Nondual Community: The Flowering of Intersubjectivity (Part 3)

-a fine series of essays, Balder!

This distinguishing between, or recognizing the difference in, “nature” and “person”, I find extreamly valuable in my own sense of who, what and how we are.

This entry clarifies the previous one further, for me, in that “the public self” is not merely confined to (Walsh's) nature, or Mortimer Adler's “person as a locus of rights”, but can include ( as Fred Kaufman spoke of at an ISC event) the person as a locus of response-ability, a prime enacter of kenotic agape.

The nature/person distinction lept out to me as familiar having posted a similar discernment on a Multiplex thread (The Very Next Word, by Davidd). In that post “highest self” seems equal to Bruteau's person …”inseperable from this flowing wholeness”. In your summary, Bruteau's point, “transcendent persons have 'creative freedom' and in fact are charecterized by spontineity and authenticity ” also resonates with the instance of that old post. As soon as David's request entered my awareness I “knew” immediatly, and responded without hesitation.

Just as the content and context, the subject matter and experiential vessel, coincided beautifully in that instance, it seems to me that nature and person do both evolve interdependently, and that any binary, dual, polar framing of their irreducably rich dynamism will always fall short of accurate, immediate, direct living of them.

Thanks again Balder for this creative sharing of self/other,

jikishin

balder, this is breath-taking in its scope and depth. thank you so very much for directing me here (via the integral christianity pod)!

And McCarl on content and the transparent I, for me, echoes Tim's finishing flurry of qualifications that he topped off his blogopalooza piece with.

jiki

Hi B.,

Driving today, reflecting on your entry, a line of thought began. This had to do with wondering how we may be further establishing the kosmic grooves of quadrantial factors which may be potentiating, compounding the probaility of realizing, Communitarian Nondualism.

You wrote, “In this vision, the cosmos-community is seen as the child of the self-emptying love of the formless person-community. … ” , “… the unfolding of the world of form is the exterialization of this dynamic interiority.”

This “externalization” I began to relate to our use of what I once called ” the hardwares for the materialization of memory”, in which I included writen language, representational art, and recording technologies in general.

Another strand of this line was something George Leonard noted in his book, Transfomations. How there may be a unifying influence of concurrent, global experience of media.( He was writing of a release of a Beatles albumn, and the mass anticipation gratified with ready availability and participation in the grand, decentralized audience.)

Could this aspect of recent histiry, the snowballing of our capabilities to materialize memory and share exact patternings of perception, be contributing significantly to the realization of nondual community?

What of the pulse of litugical engagements? With more people attending religious services than sporting events..  How might these habits of communing (simply the convening regardless of content ) be carving the grooves of person-community, the apriori source, into the cosmos-community of nature, human rights, and sustainable resouce use?

-thoughts on thoughts,

jiki

You said of Bruteau:

“The person, in that sense, drops away.  In its place is an open clearing of dynamic, unqualifiable, creative presence.  But in Bruteau's view, it is this open presence itself that is the “person” - not as a fixed metaphysical entity like the atman or soul (that is another abstraction, a metaphysical construct), but simply as the self-affirming fact of subjective immediacy, a presencing which cannot be reduced either to a monolithic 'oneness' nor a fractured 'many.'”

I'd like contextualize this with your previous posts regarding Habermas, de Quincey and Mead. Bruteau's notion, along with Wilber's and de Quincey's (and yours), is that at root of intersubjectivity is this transcendent “spirit.” Or in the terms above, a “subjective immediacy” or 1st-person account. But I think Habermas' point (via Mead) is that there is no 1st person without being created from the outside via the 2nd person. In other words, the 1st person doesn't tecnically even exist before that socialization process.

Now yes, there is an “awareness” within a human being before it develops this 1st- person “self” via this 2nd-person socialization process. But before that there is no “I,” just diffuse, oceanic embeddeness. In other words, the “pre” of the pre-trans fallacy. So in a sense this positing of a transcendent self as originary in “subjective immediacy” is a sort of pre-trans fallacy because it suggest that this “subjective” immediacy, this “self,” was there to begin with and it was not. And certainly the Self (big S) was not.

Now once we attain an “I” through a “you” then we can begin to go trans I and you, in this I-I space Bruteau (and de Quincey and Wilber) speaks of. But I don't think it's accurate to speak of it as “subjective immediacy,” as that concept itself arises with the metaphyical philosophy of consciousness that Habermas and Wilber have so aptly criticized. Granted Bruteau attempts the same with her languaging of this “state” as an “open clearing of dynamic, unqualifiable, creative presence.” And I'd have to agree with that, except in the aspect of “presence,” the latter of which IS a metaphysical contstruct, as is “immediate experience.”

Now there is quite a bit of debate on that last statement between the cosmological and the poststructural postmodern camps, with Whitehead and Derrida as the titular representatives. I'm exploring this very topic right now at Open Integral (www.openintegral.net). I do not have the answer, just a lot of questions at this point, and I'm exploring a book there on how boths camps might find some rapprochement on such subtle and significant issues.

But some tentative conclusions that are emerging for me at this point from that reading (and related sources) is that 1) Wilber's characterization of Derrida, deconstruction is way off-target due to his 2) siding with the cosmological (or what he and they term “reconstructive” postmodernism) when 3) the editors of the book (and others) think that it is not an either/or choice (how 1st tier!) between them but their “integration,” so to speak, using postformal thinking wherein lies the next generation of “integral.”

As Wilber said in Integral Spirituality (draft) regarding the myth of the given, pp. 207-8:
 

–the belief that the consciousness of an individual will deliver truth. This is why

Habermas calls the myth of the given by the phrase “the philosophy of consciousness”-

and that is what he is criticizing because it is blind to intersubjectivity, among other

things. As we have been saying throughout this book, consciousness itself simply cannot

see zones #2 and #4, and therefore is deficient in and of itself (e.g., “Not through

introspection but through history do we come to know ourselves”). You can introspect

all you want and you won't see those other truths. So consciousness itself is deficient-

whether personal or transpersonal, whether pure or not pure, essential or relative, high or

low, big mind or small mind, vipassana, bare attention, centering prayer, contemplative

awareness-none of them can see these other truths, and that is why Habermas and the

postmodernists extensively criticize “the philosophy of consciousness.”

Yes, I'd agree with your last statement that even this “transparent I” is not primordially present but emerges in development. What does seem to be primordially present though is “awareness.” We are aware from the start but not aware of “I.” But even using a word like “transparent” for it, and the notion that the “I” is “transcendent,” is postmetaphysically problematic. It seems to me that the “I” in a 1st-person reflexivity that emerges via the processes elaborated by Habermas et al. Interpreting it as “trans”personal or transcendent seems to arise from the perennial traditions upon exploring this self-reflexivness without yet having the benefit of the poststructurualist perspective. Hence Ken's PM critique of the myth of the given which includes even a “transcendent” consciousness per above. It might be that the very nature of the I's reflexiveness is due to its inherent mirror-like nature, that we cannot “see” it directly because of more accurate intepretations like Habermas's. 

Now one question might be: what is “awareness?” It is a given that is apparent even before the “I,” and this seems to go all the way down, even to physical particles (atoms) that are “aware” of their external environments, at least in that they “respond” to them. Whatever it is it certainly seems to be inherent in the very nature of “form.” But is there a true “interiority” without a sense of “I?” Is “awareness” also “consciousness?” Even Whitehead doesn't make this conflation. He attributes this primordial awareness to causal efficacy, which even inanimate “actual entities” possess. Consciousness per se, for Whitehead, doesn't emege until “higher integrations in the fourth phase of concrescence.”*

I guess one of the things I'm trying to day is that it's easy to conflate “spirit” with “awareness” and “consciousness” but perhaps they are not the same. But what then?

* http://www.hyattcarter.com/glossary.htm

I don't know much about Whitehead; I'm just now exploring him at Open Integral through the book Process and Difference referenced above. So not sure yet about him and God. So far it seems his notion of God though is quite different that the “usual,” given his non-foundational agenda. I'm also not sure about the necessity of metaphysical entities yet. I am now, as usual, “in process” on these matters.

scimming this thread of comment…  now I'm wondering if there is

an agency aspect to Zones 1, and 3, 
…a communal aspect to Zones 2 and 4,
…a communal aspect to Zones 5 and 7,
…and an agentic aspect to Zones 6 and 8  ?

Anyone else see this ?

jiki

Re: Whitehead and the above you might find this interesting:
 

Mooney, Timothy (1999), “Deconstruction, Process and Openness: Philosophy in Derrida, Husserl and Whitehead” at http://www.ucd.ie/philosophy/staff/Mooney/decproopen.pdf

Whitehead calls the most primitive form of perception causal efficacy. It is the vague, ill-defined awareness of the wider environment and of our living bodies as its receptors which is involved in all seeing or hearing or touching. This level of awareness is responsible for our sense of continuity with nature and identification of our bodies with ourselves.

What we usually take as perception has the form of presentational immediacy. This is relatively clear and distinct, but only because it is an ‘active forgetting' which filters out most of the vagueness and complexity of causal efficacy. On Whitehead's account, the abstractive world of presentational immediacy has its origin in the inherited world of the immediate past, as mediated by the still more immediate past of antecedent bodily functioning.

Like Derrida, however, Whitehead notes that this immediacy does not amount to simple presence. For one thing, perception involves ‘symbolic reference' - whatever is presently experienced goes beyond itself, invoking a proximate future of anticipation as well as the proximate past. For another, it is invariably interpreted through a complex of ideas or conceptual scheme which of itself alone precludes our chancing upon a pure given. And we can no more have an adequate conception of a worldly thing than capture it in intuition. Our conceptions of worldly objects are inadequate, he argues, in that they lead us to concentrate on some of their characteristics whilst passing over others, and in that novel experiences hold out the possibility of modifying these very concepts (which informed previous perceptual acts).

Whitehead understands consciousness as a complex outgrowth of more basic, embodied experiences - it presupposes such experiences and not the other way round. By the same token he avoids the term ‘mind', which he regards as carrying unfortunate connotations of independence.  On his account, moreover, self-presence is given no primordiality - we do not initiate thought by an effort of self-consciousness - it is rather the case that ‘[w]e find ourselves thinking, just as we find ourselves breathing and enjoying the sunset'. So far as I know, Whitehead has no worked-out doctrine of reflexive and pre-reflexive self-acquaintance (though the latter could easily be read into the notion that we feel ourselves in causal efficacy). When he considers consciousness in general, however, he rules out any possibility of undifferentiated awareness:

Much of the above, despite its naturalistic reference to measurable time, is in accord with Derrida's description of self-presence. Further agreement is found in Whitehead's claim that there ‘is no definite area of human consciousness, within which there is clear discrimination and beyond which mere darkness'. Whitehead might not fully concur with Derrida's argument that the admission of the other into the present moment is the admission of nonevidence as well as nonpresence, but he certainly anticipates the latter in denying any privileged zone of transparency in consciousness.

Indeed it does Bruce. However I think Whitehead does make an exception for “God,” which might be his version of satori. I'm pretty sure that Derrida though does not make this exception, nor does Habermas. And this is where I find the metaphysical loophole in Ken's otherwise postmetaphysical project.

Regarding the “agency” or “subjectivity” aspects of zones, I'll provide another quote below from the Mooney article. It seems Whitehead allows for “subjectivity” via prehension, although it's certainly not mind, consciousness or even sensation proper. (Nor satori, for that matter.)
 

The relations which enable an actual entity to develop are called ‘prehensions', a

neologism used by Whitehead to convey his claim that they are found at all levels of reality and need not involve consciousness or life.48 Prehensions are the various ways in which actual entities register data from their fellows in other times and places. This can involve the inclusion of a datum, which is the  preserve of a ‘positive prehension' or ‘feeling'. It can also involve a specific act of exclusion or ‘negative prehension'. Even here a minimal relation is established between two entities, since a datum must be encountered in some way in order to be excluded. According to Whitehead:

“Each actual entity is analysable in an indefinite number of ways. In some modes of analysis the component elements are more abstract than in other modes of analysis. The analysis of an actual entity into ‘prehensions' is that mode of analysis which exhibits the most concrete elements in the nature of actual entities….. …..any item of the universe, however preposterous as an abstract thought, or however remote as an actual entity, has its own gradation of relevance, as prehended, in the constitution of any one actual entity:

it might have had more relevance; and it might have had less relevance, including the zero of relevance involved in the negative prehension; but in fact it has just that relevance whereby it finds its status in the constitution of that actual entity.”

Actual entities might never absorb other entities in their entirety, but their prehensions are nonetheless internal relations that hold within as well as between them.50 There are similarities discernible here between the network of prehensions constituting each thing and the structure of différance, and in Derridean fashion Whitehead does not regard a prehension as a simple operation of productive spontaneity or passive receptivity - the character or ‘subjective form' peculiar to each prehension is a product not just of the prehending subject but also of those determinations in the object prehended.51

Every actual entity enjoys subjectivity in that it prehensively emerges from a

background world and possesses a unique perspective on that world.52 Now within the confines of this essay I cannot give an account of the differences between the more basic actual entities and the complex ‘societies' of such entities which compose animals and humans.53 But what is found throughout Whitehead's work, as already intimated, is a rejection of soul-substantialism - subjectivity is an ongoing process of becoming in which no being can lie underneath or endure apart from its experiences or thoughts.54 When he turns to the topics of sense-perception and consciousness, he makes it clear that these are derivative operations precluding simple presence.

And for an alternative view of  “no view” see this thread at OI:

From Postmetaphysical Thinking 4 at http://www.openintegral.net/blog/?p=107

Recall from Braitsten above that both Nagarjuna and Derrida emphasize that emptiness is beyond views or perspectives and is itself not a view or perspective. But neither is it a “consciousness” without a perspective or a “pure perception” as Ken defines it. Hence the former places perspectives in an indeterminate context whereas the latter has a determinate and absolute consciousness at its root, a la vedanta, vajrayana and yogacara. There is a big difference here (or is that differance?) with practical implications and consequences.

Hi Balder,

“Can [I] tell [you] in what way [I] see a 'communal' aspect in Zones 2 and 5?”

In saying “aspect” of a Zone, I was thinking in terms of a Zone's center of gravity, or primary focus, not that Zones operate through any mode exclusivly.

(My notion of aspects began when reflecting on the partiality of the statement  ” Not through introspection but through history do we come to know ourselves.”)

Zone 5: Behavioral Interiority. To have a body is to have a history. To have a history is to embody, to incarnate, specific relatedness to entities. To embody relatedness is communal.
If Zone 5 enfolds the personal involutionary inheritance of the exterior, I would say that this content is, to whatever degree, available to the exterior agency (Zone 6) of the person.

For Zone 2 being seen as communal I would apply the same criteria of relatedness. That 1p X 2p = communal. Prior to structure, prior to self/other relation, communal aspects remain potential. Introspection itself I'd call an agency, or requiring agentic intentionality, but it's hardly communal until a knock is answered. Zone 2 is a zone of answered knocks (be it the knocks of the cosmos, or person-community). The exterior of the interior of the individual, I'm seeing as meeting place of entity and context. Even prior to intersubjectivity, the space that holds the valence of 1st person, the beginning of the communal, and the first field of manifestation of agency. I know I'm supposing a syntax of flow, but that's how I think of it now.

Writing this, it occurs to me to ask if an agency of one Zone may be an instrument of communion in another Zone.

Thanks for the grist and the prompt,

jiki

Some of Wilber's comments on the topic of intersubjectivity (IS), Whitehead and nondualism follow. As you can see he is adamant about the “absolute” variety of IS as espoused by the “nondual tradition.” You can also see that he characterization of this direct, immediate perception of “it” arises in “consciousness” and “presence.” Whereas I argue (as do many others) that this is not at all what Nagarjuna's version of nonduality looks like or says, and that Derrida is on to the same idea. As is Whitehead in his “non-foundational” aspect.

Granted this is older material, but much of it is reiterated in Integral Spirituality, especially Ken's “dual” nonduality.
 

Ken in Appendix A of “Do critics misrepresent my position?” at http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/critics_04.cfm/

… we needed to supplement immediate empirical knowing (or even immediate conceptual knowing) with interpretive, dialogical, paradoxical, ambiguous, intersubjective awareness, an intersubjectivity that is not just a result of the interaction between a prehending subject and other prehending subjects, but rather forms the priorly existing space or field in which both subject and object arise, after which, the subject then prehends the object in Whiteheadian process terms.

And ultimately, that intersubjectivity itself can exist–that is, subjects can participate in each other's immediate presence–because the agency of each subject opens directly onto nondual Spirit or pure Emptiness, so that, as I often put it, the agency of each holon acts as an opening or clearing in which other holons can manifest to each other, and that opening or clearing itself is (in part) a product of the four quadrants, so that a holon's culture (LL quadrant) is always already an intrinsic part of the holon's prehension of any objects.

Thus, even in Whitehead's notions of concrescence and prehensive unification, I do not detect a vivid understanding of strong intersubjectivity. Rather, using a merely Whiteheadian process philosophy, one must construct intersubjectivity (and true dialogical experience) from a repeated application of prehensive unifications and concrescences, all of which are to some degree after the fact. I believe this hampers Whiteheadian process philosophy from becoming a truly integral philosophy. By adopting a quadratic, instead of limited dialogical, approach, I am not denying Whitehead but enriching him.

(Note also that because Whitehead does not write about the nondual wave of awareness, his writing does not have a solution to aspect #3b of the mind-body problem, either; and thus, once again, by moving to an AQAL formulation this final aspect of the mind-body problem can likewise be solved. I am aware of no other approach that offers plausible solutions to all four aspects of the mind-body problem.)

There is, finally, the “ultimate” meaning of the mind-body problem (#3b) and its relation to “ultimate intersubjectivity.” I maintain that any sort of genuine and immediate intersubjectivity can only be derived from nondual consciousness or nondual Spirit. The reason is that, in the relative or manifest dimension, there is no simultaneous subject-to-subject presence, as Whitehead clearly explained. Whitehead pointed out that any actual occasion can only prehend its descendents, not its contemporaries. The reason is that every form of communication from one subject to another must enter the stream of time and travel to the other subject; by the time it reaches the other subject, the immediate present is gone, and thus the other subject prehends only the past (perception and memory being essentially synonymous). Thus, for Whitehead, there is no simultaneous Presence for any two subjects.

This is where the nondual traditions have much to offer. For these traditions, simultaneous subject-to-subject presence is possible because ultimately there is only one Subject (Atman, Buddhamind, Godhead). This means that each subject in the relative, manifest dimension, although prevented from having simultaneous presence in the relative realm (for precisely the reasons outlined by Whitehead), nonetheless possesses an immediate subject-to-subject simultaneous Presence in the ultimate or nondual dimension. Because there is ultimately only one Subject, then genuine intersubjectivity on the relative plane has an ultimate grounding. The reason is exactly as Erwin Schroedinger, cofounder of quantum mechanics, put it: “Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown.” Because there is only one “nondual Mind,” then all relative minds can possess immediate “touching” or simultaneous Presence, something that Whitehead's view cannot explain or even allow.

Thanks Edward,

That is very helpful.
Im no longer likely to write, “..even prior to intersubjectivity”, again.
What you've added is precisely relevant to my current concerns.

jiki

Balder,

You’re right that it’s an old argument but what’s new about it is the intersubjective revolution. As Ken criticized in IS, these Buddhists (or any of the perennial tradition, as welll as modern phenomenologists), while using community validation, didn’t have the insights of pomo “about” intersubjectivity and hence made some serious assumptions without awareness of their cultural context. And without that insight they didn’t recognize that the very nature of the “I” arises from the process of socialization, from the outside, per Habermas and Mead. The source of the mysterious “witness” is not ultimate Spirit but natural, developmental self-reflexivity in relation to an other. That really does change everything.

Jiki,

Could you articulate how the material I provided was relevant to your questions about the zones?

Edward,

You gave a needed lead regarding the play of noduality and agency, and reminded me not to omit the cultural intersubjective even while refering to upper quadrants.

(KW)…” the agency of each subject opens onto nondual Spirit or pure Emptiness, so that, the agency of each holon acts as an opening or clearing in which other holons can manifest to each other, and that opening or clearing itself is (in part) a product of the four quadrants…”

Just begining to see how what came all-at-once (re: a/c dynamics in zones) might relate to Nondual Community, I hadn't noticed the role of the nondual yet, but only saught the relative contours of what might apply to both this blog, and my fledgling grasp of(or grasping at) the actual topics.

You mentioned Whitehead's(via KW), ” In the relative, or manifest dimension, no simultaneous subject-to-subject presence…”

which was a point I made earlier among the comments on Balder's series here. One that I arrived at, independent of Whitehead, directly, through state training some twenty years ago. Although the context of the insight, in my case, was a Zen monastery, I don't know that that's a common Mahayana understanding. I did not find an agreeing consesus in the resident sangha. 

So the relevance of what you provided, Edward, was both by way of correction and affirmation.

Thanks again,

jiki

Hi Balder,
Have you guys read Andrew Cohen's latest blog on his website? I have been longing for this intersubjectivity to come alive between people that are willing to push towards a unified living experience. One that many of us has tasted and seen through our “awakenings”, by ourselves or together with others. Acceptance and love will take down barriers but to reach beyond needs, I believe, commited participation. In Christianity there is a communial experience of the Holy Spirit through each and every ones living faith in Jesus, but more often than not, it is not pursued and pushed into the forfront of our everyday lives. We experience a communion that is bigger than all of us but then “go back” to our personal experience.
If we have tasted our fundamental non-difference, our true common ground, then I would love to live as that with others. But because it's not a steady occurance in our society we are actually pushing evolution into a new level of union between us. Love has always been the binding faculty among humans to come together and to resolve our differences. Now is the time when love has to become a living realm in which we exist. live and breath.
Andrew is pushing for this to happen and his students are describing the unfolding of it as they give their lives to participate in this. I believe this helps us to sort our our understanding in regards to something that is very very rare and help us move into such a communion among people who we share our lives with.

Understanding is essential as otherwise it will be left as a feeling experience. Understanding that it is an already potential union between us and for us to “experience” that together in a joint seeing, we need to align our efforts to realize what stands in our way, our own idea of separation.

The beautiful thing with the Holy Spirit in Christianity is that it bypasses the mind and its intellectual understanding and speaks directly to the heart of the “believers” and we feel communion in our bones and marrow, together with others. It caters to all alike. No need to be hyper smart in order to taste its liberating effect on the individual. Bringing us out of a personal hell into a larger communal awareness that is more true to our fundamental make up. Now, to incorporate our mind and understanding is essential in order to take it further but to share this common ground all we need to begin with is a surrendered heart.

To share in our inherent Oneness we need to accept that that is our very true nature.

Best regards,
Bjorn

Thanks for the link and article Balder. I just read the intro and first section, which supposedly refutes the notion of the social creation of the self because via meditative quiescence we arrive at “a 'ground of becoming' from which all active mental processes arise.” Ken and others critique this because of the lack of awareness in traditional Buddhism of the psychodynamic development of the personal ego. It seems Wallace (and his Buddhists) take for granted certain foundational personal developments that are required in order to even begin to practice meditative quiescence. Do you think that a 2-year old, for example, could take up this practice (in any culture)? A 6-year old? At what age generally do you think this practice is relevant and why not before then? If not before then it this “ground of becoming” inherent or cultivated?

Oh, invincible or just ignored? Hmmm…

Well I'll just let you guys get on with it.

Cheers,

Hear hear
Om mani padme hum

Now that taken to be realized among many, together, at the same time, brings about wonderous communion.

Perhaps you (plural) can help me understand something(s). I think this inquiry is relevant to the thread “nondual community” because 1) we are trying to understand these nondual issues communally; 2) part of the issue of primordial awareness might hinge on its communal development; and 3) the very idea of nondual community might just be a “postmodern” development in nonduality, per Cohen.

If we accept that Ken no longer puts the states (subtle, causal and nondual) above the stages in development because they are not higher stages, and his claim that those states (including the nondual) are interpreted by the stages, and that there are indeed higher stages than turquoise (3rd-tier), then I have a few questions.

It appears Ken says in IS that the traditional Buddhist interpretation of the states is not yet from at least the green stage, let alone teal or turquoise. (But in another place he contradicts this saying some Buddhist doctrines are indigo stage. I don't have time to refeence both of the above but might later.) So if the “usual” Buddhist interpretations of the “primordial awareness” are not only pre-3rd tier but even pre-2nd tier stage, then what would a turquoise or indigo interpretation of these states look like? And who is qualified to provide them? We don't have such interpretations in IS that I can find. 

The following excerpts are from the draft of Integral Spirituality. The pagination is different from the printed book, but having perused the book I can tell you that most of the draft survives in the book verbatim.

From IS:

A second problem quickly compounded that one. If “enlightenment” (or any sort of unio

mystica) really meant going through all of those 8 stages, then how could somebody 2000 years ago be enlightened, since some of the stages, like systemic GlobalView, are recent emergents? (107)

It allowed us to see how individuals at even some of the lower stages of development-such as magic or mythic-could still have profound religious, spiritual, and meditative state experiences. Thus, gross/psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual were no longer stages stacked on top of the Western conventional stages, but were states (including altered states and peak experiences) that can and did occur alongside any of those stages. (110)

(What was so doubly confusing to us is the fact that, as indicated on fig. 6, there are also

3 or 4 higher structures beyond the centaur, and they have similar-sounding characteristics as these 3 or 4 higher states, which made it almost impossible to spot the differences. (110)

Anybody familiar with the monastic traditions, East and West, from Zen to Benedictine, will recognize those souls who might be quite spiritually advanced in Underhill's sense (very advanced in contemplative illumination and unification) and yet might still have a very conformist and conventional mentality-sometimes shockingly xenophobic and ethnocentric-and this goes, unfortunately, for many Tibetan and Japanese meditation masters. Although they are very advanced in meditative states training, their structures are amber-to-orange, and thus their available interpretive repertoire is loaded by the Lower-Left quadrant with very ethnocentric and parochial ideas that pass for timeless Buddhadharma. (E.g., according to his secretary, the Dalai Lama believes homosexuality is a sin, anal sex is a sin, oral sex is bad karma, etc.-when everybody knows that oral sex is not bad karma, only bad oral sex is bad karma…. But these sadly are typical mythic-amber beliefs.) (117-18)

In the meantime, Asian meditation teachers, with a LL-quadrant that is heavily amber, or mythic-membership, and hence “non-egoic” in the sense of PREinvidualistic, and therefore used to having students simply obey them unhesitatingly and in a conformist-stage fashion, don't quite know what to do with individualistic-stage Westerners, whose LL-quadrant is loaded orange-to-green. (118)

…many of the great contemplative texts, sutras, and tantras were written in the cognitive line from at least the turquoise and often indigo or violet levels. (127)

As my inquiry is getting to be a bit broader than the intent of this blog entry, I've posted it under “Indigo Buddhism” in the I-I Zaadz site, as well as Open Integral and Lightmind Forum. Please visit there for further discussion, thanks.

Hi Bruce,
I wish I had more time but these days it's impossible for me to devote these issues the time they deserve, and write down at least an attempt at serious analysis.

As you mention elsewhere, the WCLattice or Matrix may or may not be sufficient, but that's not the point, I believe. What it does, however, is amazing. The same goes for KW's “ladder” or vertical fulcrums of growth and transformation. It's important to limit any model to what it does, or at least what it strives to achieve. The WCL, specifically, aims to delineate structure-stages and state-stages, and that results in a matrix of at least a dozen probable realization-complexes. I say “complexes”, because these may become deeply problematic if the distinction between structure and stage stabilization is not understood correctly. Of course, the lattice will not “explain” various issues, since it only demonstrates the basic distinction. Some issues only become available once we accept the basic proposition of the WCL.

As to Integral Buddhism (or specifically, Integral Mahamudra, Integral Zen, Integral you-name-it), at this point it's just a whisper, and for some of us a promise, a challenge…  Patrick Sweeney holds that the issue of hierarchy presents such a challenge. When people gather to practice, they organize a mandala of transformation, wherein the mandala of confusion is realized to be the mandala of awakening. In order to
effectively deliver such a transformation, the teacher aided by students must establish a hierarchy of principles and representations to serve as an external transformational setting, itself an enactment of an inner transformative potential. The “guru” is brought into the post-metaphysical context along with the principles of purification, transformation and spontaneous awakening.

It's seems obvious what Ken Wilber proposes from his book “Integral Spirituality”, but the details should be developed by lineage-holders and senior practitioners in each lineage, who are at home both in the integral view and practice, as well as the esoteric core of their respective traditions.

Are there specific issues you had in mind?

Hokai

Hey, Bruce. From what I've seen at the “indigo” thread (I wonder who came up with that title, sure of themselves when it comes to something like “indigo”), Theurj uses altitudes as if they were one thing, such as in the following statement, “assuming that Nagarjuna and Padmasambhava and even the current Dalai Lama are not indigo level, then we must take their interpretations of their state experiences as the interpretations of a lower level”. Let's counter this misconception by using just integral concepts. You can never really say someone is or isn't any level, because (1) there are levels and lines, and (2) because there is frontal structure, deeper psyche and witness, which make the distribution of identity a complex issue, and (3) because the COG itself, even if we locate it accurately, may oscilate depending on a variety of conditions. There are huge differences among great Buddhist masters of old in terms of being conservative or progressive, public and private statements etc., and so it is today. Further, speaking of “rationality” as some single entity is also quite mistaken. What “rationality” arose in India and Greece (that was an elite philosophical discipline), has not much to do with what “rationality” we have today (this is a mainstream worldview that excludes transrational methodologies) etc. etc.

Now to emtpiness and everything :-) As far understanding emptiness is concerned, every school of buddhadharma understands it a little differently, but the core insight is always there, i.e. nonexistence of an absolute reference, that is, a radically open clarity endowed with spontaneous responsiveness. Even for the historical Buddha,

    “Bhikkhus, this mind is luminous, but an uneducated ordinary person does not know that it is luminous and this luminous mind can become impure, defiled by adventitious defilements.”

Sectarian rivalry and endless doctrinal disputes should not confuse us. As to Tibetan Buddhism, Shentong reconciled the different streams long ago. Yes, most teachings on the nature of mind are outdated in their style of presentation and their mode of argumentation. But that doesn't make them “wrong”, just dusty. Primordial and unborn are still beautiful words, but obviously not for everyone. There used to be a time when not everyone would even know such teachings exist. And not everyone could comment on whether it's outdated. First you receive the teachings, then you study the teachings, then you practice and realize the teachings, and then you may comment the teachings. It's still true, and not outdated. As to the buddhanature being “emergent” and dependent on socially constructed subject-object distinctions… well, buddhanature has at least two distinct aspects - one absolute, one relative. One primordial, one developmental. And both are ascertained directly.  However, even when we discuss the relative part (assuming we have some direct experience), what is discussed in the tradition may be in rather different altitudes, but always indicating a progression in state-stages, not an explicit (or even a recognized) progression in structure-stages (structures where not known then in traditions, but are known today in these same traditions. i.e. what we call “traditions” as historical accumulations, should be known as “lineages”, and they are carried on as they continue to evolve even as we speak). So the socially constructed relations are left as found, not engaged - this is, of course, a contemplative path to awakening, not an armchair discussion. What that means for someone's understanding of emptiness, is quite beyond me, since that would depend on how one utilizes the methodology.

I agree there are many dull-witted, unimaginative, uninventive presentations of dharma, and I'm not talking of old documents, but of contemporary expositions, current and normative today in the West. That betrays a problem, not what Tsongkhapa or Dogen wrote and what that really means.

As to the guru, you know this I'm sure but I'll spell it anyway. There is the guru as master, and there's the inner guide. The deity may signify both simultaneously. It is a challenge, but a wonderful one, to bring the guru yoga practice into the present culture in a creative manner, truly integrating timeless wisdom and post/modern knowledge. In this we cannot rely on ancient handbooks. We need to dissolve the guru institution in order to reform the guru yoga and deity yoga itself, and that can only be done by authentic teachers leading the way. Frankly, it's a long and painful process and many people in positions of authority are not helping.

Having individual mystics with fresh formulations is one thing. Reforming institutions and the way the teachings of a lineage are practiced and apllied en masse is something entirely different.

Hokai

Apologies for interrupting this amazing discussion , but I just logged into Bruce's blogpost tonight, and I had to say that the post itself was luminous to me, transportive, ecstatic! Thank YOU so so much,  Bruce!

Ok, you guys go back to theorizing… ;P

*paw* (which you can visualize as a checkered lion paw going up like a high five)

Bruce thank you for indulging my ignorance! ofcourse I missed that BB was representative of a metaphysical approach and not a post-metaphysical one. At what point is the “myth of the given” dangerous? I have heard Andrew Cohen talk about the “God principle” and isnt he “integral” and hence post-metaphysical? kw talks and writes about “Eros” which sounds alot like a euphemism for God as well doesnt he? I hope you will enlighten me :)

Love,
J

I've always been a bit bothered by  worldviews in which “transcendent enlightenment” is considered a developmental goal or destination, because it implies that the developmental
disposition of one individual or tradition or culture may be considered superior to others.

This is why the ideas posited in this essay appeal to me.  In Bruteau's realization that transcendent “realization of oneness” leads to selfless service to others, one may see that through the connectedness, serving others is actually another manifestation of serving self.  After all, if I'm connected to the whole, and I seek transcendence, then my ability to transcend is tied to the transcendence of the whole, so it becomes important for me to
serve the whole so that I might achieve transcendence as part of the whole. 

This realization may lead to a sort of egalitarian humility, and understanding that in the context of the true infinity of transcendence, every member of the whole is at an equal level of development and enlightenment, whether servingt self overtly in a physical sense, or serving self in a subverted sense through the service of others. 

This differs a bit from Plato's idea of rising to the level of the gods, and then finding one's self back among the ignorant masses who only perceive shadows, to help them look beyond the shadows.  Rather than the Platonic model, this says that our aspirations  towards transcendence help us to humbly realize our connectedness, solidarity, and equality with the masses, the whole, and in this realization, we recognize a necessity to serve individuals within the whole.