This project is motivated by a spirit of service and a vision of national and global wellbeing. It is grounded in a long history of work motivated in this spirit, that spans the full range of intellectual and spiritual inquiry. From our point of view, this project is something like a natural expression of "collective evolution", of the evolution of civilization over hundreds of years, that we believe is coming into a kind of dramatic focus today. It might be argued that human culture has always been in crisis. War and famine and disease are not new. Human misbehavior or a willingness to follow charismatic authoritarians to the great detriment of culture is not new. But today, we are indeed facing critical issues in "the collective system of human life" that are very new. Global warming and rising sea levels are new. The surge in population growth is new. The explosive growth of science is new. The tremendous power of the internet is new. Low-cost ubiquitous international travel is new. The degree of explicit human interdependence is very new. We have entered a new epoch in the history of civilization, and it can certainly be argued that new standards and a new level of common understanding of the human situation and capacity are needed as part of the collective human response to this new dawn. The ideas presented here in this framework are interdisciplinary and holistic. They represent a departure from the inherent assumption that academic or scientific or philosophical inquiry must be highly compartmentalized in order to be valid or adequately detailed. Yes, this approach involves some "trespassing" across traditional and often very legitimate boundaries. Sciences are complicated and difficult. Oversimplification is misleading. This project is an exercise in "defragmentation", and a lot of it as it stands is merely a note or place-marker for future development. But this work has a substantial background, and is documented in the best literature. *** What is the meaning of the Closed Loop vision? Why is it important? We are confronting the significant an dangerous fragmentation of the human community as it emerges from its long historical evolution from a vast diversity of locales and independent and disconnected "starting points", which today are converging towards and into one another as they are forced together by the boundaries of the world we live on. We are supporting coordinated collective response to global crisis. Our work is motivated in a holistic and inclusive spirit, and is intended to consider Sciences Humanities Interculturalism Interspirituality Common values / common ground Global / local ethics Bridge building and network development Technical solutions Our objective is the development of successful and enlightened global culture in a context of holistic and responsible local freedom. The Interspiritual vision Developing collaborative networks

The Interspiritual vision Draft | Back At the deeply intuitive level, this project has roots in the "common ground of the world's religions" -- perhaps as defined by the interspirituality movement, or by religious studies scholar Huston Smith in his introduction to Fritjhof Schuon's The Transcendent Unity of Religions>' Religions studies scholars will disagree. But they may be looking at different parts of the elephant. In this context, we understand all the major religions of the world to more or less be looking at the same common ground and the same fundamental ideas. All the world's great monotheistic religions are grounded in "One" -- and the case can be made that many others kinds of religions can also be understood through this same basic framework. Mon, May 10, 2021 Reference The parable of the blind men and an elephant originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused. It is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.[1][2] The Buddhist text Udana 6.4,[3] contains one of the earliest versions of the story. It is dated to around c.?500 BCE, during the lifetime of the Buddha, although the parable is likely older than the Buddhist text.[4][better source needed] An alternate version of the parable describes sighted men, experiencing a large statue on a dark night, or feeling a large object while being blindfolded. They then describe what it is they have experienced. In its various versions, it is a parable that has crossed between many religious traditions and is part of Jain, Hindu and Buddhist texts of 1st millennium CE or before.[5][4] The story also appears in 2nd millennium Sufi and Bahá?í Faith lore. The tale later became well known in Europe, with 19th century American poet John Godfrey Saxe creating his own version as a poem, with a final verse that explains that the elephant is a metaphor for God, and the various blind men represent religions that disagree on something no one has fully experienced.[6] The story has been published in many books for adults and children, and interpreted in a variety of ways. URL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

Developing collaborative networks Sketch | Back As this project grows and matures, we want to interact with individuals and agencies who share our concern for an enlightened global holism and spirit of cooperation. We can do this because our internet platform supports it, because we have been developing projects with this general intent for many years, and because the time is right. Projects like this are needed in the world. Sun, May 2, 2021