Transcription of Robert Atkinson, author and speaker for the show Love Maine Radio #308: Elizabeth McLellan + Robert Atkinson
Dr. Lisa B: My next guest is Dr. Robert Atkinson who is an internationally recognized expert on life story interviewing, personal mythmaking, and soul-making. He is the author of nine books including The Story of our Time: From Duality to Interconnectedness to Oneness. Dr. Atkinson previously taught at the University of Southern Maine. Thanks so much for coming in today.
Dr. Robert A: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.
Dr. Lisa B: This is a really interesting time that we’re in now, this time of upheaval within our governmental systems and there’s a lot of shifting and changing that’s probably been going on, I want to say, at least, the last maybe 20 years or so but you may extend it out further into your lifetime. Why did you think it was time to talk about oneness?
Dr. Robert A: Well, it’s been a piece of our evolutionary process that’s been moving toward that for, I would say, at least a century, maybe a century and a half or three quarters. It all depends on the perspective we take on it and the book takes a big picture perspective of the whole process that we’re in the midst of right now. I stepped back and look from a distance pretty much and there were signs and a real need, for bringing into our conscious awareness, the need to shift our focus. Actually, it’s been a really long process of evolution. One of the ways I like to look at the whole process is in terms of spiritual epics and those are defined by each individual prophet who has been the founder of a major world religion.
We go back way back in time to 4,000, 5,000 years ago in the time of Abraham and then, Krishna and then, Moses and then, Zoroaster and then, Buddha and Christ and Mohammed and then, in the middle of the 18th Century was Bahauallah, the founder of the Bahai faith. Each of those represented a leap of consciousness. We started out way back where the focus on and a need to create oneness in the family. Then, that expanded to a need to create unity and oneness, harmony and the tribe and it went on to larger and larger context, city, city state, nation. Today, the need is to turn our focus to humanity as a whole, the world as a whole because we are becoming a global community.
That’s been a long process in the works and even though the teachings of Bahaullah came into existence in the mid to late 1800s, it’s taken the world about that much time ‘till, say, the 1960s or whenever you want to start thinking of the real shift to occur. Part of the way that that shift has been made, I think, is through the advancement of technology as well. One of the key events of my early adult life was the moon walk in 1969 where, not only the country, but the world was fixed on the TV screens. It was not only a matter of one small step for man and one leap for humanity but it was the photographs that were sent back from the moon, of Earth, where we could see for the first time, literally, that the Earth is one planet with no boundaries.
Then from that point on, a number of other things kept happening to confirm that new reality for us and that also happened to be the time, in my own life, when I was in the midst of a series of adventures that became my spiritual adventure, my quest. That same summer, 1969, was also when I was in the right place at the right time to attend the Woodstock Festival and that was one of those rare experiences where everybody really did feel like humanity coming together in harmony. Then a few months later, that winter, I met Joseph Campbell who actually became a mentor for me. It was the 1970s was when I met him and there’s one piece from the book here that I would just read because it’s a quote from his book.
I met him after one of his talks in 1970 and he took me under his wing. On one of my visits to his home in Greenwich Village, he gave me a signed copy of Masks of God: Creative Mythology which was the final volume in a series that he had written. In the preface to the last volume of that series, he wrote that the series confirmed for him, “A thought I have long and faithfully entertained: of the unity of the human race of man, not only in its biology but also in its spiritual history which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony with its themes irresistibly advancing to some kind of mighty climax.” There was another expression of one planet, one people, basically, concept.
My own quest and study of the world’s religions continued from that point on. It just became clear as it went along and that particular quote from him became the center of my emerging world view. It has been a long process and now, 50 something years later from the moon walk, we’re seeing that it’s turning out to be, the evolutionary process toward oneness, is turning out to be a much more difficult struggle than we might want it to be. That’s also a part of the process. I have a chapter on the book on opposition as the catalyst for transformation. What we are seeing today is also a part of the process of needing, for whatever reason, needing to go, basically, deeper into our collective shadow. To emerge from that, to then get even closer to our sense of oneness.
Dr. Lisa B: Give me some examples of what you are describing as our collective shadow.
Dr. Robert A: Well, that could be a loaded question but there’s a section of that chapter that I want to talk about, “The Dark Night of the Collective Soul.” That’s what I was referring to. Of course, the dark night is a key part of the mystic journey, on the individual level as well as a key part of the hero’s journey from Joseph Campbell’s work. Each individual journey has that part where we face our own difficulties and after learn, somehow, how to overcome the greatest difficulties that we have in our lives in order to let go of those parts of ourselves that may be holding us back from the essence of who we are as a soul on a journey from God and returning to the creator.
We also carry those aspects, those elements are referred to as the shadow side. We all carry those within us too and sometimes, they emerge to the surface. We’re seeing that more now with the greater distinction between oneness and duality emerging. It’s heading in so many ways. Probably the easiest example to use right now is in the political realm with all the debates and beyond that are happening about what our values or should be or that kind of thing. It’s a matter of opposites coming out, becoming evident, apparent and that creates a real struggle between the opposites.
It’s a process of that struggle playing out and there’s a number of ways of putting it but eventually, what happens is the light overcomes the shadow and through that struggle, the process of gaining a better understanding of what those two forces are really about happens. The force of light eventually wins out and the progress moves onward towards that unity and oneness. I didn’t really give you a specific example but there are many from our recent political realm that have brought out that shadow. The interesting thing is the more that that shadow side comes out, the greater the other side becomes as well.
It’s always a matter of one fueling the other and making both even more apparent. In terms of how they juxtaposed each other, one interesting moment recently was one day we had the inauguration of the new president, the next day we had the Women’s March. Some might say that the inauguration itself and all it represented was about our collective shadow side. The next day, the Women’s March worldwide, globally, totally, not totally, but mostly spontaneous seven people in seven continents in harmony asserting really the oneness of humanity by bringing in, to that one march, all of the human rights issues of the last 50 years or more.
Dr. Lisa B: Some might say that one of the reasons we have had this issue with duality is that maybe people on either side aren’t really listening to one another. No matter what one’s political bent is, if people are surprised that a certain president was elected, then maybe they weren’t paying attention to what was actually going on in the other half of the population. We saw this within our own state.
Dr. Robert A: Yeah. Paying attention is a really important part of the whole thing. First of all, our collective conscious evolution is not a straight line from one point to the other. It is more like a process, from one point to another, that incorporates cycles within it. When we lose track of what’s going on or don’t pay attention to what is going on, that allows an opening for the shadow side to popup maybe a little easier than it might have.
That whole process is like our own individual, spiritual practice and whatever we have, as a spiritual practice, whether it’s meditation or yoga or whatever it is, if we don’t keep that up on a regular basis, other things happen and take over. It’s the same process on a collective level and moving toward our collective goal.
This is all in the context of all of the world’s sacred traditions having in common, not only things like the Golden Rule and various versions of the 10 Commandments in each spiritual epic, but also having in common the need for some kind of regular practice to keep us on the path and without that, we open ourselves up to other kinds of troubles.
Dr. Lisa B: When you were a professor at the University of Southern Maine, what was your focus?
Dr. Robert A: My field?
Dr. Lisa B: Yes.
Dr. Robert A: My main field was cross-cultural human development. I came to that from a number of other approaches. I majored in philosophy in college, then I got a master’s degree. My first master’s degree was in American folk culture and then, I got a second master’s in counseling, and then my doctoral work is in cross-cultural human development. I merged all of those interests into a way of approaching and understanding human development from a cross-cultural and spiritual perspective. Integrated all of those into my courses. I taught in the counselor education program at USM and so the graduate students that I had over the 27 years, because they were coming from their own personal experiences that brought them to counseling, they appreciated that broader cross-cultural, spiritual approach to human development.
Dr. Lisa B: I’m going to read a paragraph from your book that speaks to me because it speaks about the way that we develop as humans, as individuals. “Usually a gradual process, most children start out with limited access to reality as our sensing, feeling and mental capacities develop and mature. We grasp greater levels of complexity, think symbolically, understand other points of view, apply logic, weigh dichotomies, make difficult decisions, think abstractly and hypothetically and eventually, become theoretical about life and our experience of it. As our thinking matures, our consciousness expands and we see what was once hidden.” If we are, all of us arguably, on individual continua, we’re all evolving in different phases. We’re never going to all be in the same place at the same time, we may not be children anymore but even as adults, I think that we evolve. How do we move towards oneness with that?
Dr. Robert A: It’s a long process and you’re exactly right that not everyone is going to get to that goal or point at the same time. We notice, clearly, how there have been throughout history, pockets of resistance or not moving on at the same phases on other parts of the population. That is part of the process because it’s a relative process, it’s a progressive process and not everyone is at the same place at the same time. As I said, how we will all get to that place of living with a consciousness of oneness, at some point, is that it is a very gradual process. It’s one of those processes or movements that is definitely not short-term.
It is a process that gains a little traction by little steps at a time. It’s of the same kind of process and then the other kind of setting. The more individuals who make progress, the more they create a greater force beyond the resistance level. The more they get the collective closer to what some think of as a tipping point at which point, once that’s reached, then many more will come to that point more quickly. The tipping point, in terms of our collection evolution, towards that is not that great.
It’s not 50%, it’s not 40%, it’s more like maybe closer to 20% of the population. Once that happens, then the process overall will quicken and once that quickening of the process starts, then everyone else will get there quicker. It’s like once we got to the point of realizing how important unity is within the city, then it gradually, eventually became easier to understand how and why unity is important in the nation as well. We’ve been at that point for a few centuries and from that big picture perspective, we are getting closer to realizing how important it is for humanity, as a whole, to think of ourselves in terms of a global community rather than any individual nation.
Dr. Lisa B: How will we know when we’ve reached that tipping point?
Dr. Robert A: Yeah, that’s an interesting one. I’m not sure if anyone has written a definitive explanation of that. If they have, I’m not quite aware of it but my sense is that we may know because the resistance put up around it is less. Right now, it’s clear that we’re not there yet because the clash of opposites is so strong right now, today, that who knows how much longer it’ll take for us to get closer to that tipping point and for the resistance to lessen. That’s the way the process happens. It’s a two-fold process. One thing that’s happening is the unfolding of a new world view, a new way of seeing the world and being in the world and at the same time, the other thing that’s happening is the breakdown of the old way of seeing things.
Those are dual processes happening at the same time and they haven’t gotten far enough apart yet for the building of the new to be a smooth ride. There’s still a lot of resistance from the old world view which really a main part of that old world view is seeing the nation as the center of focus for the world. At the same time, there are many others and this has been true, ever since or before, the United Nations came into existence 70 some years ago. That dual process has been happening for a long time and even though there is that strong resistance to hold onto, the need to have the nation at the center of the focus, there are other forces that have been in the process for so long that eventually that will overcome the resistance.
Dr. Lisa B: I’ve been speaking to Dr. Robert Atkinson who is an internationally recognized expert on life story interviewing, personal mythmaking and soul-making. He’s the author of nine books including The Story of our Time: From Duality to Interconnectedness to Oneness. He previously taught at the University of Southern Maine. It’s been a very interesting conversation. Thank you for coming in and having it with me today.
Dr. Robert A: Thank you.