The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

by Hanzi Freinacht

prolonged and stable periods of high equilibriums of subjective states are possible and achievable.

Just imagine how differently society would function if many more of us were in higher states a larger portion of the time. Not only does the development of the subjective state seem to be a moral imperative (the right thing to pursue for the sake of people’s well-being); it would also, we can assume, create a considerably less dysfunctional society in a far-reaching variety of ways.

Many of them were meditators with years of meditation experience, but not all of them. Ages ranged from 23 to 69, average age was 51. The average age at which they had begun to experience consistently high states was about 40. Fifteen, less than half, reported having used hallucinogenic drugs at some point. Half of them had a postgraduate education. Other than that, they seemed to be just about anyone.

Sensitive people tend to be, I would argue, both more vulnerable to the adversities of life and more in tune with the profound beauty of existence.

there is a kind of dialectic between the lower and the higher states: Lower states can be instrumental to the acquisition of higher ones.

It’s just that the occurrence of higher states should be taken seriously and that they can have great intensity and significance in people’s lives. It has been described in many sources that such spiritual states very often have lasting impact on our overall psychological development.

When people communicate across too vast distances of subjective state, the ones who talk of higher states necessarily appear frivolous, naive, confusing, insulting—or even deeply dishonest:

In spiritual communities, social pressure arises to present oneself as being in as high states as possible (both by personal prestige and because people want to hear that you are doing well in order to validate the spiritual enterprise as a whole).

you overlook all of the other developmental dimensions.

even if your guru really does frequent high subjective states; he or she can still be low MHC stage,

Just listen to a person like Eckhart Tolle, the author of the book The Power of Now, who has been featured on Oprah Winfrey and gained great traction. He obviously has high states. But his answers on any social or societal issues, and the theories propounded in his books, are of average complexity (MHC stage 11 Formal, more precisely).

A possible antidote to this social-psychological malady might be to democratize spirituality; to make it more participatory, transparent and based on measurable results.

Yes, the subjective state of organisms is the most important thing in the world, and yes, it should therefore be made a central goal of society. And yes, it has great significance for the overall development of people and societies. But no, having higher state does not give you all the answers. And no, we should not build a society that creates hierarchies based upon vague and unverifiable phenomena such as subjective state. And YES, more research is needed.

Depth is the number of states that have become inseparable parts of us; integrated into our memories and personalities.

Hence, another way of describing the matter is that depth is a person’s innermost recognition of the greatness and/or seriousness of reality.

A person may well have experienced very profound subjective states but lack any means of integrating them with the rest of her life and everyday understanding.

But greater depth doesn’t really entail anything other than a psychological property of a person’s relation to the universe and existence: It is her remembered, embodied knowledge of agony and ecstasy.

What is of ultimate significance? People are likely to understand, interpret and answer the question very differently.

a “low-depth” response might be one that entirely misses the philosophical implication of such a question. People might just mention something they are working on at the moment and that he or she thinks is important.

A more medium-depth adult might answer: “To live a life that serves love in all forms is what is of ultimate significance.”

A great-depth response involves yet more universal values which do not necessarily correspond to aspects of everyday life: to manifest divinity in the world, to find radical acceptance, to serve the becoming of the most profound possible unity and multiplicity, to surrender fully and without compromise to God or existence, to “be” wordless emptiness and recognize the pristine meaninglessness of the ultimate truth.

Depth is something that develops and accumulates over time. States come and go; depth very rarely decreases (only if you become senile or the like)—once you have reached a level of depth, it tends to stay.

Even if Cinderella is out-stated (as discussed in the last chapter) by Lonny, she may well out-depth Lonny, given that Cinderella’s “negative” experiences have been successfully integrated into her overall personality.

She can see more of reality, and when she relates to the world, she understands the fundamental seriousness of reality much more clearly. She has, in a sense, become a more sensing soul, gazing deeper into reality.

depth is developed by the successful integration of high state experiences, so that these are no longer just “festive occasions”, but become part ...

The people we like to imagine as “spiritual masters” are the ones that have both high average state and great depth.

And there is also a host of potential pathologies (sicknesses) that come with the territory of greater depth and higher states (spiritual arrogance, tendencies for holistic visions that lean towards totalitarianism, and other things; these things need not concern us here).

So, developing depth means to experience new states and to integrate them into one’s psychological constitution so that they “permanently” change one’s relatedness to the world and to existence as a whole.

Depth is not knowledge of any particular fact, it is not “code”, or theory or any particular belief. It’s just one’s wordless relationship to existence itself.

experiences that are fundamentally alien to the people who have medical and sometimes even legal authority over them. The patients can know worlds of suffering, or have spiritual experiences, that are poorly or wrongly interpreted by the therapists and psychiatrists.

Ideally, therapists and psychiatrists should out-depth their patients, but unfortunately that is quite difficult to achieve.

Yet, strangely, all of these forms of experience—beauty, tragedy, mystery—converge in that they constitute forms of wordless relatedness to reality: Each is an aspect of existential depth.

For some strange reason, this reality, for all its meaningless grinding and torture, is sublimely beautiful.

the beauty of existence is intimately known and recognized to varying degrees by different people. Is it not safe to assume that the greatest painters and composers notice aspects of the beauty of the world that most of us are blind to?

Some, more than others, will be more moved by the subtleties of the world. This is a kind of lasting relationship to reality: It is depth in its subjective, 1st person aspect.

Recognizing the beauty of reality is not only a “matter of opinion”—it is a faculty, a capability. Seeing beauty somehow strangely seems to be the correct way of seeing. It means to gaze deeper into reality.

There is a form of sublimity of reality that is recognized not by an aesthetic sense, but by a will to know, a search for truth for the sake of truth, by recognizing the fundamental mystery of reality.

The ability to not just look out the window and see a mundane street with cars and pedestrians, but to see complexity, self-organizing principles, startlingly bizarre social orders, the workings of political power in the life of every child and old woman.

knowingness”) as an existential and spiritual endeavor. It is not even necessary to be smart, to be correct about stuff or think complex thoughts: We’re just talking about a general sense of mystery and awe that grips your heart.

The spiritual meaning of science, of knowingness, is subdued to grosser human needs, such as acknowledgment, status, accomplishment, material prosperity and survival.

That being said, the recognition of mystery may be the most accepted and encouraged form of depth development in modern society.

The third form of depth development is the recognition of tragedy. It is the sense and realization that we live in a tragic universe.

To be spiritually mature means both accepting the unavoidability of suffering and being resolved to prevent and mitigate it.

Even if our childhoods are really hard, we don’t yet as children have the capacity to see the universality of suffering and feel that soft, aching heart that grows from the development of inner depth.

There is a fundamental and logically necessary brokenness of reality itself.

to work for the happiness of all is not a denial of tragedy.

Depth is developed by the recognition of tragedy, by the successful acceptance of such tragedy, and by the resolve to work, as Sisyphus eternally lugging rocks, against it. Resolve in the face of a fundamental hopelessness and utter meaninglessness.

Tragedy is necessary for us to mature beyond our current, limited form of “humanity” and begin to take responsibility for all sentient beings in all times.

Only a sense of tragedy can drive us to work for the wretched of the earth: loving until it hurts; as medieval nuns of contemplative Christianity, licking the wounds of lepers.

Light depth is the acquaintance with higher states and dark depth is the acquaintance with lower states.