order to strengthen, on a personal level, fundamental characteristics of respect, reciprocity, trustworthiness, and empathy, in order to support the development of a collective commons. Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/dillard27.html