Being Human in an Artificial World

The vision of Raimon Panikkar is to examine an understanding of the fulness of the human experience, understood ultimately in the iconic image of Jesus, the Christ. This book aims to explore an understanding of his work in context, context of the history of humanity, the emerging integral era of perception, the context of the contemporary secular society, which he speaks of as an artificial life, and the context of creation and the creator. As creature he sees the secret of life in the inter-relational nature of the three, creature, creation and creator. The unique nature of this mysterious three-way unity leads him to coin a term to speak of its nature as Cosmotheandric. His extensive academic background, of philosophy, theology and science, and the broad life of spirituality lived in the context of the interreligious world of both East and West equips well his mind to probe life’s nature. Of his many students, Ewert Cousins’ asks the pertinent question of how to live Panikkar’s vision? It is the author’s contribution to respond to Cousins’ question, while drawing upon Panikkar’s cosmothendric concept, by drawing upon contemporary knowledge through the model of the scriptural wisdom to, ‘love God and one’s neighbour as one’s self. This he refers to as Relational Spirituality The integral era of history is appearing on the horizon of the global psyche to birth a new era of human mindfulness like never before. Carl Jaspers has highlighted two major times of transition shaping humankind through the passing millennia that have moved humanity from a simple human life to the highly complex time of today. Jaspers spoke of the transition in human consciousness through the millennium prior to the life of Jesus Christ, as the First Axial Period of History.

Martin Heidegger, Teilherd de Chardin, Jean Gebser, Ken Wilber, Ewert Cousins, Raimon Panikkar, are some of the thought leaders of our time who have made major contributions to this understanding of the emerging Integral awareness. For many the disturbing changes encountered on the surface of society ring loudly of crisis. Secularisation is the dominant life-style primarily shaped by the cyber revolution and its Artificial Intelligence. Most concerning is the range of questions humans face about their personal value and loss of substantial meaning. Dr Cheong draws upon the great minds listed above, in particular the work of Raimon Panikkar, to map a pathway for growing more fully into an Integral way of life, which he refers to as Relational Spirituality.

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