We are still in the intellectual forcefield of the European Enlightenment, but as the years since the Eighteenth Century go by it has become apparent that a change is approaching – a change summarised as the post-materialist paradigm. Many intellectuals are now open to something more like the Buddhist notion of enlightenment. Lance’s lecture discusses the balance that is being precariously struck between these different mindsets.
These two modes of thinking are now showing signs of influencing each other mutually. Post-materialist thought is, and always has been, very open to Enlightenment methods and ideas, but now ‘ordinary’ Enlightenment-materialist thought is having to come to terms with anomalies and with new evidence pointed out by its own gurus – ideas that put its structures into question. One can think of quantum mechanics for example and the new developments in consciousness studies.
Given this situation where we are between two forms of enlightenment, how should we think now?