Unless we reject altogether a religio-spiritual view of what it is to be human, and of the nature of the universe/cosmos, we have the challenge of what to do about the many belief systems - and their violent relationships. One response is an integrative pan/meta/transcendent view that can win wide support. I will address this elsewhere.

Assuming that as a minimum we can agree that powerful, important insights lie enshrined in the teachings of major belief systems we might see it as worthwhile to investigate mystical-spiritual texts.

The Wiki encyclopedia tells us about one classic Western text - The Cloud of Unknowing.

This is a practical spiritual guidebook thought to have been written in the 14th century by an anonymous English monk who counsels a young student to seek God not through knowledge but through love. "Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love [...] and must always be overcome", he writes. "For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God."

My reading of this is the same as one of the key principles presented on this site - that we need a balance between experiencing the Whole, through the meditative, and gaining mastery over the parts - through the concepts, the material and productivity.

Interestingly the anonymous The Cloud of Unknowing has been described as Christianity with a Zen outlook, but has also been derided by some as anti-intellectual. Of course arguments about the mystical being anti-intellectual are as sensible as arguments that love is no longer real or needed because it cannot be effectively measured.

We are told;The practical prayer advice contained in The Cloud of Unknowing formed the basis for the practice of centering prayer, a form of Christian meditation developed by Trappist monks William Meninger and Thomas Keating in the 1970s. I take centreing and 'ego boundary losing' as the same - or at least inevitable consequences of each other.

The caring, 'other-ways-of-knowing', experiential approach is also found in;

"And so I urge you, go after experience rather than knowledge. On account of pride, knowledge may often deceive you, but this gentle, loving affection will not deceive you. Knowledge tends to breed conceit, but love builds. Knowledge is full of labor, but love, full of rest".

We need to gather in the wide range of texts from the many world-views that we have as our global heritage. There are so many subjects still to be teased out in which great figures and their writings will be held up and their light will help us to re-articulate the wholeness perspectives that Holistic Education seeks to re-claim. Ken Wilber indirectly and Jack Miller directly have started on the task of relating mystical texts and insights to Holistic Education - but as in so many other areas it is still largely virgin territory.