Stages of spiritual growth: skeptics top believers

I was prepared to scoff at M. Scott Peck’s levels of spiritual development . But when I scanned the four stages and saw that I’m definitely a “three” and probably a “four,” I became an instant believer.

Somehow I’ve managed to never read any of Peck’s many books, he of “The Road Less Traveled” fame. He converted to Christianity after dalliances with Christian and Islamic mysticism, but I don’t hold that against him. Well, maybe a little.

I did enjoy reading an abridged version of Peck’s analysis of the stages of spiritual growth after Bob, a Church of the Churchless visitor, clued me in to it. Wikipedia summarizes the stages:

--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.

Peck was a psychiatrist. These stages have a ring of psychological validity to them. Most religious people are in II: formal, institutional, fundamental. They feel superior to the lost souls in I, but are threatened by the skeptical atheists, agnostics, and scientifically inclined III’ers.

A true II believer considers it backsliding if you go from being a moralistic churchgoer to a hell-raising “I make my own rules” I’er. Yet the same person would look upon a move from skepticism to faith as spiritual progress, even though Peck says this is a regression from III to II.

Like all typologies, these stages are simplistic. Still, Peck’s analysis is one more reason, among many, for the churchless to stand tall. In an egoless fashion, of course, since one of the hallmarks of IV is an embrace of collective consciousness rather than a separate self.

I found this passage interesting in the light of Peck’s own life:

Similarly, we see people bouncing back and forth between Stage III and Stage IV. A neighbor of mine was one such person. By day Michael expressed his highly analytic mind with brilliant accuracy and precision, and he was just about the dullest human being I have ever had to listen to.

Occasionally in the evening, however, after he had drunk a bit of whisky or smoked a little marijuana, Michael would begin to talk of life and death and meaning and glory and become "spirit filled," and I would sit listening at his feet enthralled. But the next day he would exclaim apologetically, "God, I don't know what got into me last night; I was saying the stupidest things. I've got to stop smoking grass and drinking."

I do not mean to bless the use of drugs for such purposes but simply to state the reality that in his case they loosened him up enough to flow in the direction he was being called, from which in the cold light of day he retreated back in terror to the "rational" safety of Stage III.

Shortly before Peck died in 2005, his wife of 43 years walked out on him. I learned that from an article about him, “Gin, cigarettes, women: I’m a prophet not a saint.” Another article says Peck “made millions with his first book by advocating self-discipline, restraint, and responsibility - all qualities he openly acknowledged were notably lacking in himself.”

Well, who among us is worthy to throw a stone at Peck? Not me, for sure. The longer I live, the less confident I am that I know what life is all about. Peck struggled to find out. But like he famously said, “Life is difficult.”

Whether we’re a I, II, III, or IV, we all can agree on that.

Comments

[Marcel Cairo]

Let me just say, "Beautiful Essay, Mr. Hines, really beautiful."

I had read "The Road Less Travelled," but don't seem to have known about Mr. Peck's the 4 stages of spiritual growth. Also, I should say that in my own travels as a medium, all the honest people I have met working in this field are honestly flawed in many ways. Sinners and saints drink at the same bar in my mind... at the end of the night, you never know who will be the designated driver.

In fact, I'm handing over my keys of consciousness now and letting my id drive tonight.

[Edward]

Peck's analysis of spiritual development looks suspiciously like the quick cycle of denial/appeasement we all experience, but Peck applieds it on a broad canvas to lend legitimacy.

1. My id wants what it wants when it wants. No regard for consequences like indigestion, emotional abuse, civil ordinances.

2. Superego lays out the consequences, and ego becomes fearful and shuts up id in resentment.

3. Ego begins using higher mental function tools, (logic, language, supposition) and deploys them in a rapid, irrational manner to inject doubt into the superego's control structure.

4. Superego and ego wrestle until numb. Lack of affect is interpreted as either contentment or depression. My id tiptoes through the mine field, with or without its prize, mindless as a posey.

Honestly flawed in many ways, Peck's good idea was mistaken for profound insight. Did the collective consciousness trade lots of energy for his idea, or is that funny feeling you have the invisible hand of the market?

[Roger]

I found Peck's stages of spiritual development interesting. My concern, "do stages tend to catalog and catagorize people?" I hate it when someone catalogs or catagorizes me. Then, I turn right around and start my own c and c. Shame on me.

The "stages" brings to mind the "ten commandments" discussed in an earlier post.

I wonder how many of the "10" does One follow if in Stage 1. For those in Stage 4, wow, I wonder how many? Gosh, must be bunches.

If we all are apart of the Oneness, then should there be Cataloging and Catagorizing?

Food for thought

[benandante]

Mystery or Synchronicity... both are just dressed up versions of que sera sera as my gramma used to croon to us. What will be will be. And also that squirrel who almost fell on my head when I was walking down the street really wanted me to check our bank balance because the funds were low... but that kind of thing happens to me all the time. Life just keeps getting me to I pay attention.

I guess I am a two, because I don't have the intellectual restraint and doggedness to do the cataloging that Roger alluded to.

[spooky]

Hi Brian and Others, What about hemi-sync? Binaural-beat, pulses; the whole 'what the bleep?' in your ears? Has anyone here expirenced that stuff?

[ET]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for posting this.

Yes I think that Peck has almost got it right. Of course it is not such simple stages nor pigeon holes, but you have to simplify in order to model and then grasp it. IMO It is more amorphous but more importantly the mystical stage 4 is actually right there, just a hairline crack, between stages 2 and stage 3, not after stage 3. This is what I have been saying all along when I said that “I believe everything and nothing.” I think that several people who post to this list are hovering around this uncertainty too, and once in a while something happens. This is like what I said in my post to you about knowing ahead of time about by brother winning the lottery. As we bounce back and forth between everything and nothing between stage 2 and 3 we sometimes get something.

Thanks again Brian, this is very helpful,
ET

[spooky]

Roger! I also hate it to be catagorized; I truly get 'stage 1' tendencies when cataloged, priced, valued in what ever system.
But when I should applie these 4 stages, number one is there anyway aswell is stage 4. Weird.

[CB]

I stumbled across this site recently, or was it meant to be! My observation of these four stages is not that they are sequential but that they are like four posts on one of those old pinball machines where the ball touches one and then in an almost random way rebounds towards one of the other three. I could think of instances of people I have known who has gone from any one of stages one to three to one of the other two stages. Stage four is probably home, if you find it you dont rebound but stick to it. In another way the stages are more like bars than posts on a pinball machine in that where you make contact on the bar (spectrum) effects to some extent your angle of deflection. These bars also have glue on them, a light coating of glue at one end and a lot of glue at the other end. If you make contact with an end with lots of glue, you are less likely to deflect - the deep seated and genuinely committed rebel, believer or agnostic. I spent much of my early life as a two and deflected off to spend most of my adult life as a three. I sense that life as either a two or a four is like being on a yacht anchored on a quiet lagoon - having a sense of knowing, whether right or wrong, is very comforting. By contrast, as a three, one is like a yacht drifting at sea with a broken rudder, you are not in control, you know a lot about where you are not, but much less about where you are. The poor souls in one are threes caught in a storm at sea.