David Spangler
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

David Spangler (born January 7, 1945) is an American spiritual philosopher and self-described "practical mystic." He helped transform the
Findhorn Foundation The Findhorn Foundation is a Scottish charitable trust registered in 1972, formed by the spiritual community at the Findhorn Ecovillage, one of the largest intentional communities in Britain.''The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Org ...
in northern Scotland into a center of residential spiritual education and was a friend of
William Irwin Thompson William Irwin Thompson (16 July 1938—8 November 2020) was an American social philosopher, cultural critic, and poet. He received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986. He described his writing and speaking style as "mind-jazz ...
. Spangler is considered one of the founding figures of the modern New Age movement, although he is highly critical of what much of the movement has since become, especially its commercial and sensationalist elements.


Childhood and education

Spangler was born in
Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...
in 1945. At the age of six, he moved to Morocco in North Africa where his father was assigned as a counterintelligence agent for
U.S. Army Intelligence The United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) is a direct reporting unit that conducts intelligence, security, and information operations for United States Army commanders, partners in the Intelligence Community, and nationa ...
. He lived there for six years, returning to the United States when he was twelve in 1957. He attended Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, which was considered a Protestant school. His time at Deerfield was interrupted when his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where he graduated from high school. He attended
Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
where he was working for a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry but continued to pursue other subjects of interest.


Clairvoyant development

From his earliest years, Spangler has argued he was clairvoyantly aware of non-physical entities. While in Morocco at age seven, he said he had a classical mystical experience of merging with a timeless presence of oneness within the cosmos and then remembering his existence prior to this life as well as the process by which he chose to become David Spangler and entered into his present incarnation. Following that experience, he claims his awareness of and contact with various inner worlds of spirit was heightened, though he believed throughout his childhood that everyone shared the kind of perception and experience that he had. This changed when he moved to Phoenix where he met other individuals who were clairvoyant or were acting as " channels" for non-physical entities and realized that his own inner experiences were not common. In his late teens he was asked by members of metaphysical study groups to give talks on his own inner contacts, leading up to 1964 when he gave the keynote address at a national spiritual conference on "Youth and the New Age." This led to his receiving a number of invitations from around the United States to come and give lectures to various spiritual and metaphysical organizations. At the time he refused these invitations to concentrate on his scientific studies, but the following year, in 1965, he felt called by his own inner spirit to leave college and begin sharing his own particular insights and inner perceptions. This led to his going to Los Angeles in the summer of 1965 where a series of lectures led to further invitations and resulted in the career that he has followed since then as a lecturer and teacher of spirituality. Some of this early history can be found in his books ''Apprenticed to Spirit'', ''Blessing: The Art and the Practice'' and ''Pilgrim in Aquarius''.


The Findhorn Foundation

In 1970, Spangler went to Britain where he visited the spiritual community of Findhorn in northern Scotland. He claimed to have been told by non-physical, spiritual contacts that he would find his "next cycle of work" in Europe; he arrived at Findhorn and was told that one of the founders, Eileen Caddy, had had a vision three years earlier that a David Spangler would be coming there to live and work in the community. Not knowing who David Spangler was, but having read a small booklet written by him which someone sent to them, Eileen and her husband Peter Caddy and their Canadian colleague, Dorothy Maclean, the three founders of the Findhorn Community, had been waiting for someone with that name to arrive. Sometime after Spangler's arrival, he was offered and accepted joint directorship of the community along with Peter Caddy. He remained in the Findhorn Community until 1973. He then returned to the United States with a number of other Americans and Europeans, including Dorothy Maclean, where they founded the Lorian Association as a non-profit vehicle for the spiritual and educational work they wished to do together.


Lindisfarne Association

Also in 1974 Spangler helped
William Irwin Thompson William Irwin Thompson (16 July 1938—8 November 2020) was an American social philosopher, cultural critic, and poet. He received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986. He described his writing and speaking style as "mind-jazz ...
, the author of '' At the Edge of History'', '' The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light'', and various other books on contemporary culture, science and spirit, to found the Lindisfarne Association and became one of the first Lindisfarne Fellows, a group of scientists, artists, religious teachers, political activists, economists, and visionaries whose number included
Gregory Bateson Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include '' Steps to an ...
, John and
Nancy Todd Nancy Janann Todd (born October 28, 1948) is an American politician and a former Democratic member of the Colorado Senate. In the state senate, she represented District 28 from January 2013 to 2021. Previously, from January 2005 to January 9, 20 ...
, Elaine Pagels,
E. F. Schumacher Ernst Friedrich Schumacher (16 August 1911 – 4 September 1977) was a German-British statistician and economist who is best known for his proposals for human-scale, decentralised and appropriate technologies.Biography on the inner dustjacket ...
,
Stewart Brand Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the ''Whole Earth Catalog''. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the auth ...
, Paul Hawken,
James Lovelock James Ephraim Lovelock (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) was an English independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating sys ...
, and
Paul Winter Paul Winter (born August 31, 1939) is an American saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. He is a pioneer of world music and earth music, which interweaves the voices of the wild with instrumental voices from classical, jazz and world music. The ...
, among others.


Going beyond the "New Age"

Over the years since then, Spangler has continued to lecture and teach and has written numerous books on spirituality. He is considered one of the founding figures of the modern New Age phenomenon, but early on he identified its shadow and rejected what he termed "its further outgrowth into a myriad of 'old age' pursuits (including spiritual pursuits) dressed in 'new age' garb". This devolution into commercially-driven fads, identity politics, mystical glamour, atavistic spiritualisms, and uncritical guru reverence was a main theme of his ''Reimagination of the World'', co-authored with fellow-traveler and cultural historian William Irwin Thompson. Spangler has often been miscast as a new-age channeler due in part to the "transmissions" received while living at the intentional community at Findhorn, Scotland in the 1970s, which became the core of his first book '' Revelation: The Birth of a New Age''. In hindsight it can be seen that Spangler's ideas were at that time transitional between the earlier theosophical esotericism represented by Alice Bailey and an emerging worldview that is more
postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
, less obscure, and less metaphysical than theosophy. Spangler himself reports that it took him some years to develop a language in which to communicate clearly the insights and experiences he had been having since childhood.


Recent Activities

In recent years he has emphasized a practical or incarnational spirituality in which our everyday lives—our physical, embodied, sometimes resplendent and sometimes shabby persons—can be experienced as spiritual or sacred, as opposed to a spirituality concerned solely with the transpersonal and transcendent. Spangler defines ''Incarnational Spirituality'' most simply as the exploration and celebration of the individual and his or her unique spiritual and creative capacities. The practice of ''Incarnational Spirituality'' is one of honoring the sacredness and sovereignty of each of us and practicing our powers of blessing, manifestation, collaboration, and loving engagement with life. It is not a religious practice, but an understanding of how we connect to this world and how we may grow and develop and shape ourselves and our world by our intention, presence, participation and service. In 2010 his memoir ''Apprenticed to Spirit'' was published by Riverhead Books, describing his early years, his spiritual training, his association with Findhorn, Lindisfarne, and the New Age Movement, and his subsequent work with the ''Lorian Association'' and the development of ''Incarnational Spirituality''. Spangler is currently the Director of the ''Lorian Center for Incarnational Spirituality'' and a Director of the ''Lorian Association'' (www.lorian.org). Through Lorian, he publishes a free monthly essay, ''David's Desk'', and a subscription-only quarterly esoteric journal, ''Views from the Borderland'', offering "field notes" from his clairvoyant researches and encounters with the subtle worlds.


References


Partial bibliography

* Revelation: Birth of a New Age, by David Spangler, Findhorn Press, 1971 * The Little Church, by David Spangler, Findhorn Press, 1972 * The Laws of Manifestation, Findhorn Press, 1975 * Towards a Planetary Vision, by David Spangler, Findhorn Press, 1976 * Relationship and Identity, by David Spangler, Findhorn Press, 1977 * Reflections on the Christ, Findhorn Press, 1978 * Emergence: The Rebirth of the Sacred, by David Spangler, Doubleday, 1986 * Reimagination of the World: A Critique of the New Age, Science, and Popular Culture, by David Spangler (with William Irwin Thompson), Bear and Co., 1991 * Everyday Miracles, by David Spangler, Bantam, 1996 * The Call, by David Spangler, Riverhead Books, 1996 * A Pilgrim in Aquarius, by David Spangler, Findhorn Press, 1996 * Parent as Mystic, Mystic as Parent, by David Spangler, Riverhead Books, 1998 * Blessing: The Art and the Practice, by David Spangler, Riverhead Books, 2001 * The Story Tree, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2004 * The Manifestation Kit, Lorian Press, 2005 * The Incarnational Card Deck, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2008 * The Laws of Manifestation (revised),by David Spangler,RedWheel/Weiser Books, 2009 * Incarnational Spirituality, by David Spangler,Lorian Press, 2009 * The Flame of Incarnation, by David Spangler,Lorian Press, 2009 * Subtle Worlds, by David Spangler,Lorian Press, 2010 * Facing the Future, by David Spangler,Lorian Press, 2010 * An Introduction to Incarnational Spirituality, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2011 * A Midsummer's Journey, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2011 * The Call of the World, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2011 * The Soul's Oracle Card Deck, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2011 * The Card Deck of the Sidhe, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2011 * Apprenticed to Spirit, by David Spangler, Riverhead Books, 2011 * Numerous articles in various magazines, including New Age Journal, East-West Journal, The Sun, New Times. * Lorian Textbooks: Slightly edited transcripts of online classes: ** World Work, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2008 ** Crafting Home: Generating the Sacred, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2009 ** Crafting Relationships:The Holding of Others, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2009 ** Partnering With Earth, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2013 ** Starheart and Other Stores, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2013 ** Conversations with the Sidhe, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2014 ** Journey into Fire, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2015


External links


Lorian Association

''A Vision of Holarchy'', Seven Pillars Review, 2008
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spangler, David 1945 births Living people Writers from Columbus, Ohio New Age writers Arizona State University alumni Deerfield Academy alumni Findhorn community