A little more music I've been enjoying recently, and then I'll get back to writing!

Here are a couple new tunes from Death Cab for Cutie's latest album, Narrow Stairs, most of which deals with existential themes.

Grapevine Fires

No Sunlight

What is the relationship of Integral Theory to the interreligious strategy of inclusivism?  Consider the following passage:

"In his discussion of inclusivism, Halbfass points to the discursive tendency of traditional sectarian Indian thought to develop doxographies in which ‘others' are neutralized through inclusion and subordination.  In this, he divides the strategy of inclusivism into two major types, based on images developed within the Indic tradition. The two images are: (1) that of the ocean into which rivers merge, discharging their waters and losing their names, but remaining preserved in essence and substance; (2) that of the elephant's footstep, which includes through exceeding the footsteps of other animals, covering larger terrain than any of them individually and erasing or obliterating them in the process. Halbfass characterizes these strategies as hierarchism and perspectivism respectively, and sees examples of the first in Advaita Vedanta and the second in Jaina doxographies" (Banerji, 06)

As Integral Theory is increasingly institutionalized, and as it enters ever more actively into dialogue with other systems of thought, I believe it is imperative that advocates of this approach reflect on its relation to the various discursive strategies that have been adopted by prominent religious traditions in ancient and more recent times.  Given the emphasis in Integral Theory on hierarchical inclusiveness and perspectivism, I think it is especially important that we consider how the Integral approach resembles and yet may also differ from historical inclusivist strategies.

The term inclusivism is typically used in relation to other attitudes that have historically informed interreligious relationships:  exclusivism, which is the belief that only one revelation or tradition is true or has authentic soteriological power and all other ways are false; and pluralism, which has multiple definitions, but which for our immediate purposes may be defined as the belief that all major religions reveal spiritual truths but no single religion can claim to be in possession of the final, absolute truth.  Inclusivism occupies a position in between these two extremes, assigning ultimate truth status to a particular vision while acknowledging that other paths may variously participate in, reflect, or supplement the truth of this superior way.

Within the Christian tradition, inclusivism takes the form of various Christological "fulfillment" doctrines, where the possibility for salvation is granted to non-Christians (contra the exclusivist position), but only in and through the extra-ecclesial, redemptive work of Christ.  In other words, the ultimate religious fulfillment of non-Christians is allowed as a possibility, as opposed to inevitable damnation, but this salvation or realization is ultimately a Christian one.  While other, non-Christian religions are granted a relative value and "truthfulness," their value and truthfulness are recognized only inasmuch as they can be said to approximate or reflect the ultimate truth(s) of the Christian vision. 

Within the Indian context, inclusivism shows up under several different guises.   As the passage above indicates, Halbfass recognizes two forms of inclusivism:  the hierarchic strategy of Advaita Vedanta (or Vajrayana), which includes alternative traditions and schools of thought by incorporating them into a hierarchy of perspectives of which it is the pinnacle; and the perspectivist strategy of Jainism, which, with its notion of anekantavada or non-one-sidedness, includes multiple religious perspectives as true but necessarily partial reflections on the whole.  (This Jain doctrine is considered inclusivist rather than pluralist because it denies the possibility of salvation to anyone who fails to accept its truth.)  The Buddha also arguably voiced an inclusivist perspective when he acknowledged, in the Digha Nikaya, that other religions could possibly lead to liberation if they contained the Noble Eight-fold Path.

Postmodern pluralists within Christian, interfaith dialogue, and Indological contexts have criticized this approach as imperialist, triumphalist, and a product of pre-postmodern rationalism.  It is a hegemonic strategy, the criticism goes, which wipes out difference in the name of an overarching truth.  As the metaphors in the passage above illustrate, it is seen as an approach which denies and essentially erases alterity - swallowing and wiping out the tracks of the "other."

To what extent does this critique apply to Wilber's Integral vision?  In an essay I wrote a year ago for the Zaadz Integrative Spirituality Symposium, I described Jainism's anekantavada doctrine as a precursor to Integral Theory's integral perspectivism.  And Wilber has acknowledged parallels between his model and the stage models of Vajrayana and Advaita Vedanta.  So Integral Theory incorporates both the horizontal and vertical inclusivist strategies highlighted in Halbfass' critique.  If the Integral approach is thus best characterized as a form of inclusivism, and inclusivism historically is a pre-postmodern, pre-pluralist strategy, must we then conclude that it is an approach that has failed to adequately digest the lessons of postmodernity?  Is it necessarily hegemonic and corrosive of difference?

In theory, I do not believe it is.  I believe it acknowledges and incorporates important postmodern insights which can help mitigate tendencies towards narrow, ideologically driven forms of inclusivism.  I will say more about this below.  In practice, however, I believe some of these lessons have yet to be digested - particularly in forums like this one, where, for instance, well-meaning Integralites may use the "transcend and include" mantra as a defensive, self-insulating polemical strategy.

Before looking more closely at Integral Theory, I want to pause for a moment to look at pluralism as an alternative to inclusivism.  In The Infinite Ladder, Dustin Di Perna identifies inclusivism as a rational-level (Orange) strategy and pluralism as a pluralist-level (Green) perspective.  Religious pluralism, emerging in the Western context out of the intersubjectivist critique of rationalist epistemology and ontology, thus serves as an important corrective to the earlier strategies of mythic exclusivism and rationalist inclusivism.  However, while it represents an advancement in a number of ways, it is nevertheless a problematic position to maintain.  Gavin D'Costa, for instance, argues that a pure pluralist position cannot be coherently articulated and employed because it ultimately rests on the same logical structure as exclusivism. According to D'Costa,

[T]here is no such thing as pluralism because all pluralists are committed to holding some form of truth criteria and by virtue of this, anything that falls foul of such criteria is excluded from counting as truth (in doctrine and in practice).  Thus, pluralism operates within the same logical structure of exclusivism and in this respect pluralism can never really affirm the genuine autonomous value of religious pluralism for, like exclusivism [and inclusivism], it can only do so by tradition specific criteria for truth (D'Costa, 1996, as cited in Trapnell, 1998)

D'Costa thus calls the position of pluralism itself into question.  In seeking to establish a pluralist model of religious equality, we apparently cannot avoid making appeals to non-universal, tradition-specific truth claims, and thus implicitly endorsing a quasi-inclusivist (if not actually exclusivist) perspective of our own.  We find ourselves, in other words, in the midst of a performative contradiction.  But if religious pluralism cannot be established as a coherent, un-self-contradictory position in itself, it nevertheless imparts valuable insights into intersubjectivity, the constructedness and relative incommensurability of cultural and religious worldspaces, and the value of alterity that I believe must be retained in any post-pluralist model.

Integral Theory, in its latest incarnation, aims to do this.  While it certainly incorporates both horizontal and vertical inclusivist strategies to support its overall integrative vision, it simultaneously recognizes these strategies as creative, intersubjectively grounded enactments, not pre-given realities.  With pluralism, while we acknowledge that we cannot avoid imposing our own perspective-dependent presuppositions on others, we may nevertheless recognize the creative potential that such a gesture makes available, as we consciously "hold space" for alterity, for the integrity and sanctity of otherness, and therefore we may elect to value the stance of pluralism as the best of the limited options available to us (e.g., exclusivism or inclusivism).  With the Integral perspective, I believe a similar opportunity is available, but one which corrects - or has the potential to correct - for the pendulum swing of pluralism towards the extreme of otherness (which has sometimes unwittingly contributed to even further social fragmentation and segregation) and invites a more balanced recognition and honoring of sameness and difference, sameness-in-difference, and (with its emphasis on types, levels, and so on), difference-in-sameness.

Admittedly, the language of Integral has tended more in the direction of inclusivism, understandably raising concerns in postmodern circles that Integral represents another hegemonic meta-narrative.  Some of the earlier phases of Wilber's work may indeed be deserving of this charge.  But I believe Wilber's most recent work reflects a keen awareness of the challenges and gifts of the postmodern turn, and also attempts to address some of the shortcomings of that turn.

For us to make good on the promise that I believe Integral presents, I have a number of suggestions, some of which I comfortably endorse, others of which I tentatively offer for consideration:

• To mitigate the tendency towards insular, ideologically driven inclusivism, which I believe is a potential problem for any integrative model, I believe one of the first steps is simply to call attention to and bring greater awareness to these dynamics, to call attention to the potential for elephantine footprints to effectively erase the tracks of (e.g., silence) those whom we would embrace.

• Related to this, allowing the recognition of these dynamics to impregnate our communicative practices, to inspire us towards non-attachment to views and a willingness to suspend our positions in the moment of encounter with an other.

• As may be apparent by the tone and content of this blog, I am suggesting - along with Gary Hampson and others - that Integralites may do well not to hurry too quickly past postmodernism, leaving it in the dust of history; rather they should return to take fuller advantage of the insights and tools won by this fairly recent development in human thought. I believe Wilber himself is recognizing the importance of this move, judging by his emphasis on intersubjectivity and constructivism in Integral Spirituality.

• While AQAL is often discussed and, unfortunately, treated as a static map, I believe Integral Methodological Pluralism invites us to see it in more dynamic, enactive terms, as a sort of integrative operator. This serves to undercut adherence to the myth of the given, which has informed a number of historical inclusivist approaches. As I wrote in a recent blog, when we argue that something is real or true, we are making a claim about how a given conperception (a construct-perception) will behave across a wide range of circumstances. We are saying that we can count on it to behave in certain ways and be subject to certain kinds of confirmation within a given set of operational parameters. Within an Integral enactive paradigm, these parameters include the condition of the speaker.

• It may be worthwhile, in the context of the concerns of this blog as well as the concerns of nondual spirituality, to take a closer look at our presuppositions about knowledge - what is its nature, how is it generated or realized? What is involved in map-based, instrumental or technological knowledge?

• IMP and the AQAL enactive paradigm take wholeness for granted, but this wholeness is an "active absence": while dynamic multiplicity may "testify" to this wholeness, as the Bonpos say, it will never show up or present itself as an object for our inspection. This means that the contents of Integral Theory or the AQAL model should not be mistaken as the whole; rather, to shamelessly and cannibalistically appropriate one of Grof's terms, they encourage a holotropic orientation - an orientation which recognizes the "movement towards wholeness" as valuable but which does not presume to represent it as a single, given totality, since no such totality has ever been set up or established.

• This move encourages us to value alterity in and with the movement towards wholeness, since, as Henri Bortoft points out, the whole is found, not in opposition to or through the addition of parts, but ever uniquely in and through them.

• The frequently heard claim that Integral or AQAL is "without content" or a neutral operating system strikes me as problematic. I do not think this is a defensible position. Such claims can (and sometimes, in my experience, do) contribute to a tendency to treat the AQAL model as somehow given or inevitable, and this in my view can feed into the use of ideologically driven inclusivist strategies, particularly in forums such as this one.

• Because Integral communities, to date, tend to be rather insulated - and Integral Naked discussions tend to move in relatively narrow, self-congratulatory circles - I think the maturity of the community will be served by increased efforts to interact with others outside of this movement. More encounters with intractable, inassimilable equals will be good medicine.

• While Integral has charted a powerful and compelling course beyond pluralism, I believe it is naïve to imagine that the way forward for humanity has a single horizon. The potential for multiple integral horizons, in fact, is implied by the current Integral Postmetaphysical paradigm, but in my dealings with the Integral community I have not found this to be seriously considered.

There are likely other suggestions and comments I will want to add, and some I may want to remove, so I am giving fair warning now that the list above may change!

Special thanks to Kela and Jim.  Our conversation on the IPS pod was the inspiration for this blog.

NAHUATL REFLECTIONS

   Not forever on earth; only a little while here.
   Be it jade, it shatters.
   Be it gold, it breaks.
   Be it a quetzal feather, it tears apart.
   Not forever on earth; only a little while here.

                                                                                       
                                                                         Like a painting, we will be erased.
                                                                         Like a flower, we will dry up here on earth.
                                                                         Like plumed vestments of a precious bird,
                                                                         That precious bird with the agile neck,
                                                                         We will come to an end.

   april ice storm
   new leaves freeze overnight
   words fall apart


                                                                                        To what shall
                                                                                         I liken the world?
                                                                                         Moonlight, reflected
                                                                                         In dewdrops,
                                                                                         Shaken from a crane's bill.


.

 

In the latest phase of Wilber's work, a significant shift has taken place with the development of the Wilber-Combs Lattice.  Although not much has been written about this that I've seen, one would expect that the introduction of a model which significantly impacts how we conceive of enlightenment, might also impact other key aspects of Integral theory, such as the conceptualization of the pre/trans fallacy or the relationship between translation and transformation.  In this entry, I would like to take a look at the former.

The W-C Lattice emerged after the terms transpersonal and pre/trans fallacy had already been in use for a number of years.  I believe C.G. Jung was one of the first to use the term, transpersonal, or something like it: he referred to the archetypal realm of the collective unconscious as uberpersonliche.  Maslow and other humanistic psychologists later picked up on the term as they began to look beyond the horizons of humanism to the mystical regions mapped by the Eastern traditions that were then making inroads into Western counter culture. Wilber's introduction of the concept of the pre/trans fallacy emerged within this context, as the transpersonal movement was gaining momentum in the ‘70s and ‘80s and seeking to establish itself as the first scientific discipline that mapped the farther reaches of human nature.  One of Wilber's many contributions to this effort was to posit a spectrum of consciousness, running from prepersonal to personal to transpersonal bands, with the mystical state-realizations (subtle, causal, nondual) being placed directly on top of the cognitive and egoic developmental stages that had been mapped by Western theorists.  These higher, transpersonal stages, being modeled on ineffable and nonverbal mystical states and conceived as emerging developmentally on the far side of rational, egoic consciousness, were (according to this model) clearly to be differentiated from Freud's pre-personal, infantile, oceanic awareness.  They were higher-stage realizations of oneness, not ground floor stages of non-differentiated (or poorly differentiated) awareness.

Because a number of these higher "stages" did not appear to rely on or involve rational thought (they are ineffable, inexpressible), and because they were placed on the top of the developmental ladder, it made sense to describe them as transrational.  But now that Wilber and Combs have shifted subtle, causal, and nondual "stages" off of the vertical developmental ladder, treating them instead as universally available states (which are subject to various developmentally dependent interpretations), how are the notions of transrational stages and the pre/trans fallacy affected?  They may not be rendered obsolete - I don't think they are - but I believe their meanings do undergo an important shift that is not always clearly acknowledged in discussions of Integral Theory.   

For instance, in discussions of transrationality on various Integral forums and in the blogosphere, I have noticed that it is fairly common to refer to particular altered state experiences when discussing the transrational domain.  While genuine transrational stages likely do involve relative ease of access to, and greater reliance on, non-rational states, as I will discuss below, this tendency to talk about transrationality in terms of particular states strikes me as problematic because these states are often treated as if they were inherently transrational.  I believe this tendency is traceable to Wilber's previous identification of the transrational with the subtle, causal, and nondual (as developmental stages rather than states).   In his latest work, Wilber clearly differentiates states and stages, emphasizing the role of interpretation in relation to state experience, but some of his recent comments may nevertheless contribute to this confusion, which I see as a perpetuation of the myth of the given in relation to states.  In a recent Salon.com interview, for instance, Wilber says,

The mystical state is often beyond words. It is transrational because you have access to rationality but it's temporarily suspended. A 6-month-old infant, for instance, is in a pre-rational state, whereas the mystic is in a trans-rational state. Unfortunately, 'pre' and 'trans' get confused. So some theorists say the infant is in a mystical state.

How are we to interpret this statement, particularly in light of Wilber-5 and the W-C Lattice?  In Integral Spirituality, Wilber points out that the pre- and trans- distinctions apply to stages, not states.  In the statement above, the mystical state is discussed in relation to the availability of rationality; but does the state itself transcend rationality, or is there a cognitive component which pervades and informs the state experience? 

According to the W-C Lattice, one may have subtle, causal, and nondual experiences at any level of development, but at each stage they will be interpreted (and presumably experienced) differently.  If you are at a prerational level of development and you access causal awareness, for instance, you will interpret the experience according to the capacities of that level.  If you have developed a rational cognitive capacity and you access causal or nondual awareness, you will interpret the experience according to your level as well.  If we follow the implications of the W-C Lattice, however, this suggests that the individual will have an experience which is shaped and constrained by his level of cognitive development; it won't be a transrational mystical experience, but a rationally interpreted altered state experience.  For an experience to be genuinely mystical and transrational, must one have developed beyond conventional-level rationality or formal operational thinking?  The W-C Lattice suggests this - and Wilber's concern about Buddhism being "translated down" into the terms of Green postmodernism reinforces this - but if this is the case, then it appears to me to be insufficient to describe or define transrationality in terms of a particular state experience in which rationality is available but currently suspended.  Authentic, transrational mystical experiences, rather, would entail not only state development and access, but a sufficient level of post-formal cognitive development as well.

According to Susanne Cook-Greuter's model of ego development, genuine transrational cognitive capacities begin to emerge only during the post-conventional phases of development, in particular during the Autonomous stage when the individual has access to an expanded 4^th person perspective; and it doesn't become firmly established until the individual reaches the Construct-Aware and Unitive stages, at which she is able to take basic and expanded 5^th-person perspectives, respectively.  At these higher stages, a number of capacities develop which have commonly been associated with mystical state experience:  increased awareness of the constructedness of the "object world" experience and the limitations of rationality and language; the ability to witness the arising of thoughts without being caught up in them, at least for short periods of time; temporary dissolution of subject-object divisions, and the experience/understanding of the world as a seamless "phenomenological continuum."

When contemplatives report such insights and experiences, are they reporting the "world as it appears" from a particular altered state (an experience which would be available to anyone who accesses that state); or has their training also impacted their level of cognitive development?  This strikes me as a rather complex question, and I am not entirely clear on the answer yet (though I will attempt one).  Individuals apparently at different cognitive stages of development have reported spontaneous or drug-induced experiences of oneness, boundary dissolution, immersion in the boundless "field" of being, temporary dissociation or detachment from thought, and so on.  There is at least a surface similarity between some of these experiences and certain transrational perspectives.  This similarity has led various researchers and commentators to commit what Wilber describes as the pre/trans fallacy. 

What I am interested in looking at in this entry, however, is the hold-over tendency to conceive of transrationality in terms of causal and nondual state experience, without giving adequate attention to the apparently necessary, concurrent development of sophisticated levels of cognitive, perspective-taking capacities.  The W-C Lattice suggests that causal and nondual state experiences are universally available; but transrationality, as a stage of development, is quite rare.  For example, transrational mystical experience would not be available to an individual performing a practice such as Holotropic breathing, which induces sometimes profound altered state experiences, if that individual did not also have access to expanded 4p or 5p perspectives. 

In her discussion of the Construct-Aware stage, Cook-Greuter comments that the regular practice of observing one's own mental processes (which tends to emerge naturally at this stage) leads sometimes to spontaneous experiences in which the knower and known merge and the sense of self disappears.  To the extent that certain contemplative vehicles encourage mindfulness of internal thought processes, therefore, one could argue that these vehicles aim not only at state training and access (a common way these traditions are described in Integral circles), but at the development of an expanded perspective-taking capacity as well.  In other words, in a tradition such as Madhyamika, for instance, cognitive development to transrational (5p or higher) levels could be said to be as important a part of "realization" as state training, if not more so.  As both Wilber and Cook-Greuter suggest, once one gets to these higher stages of cognitive development, regular (if not always stable) access to deeper state experience appears to come with the territory.  In my understanding, this is because, with increasing insight into one's mental processes and identifications, one begins to hold less tightly to one's constructs and open to a fuller range of available human experiences and modes of knowing, which might include heightened synthetic, intuitive faculties, archetypal or subtle visionary experiences, or causal or nondual levels of awareness. 

As a stage of cognitive development or epistemology, the transrational involves the establishment of an abiding mode of interacting with the world, ordering experience, and acquiring or generating knowledge.  As such, it should not be confused with discrete altered state experiences which, in themselves, are questionable in terms of their capacity to deliver propositional knowledge.  Rather, it represents the evolution and integration of sophisticated human capacities for meaning-making, perspective-taking, and broad state access, with relevance to human well being functioning far beyond having access to transitory "mystical experiences."

I recall summer, firefly-lit evenings, being held in the arms of my father, inclining my eyes towards the vast expanse above me and falling headlong into it with the help of my father's questioning:  What do you think is out there, Bruce?  How far does it go?  Does it have an end?  If it doesn't, can you imagine infinite space?  If it does, what is the nature of that barrier?  Is there anything on the other side?   Is there life out there?  Will we ever meet it face to face ... ?

On those evenings, I did touch life in the stars: the wonder of infinite openness reflected in my child's mind, stretching the edges of my thought, illuminating their smallness against the vastness of an inviting mystery.

The sky stands as a living symbol above us, a reminder of what is yet unknown at the horizons of the famiiar, an invitation to openness in the midst of routine.  As Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche reminds us:

Today is my birthday, and I've been playing like a kid all weekend.  I took my son to see Speed Racer yesterday, and I probably enjoyed it as much as he did.  And now I've just written a Fairy Story for my niece, who will be turning six in a few days.  My sister told me she is planning to throw a Fairy-themed birthday party for her out in a local park, and asked me if I could create a Fairy story set in the park to provide the theme.  She gave me a few of the landmarks to work with -- the ruins of a mill, a field of daffodils, trails through the woods, a small lake with a long, thin island connected by a wooden bridge, a large flat rock, etc.  So, I sat down last night at my computer and this is what came out.  I had a lot of fun doing it, which inspires me to do more of this kind of thing for the children in my family...

 

Sara and the Secret Place

 

A long time ago, when all the roads were still dusty paths and the skies were bright and clear of smog, this park belonged to the Secret People.  No humans lived here or even dared to pass through - except for Sara, that is.  I'll tell you about her in a moment.  But first, about the Secret People:  these are the ancient ones who are almost gone now, the first creatures before humans were made.  These are the Fairies, and the Trolls, and the Rock Giants, and the Tree Gnomes; the creatures made, not of clay (like us humans), but of root and bark; of rock and crystal; of golden pollen and gossamer wings.  These are the people who live in the twilight, not the light of day; who walk only in the darkness, wearing poison mushroom caps and jackets made of moss; who live in the Catskill Mountains in cold caves with bats and giant spiders for pets.

And long ago, this park was a place where the Secret People used to meet to do their Secret Business: to gather rare flowers and red slimefrogs to put in the Fairies' soup of dreams; to dance with the purple wildermoths in the month of June; to fight off the wart goblins and the slobbering goons; and to hide away the children they stole from human homes by the light of the moon.

One such child was Sara, sister to Sam, daughter of the mayor in a city far away.  She was six months old when she was stolen, just a baby in the crib.  The Fairies had captured her in a bag made of spidersilk knotted with juniper berries.  They lifted her quietly and carried her out the window, across the hills, over the forests, and down to this secret meadow, where they left her, wrapped in a silky bundle, at the door of the Mill. 

Gildar the Rock Giant lived and worked all by himself in the Mill during those days.  He was 10 feet tall, and his head was as big as a boulder, and his hands were as strong as iron.  He had saved the fairies one night from an attack by the slobbering goons, who were sneaking across the old bridge from the island, to where the Fairies lived underneath the daffodils.  He doesn't know why he did it.  He was always quiet, and he always kept to himself.  But he liked to look from his window over to the daffodils, and so he got mad when he saw the slobbering goons coming with their pointy little swords to cut them down and attack the Fairies.  He roared and ran out of his house and leapt into the lake, and the huge wave splashed the goons off the bridge and swept them under water.  He used his huge hands and he scooped them up and threw them, one by one, far away from this Secret Place.

 

 

When he returned to the shore, the Daffodil Fairies cheered and thanked him for saving them.  When Daphne, the Queen of the Daffodil Fairies, asked him how they could repay him, he asked them for a human baby.  He was lonely and wanted someone to live with him and help him.  So the next night, the Fairies searched across the countryside and found a little girl, Sara, sleeping in a room upstairs in a farmhouse with the window wide open, and they captured her and laid her at his door.

And little human Sara grew up with Gildar the Rock Giant, who raised her as his own daughter.  When she was very young, she would play around the Mill, making mud pies and running in the field, and sometimes she would even play games with the Fairy and Gnome children, though she was bigger than they were and had to be careful not to squish them.  And when she got old enough to help around the house - around six years old - she began to help Gildar work in the Mill.  She would pour the grain on the stone and he would grind it with his huge, stonelike hands; and on weekends, she would carry it into the woods or the daffodil fields, where she would exchange it for gnome bread and fairy cookies and other tasty treats.

When she was seven years old, she was given a special green cookie with dragonfly wings on it by an old Fairy woman she had never seen before.  She thought she should show it to Gildar, since he always wanted to look at everything she got before she ate it, to make sure the Trolls weren't tricking her and giving her something dangerous.  But this time, she really wanted to eat the cookie and she was afraid the kindly Rock Giant might not let her, since no one knew who that old Fairy woman was.  So, Sara snuck over the bridge to Sliver Island and sat down under a tree to eat it by herself.  And when she did, something strange happened.  Her eyes turned bright green, just like the cookie, and dragonfly wings came out of her back.  She had become part-fairy!  What was Gildar going to say!

She walked home, her heart beating fast in her chest.  Oh, no, oh, no, she thought.  Father  is going to be really mad.  I can't see him like this.  So, she turned around, and instead she went to the Daffodil Field.  She picked up a dandelion, walked in a circle around the flowers, and then blew her wish:  Fairies!  Come Out!  And slowly, some of the flowers started to move, and the grass parted on a knotty old wooden door in the dirt, which opened to let the Fairies out.  (This is how you called the Fairies back then.  You can also stand in a circle and blow bubbles.) 

The Daffodil Fairies gasped in surprise and they started giggling when they saw her.  "You've become like us!" they said. 

"Yes," she replied.  "And Gildar is going to be mad.  Can you help me?"

"Why do you want to change back?" Dora, the daughter of Queen Daphne asked.  "Now that you are like us, you will never grow old!  You can live forever, and you can fly!"

"Well, I didn't listen to my father, Gildar.  He doesn't like me to eat anything without showing him first.  But that old Fairy woman gave me that green cookie, and it looked so good that I just had to eat it!  And now I'm afraid he will be really disappointed in me."

"You'd better talk to my mother," Dora said.  And she went back into the ground to get Queen Daphne.

When the queen floated up above the flowers, shining golden light all around her, she looked at Sara and smiled.  "So, now the girl is like us!"

"Yes, Your Majesty," Sara said.

"You have been tricked by one of us, Sara.  A fairy's heart is not like a human's.  We're all very sly and tricky.  I shouldn't help you at all.  But since you are the adopted daughter of Gildar, who saved us one day long ago, I will tell you something.  You are not his daughter, Sara, and you are also not one of us.  You can go home and talk to Gildar, and he will forgive you even if he gets mad.  But really, you are not a Rock Giant, Sara.  You are not a Fairy.  You are a human being.  If you want to return to the human world, you will need to seek out an old Indian shaman who lives on Sliver Island.  He keeps very hidden, and sometimes looks like a tree, sometimes like a stone.  But he's a magical human, and he can help you become human again.  Tell him what happened.  He will be able to give you a special mix of mystical gumberries which can break the old Fairy woman's magic spell."

Sara was surprised to learn she wasn't really Gildar's daughter.  She wondered what the human world was like.  She wanted to find out.

"Yes, Your Majesty," she said.  "That's what I will do."

After thanking the Fairies, she turned around and began walking towards the little bridge to Sliver Island.  She would have to look very carefully to find the shaman in his disguise.  She felt nervous but also a little excited.  Could he help her?  What was the human world like?  Did she have a real mom and dad?  She wondered about these things as she walked to the bridge.

 

 

What she didn't know was that Snog the Troll had been hiding and listening to her talk to the fairies.  Snog was a selfish, mean old creature who lived under the bridge, usually eating fish and frogs, sometimes scaring humans away when they tried to come to the Secret Place.  He did not like the idea of Sara returning to the human world.  So, he was going to stop her...

As Sara got to the bridge and set her foot on its first wooden plank, he leapt out of hiding and blocked her way.  "Go no further!" he said.  "No one crosses this bridge today!" 

"But I have something important to do!" she protested. 

"No buts, human girl!  You are mine now!"  And with that, he threw a net around her - the same net he used to catch frogs and fish - and he dragged her under the bridge, pushing her into the small, dirty cave where he slept.

And from that time on, no one has seen Sara.  Gildar the Rock Giant looked for her for many months, but he never could find her.  Her brother Sam grew up without her, but he heard she had been stolen by Fairies the night she disappeared, and he had looked for her ever since then.  He even came sometimes to the Secret Place to find her, but he could not find any trace of her.  He once met Gildar the Rock Giant, before Gildar got so lonely without Sara that he knocked the Mill down and went away to the mountains to live in a cave.  Gildar had told him how he'd raised her, and he told Sam that one day he might just find her here, so he should keep looking.  And Sam came every year to look, and he still comes now, when the daylight is full and the Secret People are hiding.  But he is old now - this year was his 95^th birthday - and soon he will be too weak to search anymore.  This may be his last year to try. 

He needs your help, children.  Only you know this sad story; only you know the details that can help young Sara be found.  (Remember!  She's part Fairy now and so she has never aged!)  If you can leave a copy of this story on Sliver Island by the secret shaman tree, the shaman might be able to learn what happened and prepare the mystical gumberries.  If you leave the gumberries on Table Rock for Sam, he might be able to bring them to his sister.  And if you can make a map or a sign, maybe Sam can find her hidden, after all these years, with Snog in a hole under the bridge...  Watch out for clues, and be careful of Troll traps.  Sara needs you!

Imagine all the events that are happening, right now, in a single moment, in the room where you are sitting.  Not just at the scale you are familiar with, but at different levels of magnitude, and in multiple dimensions (physical, emotional, mental).  How many different events and processes are contained in this small space, in this very moment?

Expand your perspective out to encompass the house or the building you are in ... the city ... the state or province ... the continent ... the planet ... the solar system ... the galaxy ... the universe.  How many events are happening right now, simultaneously, at all these distances and levels of magnitude, from the subatomic to the universal, from the material to the mental? 

There is no way to count everything that is happening in this single moment.  Even in the few square feet of this room, the vast number of simultaneous events is beyond our grasp.  What does this tell you about the fecundity and dynamism of time, the open allowingness of space?  A single moment can "hold" an infinite number of events. 

Now, think of all the forms of the events you've just reviewed - the infinite forms that space accommodates without obstruction, without limit...

How often do we really appreciate the miraculous fullness and freedom of our ordinary existence?

"Solid things, places, and directed processes seen on the first level become appreciated--in their second-level 'time' aspect--as being very fluid. This fluid quality is a central feature of 'time', which has been rendered more dry and friction-filled in order for us to play in a first-level way." ~ Tarthang Tulku

 

For several weeks now, ever since Julian posted his Simply Put series and I responded with a Simply Put entry of my own, Julian and I have been debating whether or not Wilber's writings on Integral Postmetaphysics and the myth of the given in Integral Spirituality open the door in the Integral community to relativism, magical thinking, pre/trans fallacies, and so on.  In a recent blog entry, Julian challenged me to write "a piece that puts IPM ideas in their proper context with regard to truth, falsity, pathology, stages of development, and left/right distinctions." 

This entry is my response to that challenge.  I am going to approach this somewhat informally, not presuming to speak on behalf of Wilber or the Integral community at large, but just talking about how I relate to these ideas in my own thought and practice.  For now, I will talk about how IPM handles the issues of truth, falsity, pathology, and left/right distinctions.  I will return to stages of development (which I believe are implicit in what I'm writing below) in a later entry, or in the comments section of this blog, if necessary.

Prelude

In my Simply Put entry, I wrote, "In Integral post-metaphysics, discussion of 'the real' can be understood as making a claim about how a given conperception will behave across a wide range of circumstances - we can count on it to operate in certain ways and be subject to certain kinds of confirmation."  To explain what I mean by this, I want to take a step back and say something about how I view AQAL and Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP).  To do this, I will appeal to a paper which is not part of the Integral literature, but which I believe is consonant with the aims of Integral Postmetaphysics:  A Cure for Metaphysical Illusions: Kant, Quantum Mechanics, and the Madhyamaka, by Michel Bitbol.  In it, Bitbol argues for a functional-operational integration of the three perspectives named in the subtitle of the essay. 

While AQAL is often discussed and, unfortunately, treated as a static map, I believe Integral Methodological Pluralism invites us to see it in more dynamic, enactive terms, as a sort of integrative operator.  In this conception, the constitutive paradigms of AQAL/IMP - science, philosophy, linguistics, religion, and so on - are themselves understood as operators rather than representational maps.  For instance, following Michel Bitbol's description, "scientific theories [are] operators of structuring our actions within the world and of anticipating their outcomes."  Science here is understood dynamically and enactively, not as a revealer of static, underlying, universal, pre-given truths, but as the product of the disciplined co-interaction of human subjects and the (indeterminate) wholeness of reality.  Similar enactive or operational readings can be given of other paradigms as well.  If we adopt this view, then AQAL, via Integral Methodological Pluralism, becomes, not simply a map of what is "already there," independent of all perspectives, but a higher order, creative enactment itself.  With regards to this notion, Bitbol makes a point which I think suggests a very helpful way to hold the whole project of Integral Methodological Pluralism: 

Insofar as [transcendental philosophy, quantum mechanics, and the Middle Way] are nothing but tools (operators), the three terms to be related must be taken as plastic and evolutive; each term has to be seen in the context of its history, of its potential developments, and of the dynamics of its possible coadaptation to the other terms rather than treated as a closed doctrinal system.

With this move, he outlines a fruitful integrative approach that avoids the problems of naïve representationalism and is quite consonant with the enactive perspectivism of Integral Postmetaphysics.

Truth and Falsity

If, as is suggested by the Integral Postmetaphysical approach, we abandon the idea of a single, pre-given world order for one and all and accept that everything in the phenomenal world that we can point to is, first and foremost, a perspective (or perspective-occasion, as Wilber sometimes puts it), what happens to the notions of truth and falsity?  Must notions of "truth" and "reality" be thrown out?  Clearly not -- not in a system such as AQAL which attempts to honor and integrate as many (relative) truths as possible.  But we will need to let go of any residual attachment we may have to the naive metaphysical realism that under girds popular understanding. 

From the perspective of scientific theories as operators, we can say that something is "objective" if certain relationships among phenomena can be observed universally, or across a stable range of circumstances, by active human subjects.  As Kant showed us, this invariant relational patterning of phenomena says nothing about "intrinsic properties" of things-in-themselves.  Because we cannot extract ourselves from the overall situation to adopt a view from nowhere, we can at best study the form given to phenomena by our cognitive apparatus.  But as developmental psychology and relativistic/quantum science have shown us, our cognitive apparatus is neither static in its organization nor endowed (as Kant had originally argued) with a priori forms which are valid at all levels of phenomenal reality.  The phenomenal world enacted by human beings is, in some important respects, enacted differently by human beings at different times and in different developmental or even cultural contexts, with no apparent perspective available that we can hope to appeal to as final or decisive.

Does this leave us stranded in a flatland, radical relativist swamp?

Not from the point of view of Integral Postmetaphysics.  But while, according to AQAL, all holons or perspective-occasions are understood to have an objective component (and therefore are not merely products of our psychology or our cultural conditioning), the way forward does not lie in finding a way to separate out the "factual part" from the "conventional / constructed part."  To imagine we can do so is to commit a fallacy of division.

Rather, as I suggested above, the postmetaphysical approach is an operational one: when we argue that something is real or true, we are making a claim about how a given conperception (a construct-perception) will behave across a wide range of circumstances.  We are saying that we can count on it to behave in certain ways and be subject to certain kinds of confirmation within a given set of operational parameters.  If a claim cannot be confirmed in these ways, we are justified in rejecting it as false.

Thus, as Wilber and Bitbol both suggest, if we take on board ...

*  The Madhyamaka critique of ontology (which demonstrates that, try as we might, we will not be able to find any self-existent things-in-themselves)

*  An operational or enactive approach to cognition and epistemology, such as Varela's autopoeisis or the Neo-Kantian transcendental philosophy of science (which proceeds by identifying invariants [objectivation] and distinguishing them from the noninvariant remainders of any perspective-occasion [subjectivation], without ever having to appeal to correspondence to an absolute, independent, pregiven reality)

*  The implications of postmodern science / quantum theory (which challenge us to reconsider our attachment to object ontology)

*  And the constructivism, contextualism, and integral aperspectivism of postmodern philosophy

... we will still be able to pursue rigorous scientific inquiry, make objective determinations, and differentiate true claims from false ones based on integrative operational procedures (which IPM situates in AQAL space).

Pathology

The above discussion was concerned mainly with truth, which in Integral Theory would be considered an Upper Right (singular objective) type of validity claim.  But Integral Postmetaphysics is equally concerned with other types of validity claims, from truthfulness (Upper Left) to rightness (Lower Left) to functional fit (Lower Right).  Pathology in an individual can be understood from any of these perspectives (UR neurophysiological disorders; LL intersubjective issues, such as family conflicts or problems; UL psychological disorders; and so on).  In my discussions with Julian, it appears he has mostly been concerned with left-hand manifestations of pathology ... and whether IPM undermines our ability to make sound determinations in this area.

Honestly, I am not clear why he expects this difficulty to arise.  It can't be the subjective or even intersubjective bias that I believe he fears may infect IPM, since psychological assessment of pathology is already an inter/subjective exercise.  Is it the nondual element?  If so, that need not pose a problem either: non-dual does not mean "all one, without distinctions"; it points to the radical interrelationship and co-determination of all phenomenal appearances.  This perspective can be seen as consonant, in some respects, with Object Relations theory, which has a sophisticated model for understanding the intersubjective generation of the object-relational self (e.g., a self which lacks inherent self-existence).  But although Object Relations theory is a constructivist approach, which like Buddhism understands self and object as interdependent and co-emergent, it still has no compunctions powerfully modeling the etiology of different forms of pathology, or suggesting constructivist ("structure building") interventions to alleviate suffering and dysfunction. 

If students of Integral for some reason come to the strange conclusion that a perspective grounded in nondualism, or which admits postmodern intersubjectivity, is incompatible with the notion of the existence of pathology, they need look no further tha Object Relations theory - if not Buddhism, which freely diagnoses Samsaric illnesses and prescribes spiritual and psychological cures.  They might also read Wilber's thoughts on the nature of UL pathology as set forth in Excerpt C of the Kosmos Trilogy:

Many psychological symptoms--interior feelings of anxiety, depression, phobia, obsession, compulsion--are the disguised forms of feelings and impulses that, for whatever reason, are too dangerous to the I-space to allow them to arise in their raw and naked forms, and thus they have to be "clothed" in more acceptable fashions. Put bluntly, the psyche lies to itself, becomes false to itself, is no longer being truthful about its own interiors--the price of which is psychological pain and suffering.

(Truthfulness, recall, is the selection pressure, or validity claim, of the UL quadrant. The types of psychopathology we are investigating here involve violations of this integrity or truthfulness, the price of which is psychological anguish, suffering, angst. When the self is untruthful, it damages its internality codes and boundaries, or the ways to tell with integrity what is true self and what is false self. A history of interior deception, untruthfulness, lying to oneself, deceiving oneself, is the beginning of the creation of a false-self system, the beginning of a kosmic habit as a negative karmic stream of dis-integrity that lives on lies. It is this false self we are briefly examining, which is not to say that other things aren't also happening with psychological dys-eases, including, e.g., UR neurotransmitter imbalances, LL family problems, LR economic factors, and so on. We are here simply focusing on the UL manifestation of the knot in the Kosmos identified as a "psychological symptom.")

In this example, an original feeling of "anger," which is not allowed by the self's agency, regime, or code (because it is a nice person), is mis-translated as "depression" and thus allowed to arise in the I-space as long as it is wearing that disguise, a disguise that is accompanied by suffering as the price of untruthfulness.

Wilber's perspective here does not depend for its validity on a commitment to metaphysical realism or foundationalism.  The diagnosis of pathology, in any of its guises, is something that can be handled operationally within the context of Integral Postmetaphysics, without being compromised - as Julian unnecessarily fears - by the fact that all such determinations are necessarily relative.

Left/Right Distinctions

By left/right distinctions, I believe Julian means a clear differentiation between the actuality of the physical world and the inter/subjective influences of personal history and culture.

Integral Postmetaphysics is neither solipsistic nor a form of subjective idealism.  It does not deny the existence of a world outside of or beyond the individual observer, nor does it suggest that the individual observer is solely "responsible for" or the generative source of that world.  The world is not merely a concept or belief.  However, following the Madhyamaka analysis and the insights of postmodern philosophy and science, IPM legitimately challenges the notion that this "external reality" consists of absolute, pre-given, abiding, self-existing objects.

Conventionally, we can still speak of "the world."  But from an Integral Postmetaphysical perspective, it is more appropriate to speak of world orders or worldspaces, since the four quadrants of AQAL, while distinguishable, are inseprable and always co-implicated, meaning that the world we interact with and describe is always "the-world-as-it-appears-to-this-subject-at-this-AQAL-address."  As perceptual relativists point out, individual objects do not exist independently of our conceptual models.  Objects represent particular patterning "cuts" that we impose on the whole of reality (implying that there are other ways the whole could be conceptually sliced and divided).  A cognitive scientist such as Francisco Varela might point out that there nevertheless appear to be objective constraints on how human beings carve up the world; that it is not wholly arbitrary, and that certain divisions appear to be nearly universal for human subjects, suggesting the impingement of culture-independent objective patternings.  Thus, even though we may not be able to separate the "factual" from the perspective-dependent or "conventional" aspects of any observed phenomenon, neither can we attribute the existence or "order" of the world solely to Lower Left, intersubjectivist patterns or influences.  The Right Hand quadrants cannot be reduced out of the picture, or subordinated to the whims and influences of the individual observer.

From the point of view of the Madhyamaka, and of IPM as well, neither the objects on the right hand or the subjective patterns on the left are inherently self-existing -- they are co-dependently originated, tetra-enacting, and thus, in the ultimate Buddhist analysis, "empty."  But emptiness is not a denial of existence; without this radical interdependence, no world order at all would ever appear or get off the ground.  Therefore emptiness does not constitute grounds for ignoring or dismissing the importance of either the subjective and objective dimensions of experience in human life.  To privilege one side over the other is to move in the direction of reification, metaphysical illusion, and potential pathology or disorder.