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M. Scott Peck’s Four Stages of Spiritual Development

Posted by Joemar | Filed under Philosophy

I just came to read about M. Scott Peck when I was reading articles about demonic possessions and  exorcisms. He is an American psychiatrist and best-selling author who wrote about his insights into various subjects including characterization and diagnosis of evil, nature of love, existence of Satan, and about spiritual development. Many of his ideas do make sense but others are vehemently criticized as unscientific.

What I found to be a helpful insight from M. Scott Peck is his four stages of spiritual development. I am quoting here a summarized description of the four stages from the Wikipedia article on M. Scott Peck:

Stage I is chaotic, disordered, and reckless. Very young children are in Stage I. They tend to defy and disobey, and are unwilling to accept a will greater than their own. Many criminals are people who have never grown out of Stage I.

Stage II is the stage at which a person has blind faith. Once children learn to obey their parents, they reach Stage II. Many so-called religious people are essentially Stage II people, in the sense that they have blind faith in God, and do not question His existence. With blind faith comes humility and a willingness to obey and serve. The majority of good law-abiding citizens never move out of Stage II.

Stage III is the stage of scientific skepticism and inquisitivity. A Stage III person does not accept things on faith but only accepts them if convinced logically. Many people working in scientific and technological research are in Stage III.

Stage IV is the stage where an individual starts enjoying the mystery and beauty of nature. While retaining skepticism, he starts perceiving grand patterns in nature. His religiousness and spirituality differ significantly from that of a Stage II person, in the sense that he does not accept things through blind faith but does so because of genuine belief. Stage IV people are labeled as Mystics.

I find this interesting because I am aware about my spiritual evolution from hard liner fundamentalist Christianity (Stage II) to rational religion characterized by skepticism on ancient revealed religions (Stage III). I used to think that mystics are much like fundamentalists who emphasize revelation and dogma, so belonging to Stage II. Much to my surprise, M. Scott Peck considered mysticism as the highest stage of spiritual development. This illustrates my lack of knowledge about what mysticism really is.

In the past few months I have been contemplating about the limits of human knowledge and how our mental abilities are incapable of directly grasping the existence and presence of the divine. I am sort of inclined to believe that rational religion is powerless in bringing us into a union with the ultimate reality, with the divine..with God. This development from a purely rational to a mystical approach to spirituality is quite apparent from my previous post entitled “Reflections on truth, knowledge, the philosophy of science, God and religion” on my answer to the last question that I myself posed:

If you are not absolutely certain about the existence of God, then what does it mean to be religious?

For me, to be religious does not necessarily involve absolute certainty that a Divine Being exists. It is more of the feeling that there must be a Super Intellectual power that sustain the beauty and complexity of the universe. To be religious is to be amazed at the magnificence of nature and to come to a humble realization that there is a greater intelligence and power behind all these. As with Albert Einstein, I say “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe….”

I used to read about mysticism in its various forms (e.g. Western and Eastern mysticism) before but it only starts to make sense now. Perhaps there really is no shortcut from Stage II to Stage IV. I needed to go through Stage III for me to realize that mystery pervades all of human experience and that the more we think deeper, the more we realize that we really don’t know anything at all.

Tags: mysticism, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Comments (View Comments) | June 15, 2009

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