Ashes and Snow 1

The fundamental intuition behind the Integral approach - "Everybody is right" - is one that has been around a long time.  One of the central tenets of Jainism, for instance, is anekantavada, which is variously translated as non-absolutism, non-one-sidedness, or non-one-perspectivism.  This principle holds that no single language, conceptual model, or perspective is capable of disclosing the fullness of Being, and that multiple perspectives must be held together, as the many facets of the jewel of Spirit, if we wish to understand and appreciate the richness of reality.

This principle has classically been illustrated with the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant.  In this story, the blind men, encountering an elephant for the first time, fall into a dispute over the nature of the beast, each having seized on a different part of the animal.  The one touching its leg insists that an elephant is like a pillar; the one touching its tail argues that it is like a rope; the one with his hand on its side proclaims that it is like a great wall.  When a wise man comes along, he settles the dispute by pointing out that each of the men is right, but only partially so: the elephant indeed has features that resemble a rope, a wall, a pillar, a tree branch, a hand fan, and so on, but the elephant as it is in itself can only be appreciated when all of these things are perceived together as an integrated whole.

For a modern Integral approach, this story is still a good way to communicate the basic orientation of Integral Methodological Pluralism, but it is also in need of updating.  A simple way to illustrate how the Integral approach differs from a classical perspective like anekantavada is to look at the parable in relation to Wilber's three heuristic principles: nonexclusion, unfoldment, and enactment.

Ashes and Snow 7

Nonexclusion

The principle of nonexclusion is closest in spirit to Jainism's non-absolutism or non-one-perspectivism.  As the wise man in the parable settles the dispute of the blind men by pointing out the partial validity of each of their perspectives, the principle of nonexclusion allows for the validity of multiple paradigms while preventing them from passing judgment on the truths of other paradigms.  Just as the man holding the tail cannot rightly pronounce on the truthfulness of the other man's description of the elephant's ear, because he is accessing a different range of phenomena, a particular paradigm, in itself, should not be used to deny the validity of phenomena called forth by a different paradigm.  Nonexclusion and anekantavada thus both share the aim of encouraging tolerance of multiple viewpoints - freeing paradigms by limiting them (to their relative spheres of competence), and effectively encouraging a spirit of collaborative effort.

Unfoldment

According to the principle of unfoldment, there is a vertical as well as a horizontal dimension to the partiality of perspectives.  This is illustrated in the Jain parable when the wise man points out not only that each of the individual perspectives is correct, but by implication, that there is a fuller, integrated perspective which transcends and includes them.  The wise man's perspective is arguably more adequate than any of the individual blind men's perspectives on the nature of the elephant.

Drawing on Whitehead's notion of the prehensive unfolding of moments, where each moment includes (prehends) the previous one while also allowing for the emergence of creative novelty, Wilber argues that paradigmatic enactments similarly unfold in time, allowing for understanding to continue to grow and develop.  Thus, while the blind man touching the elephant's side might first describe it as a wall, as he continues to attend to it, he may notice details which differ from his initial impression: there are hairs which emerge from the rough-textured surface; the "wall" continually contracts and expands, as one's abdomen also rises and falls, and sometimes shivers dramatically; and so on.  Taking the same perspective again and again - holding his hand to the elephant's side - he slowly develops an increasingly comprehensive picture, an evolving view which may eventually undermine the original perspective, revealing its inadequacy.  Here, the limitation of understanding is discovered within a given perspectival approach, over the course of its own evolutionary unfolding, rather than through the recognition of the existence of other paradigms.

The Jain view, with the upper perspectival horizon represented by the "wise man," recognizes a sort of development of understanding; but the Integral view takes this understanding further, pointing out that development runs through all perspective-taking, endlessly.  Even the perspective of the wise man is limited, incomplete, and subject to further development.

Ashes and Snow 4

Enactment

From an Integral perspective, the Jain parable, while integrative, nevertheless still preserves the myth of the given.  In the story, for instance, the wise man is presumed to have access to an absolute perspective - to be possessed of full knowledge of the elephant as it is in itself.  True knowledge of the object is arrived at through simple addition:  when all the pieces are added together, we have an accurate representation of reality.

According to the principle of enactment, however, phenomena are not simply disclosed or "discovered" as they are in themselves, such that our perspectives can be understood as neutral (if partial) representations of reality.  Rather, phenomenal spaces are enacted: the actor and the action taken both play constitutive roles in the calling forth of a given range of phenomena.  What this means is that there is no "elephant in itself," even for the wise man; there are only unfolding enactments, participatorily emergent phenomena.

Here is how Wilber puts it:  "Subjects do not perceive worlds but enact them. Different states of subjects bring forth different worlds. For AQAL, this means that a subject might be at a particular wave of consciousness, in a particular stream of consciousness, in a particular state of consciousness, in one quadrant or another. That means that the phenomena brought forth by various types of human inquiry will be different depending on the quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types of the subjects bringing forth the phenomena. A subject at one wave of consciousness will not enact and bring forth the same worldspace as a subject at another wave; and similarly with quadrants, streams, states, and types... This does not mean that the phenomena are not objectively there in a meaningful sense; it means the phenomena are not there for everybody. Macbeth exists, but not for my dog. Cells with DNA exist, but they can only be seen by subjects using microscopes (which did not exist until the orange wave, which is why cells did not "ex-ist" or stand out for magic and mythic worldviews; you can find no account of DNA in any magic or mythic text. This does not mean DNA wasn't there, just that it did not "ex-ist" in those worldviews)... Phenomena ex-ist, stand forth, or shine only for subjects who can enact and co-create them."

Even if the men approaching the elephant were sighted, they still would not have access to the elephant-in-itself; each of them, even with the same basic biological equipment, would enact a perspective appropriate to his own state and stage of development.  For tribal man, he might encounter a powerful animal spirit, one who has the power to enter his dreams and communicate with him - a Thou rather than an It; for a man from the early 20^th century, he might encounter a biological organism (a machine-like, instinct-driven it) which is the product of a particular evolutionary line of development; for a modern scientist capable of vision-logic cognition, the elephant will "stand forth" for him still differently - perhaps, as Wilber puts it, as "a molecular biological system that is an expression of DNA/RNA sequencing operating through evolving planetary eco-systems."  And so on.

Ashes and Snow 6

When the principles of nonexclusion, unfoldment, and enactment are considered together, it becomes apparent that there is no reason to expect any paradigm or perspective to be able to deliver a final, authoritative representation of the elephant or anything else.  Representationism itself is no longer an adequate interpretation.  But while this reveals that the wise man was also "blind" in his own way, and implies that the Integral view must be too, this does not cut us adrift from the world: instead, it leaves us in perichoretic play, in an intimate, participatory dance that has the power to summon "elephants" from the deep.


_______________________

All photos by Gregory Colbert

Beginning this week, I am participating in a Time-Space-Knowledge online study program with Jack Petranker, a respected TSK teacher and author of When It Rains, Does Space Get Wet?  The title of the course is "Opening Space for Inquiry," and this first week we are reading and reflecting on various approaches to inquiry.  Two other Gaians (Davidu and Crouching Tiger) are also participating, and we will be posting notes from the course to our blogs from time to time.

Here are the topics and readings we'll be covering in this course (using the books Love of Knowledge and Dynamics of Time and Space):

Unit One, October 6-December 5, 2008
Theme: Opening Space for Inquiry

Week One Approaches to Inquiry LOK xxvi-xxx
Week Two Space, Mind, and Inquiry DTS xxviii-xxxi
Week Three Space and Substance DTS 3-8
Week Four Origins of Substance DTS 9-14
Week Five Realness of the Real DTS 14-18
Week Six Activating Understanding DTS 19-22
Week Seven Space and Active Appearance DTS 29-34
Week Eight Inward Outward DTS 35-41
Week Nine Space Dimensionality DTS 42-50

For the next few weeks at least, I will be using my blog primarily to post notes from the practices and some of the readings.  My idea for now (I may change later!) is to simply post the exercise instructions or reading excerpts as the primary blog entry, and then to add my notes in the comments sections throughout the week.  I would also like to invite readers to explore the practices or inquiries for themselves, and to join me in comments section to discuss our experiences, questions, etc.

At the bottom of each blog entry, I will post links to blogs by Davidu or Crouching Tiger on the same theme(s).

This is the first time I've tried this, and I'm not sure yet if it will be fruitful or interesting enough to maintain for the whole course, but it will be fun to see.

Layers 1

The exercise for the first week of the course is Layers of Mind, an introductory practice from the beginning of Love of Knowledge.  Here are the instructions:

Note the kinds of mental events that come up in the mind and their relationship: images and feelings, intentions, thoughts, judgments, etc. Which elements are dominant and which supportive? How do states such as tension, conflict, boredom, calm, clarity, or appreciation arise? Keep a journal in which you record your discoveries: an annotated catalogue or inventory of the contents of your mind.

To these instructions, Jack has added a number of suggestions, asking us to try to attend, not so much to the contents of mind, but to the contextualizing background of our subjective field -- what he calls the non-content.  Without seeking to exclude or avoid the normal contents of our consciousness -- the images, feelings, thoughts, intentions, and so on -- he asks us also to pay attention to things such as embodied experience; affective experience (specifically, positive, negative, or neutral affects); states of mind or outlook (alertness, boredom, openness, confusion, etc.); and other background or contextualizing factors (the sense of what's going on, structural influences, etc).  Jack suggests to try to engage in this practice as often as possible throughout the day.

I'll post some of my notes from the practice below.  You can also read Davidu's practice notes here, and Crouching Tiger's notes here.  As I mentioned in my previous blog, if you try the practice for yourself, feel free to post your comments here as well.

In Week 2, we are continuing with the same practice as last week, Layers of Mind, focusing on the relationships among space, mind, and inquiry.  To support this practice, or as an alternative, Jack has suggested we also look at an exercise from the first TSK book - Exercise 7: Body-Mind-Thought Interplay. 

Explore a wide variety of typical activities and situations. These can include social interactions, entertainments, learning experiences, various sorts of work or labor, and emotional highs and lows. In each situation, notice that its overall character and nature are reflected in your own psycho-physical embodiment. Observe the complex interrelationship between sensations, ‘mind', thoughts, emotions, and body which constitutes ‘you in that situ­ation'.

This is one I have worked with before, and I look forward to continuing with it this week. 

Today, I continued with the Layers of Mind exercise - "checking in" to my experience throughout the day, and also setting aside time for a longer practice as I took a walk around my neighborhood.  I love to work with TSK exercises as I walk.  They have a dynamic quality and can be explored in a variety of ways, not just on a meditation cushion.

When I first started working with this exercise, I was a little thrown off by Jack's description of things such as affective tone, state of mind, body sensations, etc, as "non-content."  As soon as I noted them, they became "content" - points of focus, objects within space.  But I didn't reject Jack's suggestion right away, even though it didn't make complete sense to me; I kept an open mind and just kept practicing.  I'm still not sure if non-content is the best word, but as I continued to work with the exercise, I did find that the maintenance of an openness towards dimensions of my being as "non-content" had an interesting effect of simply relaxing some of my habitual orientation, allowing a not-knowing or a living "question" to sit at the heart of experience.

The title of the exercise is apt.  As I worked with it last week, making space for an awareness or acknowledgement of body, affect, state of mind, and background context or orientation in addition to the normal stream of thoughts and associations, I did sense - or, perhaps, enact - a fuller, more layered, but also more open field of experience.  Much of the time, I experienced a layering of familiar feelings and patterns - a persistent, and mysterious, pain in my side; the occasional stab of anxiety in relation to that, often quickly dropped; my habit of "talking ahead" (imagining future conversations with others); images that would play subtly over my field of vision, sometimes superimposing themselves (seeing with the mind's eye and my physical eye at once); and so on.  I noticed that sometimes a neutral sight would trigger surprising, dream-like associations, faint and fleeting enough that I expect I would normally miss them.  I was also a little surprised to notice that there was often a positive feeling running underneath everything else, a buoyant sense of well-being that ran concurrently with anxiety or other surface feelings, and that seemed almost constant.

But in addition to noting these layers, I sometimes shifted into a different sense of space and time, where everything seemed to have a virtual or thought-like quality.  For instance, at some point, I saw my experience unfolding in terms of a series of circles of concern, with "being in a TSK class" forming one large temporal frame, "being on a break at work" forming another, and "moving my body" and "experiencing what's present" forming more immediate contexts.  The sense was not just of being an actor moving forward along a trajectory in a given span of space or time, but of experience emerging or taking shape as the "concrescence" of these circles of concern.  There was a virtual sense to this - as if the present was bubbling up in the center of a field of potential, being "enacted" in a sense by overlapping, multi-dimensional circles of concern which encompassed past and future, local and nonlocal spaces.

At other times, the experience was simpler, but still evoking a different sense of space - as when I took a walk today, and felt the movement of leaves as a part of me, as a delightful dancing of sensation, emotion, and light in the open, resonant field of my body.  I didn't have a sense of expansion, as if I had "encompassed" the world; it was more like there was an overlapping of distinct but somehow virtual spaces.  I felt this movement as a subtle celebration and joy streamed very lightly through me.

~*~

Note:  Other members of Gaia -- Davidu and Crouching Tiger -- are also participating in the online TSK course this Fall.  The theme of this course is Inquiry and Space.  We've been blogging about our experiences; links to our entries are below.  Feel free to join in our discussions, and to practice the exercises along with us. 

Davidu

1.  Layers of Mind with TSK

2.  Exploring Layers of Mind with TSK


Crouching Tiger

1.  Layers of Mind


Balder

1.  Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)

For Week 3 of the TSK Course, we are focusing on the presence or experience of space as a type of context or non-content, and exploring the relationship of space to the "layers of mind" we focused on during the previous two weeks.  We're approaching this both through our readings and through an ongoing inquiry into space or "spaces." 

In the reading, Tarthang Tulku offers some thought experiments which challenge conventional notions of substance, revealing substance as a function of perspective and scale, and problematizing the "boundaries" or distinctions we draw between objects and space.  In the practice, we have been asked to attend to space as "context" throughout the day, in many different ways -- first in our embodied movement and activity, and then in our thought processes as well.  What is the relation of space to feeling, orientation, state of mind -- all the layers we've been exploring?

I've been exploring these things for the past several days, mostly while working or walking outside, but sometimes in other settings as well.  I'll share a few notes here -- mostly just snapshots.

Open Sky

How beautiful the bright sky that remakes me!

I have always loved the month of October.  The air seems shot through with a shimmering light and lightness.  Walking today, it is easy to release the felt sense of boundaries, to open to the deep blue of the sky and merge with it -- a movement which leads first to the disappearance of the body, but then to its bright return, revitalized, shot through with spaciousness.

In asking myself to explore space as context, I set up a context: I enact what I am looking for.  The mind's habitual focus shifts, a new focal setting is established.  Looking for space as context appears to be the same movement as looking for layers of mind.  Or the feeling is similar, as I step back and allow for diffusion, for not-knowing.  There is space as context, space as form, space as support -- somehow inseparable from perspective.  And right at the heart of these shifting, enacted perspectives, the accommodation that allows for this creative play.

rays of sun

Driving over the Sunol grade, noticing the sense of layered spaces as I move within my car and my car moves through the open countryside, suddenly I find myself in vastness as I crest a hill and sunlight is streaming in abundant waves over the road and the shapely swells of earth.  I feel swept up in something enormous, part of a vast movement that is seldom acknowledged but on which we all depend:  this streaming river of light flooding over us from the sun.  I imagine the Earth suspended in these vast currents, and like a fish I am driving "upstream" into the light as it flows past me and all around me into the deep reaches of space.  This image relaxes and opens me from within, and I float appreciatively in expanded vision.

Labyrinth

It is evening and I have come to the school campus to walk the labyrinth under the trees.  Following the winding narrow paths between the rows of stone, looping around the same patch of earth again and again from new directions, I think about how space accommodates form, how every movement and shape plumbs its seemingly infinite potential.  I think about how these lines of stone both constrain movement and enact new potential, as our constructs similarly shape and guide our lives: so many ways that space can flower.  We seem always to move within limits, but ... is there a limit to the forms these limiting borders may take?  What richness is available for each new pattern to evoke, for each new pathway to enact?

As I move around the labyrinth, slowly tracing out this space within the larger space of the school gardens, sensing the movements of my body and the play of thought and image "within" me, listening to the rush of cars on the freeway not far away, I notice first a layering and overlapping of perspectives and spaces, which then seems to collapse and somehow become spaceless.  Turning a bend on the path, sunlight streams suddenly through the branches of the tree, illuminating the motes of dust hanging in the space under the branches and the watchful squirrels, and I experience the whole scene as somehow virtual, a patterned readout which overlaps with other readouts -- other perspective-spaces -- without obstruction.  I do not have the impression that the surrounding space I perceive isn't really "there"; rather, the patterned space in its all-at-onceness and givenness seems simultaneously not given, but read out, as the squirrels looking on read out their world, and the trees their own as well.

Note:  Other members of Gaia -- Davidu and Crouching Tiger -- are also participating in the online TSK course this Fall.  The theme of this course is Inquiry and Space.  We've been blogging about our experiences; links to our entries are below.  Feel free to join in our discussions, and to practice the exercises along with us. 

Davidu

1.  Layers of Mind with TSK

2.  Exploring Layers of Mind with TSK

3.  Space of Memories of Layers and Contexts

Crouching Tiger

1.  Layers of Mind

2.  Space in Memory and Non-Content

Balder

1.  Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)

2.  Deepening Layers of Mind

Expanding Layers of Mind

For week four, the reading explores challenges to conventional notions of "substance," and the practice we are working with involves expanding the layers of mind we explored previously -- taking an object of our experience, or some contextual or "background" element, and expanding it in different ways.  I have practiced this in a number of different ways over the week, but I will just write about my most recent practice session. 

On a break at work today, I took a walk around the office building in the blustery October weather.  The clouds were grey and billowing, gathering threateningly overhead; the gusts of wind carried faint traces of moisture that braced the skin of my face.  As I walked mindfully around my familiar circuit, allowing my eyes to rove over the shifting autumn landscape, I noted the subtle movements of my thought, and the faint underlying sense of joy that was stirring in my chest.  Breathing with the gusts of wind, I expanded the feeling of joy until I had the sense of it filling my body, and spreading just beyond.  My thoughts grew still for a moment in this widened field.

As I continued walking, I noticed the sense of being "positioned" in my eyes -- as if that was where my knowing self was centered, looking out on the world, looking in on myself.  I could feel how my current sense of identity, of being an observer, was anchored in these sensations.  Feeling into this contraction, I expanded it outward, imagining and "feeling" it merge with the sky and the space all around me.  As I did this, I felt a shift in my relation to the objects around me.  The rigid "relationship" between my observing self (in my head, around my eyes) and a tree before me dissolved, and "relation" itself became subtler; there was "knowing" or "experience," a particular experiential field, but the sense of being divided within it, or over against it, had dissolved. 

Water Rings

The feeling of being centered in my eyes or in the upper portion of my body would return on occasion, and whenever I noticed this, I would again expand the sensation outward, like a circle of rippling water spreading out to encompass the lake of my sensory field.  Eventually, both the point of contraction and the expanded circle seemed to be present together, cancelling each other out (in terms of either being "ultimate").  After a time, I found that the expanded circle itself had a sort of "fixed" quality, with its own boundaries, and so I expanded this as well.  The first expansions had set up an alternative, wider frame, but there was a subtle stuckness and dullness to it.  When I began to expand and open this as well, there was a more powerful sense of decentering that, at the same time, seemed like a "bright ordinariness."  I don't know how else to put it.  Contractions, whenever noted, just rippled outward automatically, and I walked in a simple freshness.

~*~

Note:  Other members of Gaia -- Davidu, Crouching Tiger, and Debyemm -- are also participating in the online TSK course this Fall.  The theme of this course is Inquiry and Space.  We've been blogging about our experiences; links to our entries are below.  Feel free to join in our discussions, and to practice the exercises along with us. 

Davidu

1.  Layers of Mind with TSK
2.  Exploring Layers of Mind with TSK
3.  Space of Memories of Layers and Contexts
4.  Expanding with TSK

Crouching Tiger

1.  Layers of Mind
2.  Space in Memory and Non-Content

Balder

1.  Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)
2.  Deepening Layers of Mind
3.  Week Three: Exploring Space and Form

Debyemm

1.  Layers of Mind (TSK Practice Notes)