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buddhism
October 2009 
In Defense of Integral Postmetaphysics
Balder
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.
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Hi Balder, Good essay!
You write:
[A]s 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).
I would simply add that even someone who doesn't take the above on board, ought, in principle, to be able to pursue serious scientific inquiry, make objective determinations, and differentiate true claims from false ones.
One of the posts by Julian (the last one linked to in your post) to which you are responding is titled “Critical Thinking and Integral Theory.” Aside from the content of Julian's post, I say that if anyone who takes on board the points you list is operating in a way that they or anyone else might characterize as “transrational” or “beyond the rational,” they should be capable of critical thinking. (Critical thinking is sometimes referred to as creato-critical thinking to reflect the fact that critical thinking involves imagination and creativity as well as logic and reason, and also to distinguish critical thinking from any activity the sole purpose of which is to adversely criticize other people's ideas.)And I would add that anyone who is capable of critical thinking, a skill that includes the ability to assess the validity arguments (claims supported by premises), ought to be able to assess the validity of arguments regardless of whether they accept the points you list (points I agree with, BTW).
I think that part of what Julian “fears” is that someone might misuse the points you list (which I quote above) in an attempt to bypass or even obviate critical thinking.
All best,
Jim
Hi, Jim, thank you for your comments. I agree with both of your points: even if the points described in the section you highlighted are aspects of a transrational (or purportedly transrational) perspective, their adoption should not lead anyone to assume that they take one beyond the need to reason. If anything, the transition to transrational cognition, while it may help to make the limitations of reason clearer, should actually also deepen and enliven one's reasoning capacities – bringing in, as you suggest, new levels of creativity and imagination. And conversely, if a person does not adopt the points I listed, this in no way stands in the way of being able to think critically (though I think failure to recognize emptiness may lead to some entanglement). The point I wanted to make with that list was simply that these perspectives or commitments, which I believe are implicit in Integral Postmetaphysics, are not incompatible with critical thinking. They can, in fact, help fine tune it.
If you haven't noticed, by the way, I edited my blog entry a few moments ago. It now contains a final section on left/right distinctions.
Best wishes,
Balder
Hi Bruce.
If anything, the transition to transrational cognition, while it may help to make the limitations of reason clearer, should actually also deepen and enliven one's reasoning capacities – bringing in, as you suggest, new levels of creativity and imagination.
I agree, and I would also say that the transition to transrational cognition may help to make the limitations of language clearer.
I'm my 84 year old mom's primary caregiver, and I had to put her in the hospital last Tuesday and she is still there (her condition is stable and hopefully she'll recover and will live to become the great-grandmother of what will be my first grandchild in June).
Last evening while visiting with her, Father Mike of the local Catholic Church, of which my mom is a member (though she doesn't attend church), dropped by. Before he left, the three of us held hands and prayed. Although I have no belief in anything supernatural, this was for me a deeply moving moment. I did not take Father Mike's words (about Jesus and God, etc.) as if they were propositions, meaning statements the truth or falsity of which can be assessed by critical thinking or reasoning, but as expressions of a dimension of humanness that cannot be expressed in the form of propositions.
As we all know, different people who are attuned to this dimension express it in different ways, and some express it through silence and presence and/or action rather than language. If a rabbi had come to visit I could've prayed with him.
If Father Mike had initiated a philosophical discussion about life after death, then I would assume that he is speaking in propositional language or declarative language, and is making assertions the truth or falsity of which can be assessed via critical thinking or reasoning. But as it was, I took everything that Father Mike said as expressive rather than declarative.
I just read the section on left/right distinctions that you added to your post and I hope to comment later.
Best,
Jim
quick point that i have made before but i think is important.
bruce - i so enjoy getting to debate and discuss with you - i am honored by this wonderful piece and you using my comments as a jumping off point. thank you!
i think its good to bear in mind that we have different areas of focus/audiences.
i have been teaching at street-level so to speak for almost 15 years. i teach classes, workshops, retreats and do one-on-one work that is designed to provide what i hope is a substantive experience of mind-body spirituality, learning how to use yoga as an arena for psychological healing and the authentic energetic opening that goes hand-in-hand with that process.
the vast majority of people interested in spirituality are heavily influenced by new age ideas and in the vast majority of cases hose ideas serve a defensive function against psychological and emotional distress/trauma/anxiety and other feelings.
so i try to meet people where they are really at and provide a practice and philosophy that allows those very defenses to be brought into awareness and worked through in the interest of moving to the next stage of personal growth and healing. it works. i love it. it is challenging and can be intense, but i am proud of what i do and feel (though i keep growing and leaning) fairly succcesful at it.
for me this is where the work is most needed and for the most part it is sorely lacking in the alternative/spiritual/holistic community which tends to rather bolster the new age fluffy fantasies, poorly reasoned philosophy and defensive beliefs.
my writing is an extension of that professional experience, day in and day out for many years.
my position is that for integral to optimize its effectiveness it has to honestly face and address the dominant belief system and roadblock to what wilber used to call the centauric stage's emergence.
i stand by this as the foundation for much of my writing on the subject and am passionate about helping this to happen.
you may notice to that i write for a somewhat broad audience - many of who are new to integral theory. on average my serious posts get read to1 to 2 thousand times and i have posts that have been read 10 and 15 thousand times.
i feel like i have placed myself right in the heart of some topical issues that some people at least are hungry to engage on, think about and struggle with - this has way, way exceeded the initial ambition of my blog…
you on the other hand have your own background and experience - which i respect and admire immensely. i think of you as more of an academic and monastic scholar. i love this about you. i am so glad you are here and that i get to interact with you as we do. i think you are providing a wonderful service and i stand by my often stated claim that i think it is debates like the ones you and i are having that will carry integral forward and help create the next version of its powerful application in the world. in addition i will continue to do what i can to expose you to my readers, as i think many will benefit greatly from your wisdom and clarity.
correct me if i am wrong, but i think you write for a smaller and perhaps more sophisticated audience. i dont think you have taught on what i am calling street level in the way i do, i dont think you have had the kind of experience that i and perhaps jim have had in the spiritual community at large over the last 20 years (for me) and probably 40 years for jim.
correct me if i am wrong, but i think perhaps the serious problems of the new age community may not have been made so glaringly apparent to you via experience.
i think you are doing a superlative job of mapping some very high stages and very lucidly discussing some important topics - juicy, rich, beautiful topics - and that you do so with grace, intelligence and clarity that bespeaks your education as well as your serious spiritual practice.
bravo!
sometimes we get into this thing where i wonder what the practical application is of certian very nuanced positions you are putting forth - this happened with simply put - and i think on your end you are concerned that i may be leaving out important subtleties and higher order gestures.
i stand by my position that until earlier stages have been adequately traversed, later stages are easy to misinterpret a la pre/trans and misuse and that this can be a problem in terms of any further development.
my main point here is that i think we have different backgrounds, agendas, audiences and intentions in what we are doing - and i basically see our work as complimentary in so many ways.
in my next comment i will go into some other more detailed observations.
bruce this is exactly what i was hoping for - thank you!
i think you have done a great service in making some important distinctions.
i have said to you before that my sense is that neither wilber, nor you would agree with the misinterpretations that are possible, but that i see it being done and i think that new age relativism is what buddhism calls the “near-enemy” of IPM - ie: it sounds enough like it that it could easily be mistaken for it - so making good practical distinctions is important. thanks!
i completely agree that if one is reading wilber in the way that would extract quotes like the ones you offered, many of my concerns would be evaporated.
part of the tricky thing is though that wilber's work is so vast and i think that people who have just gotten into it in the last couple years are coming in through the wilber iv and v door without the advantage of a lot of his fiercely critical and intellectually rigorous polemics and distinction making from the 90's - also i think that the strategy at I-I (understandably) has been to reach out to a lot of the popular new age celebs and interview them for IN etc … there has been a greenifying and a new age-ifying of integral over the last few years that stands in stark contrast to the MGM warnings and new age critiques of previous years.
while i understand this as a necessary phase i also have my concerns with it.
many of those concerns were resoundingly born out by some of the contact i have had with I-I staffers, by the VA Tech/Pavlina/Holons newsletter saga, by the desire of integrally-informed bloggers and posters to try and “include” things like the so -called “law of attraction” from a so-called “integral perspective” and by a 3 day intensive workshop i took recently through I-I that was horrifyingly bad new age, rife with massive pre/trans mistakes (of the kind you and i would have no problem agreeing completely on) , very flimsy in terms of application and even presentation of integral theory, and the worst part was that there was a lot of intense psychological work being done in a container that referenced spirit guides, angels, possession by goddesses and in which the suggestion was offered (after going through a potent transpersonal process that can and did bring up powerful traumatic memories and unresolved pain for people) - that we “wink” at the part of us that ever thought that all of our experiences weren't “perfect”, and exactly what we needed…. (i shan't say more, identify the teacher or workshop, because i had promised not to do that after bringing my concerns to the highest levels of I-I and even saying this much is tricky.)
for me this is a classic example of the problem i have been pointing out and have seen for may years - i was hoping integral could be an antidote to it - hence my alarm!
thanks so much for using my section headings as suggested!
regarding truth and falsity. i totally hear what you are saying. i get the distinction - always have, but i think that one has to situate any kind of relativism in a really grounded container - you have to draw a line around the relativism so as to keep it reasonable - and as jim suggests above i think that this line is critical thinking. as you suggest in the essay - i think the line is scientific method and healthy reason.
unfortunately many in the integral community you and i inhabit will suggest that trans-rational goes beyond not only reason, but also the need to reason, that somehow rational thought or evaluation is transcended. this then becomes ripe ground for pre/trans mistakes because anything that sounds non-rational must be trans rational and without using reason it is very very hard to tell the difference.
this leads to arguments about whether or not something is true being countered with arguments about relativity and how from a transrational or integral perspective there is no such thing as truth, all truths are partial etc etc… which is perhaps a different kind of fallacy - perhaps one of the order of analysis or the level of engagement - do you see what i am trying to get at?
i think you agree that no-one can “manifest” parking spaces. simple. this can be proven using reason and scientifc method. it is simply the case that any one who claims hey can do so is mistaken.
now unless the line is clear enough that someone who has studied wilber knows this is obvious and knows the difference between IPM, IMP, postmodern theory, SDi etc and the mistaken thought that perhaps this claim is true in certain contexts for certain people inhabiting certain worldspaces with certain stage development - we are still in big trouble both regarding differentiating integral form new age silliness and as a function of that, getting integral taken seriously by intellectuals and academic folks..
unfortunately i dont think that line is clear enough for many integrally informed thinkers - and when i draw it i get called a rational fascist unspiritual person or something similar… :O)
regarding pathology. yes you are right my concerns do have to do with UL applications. human beings are traumatized, we have unresolved pain, we have issues and defenses and ways of dealing or not-dealing with this suffering, be it psychological or existential.
defenses may take the form of rationalizing, minimizing, denial etc.. i think it is important to keep drawing strong and clear distinctions between sophisticated higher stage awareness's and sophisticated sounding but poorly reasoned defenses.
i have a sense that many spiritual people want to deny pathology. from schizophrenia to dissociative conditions to prerational thinking (properly the province of 5 year old westerners) to fantasies of narcissistic omnipotence a la manifesting parking spaces, there is a tendency even in integral circles to want to see these things as relative truths - rather than have a grounded sense of what is pathological and what is healthy,m what is demonstrably true and what false, what is an insight into reality and what a defensive rationalization.
this is why i listed those as topics for inclusion in your piece…
the left/right distinction is another piece of that puzzle.
the tendency among spiritual folks is to want to over-privilege the left hand quads and have a knee jerk reaction against the narrow scientific privileging of the right hand quadrants.
this can lead to the use of broad scientific method a la wilbers three strands idea being misinterpreted as narrow reductionism when it starts to make claims about truth and falsity - the next move in this argument is then to try and appeal to some integral sounding idea - whether it is non-dual, postmetaphysical or transrational in its stripe - that will often enact one of the mistakes i have listed so far, in which pre/trans errors, quadrant confusion, relativism, etc seem to suggest that truth/falsity, pathology and anything that doesnt embrace all perspectives and perceptions as being almost exclusively a left hand affair are seen as negated and certainly as un-integral…
again i am all for healthy relativism but i think it has to be bounded by the kinds of lines you have begin to draw in this piece.
my above comments are not intended to detract from or criticize your work at all, more to clarify what my concerns have been.
several times now you have said that the fact that an idea can be misapplied is not a reason to negates the idea.
i couldnt agree more, and at the same time i think two things:
a) as i said in my previous comment we may have different audiences and agendas. for me how an idea is applied and how broadly the interface between the philosophy and practice is successful is of ultimate concern.
b) i think philosophy this sophisticated - especially postmodern philosophy in an integral context does well to keep itself in check with the many, many criticisms and warning flags that wilber expressed during his work prior to this new addition. my sense is that IPM has to stand in stark, stark, (did i say - stark ) yes, stark contrast to the unhealthy applications of postmodernism, relativism and their new age cousins.
what you are doing here in response to my challenge begins to pull that contrast into clearer focus.
Great stuff, Bruce. If it is possible to make available, I'd love to take a look at the Bitbol essay. The idea of knowledge paradigms as operators is both clear and deep, and fits well with my way of looking at things. I would think you would agree that since there is no view from nowhere, we don't have access to truly transcendent objects.
One thing I'd like to see clarified from your previous Floating Rocks post is where you say “There is no single pre-given world that exists independently of all perspectives … only worldspaces enacted by sentient beings.” This might need to be unpacked a bit, because it seems to me that you aren't acknowledging the holarchical nature of perspectives, that they include lowers ones. I think that permits us to say two things: first, that there are facts that are “universally” valid, meaning that they are part of all worldviews (but again, not representational of reality as such). Perhaps there is a mistaken assumption that SD Beige is the “first” perspective, but we should remember that all worldviews including beige transcend and include lower worldviews going down to prehension, thus the “universality” of those forms. And second: even though there is no perspective that is foundational or absolute, some perspectives are deeper than others.
really good distinctions mr t.
yes some facts are universally part of all worldviews. sounds obvious yet important to say in this context.
they may not be representational of reality in this very particular philosophical sense, sure, - but for all practical purposes (and forgive my ignorance or philosophical naivette here) i still think it is still safe to say that - for example, gravity is part of reality as we know it - and anyway what the hell else is there? if someone denies gravity it will kick them in the ass and prove the worldview that doesn't “believe” in gravity incorrect - in practical terms why all this pussyfooting around making statements about what reality is? if gravity ever changes or our understanding of it shifts we'll be happy to add to the picture, but until then gravity is real and superpowers are not.
this doesn't mean we can't acknoweldge healthy relativism, worldviews, stages etc - it just means we have contained the relativism in a grounded way.
do you hear the struggle i have with putting too fine a point on this particular philosophical question? i wonder about its practicality. what would we compare reality too, anyway?
perhaps you can help me make sense of what seems at times like a debate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
and yes, some perspectives are deeper than others, and wouldn't you say even negate certain aspects of the less deep perspectives or clean up pathologies/errors/inadequate representations… isn't that what trasncend and incluude is all about?
and whenthis fails to happen in ahealthy way isnt that a form of patholgy and doesnt it lead to flase beliefs about reality?
you are going in the direction that i am trying to tease out, so i am hoping you can flesh this out for me.
Jim,
I hold your mother in my thoughts. I too hope she is able to see her new great-grandchild.
I understand what you mean about being able to connect in an essential way in moments like that, even if you do not share the myth. I have had that experience on a number of occasions during my travels overseas, and I experience it fairly regularly in my home, when I help my wife do a long Shiva or Krishna puja and she blesses us all afterwards.
I look forward to your thoughts on my addition to the blog, if you are so inspired.
Julian,
Thank you for coming back and stirring things up here on Gaia, and for pushing (and inspiring) me to explore these questions further. I also enjoy dialoguing and debating with you and hope that it continues to be mutually enriching.
Regarding your first post to me, yes, I agree, we have different backgrounds and hence our focus, and our target audiences, differ. I understand what you are saying about most spiritual seekers, but I would feel more comfortable with your characterization if you qualified it a bit - maybe saying, “the vast majority of people that I meet….” Simply because, while I haven't worked as a spiritual teacher, I have certainly spent a lot of time in different spiritual centers over the years - living at monasteries and ashrams in Asia for several years, living at a Tibetan Buddhist center for 3 years in Virginia, attending retreats all over the country, etc - and I haven't found the majority of people I've met to be as confused or immature as the ones you're describing. No doubt, there are confused people, even mentally or emotionally ill people, in almost every spiritual community I've come across; and there have been a few communities I've encountered that have seemed either ungrounded and flaky or defensively fundamentalist; but I feel I've also met a lot of people who are doing deep, authentic work. Having lived in Sedona, a New Age Mecca, for four or five years, I feel I have a good deal of familiarity with the type of spiritual escapism and role playing you're describing, but I honestly have not felt “overwhelmed” by that in my encounters with people over the course of my spiritual journey.
I do agree with you that a lot of people use spiritual teachings defensively, as a means to avoid painful wounds or ease anxiety or cope with loss. But while, from a rational scientific perspective, for instance, it may not make a lot of sense for people to actively believe in and defend wildly mythological stories - and in that regard the tendency may rightly be regarded as “regressive” or whatever - I think a broader, more nuanced and psychologically empathic appreciation of what is going on is called for. For instance, a lot of us are walking around with wounds from very early childhood experiences - wounds that have negatively impacted our emotional lives and our self development. Several important self-related lines may be stunted; our object relational structures may be compromised. Understood from the point of view of something like Kohut's self psychology, the characters in sacred literature or ritual enactments may provide selfobject experiences for individuals - helping them develop empathic matrices or, through the process of transference, experience transmuting internalizations which actually facilitate the development of healthy self structures.
Importantly, the power of sacred narratives to effect such changes is not compromised if the individual happens, perhaps naively, to take the stories literally. It may even be amplified. If this is the case - and I'm not saying it always is, or that this is all that is going on in traditional/conventional spiritual practice - then that should at least give you pause and inspire you to think twice, or to look more closely, before you decide to dismiss or “pathologize” the process because it involves elements that, cognitively, appear primitive or immature. The work that is going on may, indeed, be the “repair” of quite primitive structures. Structures which, according to Kohut, are compromised to some degree in most of us. If you only judge the surface of what is going on - “He believes what?” - you may miss what is going on on other levels that may, in fact, be healthy and authentically transformative.
I make these remarks, not to argue that it is never appropriate to label a practice or pattern as pathological, but simply to caution against evaluating what is going on in a given spiritual context based on too narrow a range of criteria. The hardcore sermon on logic and critical thinking may run roughshod over what is a much more delicate, and much more fundamental, process.
Best wishes,
Balder
Hi, Mike,
I think Bitbol's essay is quite good. I haven't been able to find an online copy of it, but it is available in the book, Buddhism and Science, edited by B. Alan Wallace.
I appreciate the points you have made about the holarchical nature of perspectives and hence the universality of very basic or primitive ones (down to prehension or whatever). I wasn't intending to deny or leave out holarchical patterning in my account, since I recognize that as present and consider it a valid way to frame things; it is indeed a key element of IPM that needed to be fleshed out here. So, thanks for highlighting it.
I'm going to read over what I've written and reflect on the issue a bit to see if there is anything I want to add in addition to what you have written.
Best wishes,
Balder
all good points bruce - thanks! as i have said many times before were i to be in my capacity as healer that is exactly how i would support and interpret that kind of material.
AND: when having theoretical conversations with intellectuals who are into integral theory and its applications and interpretations i think it is important to be able to get clear on things like the pre/trans fallacy. and what it actually means.
i have no problem recognizing what you are saying in terms of the nuances - at the same time: i think it is important to know what is literal and what metaphorical and be able to hold that grounded position implicitly for the person who may be using that kind of narrative.
again for me its all about the yin and yang of relativism/open-ness to personal meaning and being grounded in reality. personally i have helped a few people make the transition from a lot of magical beliefs that were a defense against trauma into a place of more embodied freedom, ability to function better in the world and a spiritual world view that was more life affirming and less escapist. (and no i didnt use the socratic method to do so!:O)
ultimately if the archetypal/mythic/magic narrative/belief is not tending in the direction of being grounded in reality i think it loses its true function.
as you know i follow donald kaslched on this and his amazing book the inner world of trauma. the distinction he makes between imagination which healthily relates the inner and outer worlds and what he calls “fantasying” which keeps one locked in the crystal palace a la eros and psyche or the witches tower a la rapunzel.
this of course is a distinction on what is healthy and what pathological and of course this is not black and white but exists along a spectrum - but of course there is always a tipping point on those continuum's.
i still think there is something important about taking a position on what is real and what isnt, what is metaphorical and what literal, what is true and what is false when it comes to things like virgin births, manifesting parking spaces, and the power of thoughts being transmitted into water - especially when these are the lingua franca of so much of the spiritual community.
why?
because truth matters.
Hi Bruce, I appreciate your thoughtfulness.
I like and agree with what you say in the “left/right distinctions” addition to your essay. I would add that it may be useful to keep in mind the distinction between ultimate truth and conventional truth.
Buddhist scholar and practitioner Donald Lopez talks about the value of money to illustrate the Madhyamaka understanding of emptiness. The value of a twenty dollar bill cannot be found in the paper, the ink, the design on the bill, the shape of the paper, etc. The value of of a twenty dollar bill exists only by common consent among the citizens of a particular region. “The Madhyamaka claim is that nothing in the universe possesses intrinsic value,” writes Lopez.
He also says that “The emptiness critique is not aimed at functional efficacy. It targets instead the false nature of independence, the self, that we ignorantly project onto ourselves and the objects of our experience.”
We would not want a cashier who is told by a customer that he has shortchanged the customer to appeal to “the emptiness of monetary value” in defense of the assertion that he gave the correct change. That would be a non sequitur. The “ultimate truth” nature of monetary value simply isn't relevant to the “conventional truth” issue of whether the correct change was given.
Just so, we don't want to appeal to ultimate truth or emptiness when such an appeal simply isn't relevant to the issue under discussion. (For example, I would say that phenomenal consciousness is empty of inherent self-existence, as are brains, but I don't think this could be used to defend or challenge any particular view about the ontological and causal relationship between phenomenal consciousness and brains.)
Much lovingkindness,
Jim
oh and balder - thanks for the expanded bio, it gives me more detail on your life experience and corrects/contextualizes some of my perceptions.
we may just have come across different crowds - certainly i think serious buddhist practitioners travelling to tibet and your average westside yogi in l.a. are quite different species.
however you have lived in sedona and if your impression of the zeitgeist in sedona is different than what i described above all i can do is scratch my head…
perhaps we have a problem here of either - one of us being too generous, one of us being too critical, or some combination!
i find it troubling that my description of the dynamic interplay of trauma and its ensuing defenses with unreasonable and regressive beliefs/worldviews translates into a discussion of whether or not people may be intelligent or mature.
my experience has been that very intelligent and mature people can still carry trauma (both biographical and existential) and be very prone to magical thinking and mythic literalist defenses as a result.
no amount of reasoning will get past that defense until some healing has happened around the pain it is protecting.
will this color the ability of otherwise very mature and smart people to see the implications of certain theories?
i think so - and my pointing that out needn't be seen as an insult to anyone's intelligence or maturity - though it is a gesture toward something distorted and out of balance, and absurd when looked at rationally - especially given that spirituality should ideally be the province of balancing and removing distortions.
that it is seen as an insult is no doubt due to my own ill-considered tone at times….. but i would hope that you could see beyond that to the essence of what i am saying and its theoretical implications/genesis.
i think what jim has said above is important.
this is related again the fallacy i am trying to put my finger on that may have something to do not so much with a category/quadrant error or pre/trans fallacy as an error having to with the level of analysis/perspective.
sometimes i hear the kinds of ultimate truth claims such as non-duality, or the impossibility of knowing what reality is separate from perspectives used as a reason to discredit certain otherwise valid relative observations about varying degrees of truth/falsity/depth. i have encountered this all too often as a counter to any critical observations about everything from trance channeling to manifesting parking spaces to whether or not sai baba can manifest ash from the palm of his hands - and from some quite intelligent and mature people. it still seems like an error, and a fancy way of trying to maintain a simple magical fantasy.
i do think this happened in my simply put series conversations as well as in many other discussions online and i think that coming to a consensus about some of these common mistakes might be interesting, useful and uplevel some of the discourse.
of course my attempts to do so with the pre/trans fallacy were an almost complete waste of time last year - but one can live in hope…. :O)
for example - in the simply put series, i made statement to the effect that even though cause and effect were undeniable the belief that everything happened for a reason was a denial of randomness, unfairness and the fact that many events have no meaning per se…
this is an attempt to shed light on what i see as a very confused area of popular thought - it was met however with responses about whether or not cause and effect were undeniable - which to me was totally left-field and beside the point., probably because of the kind of error i am postulating.
when i try to :
a) point out the inconsistencies and inadequacies of the popular new age worldview in relationship to the lived experience of human beings, the reality of suffering and the possibility that through meditation and self-inquiry one might not only experience some authentic healing/opening but also come to a clearer, more skillful and grounded perspective -
b) and this is met with challenges that seem to (by taking a kind of absolute perspective)refute the important but of course relative difference between a kind of dissociated wishful thinking and denial of pain in the name of spirituality and the experiential process of getting real with ourselves, becoming more embodied and healing the our emotional selves - then
c) i have an eyebrow raised…
getting real = truthfulness a la UL and while this is a relative term it has degrees of depth that are mappable, almost quantifiable.
to counter those sorts of ideas with radical claims about the emptiness of reality and so what does getting real even mean seems to me problematic and committing what perhaps i will call the absolute/relative fallacy, unless there already exists a better name….
jim and teacup help me here if i am not saying this right please!
bruce does this make any sense to you?
Hi, Julian,
Thanks. You've made some excellent points which help clarify for me where you are coming from. I was planning this morning to actually add a second post, if you hadn't answered yet, because I felt my post to you didn't clearly express the point I wanted to make.
Essentially, what I was trying to say was that even if we find that the beliefs that some people hold are, from one perspective, regressive or naively mythological, we can recognize that, from another perspective, they may also be therapeutic and may serve authentic transformational functions.
In your latest posts, I hear this distinction, but it doesn't always come across - it seems (in your blogs) as if you are intent on decisively confronting and dismantling mythical thinking wherever you encounter it, in the name of “reality.” But the reality may be that, for this person, the stories are working on a level that isn't immediately obvious, helping him or her to build positive psychological structures and cultivate emotional and moral qualities that have not been supported by the culture at large. To stick with the Self Psychology lingo for the moment (recognizing there are many other ways to approach this): the belief may serve a defensive purpose, or it may serve a selfobject purpose. Traditional psychoanalysts have tended to view transference largely as defensive, for instance; Kohut and others have pointed out how it may also serve, not a self-defensive purpose, but a self-building purpose. If it is unrealistic on some level, skillful means might nevertheless call for keeping silent, respecting it, working with it, as it is, rather than taking the “higher” perspective and dismantling it.
From your recent posts, it seems we largely agree about this. If you have helped people who were ready, to let go of defensive magical beliefs and step into a new sense of existential authenticity and freedom - and I believe you when you say you have - then I applaud that. You have helped midwife something quite beautiful. If you also work “within” individuals' meaning spaces when direct existential confrontations are contraindicated (at that point), then I am glad to hear it.
Where we may differ is that you sometimes give the impression that you believe that the only non-pathological spiritual way forward is to become an atheistic existential humanist, and I don't think that is the case. I think there are existential issues that must be faced as we mature, but that transition can come in many shapes and forms - it is not limited to the mythos or language of humanism. (I'm using mythos here as Panikkar does; I don't mean “mythology” in the disparaging sense.) It can take place within other spiritual systems (spiritual operators) as well.
This is essentially the same point we have discussed many times before, so I won't go over old ground, unless you think it would be helpful at this point to do so.
Best wishes,
Balder
P.S. I just saw your last post. I will respond to that a little later today.
P.P.S. About my Sedona remark: I believe you misunderstood me. I was saying that I saw exactly what you were describing when I lived there, but using that dynamic as a point of comparison, I wouldn't say that the majority of spiritual seekers I've encountered (in other contexts) have been doing the same thing.
I also hope we can get to the bottom of what happened on the Simply Put blogs. I will make a brief comment here for now, but will be happy to go into it more when I have more time. To begin with, I agree with the points that Jim made about the applicability and purpose of the doctrine of emptiness - it is not aimed at functional efficacy.
In the case of something like cause and effect, I completely agree, if someone says, “I'm jumping from the roof of this high rise! I believe I can fly!” and another answers, “No, you can't, you idiot! Gravity will cause you to plummet to your death!”, an appeal by a third party to the “emptiness” of cause and effect is inappropriate … and ill-advised!
As I said at some point in our conversation on the Simply Put blogs, Julian, I was directing my comments and questions directly to you, rather than intending for them to relate directly to the topic under discussion. I believe I admitted at the time that my questions and comments were probably out of place and ill-timed and I should have directed them to you privately. Because I wasn't trying to counter your suggestion that believing in the ability to manifest parking spaces was unrealistic. I was aiming my questions at something I was picking up on underneath what you were saying, in your language choices, the way you framed your arguments, and so on. I was speaking to what appeared to me to be certain underlying structuring beliefs or perspectives that I have detected throughout the course of our conversations, not just in that post. Although you have said you understand emptiness, relativity, nonduality, and so on, I have not picked up on the “flavors” of that understanding in your language. That's what I was going for. But the timing was off, and it gave the wrong impression - that I was trying to say that you were out of place to challenge magical thinking, when I didn't mean that at all.
Best wishes,
Balder
I once read the remark that postmodern thinking’s relationship to modernity is what quantum physics and relativity theory’s relation is to conventional physics. When you look at both ends (large and small) of the spectrum of the space-time continuum, like f.i. very small particles and observers of them, the speed of light in relation to time and the working of gravity as curves of space and time you see that conventional physics is not accurate anymore. Here one sees that conventional physics needs to be replaced by a more precise physics; quantum physics and relativity theory. But for 80% of the physical questions and applications conventional physics is still perfectly applicable.
If one compares that with postmodernism and modernism one sees that looking at contextualism, différance and aperspectivism this shows that basic statements of modernism are not totally correct if one goes towards ends of the spectrum of f.i. language and epistemology. If one is aware of one’s boundedness to context or inability to pin down the true meaning of words one sees where postmodernism can show the inadequacy of modernism. But still in 80% of the cases modernism works just fine and has no need of replacement.
I seem to see this pattern in the nice discussions between Julian and Balder. Julian says 1+1 = 2. Balder says, well in some contexts it isn’t. Julian says reality is and Balder says, it depends how you look at it (as very crude and small examples of the variety of stories, myths and examples that the two of you covered).
And how I see it is that both are right. Julian because he is talking about what to apply to the many students, clients and listeners he encounters which seem to fall into the 80% and where modernity works just fine or even better then postmodernity. Balder because he is setting out perspectives on reality that are more encompassing then the 80% then modernity covers.
thanks for reminding me of that bruce - i appreciate the acknowledgment. yes you have said so - forgive me if i am not recognizing that…
you are correct i do not write about emptiness, relativity and nonduality. they are not really my focus - and i think they are an area rife for misinterpretation and wishful thinking and better left alone until people have done a lot of other work…. too often these subjects become a sidestep away from critica thinking, shadow work, and a practice based in inquiry rather than cool ideas/beliefs that one merely adopts upon hearing them - ideally a truly integral teacher would offer the best of east and west, psyche and spirit, mind and body, intellect and emptiness in a sequence that would honor not only the various stagewise developmental lines of an individuals psychograph, but also their particular process in that period of their life..
i think in a traditional setting that would almost go without saying as the skillful teacher would not offer any of the formerly esoteric (but now freely available with varying degrees of quality) sophisticated philosophy and practices to the student until they had gone through some pretty rigorous early stages - as i am sure you have.. but like you (though in my own way) i have been around the block a fair bit, done a lot of meditating and other practices and spent quite some time ( about 3 years) following non-dual teachers (yudishtara, catherine ingraam, gangaji etc), sitting in satsang, doing self-inquiry in front of my photo of ramana, getting my mind blown by wilber's pointing out instructions - it was really delicious and profound, but for me at that stage of my life (mid 20's) turned out to be part of an avoidance of being grounded in this life and dealing with my suffering.
after a lot of work in the departments i now share every day with others, i returned to some of the more esoteric meditative material and practices and particularly had a powerful experience of radical nondual consciousness for a couple days while on a ten day silent retreat with kornfield. however that aspect of spirituality is not that interesting to me these days..
that said - i am sure there is much i dont understand and i have already expressed my willingness to learn about those things from folks like yourself - i do reserve the right to ask questions though! :O)
so we have:
pre/trans fallacy
level/line fallacy
catagory/quadrant error
absolute/relative error
argument from design
god in the gaps
argument from authority
performative contradiction
quadrant reductionism
some good fallacies to write about, methinks!
oh and i have a question for you - what do you think of wilber's string of polemics on the problems of MGM, unhealthy green and the new age? you seem at times to think that i am just overstating the case or being a disagreeable condescending curmudgeon who doesnt give poeople enough credit - why do you think wilber made such a fuss over these topics and called MGM something like the single biggest threat to the health of the spiral and humanities future evolution?
Great blog, Bruce. I really appreciate your comments on this subject.
At some point I wonder if it would be interesting to do something like a case study with IMP, to put into practice, so to speak. I'm not sure how that would be done or if it's really a feasible idea, but I just thought I would throw it out there.
Julian, the work you're doing with people sounds really great. I can see from your interactions with me, privately and publicly, and with others that you are a true healer. It is of course very rare what you are doing.
I just have one question, which has been on my mind for awhile and which Bruce recently touched upon: Do you present spiritual atheism as the only healthy spirituality beyond Amber? You give that impression in some of your posts and in this video (your videos are really cool, by the way). I appreciate the points you make in that video about ideas of reincarnation being a defense against fear of death, but it could be that a dismissal of the possibility of “surviving” bodily death is also a defense of some kind. For example, it could be a defense against moving into more subtle, less personal, transcendental stages–the ego, of course, does not want to do this; it wants to stay at the center of things, in control, but if it denies the possibility of such things it won't have to. In other words, the belief that such stages are not possible could work to preserve the narcissistic self.
David
Julian,
do you hear the struggle i have with putting too fine a point on this particular philosophical question? i wonder about its practicality.
The way I look at the contours of the debate, Bruce thinks that your statements might preclude a transrational perspective, if they were applied outside of the domain that you are applying them. I think this is basically right, and we can make your statements ontologically-correct (heh) without altering the content, effectively relaying the foundation of the house while it is still standing, and this should be seen as extending and enhancing the validity of your perspective rather than taking something away. I think we both share the same concern about Integral being converted into another fringe Green utopian, counter-cultural, orientalist movement that uncritically accepts Eastern pre-modern perspectives as the “true reality” that modernity has obscured. In light of that, I think that its important for integral philosophy to be grounded in mainstream Western philosophy as much as Buddhist and Hindu sources (hence my references to Kant), so that can get obscure at times. Also I think idealism is more effective in dismantling premodern ideas than is empirical realism while simultaneously being easier to swallow for some people because it doesn't have the nihilistic connotations that some people attribute to the latter.
david i always love hearing from you! thanks for your kind words. we still disagree on a coupe things and i dont think that will change anytime soon…but thats cool.
for me - and for several other thinkers and spiritual practitioners, there is a profound, beautiful, mystic, healing, mind-blowing, embodied, energetic experience of spirituality that has no need for speculative metaphysics or unprovable beliefs. its as simple as that. from this point of view speculative metaphysics and unprovable beliefs seem very curious, unnecessary and not as interesting as the mind-body adventure of life, love, creativity, beauty, tenderness, compassion, reason-based intellectual inquiry, embodied energetic ecstasy and our shared humanity.
in fact, to me, speculative metaphysics and unprovable beliefs almost seem like a bit of an obstacle to authentic spirituality - where “authentic” means something like”real,” “honest,” or “substantive…”
au contraire, i think the ego is more afraid of death being the end than of transcendental realities, - i mean think about it - the idea of something surviving the body after death is basically the ego's split-off fantasy about being able to be independent and live forever and maybe take on a new body or go to some new cool place where there are less problems to deal with… come on!
i am quite comfortable going into transcendent states of consciousness - i just am pretty clear that they do not provide evidence of anything beyond death or bodily experience, which is the only thing we really know. the idea that not being open to an unprovable belief or speculative metaphysical assertion is a kind of defense seems a little wrong-headed to me, i am afraid to say..
the moment there is a shred of convincing empirical evidence for experience without a body/brain i will change that position - until then i see no reason to…
for me body and brain are not only sacred - but exist prior to concepts of sacredness.
holy brain, holy body, holy heart, holy sex, holy breath, holy artistic expression, holy emotional experience, holy hormones, neurotransmitters and endorphins, holy nature, holy evolutionary intelligence, holy death.
for me the encounter with death as most likely the end of life puts EVERYTHING into context - (and not as a belief but as a fact, as a defining aspect of reality that is incontrovertible) it is the illuminating energy behind poetry, art, love, consciousness, the desire to grow and heal and communicate and express. i think living with “death as one's adviser” is such powerful medicine.
pretending that death is something other than what it is, doesnt sound like a good strategy to me for a sane life - though i know it is a popular one. seeing death as it is and most likely will always be doesnt seem like evidence of a defense at all, anymore than acknowledging that your family was imperfect and you have shadow feelings toward them sounds like a defense.
i do not call myself an atheist. perhaps i just believe in one god less than you do. and not believing in something unprovable is no more another kind of faith than not collecting stamps is another kind of hobby.
all of that said, believe it or not i do have a lot of space for whatever helps someone to access deeper layers of their own psyche, that activates their neurochemical potential toward well-being and that opens up their energy, but as i wrote about here - i think the distance between experience and interpretation is a fascinating and important issue..
oh - and to actually expand my question about MGM above bruce - can you give me some examples of the problems with postmodernity? can you give me an example of what extreme relativism would be in your mind? it would reallly help me if you then contrasted those with healthy versions of same…
btw thanks for the above post i just saw in which you referenced pannikar and mythos - yes i actually see your point and agree - i might be a little less dramatic in the assertion that existentialism i s the only way forward - i'll think about how to do that!
know that in my yoga class - for example today my sunday class called “yoga church” i use rumi and hildegard and am quite comfortable with using words like soul, spirit and god in a context that i find useful, evocative and in support of a process…. so go figure! i am a contradiction in some ways and this blog persona is an attempt to express and explore some issues i cant do at this depth and intensity anywhere else…
oh and Marko - i think you are dead on! thanks..
Hi Julian,
Always good to talk to you too. Sounds great about your church too.
Julian: the idea of something surviving the body after death is basically the ego's split-off fantasy about being able to be independent and live forever and maybe take on a new body or go to some new cool place where there are less problems to deal with… come on!
i am quite comfortable going into transcendent states of consciousness - i just am pretty clear that they do not provide evidence of anything beyond death or bodily experience, which is the only thing we really know. the idea that not being open to an unprovable belief or speculative metaphysical assertion is a kind of defense seems a little wrong-headed to me, i am afraid to say..
The categorical dismissal of all evidence that suggests survival of bodily death, even of careful empirical studies, looks either like biased science or some kind of a defense. What other explanation is there?
Also, I was referring to creating transcendent states of consciousness as stages. One can be entirely comfortable, even very eager, for experiences of deeper states of consciousness and at the same time have very strong resistance, to say the least, to developing that state as a stage—that requires real change, real transformation, and hard work. It is an ultimate challenge to the self; it requires our deepest emotional self to give up more and more control while our higher mind takes it up. That's why I say that not believing that the self can develop or morph past a certain point of subtlety could be an indication that the person just doesn't want to change his or her lifestyle, is just attached to a certain way of living, and, perhaps most importantly, a certain way of experiencing his or her body and mind. Experiences are always wonderful, but the personal self equates living in alignment with those experiences as death, and it doesn't want to die, so it denies that such things are possible.
David
this is off the cuff and not particularly thoughtful as i have to be somewhere in a minute - please dont take offense at my directness.
love ya david but i aint gonna rehash this death convo with you with you. if there was good empirical evidence for life after death we wouldnt be having this conversation because it would be scientifically accepted. at this point in time this is not the case. no defense - just a fact. again when this changes - cool! how mind-blowingly, reality-altering. aint so yet….
trascendent stages are a nice concept. but what do you mean?
this all sounds good and fits with a certain set of ideas , but it sounds like more of a metaphysical belief than anything else my friend. are you at a transcendent stage? do you know anyone else who is? if not - what are you talking about?
as far as i can tell there are transcendent states of consciousness that can be enriching and transformative. they arise through practice and like all experiences they pass. for some they last longer and for some they bring beautiful shifts in psyche and nervous system. how fantastic - well worth the effort. but a transcendent stage - what does that even mean? absolute enlightenment. are we talking about any non-mythic characters? maybe andrew cohen…. ha.
simple question\: why is it that the great enlightened masters who have supposedly changed their lifestyle and released their separate sense of self so as to serve humanity usually end up being abusive sex offenders with an appetite for caviar, brandy and rolls royces?
as far as i can tell, the only folks who have ever claimed to be at a perfected “transcendent stage” have either been charlatans, dissociatives or sociopaths … that list is long - from the beatles guru to rajneesh, adi da, maharaj ji, muktananda, maharshi, sai baba, and so on - its a shell game, buddy!
especially on the hindu side of the fence.
now the buddhists, that may be different, but its also a different culture and a very specific monastic context. try being at a transcendent stage in chicago or l.a. or new york, working for a living etc… funny thing is the Buddhist teachers i find respectable usually dont claim to jackk kornfield did a really interesting survey of senior teachers who had had big enlightenment experiences and wrote about heir disillusionments as their ordinary problems returned… the book is called after the ecstasy the laundry - and wilber lampooned it viciously, which i found very interesting.
again this goes back to my critical thinking challenges for integral post - i think the literalized notion of enlightenment and enlightened masters is a mistake of the idealizing boomer zeitgeist that the bitter experience of the 70's and 80' should have illuminated. but alas…
Dudes, this may sound really strange coming from my position here, in the here and now.
Deep in that spot inside my heart, for lack of a better metaphor, I understand where your coming from. Here it is. When you know, you know.
Balder….Excellent
Julian…..It isn't something you can get that beautiful brain of your's around.
But do continue, It's like crossfire.
fastdart if you have observations/comments ragrding my actual points i welcome them. otherwise a one-off back-handed dismissive assessment of where my brain is at is little much.
thanks all the same.
hey guys - just watching this wilber talk about reincarnation that i think makes some excellent points and bears out some of what i have been saying…
after all this pracice and study, at this age wilber is “agnostic” on the issue and says it is a “power trip” for the tibetans not to show evidence (if they have it) of their claims about “conscious reincarnation.” he calls it a very difficult question and one that we should be serious about having real evidence for now that we are out of the magic and mythic eras in which these kinds of claims arose.
he also talks about how christian mystics don't see visions of avalokiteshvara for example - something i went into in my spiritual experience vs interpretation piece..
then he makes some statements i found a little odd in light of what we are beginning to understand about genetics, neuroscience and evolution a la steven pinker's book the blank slate - its almost as if he is saying that a vague theory of reincarnation may be the best we can do in terms of understanding that fact that children appear to already have personality traits from a very yong age and why certain people will move up the spiral faster and further than others. for me this is much more gracefully and plausibly explained via the 4 quads and an appeal to nature, nurture, social context, life experiences, genetics etc…why appeal to something outside of what we do know when so much about that makes sense?
the point about there only being one I AM and that what reincarnates (if such a thing happens) is not the ego and its memories - for me nicely makes the distinction between mythic belief and mystic awareness..
the psychoanalytic method he suggests via the lucid dreaming tibetan bardo transmigration theory that arrives at the place where the therapist would ask the client why they chose their parents is annoying and i think highly problematic - but what are ya gonna do?
at least he says evidence is hard to come by and acknowledges that when addressing harvard graduates you might “leave out the shirley maclain part!” unfortunately i dont think he realizes that even though he brackets this kind of theorizing with grounded disclaimers and qualifiers, people want to believe that he is endorsing this sort of theory as true or “making sense” and i think this is part of the problem for me with the integral zeitgeist right now…
his wry commment that the dalai lama cant remember any past lives but shirley maclain can for me is the telling one.
http://in.integralinstitute.org/live/view_ken4.aspx#lucid
comments?
Hi, David, thank you for your comments. Can you tell me a little more about what you're thinking with regard to the IMP case study? It sounds interesting and I'd like to hear more.
Best wishes,
B.
Hey Balder,
Fantastic post! My major suggestion is to send some version of this to kenwilber.com to get some more publicity (perhaps with some compilation of the “Simply Put” series between you and Julian). I think this could have two major beneficial effects: i) encouraging dialogue on these important issues and the necessary relevant distinctions so that IPM does not turn into some green relativistic mush as Julian fears and ii) getting some more publicity for the IPM pod you have started here in Gaia. Seriously, it would be a shame for such brilliant writing not to be shared more broadly.
Second, I really enjoyed hearing your and Julian's personal history and now understand much better where you are both coming from (especially with Julian and his extreme aversion to and fear of integral being “greenified”).
I'll try to add some substantive comments about the topics at hand tomorrow.
Best wishes,
Elijah
thanks elijah - i agree.
& yes it is an extreme aversion and yet still one that i think pales in comparison to what the creator of integral has himself expressed reagarding the problems of green…
Hi, Julian,
I've been thinking about what to write about the MGM, and I'm just not sure what to say. Not that there's nothing to say about it; just that it's such well-covered ground. Honestly, I have found Wilber's polemics against it to be a little too strong too – so I'm not just picking on you! I do recognize the dynamics that Wilber is describing – the dysfunctional, generally narcissistic application of certain postmodern principles and values. I agree that that is problematic, and I have also come across it in several settings – especially strongly in schools and in some spiritual communities as well. But, honestly, the idea that the Boomer meme is going to single-handedly spoil the spiral and thwart human evolution sounds like a Boomer idea in itself! A seemingly overly magnified assessment of the importance of this generation's impact on human history and on the fate of spirituality in general.
I could be missing something, and I'm willing to look at more evidence, but that's my honest response at this point.
About the weaknesses of postmodernism, or the values and perspectives associated broadly with postmodernism in our culture, I would name a familiar litany of shortcomings – the rejection of depth, the related aversion to hierarchies (not distinguishing between dominator and actualization hierarchies), the extreme relativization of morality and values, and so on.
Postmodernism has strengths too – and, of course, IPM represents an attempt to incorporate some of them more fully, but within a model which goes beyond the endless horizontal dispersion of pluralism.
Best wishes,
Balder
yes it seems like on many of these issues i go around and around with integral folks on:
the MGM and extreme relativism
the pathology of the new age
the ridiculousness of pop spirituality/junk science like the secret and what the bleep
the importance of the pre/trans fallacy
much of the argument against what i am saying seems to in some ways actually be a disagreement with wilber too.
i feel like there is a kind of selective ignoring of certain of his positions and then i end up getting to be the mean person at the nice supposedly turquoise integral party saying um, ehemmm - but what about this?!” how dare i be so arrogant!? :O) i am not being integral at all…. etc..
i had a feeling you would say you thought wilber was too intense about MGM, just as you felt the translation vs transformation essay was something you would hope ” his thinking had now moved beyond..”
again i would ask for a few hypothetical examples when you get a second if you dont mind, that:
make clear differentiations between healthy and unhealthy postmodernism.
make clear where the reasonable line would be for you around healthy relativism and why.
and i do appreciate your comments and frankness. thanks!
Thank you, Elijah. That's a good idea. I will look into modifying this a bit and seeing if I can make it presentable for posting outside of Gaia and this current debate.
I look forward to hearing your further thoughts tomorrow!
And your comment about our personal histories reminded me that I'd been intending to tell Julian about one of my classes…
Julian, I thought you might be interested to hear how I've organized the class I teach on Transpersonal Psychology. Similar to you, my focus (and “voice”) outside of Gaia is different than it is here. My class on Transpersonal Psych is two quarters long, and the first quarter is spent almost entirely on pre-egoic, egoic, and existential issues. I only touch on transpersonal issues per se when I describe the context in which these other issues are set, which of course includes transpersonal dimensions. But otherwise, the focus is on these core issues. Only in the second quarter do we really begin to deal with different transpersonal psychological maps and approaches.
thats awesome bruce!
huh - i like elijah's idea - what do you think about collaborating and turning these last couple months of debate into something coherent that illustrates our points of view along with both their contentious and complementary nature?
we could each write a couple chapter length pieces in response to eachother and collaborate on an intro and conclusion… perhaps even get gaia opr I-I interested in getting it out there.
i think we both have moments of clarity and skill - though i probably come off more rough around the edges!
Julian, I do not consider “disagreeing with Wilber” to be “selective ignoring.” I am not towing any party line here and I don't think I have to follow him in any way. I have criticized Wilber's writings and positions in a number of places, though perhaps you haven't seen a lot of that since it was mostly on Integral Naked (the first and second versions) and then some on the Multiplex, over a period of about five years. I've since decided to focus more on what I agree with, which is still a lot, and move forward.
In almost every conversation we have, you give me a laundry list of things I'm supposed to “draw distinctions” on. I think I have been pretty clear – both in my blog entry up above, which you have responded to in a general way, and really throughout my conversations. I have not endorsed The Secret or What the Bleep as sources of reliable spiritual wisdom; I have not given my support or endoresement to questionable gurus (in fact, I've explicitly expressed my disagreement with some of Wilber's endorsements); I have never said that there is no such thing as pathology or misguided beliefs; I have never rejected the clear distinctions between levels of moral, emotional, or cognitive development outlined by folks such as Piaget, Kohlberg, Gilligan, Kegan, and Cook-Greuter (and have even encouraged you to expand your own horizons and allow Fowler into the picture too).
About the pre/trans fallacy and the meaning of transrational (discussions we had on I-I Zaadz), I posted what I thought were some pretty clear explanations of those things, but I recall that you pretty much ignored what I wrote and kept asking the same questions.
If you see examples of what appears to be extreme relativism or unhealthy postmodernism in my writings, please point it out and we can discuss it. But honestly, this is frustrating for me. In my blog above, I tried to outline what I hoped were detailed, at least relatively clear answers to your questions, and your response to what I've written has been so general, I can't tell what you agree with and what you disagree with. So it sort of feels like we're spinning our wheels here. I have tried to answer your direct questions. I can't really tell what parts of my answer you find agreeable and what you don't. And now you're asking me to answer similar questions again!
Hopefully we'll make headway at some point….
Best wishes,
B.
Okay. Now I've vented my frustration. I do think a collaborative effort – piecing together several entries – would be interesting. At least, maybe the recurrent frustrations and mutual misunderstandings will keep people entertained!
I'll also think about some examples of healthy and unhealthy relativism, if you really need me to spell it out. After I finish a little more “class prep,” since my classes begin in two days. I just wish I had a better idea of what you disagreed with in my blog, so I could have a better sense how to go forward.
Best wishes,
B.
oh my goodness - sorry bruce - i wasnt saying you were selectively ignoring i was saying i think there is a tendency in the community i have observed to do so…
i wasnt having a go at you at all my friend. of course i know you arent towing any party line. i am talking about how many of my points regarding the issues i listed were often met at the I-I pod with the retort that i wasnt being integral at all if that was what i thought - even when i was perhaps towing an unpopular part of the party line on the above issues! then i got to be the mean rationalist bastard who didnt think anyone could “manifest” sports cars…. and who heaven fordbid (!) pointed out the narcissism and magical thinking verging on the psychotic of steve pavlina's (touted as turquoise integral blogger by the I-I holons newsletter) suggestion that he manifested the VA tech killings and that there was numerological significance that related directly to his life in the number of people killed and the date of the incident…. and when he said elsewhere that we all manifest child molestation because it is in our thoughts… no, no came the clamoring integral blogger response - dont judge the man and certainly dont make jokes baout him being on drugs - ho un-integral, how rude….. but not in that good andrew cohen fry your ego kind of rude way of course.. :O)
above i listed some other examples that i think go to the argument that the integral community is much more problematically new age than you suggested.
i was however wanting to hear you say that and was also digging a little to see what your position is on the question of the unhealthy versions of postmodernism, relativism, the new age etc - because as we know but many of our readers may be unaware wilber has actually written things that make my criticisms of those areas seem like a nice swedish massage with warm oil and soft music!
and yes you are right - you have done an amazing job of drawing some great distinctions - so no more laundry lists until you ask for one! :O)
and if you have links i would looovvvee to see your pieces that go into your disagreements with wilber - that would be eddifying!
all the best to you
~julian
Bruce, with regard to the case-study idea–I don't have any formed ideas about it. I was just wondering if there might be a way to apply it or play a game with it. We could explore a specific topic or question and try to apply IMP to the best of our ability. At first we might not discuss values so much or debate what's right or wrong, though that might be inevitable; we might try to begin by just listing all the perspectives that we could think of, different worldviews, different methodologies. Or we might not have any plan at all, just pick a topic and dive in and let the Tao take us where it will (that was for Julian and Mr. T, our pre-determinists :) ).
For some reason one question that comes to mind is something that I heard David Deida say; he said, “Ramana Maharshi was dysfunctional.” I think he was missing some perspectives there. Of course that might not be a big enough subject. Maybe we could look into something regarding the election, though of course we wouldn't be able to get into much transpersonal there. I really don't know; I was basically thinking that rather than discussing the map or try to debate the map, we could, as an exercise, look into something while consciously trying apply IMP as fully and completely as we can. It might, of course, fall flat, but it might be very interesting. You know, sometimes you learn best by actually playing the game rather than reading the directions. The success of it might depend on the subject matter.
Julian, regarding transcendant stages–for one thing, it's another way of saying transpersonal stages. Let's look at it this way, have you ever known someone who was mostly irrational but occassionally was able to come off with a little rationality? On a good day, they could be rational? So, they had a peak experience of rationality. Maybe on some days they had a peak experience of post-rationality. But generally they were pre-rational; they had mastered pre-rationality, which isn't necessarily something to scoff at; the emergence of the ego (Red) was a big thing way back when. Someone like Ken was sitting around trying teach people to differeniate themselves from the flock …
At any rate, say someone goes to a retreat and has an experience of causal or nondual awareness. And then he goes back home and it dissapears (After Ecstasy the Laundry sounds interesting, but mostly Ken's lampooning sounds interesting–where can I find that?) At any rate, he had a peak experience, kind of like the irrational guy has peak experiences with rationality. Sometimes people can achieve what Ken calls state plateaus, which is when, for whatever reason, a person is able to sustain that kind of deep-state experience–maybe they live in a monastery or an ashram and the conditions remain really good for that kind of thing. Maybe he's the guru and everyone does what he says, even better for state-plateau conditions.
But that is quite a different thing that realizing those peak experiences as stages, in a similar way, for example, that people realize rationality as a stage adaptation, or as Ken sometimes says, a permanent adaptation. Actually, it is quite possible to realize the subtle, the causal, and the nondual as stable adaptations, as stages–in other words, one begins to identify oneself at those levels (those subtle selves become one's internal reference point).
When you have had deep-state experiences, did it seem like some alien had descended upon you or like you caught a glimpse of some part of yourself you hadn't visited before? I will take a guess and say it was the later; thus, it is just a subtler part of yourself. It is so much easier to identify with the gross self, the one that feels life so strongly, that is so attached to sex and security and after that pride and honor etc. It's quite a big deal to learn to disidentify with that gross self and identfiy with something more subtle. This is a different work than getting hit with a little kundalini on retreat and having your head light up for a little while. However, those experiences can be helpful if you use them in the right way. Andrew Cohen, who in many ways is a great teacher (greatly under-estimated or simply dismissed by some who don't understand how different his teachings are; he offers a basically Indigo teaching, with a touch of Violet), urges retreat participants to use those experiences in a particular way: to catch a glimpse of the personal self or the ego and learn something about its nature.
In that way, you can build some construct awareness, which is a big part of the work in building these experiences as a stable adaptation, and thereby learn to become aware of the personal self in action, day to day, moment to moment–in becoming aware of it you disidentify with the person who had a birthday and who has all these fears and desires. At the same time, he teaches people something about the energetic aspect of being–the energetic aspect of those state experiences. If you can learn the nature of that energetic self and build construct awareness, you are on your way to building some sort of stage adaptation that is increasingly aware of the personal self. I realize I have delved into areas that you will be skeptical about and spoken about it in such a way that you may not like, but just try to get the general idea; there are all sorts of ways to language it. Ken will discuss it in the forthcoming Overmind, Supermind (originally Aurobindo's terms, Ken sometimes uses those to refer to transpersonal stages).
There is some contradiction, I believe, between the way Ken talks about these third-tier stages and the Wilber-Combs lattice, but I don't think we should let that bother us too much. I do think the Wilber-Combs lattice could be improved in some way; how is hard to say. I'm not sure I've explained this in the best way for you, but fortunately the recent Guru and Pandit where they discussed third-tier-stages is available online (it's pretty general, though). One thing I recall him saying from that conversation is that these deep states “come with the territory” of the third-tier stages–that gives you some idea of what they're like, but that's also where I see some contradiction with the lattice. (Anyone want to comment on that? Bruce?)
At any rate, like any other stage we might say that these stages involve a certain value sphere, a certain kind of cognition or number of perspectives, greater awareness. Up through Turquoise a person is into self-actualization, but with third tier a person gets into self-transdence and becomes increasingly aware of the personal self. At the same time one becomes increasingly less personally motivated; one is motivated by the nature of the universal energy, which is interested in the most meaningful kind of love and development. The person is increasingly less motivated by what will make their personality feel better, now or in the future. Doing the right, evolutionary thing is much more important.
I don't know that I've been entirely clear about this, but those experiences people have on retreat are not like some drug experience; they are different, deeper, higher parts of the self, which, with work, life-style changes, value changes, meditative work, personal work, etc. one can identify with or live as. Every enlightenment teacher you meet is going to give the impression that this describes them, that they have realized these deeper states as a permanent adaptation, but most of the time they will have, at best, managed to maintain a state plateau. With the higher stages, there is a very different self-sense, motivation, feeling, etc. When satsang teachers say something like “You don't have to change,” they are letting you that they don't know anything about higher stages; they are teaching state plateaus.
Also, Ramana Maharshi doesn't belong in the group of “charlatans, dissociatives, or sociopaths.”
David
well david - you started with deida's typical off-the-cuff assessment of maharshi and ended with your own.
personally from the little info i have seen i think he was a dissociative who also had some interesting and powerful non-dual awareness - but hardly an example to aspire to IMO.
however it does sound like you are comfortable with everyone else on that list being labelled that way - so what do you say to that indictment of the enlightened holy man archetype?
as for everything in-between - i appreciate you going into such detail, but am quite aware of the general theory behind transcendent stages. how states stabilize etc etc…. my observation: this whole psychic, subtle, causal thing is mostly an article of faith for the vast majority of integral folks who like to intone the creed and imagine that having read about such things in some way is equivalent to having experienced them….
i am saying though that this is largely theoretical and based in the belief in enlightenment - which i think needs to be reassessed altogether.
you kinda make my point for me by bringing up cohen. for me the enlightenement this guy has experienced and the potency of whatever he is teaching are meaningless alongside a) the fact that his own mother wrote a book about him (as did a long-time student) that basically exposes him as a completely narcissistic power tripper, b) the many accounts available online of his seriously abusive, even criminal behavior toward students he felt slighted by, the money stuff, the violence, the psychological manipulation, c) his incredibly immature, self-aggrandizing, not-a-trace-of-irony kill the ego preaching and generally weak contributions to the guru and the pandit discussions.
if he is the example of someone at a transcendent stage and helping others to go there we are in trouble, but what else is new?.
david i really like you, and think your mind is brilliant and sincere, but i am suggesting that the metaphysics of enlightenment need to be deconstructed and i am saying that the emperor is wearing no clothes .
oh and FYI i am certainly not a pre-determinist - is that a pre-given simlile for not believing in the amber god? :O)
The conversation on this blog is sort of all over the place, not that closely related to the main topic. I'd like to try to stay closer to the topic, but I can't insist too loudly on that, since I was one of the contributors to tangents on the Simply Put series…
Julian, when you ask me about “unhealthy versions” of postmodernism, relativism, and New Age, are you asking me to describe healthy and unhealthy versions of each of those things, or are you rather asking me to compare and contrast each of them to Integral or to IPM? I ask because it seems that your main thrust in your blogs has been to differentiate Integral from all of them – since even healthy versions would generally be deemed incomplete or partial.
About dysfunctional gurus and godmen. It is, of course, easy to find problematic examples and use them to lampoon the whole idea of the type of deep transformation towards which the enlightenment traditions point. I do agree with Wilber and others that the notion of enlightenment needs to be rethought, given what we know about shadow material, evolution, postmodern critiques of presence, and so on. But while there is no shortage of scandalous stories about gurus and their foibles, there are also examples of spiritual teachers who, while not perfect and still quite human, nevertheless do appear to represent for us new, transformed modes of being which go well beyond the horizons of the “psychological adjustment” of humanistic existentialism. In the Hindu advaita tradition, for example, I think Jean Klein stands as such an exceptional individual.
I'm unfortunately a bit distracted at present and haven't been able to put together a decent post for this blog or for my IPS pod. Hopefully time and energy will free up in the next day or so….
David, you said:
so, I was referring to creating transcendent states of consciousness as stages. One can be entirely comfortable, even very eager, for experiences of deeper states of consciousness and at the same time have very strong resistance, to say the least, to developing that state as a stage.
I keep on saying this: as of Wilber-V (Integral Spirituality), this is not how it works; states are not stabilized into stages, that is Wilber-IV. One of the major reasons why I began advancing my viewpoint is this specific change in the model. Wilber even says that in the link you provided:
“The fact of the matter is that we now have enough evidence to compellingly suggest that these two types of development are relatively independent… I see some of what you’re doing as a combination of helping people get into a particular state, meaning the recognition of the ever-present, timeless ground, and then also working to help them push forward with their authentic self into these literally higher structures that are being formed.”
Some of the obvious problems with Wilber-IV: children couldn't have mystical experiences (plenty of evidence for that), and genuinely realized spiritual masters couldn't be sexist or ethnocentric (plenty of evidence for that too). On the theory level, there's good evidence to suggest making stages and states independent brings Wilber-V closer to Aurobindo's actual view:
“[The Atman Project] shows an error, small and harmless as it may seem, but it points to a large and common misunderstanding. Sri Aurobindo's teachings evolution is not about proceeding from the mental consciousness “to over-mind to super-mind and Atman”. When reading Aurobindo one has to bear in mind that the dynamic aspect of the Divine that he calls Supermind… is not the same as the Atman of Vedanta that Wilber understands via Ramana Maharshi and Adidam.”
Julian is right that this should be reassessed, but it turns out it has been reassessed! I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out in Wilber's forthcoming books, and my personal view is that states come “with the territory” of whatever the leading edge of consciousness is. Now its turquoise, 2000 years ago it was amber.
Hi everyone,
First off, I'm thrilled to hear that you guys hope to follow through with my idea about sharing these recent IPM writings on kenwilber.com. I think that will be a real gift to the integral community.
I agree that Marko nailed it with his distinction about the differences between Julian's and Balder's focus and target audience. I think this relates to the following comment Balder comment to Julian: “Although you have said you understand emptiness, relativity, nonduality, and so on, I have not picked up on the 'flavors” of that understanding in your language.” I think this fits with Julian's decision to focus his teachings more on helping people reach the centauric level of development and heal old emotional wounds instead of focusing on helping people make a “righthand turn” on the Wilber-Combs lattice and master developing states.
Balder - I feel a bit bad in that I can't provide more substantive feedback to you on your initial post. This is partly because I found myself strongly resonating with just about everything you wrote, and partly because I feel your writing is so nuanced and brings in information from such a broad range of sources that it really pushes the boundary of my intellectual understanding of this material. Because I'm grasping a bit for some critical feedback to give you, I will say that I hadn't interpreted Julian's earlier comments that provoked your venting in the same way that you did. I think some important things came from that venting nevertheless.
Best regards,
Elijah
Julian: Personally from the little info i have seen i think he [Maharshi] was a dissociative who also had some interesting and powerful non-dual awareness - but hardly an example to aspire to IMO.
Dissociative in what way? Evidence? You might point to aspects of the philiosophy, but much of that can be explained by cultural factors and the era, and other Advaita teachers speak in the same way, and the American neoAdvaitins are far worse. I'm not saying he was the greatest in all respects; he didn't get Aurobindo or have good answers in response to him, but Maharshi left school as a kid and Aurobindo went to Cambridge. Maharshi wasn't high on every line, but I don't think Ken called him the greatest sage of the twentieth century for nothing, though he might not be quite so enthusiastic now; I think that was Wilber IV. I also think Maharshi's health was compromised at some point–from excessive fasting, perhaps parasites and such–so that's another thing to keep in mind with him.
Julian: However it does sound like you are comfortable with everyone else on that list being labelled that way - so what do you say to that indictment of the enlightened holy man archetype?
I think the holy man archetype does have pitfalls and negatives that need to be addressed, but teachers of other types can have similar problems. Also, people are of different types, and each of those types will likely need a different type of teacher. If we retire one sort of type of teacher I think we will leave a lot of people without a teacher. Some people find that sort of thing very inspiring, and the bhakti path is a very good one, no less important than jnana, in my opinion (I think we need both at the same time), though when it takes a personal form (worshipping the guru) the person is, of course, not at the highest stage. Of course the whole culture–teacher and students–does need to evolve and develop and mature, so it's good to discuss. One of the huge downsides, as you point out, is the word enlightenment itself and bestowing all sorts of powers onto the guru, encouraging transference, but there might be something beneficial about this sometimes. The trouble really arises when the guru tries to take advantage of it or the student gets fixated. That definitely happens, so it's good to shed light on it.
Julian: “This whole psychic, subtle, causal thing is mostly an article of faith for the vast majority of integral folks who like to intone the creed and imagine that having read about such things in some way is equivalent to having experienced them….”
It is an article of faith for most people, though not for everyone, but is this necessarily a bad thing, and how could it ever be otherwise? First a person will hear about a stage or a state, then they will become convinced of it, and then, taking it as an article of faith, they will try to realize it. It will always unfold like that 99% of the time. Of course some people do learn the map and give the impression they have also learned the stage, and this can be annoying, but what do we expect? We might be able to point out the difference occassionally, but for the most part we just have to accept it that people are like that.
Julian: i am saying though that this is largely theoretical and based in the belief in enlightenment - which i think needs to be reassessed altogether.
Those grooves are just being laid down now, so perhaps they aren't even fully formed yet, but it would be a mistake to call them theoretical, especially the first two or three. Let's reassess enlightenment, but at the same time we need to take the injunction and realize those stages ourselves if we want to be authorities on it.
I realize Cohen has faults, and don't entirely disagree with you there. However, we have to 1) give people a chance to grow and evolve and redeem themselves (the things related in those books happened years ago; I don't think the mistakes being made today are as gross); 2) not throw the baby out with the bathwater–we have to see things through an AQAL lens; that includes different lines. A person may be not well developed along some lines, but very well developed along others. If we are emotionally integral as well as cognitively integral, we'll be able to hold this in our awareness and not dismiss someone for a few faults. Not saying that anyone should become a devotee, but there may be important things to learn there; I think there are. I don't think you appreciate well enough some of the guru and pandit topics if you think AC offers weak contributions. There are some things he's very good about, like all the discussions involving authentic self. This is one of the great contributions of his teachings, and, I suspect, a large part of the reason Ken has a relationship with him.
The very first guru and pandit is a very good one, a good place to start. Most of the time, Julian, you are attacking premodern ideas of enlightenment, and here both of them talk about the difference between premodern enlightenment, nondual enlightenment, and evolutionary enlightenment. I think it's important to be very clear on those distinctions if we want to reassess enlightenment. Here is another good one; they discuss authentic self/deeper psychic. Misunderstandings about the deeper psychic/authentic self/psychic being are one of the very biggest reasons people raise arguements with Ken and Andrew. Until you understand the deeper psychic–not just intellectually but experientially–you will be in no position to critique the metaphysics of enlightement. There are a few other good discussions of authentic self in the guru and pandit series; you can find them here.
David
PS. I know you're not a pre-determinist, Julian. Just making a little joke. Get a little silly in those late-night posts occassionally … :)
actually elijah - my work include a great deal of working with states, as i discuss at length here.
in the words of i think alan watts - trying to “eff the ineffable” or write in linear language about non-dual states of consciousness is not only somehwat impossible - i personally think it does people the disservice of imagining that they can know what those states are - and even that they exist - or are somehow something that can be stabilized as a stage - by simply READING about them…
this kind of third hand knowledge sets us up for the kind of shell game charlatanism that we still like to pretend is the exception instead of the rule in this domain.
as i have said before - i am all for inquiry-based practice (and you dont get more inwquiry-based than “who am i”) but i think it needs to be tempered with a) serious shadow work so as not to use the faux non-dual escape hatch into dissociation and denial and b) with critical thinking and cog dev (“be a lamp unto thyself.”)
i always have an eyebrow raised when i hear psychic sybtle and causal being tossed arouond as a creed and third tier consciousness being taken on faith.
personally, i have spent much time in ashraams, on holotropic breathing mats, on meditation cushions and in entheogenic spaces - i am very familiar with state-work, as the link above supports and as this piece explores i still think there is a massive distance between altered state experiences and the often naive interpretations that people think they “prove.”
cheers
~j
Actually, when I talk about understanding emptiness or nonduality, I'm not only talking about having certain state experiences. For instance, if by emptiness, someone means a particular bounded (e.g., temporary) state experience of the “void,” that is not what I mean. Madhyamaka teachings and meditations on emptiness involve a rigorous cognitive component in addition to state training, culminating in a powerful state-stage integration. The Madhyamaka course, in other words, involves intensive training in logical analysis and deconstruction, which is then “sealed” with nonconceptual, “state” realization. I believe the cognitive component actually opens quite a sophisticated post-formal vista, the impact of which is deepened by the state training. By themselves, the momentary meditation experiences (nyams, in Tibetan terminology) will remain suggestive but not really very useful or deeply transformative.
Sorry, Mike, I missed your post at first.
David: so, I was referring to creating transcendent states of consciousness as stages. One can be entirely comfortable, even very eager, for experiences of deeper states of consciousness and at the same time have very strong resistance, to say the least, to developing that state as a stage.
Mike: “I keep on saying this: as of Wilber-V (Integral Spirituality), this is not how it works; states are not stabilized into stages, that is Wilber-IV. One of the major reasons why I began advancing my viewpoint is this specific change in the model. Wilber even says that in the link you provided:”
Yes, I understand the distinction there; what I said in that quote did not reflect that distinction, but what I said in the entire post did. I drew a distinction first of all between state experiences and state plateaus (which is what Vedanta generally teaches), and then I went on to discuss how this sort of thing can be realized as a stage. I spoke, for example, about stable construct awareness (which a person would carry with him- or herself all the time, not just in meditation), and the energetic aspect of being, and I wasn't referring to kundalini or at least not only to kundalini but to the deeper psychic or evolutionary impulse. I also spoke about how the personal self and the energetic aspect of being are motivated in a very different way and, very generally, how they are different, again highlighting the distinction between Atman and third-tier stages. When I said “realize states as stages” I was only referring to what you referred to in your post and what Ken says, which is that these deeper states “come with the territory” of higher stages. However, that contradicts the Wilber-Combs lattice, which suggests that a person can be at Supermind and yet not be in the nondual state.
Also, I'm not sure that Supermind can really be called the dynamic aspect of being in Aurobindo's teachings, as Kheper does; in fact apparently Aurobindo said he himself hadn't realized the Supermind (Ken and Andrew talk about that here). The energetic aspect of being in Aurobindo's teachings is usually referred to as the psychic being, as far as I have seen, and then there are all the different stages of the psychic being, from vital, to mental, to higher mind, intutive mind, overmind, supermind … When one reaches intuitive mind, overmind the psychic being has begun to “come to the fore,” to control the vehicle not in an obscured way but more directly.
Do you see the contradiction with the Wilber-Combs lattice when we say that the deeper states come with the territory of third-tier stages or any stages for that matter? It does seem to make more sense to say that the states come with the territory of those higher stages, as you and Ken say, which is why I wrote it that way in that one paragraph. How can you say that deep states and third-tier stages are relatively independent and also say that the deep states come with the territory of the third-tier stages? I think if we simply drew the distinction between state plateaus (an Amber meditation master, for example, who, after his meditation, acts according to Amber values and cognition) and third-tier stages, as well as different lines, that might be enough.
So, the quote you gave is partially right–Aurobindo's teaching is about proceeding from the mental, to higher mind, intuitive mind, etc., but Atman does not lie at the top; supermind does–unless of course we say that the state comes with the territory of supermind, in which case it does in part, though again that contradicts the Wilber-Combs lattice.
You say at the end that states come with the territory of whatever the leading edge is. I think it would be true to say that the energetic aspect of being does, though it is everywhere, really, but I don't think it can be said that the nondual state came with the territory of Amber in Europe, for example. Maybe among Zen masters in Japan or the like. Is that what you meant? It seems to me we would have to say that he gross state came with the territory of Amber, though of course people could experience other states. I think we should just say that with each stage there is a base-line state: with first tier it would be the gross state, at some point it becomes the subtle, the causal, the nondual, and that's the person's baseline, though they will still drift throughout the other states to some extent. Or of course we could say that you could be at Supermind and be at any state as the Wilber-Combs lattice suggests, but then we couldn't quite say that the nondual state comes with the territory of Supermind.
David
How can you say that deep states and third-tier stages are relatively independent and also say that the deep states come with the territory of the third-tier stages?
That's not what I said, I said that deep states might come with the territory of leading-edge stages. This is admittedly speculative and not well supported by the WC matrix, but this is me being open-minded to the possibility of a future third-tier utopia, even though I think the evidence right now points to a more straight-forward reading of the matrix: first, that state training can be used to catalyze stage-transitions in general, in all tiers. Another speculative possibility that I favor is that people at second/third-tier are more likely to be found in the world rather than exclusively in a monastery, so integral spirituality as integral is concerned about how to bring state realizations into the ordinary world.
Apologies to Bruce for getting off topic :O
:-) As I said, I'm not complaining too loudly. The conversations that are unfolding are interesting and worthwhile to have.
I've wondered, too, about Wilber's assertion that, at the higher stages, multiple deeper or more expansive states “come with the territory.” It does make intuitive sense, being on the far side of the centaur.
gaia was being very unco-operative before!
here is what i was trying to link above:
as this piece explores i still think there is a massive distance between altered state experiences and the often naive interpretations that people think they “prove.”
cheers
~j
Sorry, Bruce. I actually missed that post of yours back there. But I'm glad you're fine with letting it meander a bit. It may return to IMP in a fresh way if we do that.
Mike, that's a really interesting point about integral being involved in bringing those kind of stage realizations into the ordinary world. I think that's just it: traditional enlightenment teachings mostly focus on the upper left, though some in the lower left a bit. And that's fine in an ashram where a monk wouldn't have to make too many big decisions–he or she just follows the leader and goes about the daily routine, and there are clear-cut rules to follow. But out in the urban wilds it is not so simple, so a more integral teaching is necessary. Most importantly, I think we have to learn to flow with things in the right way, and to have the right kind of directionality. Andrew Cohen often makes the point how many choices we have, far more than those of a monastic. There are so many ways to get sidetracked and squander energy, so the foundation of his teaching is clarity of intention (I know other teachings also stress this). I think it's quite profound–we need to recognize a higher view and put our stake in the ground there and stick to it.
Another of his really great teachings that I mention from time to time concerns moments of decision. We come to a cross roads, and down one road is the way we have been, and down the other is something new. He teaches to consider everything but, generally, to go into the new. This is the evolutionary context. At certain cross roads to take up the new challenge or new way. That road will always be uncompanied by some fear, anxiety, apprehension, while the road leading to the way we have been looks very cozy and comfortable. So it's kind of counter intuitive or counter to what we would naturally feel is the right thing to do, but once we see it we see that going back to the cozy way is like a death.
Julian, that was a great piece. One point you make there about state experiences is interesting, how they can simply solidify a person in their pre-existing worldview. The guru and the pandit have talked about that as well, how in some cases those experiences can inhibit development. That's why the context that is set for those experiences is so important. If the context is simply the postmodern “have a good time” or “whatever feels good” then those experiences may not amount to much in terms of stage development. But if a context for growth is clearly established and people have the intention to look into the nature of themselves or , at Turquoise/Indigo, into the nature of the personal self in general, it can be transformative.
David
david i wrote you a long response but gaia is gobbling sentences like a little monster today… oh well. sorry if this is repetitive i am trying to catch up on a lot of writing that got lost earlier today and am not sure what i have and havent said…
bottom line:
you and i disagree on one thing alone - what constitutes evidence and what sorts of claims can be made from which of the quadrants/strands of science.
when we get into any of the stuff about god, life after death or enlightenment (all speculative metaphysical constructs btw t) you fall back on claims that i think privilege the UL and over-reach in ways that are not accurate.
you also sometimes use use sophisticated versions of religious arguments from design, special experience, appeal to authority, god in the gaps etc..
regarding the above - you are not responding to my points but trying to teach me about higher stages.
i am quite aware of the theory behind this stuff - like you i have been a wilber reader for over a decade and am into transpersonal psych, meditation etc…
the assumption you are making though is that you have had an experience i have not had. it seems like you think that if i had had the experience i would have come to the same conclusions that you have but i would list sam harris and stephen batchelor as just a couple examples of folks who have had experiences and have similar interpretations to my own.
again my question is this: are you at the stage you are describing, do you know people who are at the stage you are describing? what do you base this assessment on - and if not what are talking about that is not speculative and kinda faith based?
you make my point for me when you reference cohen again. if he is an exemplar of being at a transcendent stage i am not interested.
my eyebrow goes up when i see psychic subtle and causal spoken as a creed and the myth of enlightenment believed in as a literal absolute stage with no evidence. especially when we have such a history of charlatanism around this particular metaphysical assertion.
i was interested in enlightenment for a long time - reading about, listening to talks about it, attending satsang, meditating and trying anything to get there, for years. now i think that practice is valuable and growth does occur but the belief in enlightenment seems not only like a naive artifact of the 70's but highly problematic.
and i am ot talking about rprerational enlightenment, i am talking about some of the great exemplars of enlightenment to have come to the west in the last 50 years or so…
for me what is so exciting about integral - as an outgrowth of transpersonal psych - is the possibility of creating something truly contemporary that side steps the problems of the past and really integrates these bodies of knowledge and practice in a way that illuminates more of who we are. unfortunately i find most teachers of enlightenment are so anti-psychology and so fall into the trap of “effing the ineffable” by trying to tell people what enlightenment is so that then they think it is a concept or something they “know” about…that i think they perpetuate a lot of confusion.
Sorry about your lost posts, Julian. That's a drag. Yes, Gaia has been acting weird for me too lately. (But the spell checker just worked. Amazing!)
Okay, I've never drawn from intelligent design or god in the gaps. You continue to label everything that's not rational pre-rational. Whenever anyone touches upon something transrational, you say mythic or magic or god in the gaps or intelligent design or pathological. This new atheist philosophy is not going to carry us into third tier. Sam Harris seems like a good guy; he has superb communication and language skills, superb interpersonal skills, superb health, suberb comportment, but he is definitely not a legitimate third-tier spiritual teacher. I would say he's a talented seeker who hasn't yet found a path that will take him into third tier.
It would be interesting to contemplate the zones and how we juggle them in IMP. It seems to me that if applied in the right way IMP will go hand in hand with the kind of open inquiry (without a particular goal in mind, other than the truth, perhaps) that A. H. Almaas talks about. If the truths of each zone are honored in the right way it will simply open up the inquiry a little more; it will give us a bit more of the truth and open the inquiry further. But if we do not honor the truths of a specific zone, the inquiry becomes blocked–that's when he get ideological, needlessly metaphysical, attached. Julian, I do believe you simply dismiss findings, recently from zone #1, that don't fit into your philosophy, adding Maharshi to your list of pathological gurus when he says something you can't answer.. When you do this your philosophy becomes a static thing. Everything about our philosophy, even the most sacred cows, have to be ready to be sacrificed at all times, or least not held so tightly.
I don't think the new atheist philosophy, or the idealism we've heard about, survives the zone #1 findings of the great mystics. For example, what Ramana Maharshi said: “If it is not in deep dreamless sleep it is not real.” I've also shown that the subject/object duality can be obliterated in deep dreamless sleep. Nondual consciousness is the only thing that exists in each state according to these mystics. Ken has also said that it is obvious, given his experience, that the “mind made the body,:” by which I believe he means consciousness. It doesn't make it so, and I don't personally know that to be a fact, but it certainly is more compelling than the new atheists, who are so ideological and attached to their materialistic view that they won't even admit new evidence, as Dawkins did here.
As for third-tier, yes, I have plenty of experience with it. There was a time, in the late nineties, when it was an article of faith for me and I worked ceaselessly on it, and since the turn of the millennium it hasn't been an article of faith for me. I don't mean to make any big claims for myself for a number of reasons, including the fact that all my lines are not that high, and I still have some big challenges. But, yes, I do speak from experience on that count. What one sees when one develops a certain degree of construct awareness is that there is something that comes out of nothing. A will that comes out of absolutely nothing. An energetic that comes out of nothing. It's quite a mystery. One sees that the separate-self sense did not have nearly as big a voice as it thought it did and as the new atheists, by default, think it does. When they realize that degree of construct awareness they will also come to see this mysterious energetic, and their own ego will not be their self-sense but will be something in their awareness. It is, of course, a gradual process, but a person has a choice then: to trust in their personal will, which is fear based and terminally mediocre, or this other thing they don't understand.
With regard to Andrew Cohen, you mustn't be seeing him through an AQAL lens. If you did, you would not dismiss everything he says because of a lower interpersonal line or ethical line or wherever his issues are. If we see someone through an AQAL lens we can say, “Okay, here he's an expert, here he's average, here he's below average, so I'll just listen to him when he's on his best subject and not demonize him just because he's low somewhere else.” There are so few teachers teachings this aspect of spirituality, and they don't belong in the pre-trans dust bin. The new atheist philosophy will have to bend to accommodate it, or it will simply dead end in second tier.
The basic point, then, is that there is a will or intentionality that is not at all personal and is higher than the personal will (Andrew's fourth tenet, by the way, the truth of impersonality). This is not a message most people want to hear because they are busy self-aggrandizing or self-actualizing or self-indulging rather than self-transcending, which involves a lot more than just meditation and shadow-work. So when a person really sees this, things like the “useful myth” Ken talks about actually start to make sense; it begins to look very attractive because in your own field you can see this very mysterious and amazing energetic at work, an energetic again that has nothing to do with the personal will, though it can use the personal and all other evolved capabilities. A. H. Almaas, who Ken has called the greatest meta-psychologist writing today, Aurobindo, Ken Wilber all have awoken to this, and it has informed their philosophy. The other basic point is that the zone #1 findings of the greatest mystics do need to be honored if we are going to claim to be employing IMP. We don't need to come to any conclusions because of them, but rather allow them to open up new and different questions.
David
Gregory Desilet posted some comments on this blog over on the IPS pod, which I wanted to copy here. He is proposing a model which he calls synergistic spirituality, and his comments on my blog entry are made in the context of a discussion of his proposal (worth checking out in its own right).
Greg's comments are in bold, and the excerpts from the blog are in italics…
~*~
Here are some points taken from Balder's blog post (cited below) in which I have inserted some comments (in bold):
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)
In other words, this is not a view that at bottom is consistent with basic realism (an absolute reality completely independent of contextual constraints-and here “context” does not refer simply to cognitive orientations because a clean separation of cognitive or mental constructs and a physical reality cannot be reliably achieved by any means presently known)
* 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)
Another way of putting this “operational or enactive approach” regarding cognition and epistemology would be to say that all “truth” is held provisionally and forever open to alteration by way of new “evidence.” In this sense “truth,” operationally speaking, remains linked to persuasiveness and judgment (as opposed to the coercion of “brute fact”). This, however, does not reduce to an expression of the form such as “Truth is that which one is persuaded is the case” but rather “That which, at any given time, one is persuaded is the case necessarily operates as the provisional truth.” This latter form becomes preferable by virtue of the belief that at no point in time do humans operate with anything that may count as other than provisional truth.
* The implications of postmodern science / quantum theory (which challenge us to reconsider our attachment to object ontology)
For an academically rigorous and detailed presentation of the case for this position see my essay “Physics and Language-Science and Rhetoric: Reviewing the Parallel Evolution of Theory on Motion and Meaning in the Aftermath of the Sokal Hoax” available on my website at http://www.gregorydesilet.com/ under the “Essays” link.
* 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).
Bruce concludes his post with the following relating to the subjective/objective tension:
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.
This view of “emptiness” as implying “co-dependent origination” and “radical interdependence” without “inherent self-existence” or “core essence” marks off a position that Bruce rightly concludes is one that does not privilege one side of any particular oppositional tension over another. However, this must be understood carefully. It does not mean that in particular instances there may not be an experiental dominance of, say, subject over object, but that at the level of ontological grounding both subject and object contribute essentially, that is, in ways whereby one cannot simply be ultimately reduced to the other.
This view of oppositional tensions is paramount to an understanding of the nondual in the sense of “not one, not two.” It lies at the heart of what I want to call a “synergist spirituality” and I believe is consistent with the points of “cosmology/ontology” in the post of March 27 below.
It is not clear to me yet that this view is also consistent with Wilber V (of Integral Spirituality) so I hesitate to name it “integral.” But that's a separate issue.
Hi Julian,
I am well aware you spent a lot of time in your work with state-training, including sharing with me some of your work with ecstatic dancing which I really appreciated. :) I did not mean to indicate that you didn't do this in my post and apologize if you interpreted in that way. What I meant to suggest was that your “teachings” (by this I meant mainly your writing since I haven't seen you teach in person) are not focused on this aspect as often since you largely encourage first-person state experiences instead of third person descriptions of states. I think we would agree on this.
I think I see where you are coming from about third-person accounts of “third tier” stages being overextended. If zone 2 approaches such as structuralism are done correctly, I have no problem with people relaying third-person accounts of what those higher stages look like from within (although I think there can still be some debate about the contour of these stages with the exception of suzanne cook-greuter's “unitive” stage since the other sources typically rely upon such a small population). What I think we would both have a problem with is when people overstep how much you can say about what the terrain looks like from within that stage since third-person descriptions of structure-stages are very different from having lived in that space personally.
Best wishes,
Elijah
Bruce and Greg, I really liked that post. It really brought things into greater clarity, I think. There are a lot of great things in it. I'm still not exactly sure who said what–Bruce's blog comments are in italics; the bold comments are Greg's, but I'm not sure who all the Roman belongs to, though some is clearly Bruce's or Greg's.
At any rate, great stuff. I love the idea of provisional truth, the Madhyamaka argument, the end to “coercion with brute fact,” etc.
Greg and perhaps Bruce: “This view of “emptiness” as implying “co-dependent origination” and “radical interdependence” without “inherent self-existence” or “core essence” marks off a position that Bruce rightly concludes is one that does not privilege one side of any particular oppositional tension over another. However, this must be understood carefully. It does not mean that in particular instances there may not be an experiental dominance of, say, subject over object, but that at the level of ontological grounding both subject and object contribute essentially, that is, in ways whereby one cannot simply be ultimately reduced to the other.
This view of oppositional tensions is paramount to an understanding of the nondual in the sense of “not one, not two.” It lies at the heart of what I want to call a “synergist spirituality” and I believe is consistent with the points of “cosmology/ontology” in the post of March 27 below.
It is not clear to me yet that this view is also consistent with Wilber V (of Integral Spirituality) so I hesitate to name it “integral.” But that's a separate issue.”
I also like this. It leads us into subtler distinctions, more skillful means, less “violence,” as I believe Derrida would say. I also appreciate the remark that we have to be very careful with the idea of not privileging one oppositional force ontologically but that one force might rightly take the upperhand at times. I think we need to expand on this, however. Nagarjuna found that emptiness is form and form is emptiness, but what he did not understand is that form is evolving towards greater complexity and integration. Once we understand this, we need to align ourselves with it; a synergistic or integral spirituality would need this directionality as its moral compass, as a provisional view of course. This directionality is implied in the notion of “provisional truth”–there is the implication that we will continue to inquire and find more complete and finer truths. Of course this positive directionality would not be limited to our philiosophical lives but would have to touch all of our lives in each quadrant.
Ken Wilber discusses this and the evolution of enlightenment in particular in this guru and pandit. Here is an excerpt:
“KW: A sage, let's say a thousand years ago, could have a profound realization of dharmakaya or pure emptiness-a profound realization of nirvikalpa samadhi–and then also have a profound realization of a union with all form. So this sage would have a realization of both emptiness and the world of form and would realize that they are intrinsically each other. They arise moment to moment as the emptiness of all forms that are arising ecstatically. Now, nonetheless, that almost perfectly enlightened sage, in the sahaj sense, the nondual sense, can still only be one with the world of form that is present at his or her time. And that world of form is not going to have the types of knowledge that we now have about the world of form.
AC: You mean about evolution?
KW: About evolution in particular–the exact nature of it, what it actually means, what is going on in the world of form. In the world of form, we are seeing an unmistakable drift toward increasing levels of differentiation and integration and complexity and unification. And that's a profound understanding because it means that our vehicle in the world of form is becoming more transparent to the processes that are in the world of form. That changes everything. It doesn't matter how deeply enlightened somebody was a thousand years ago, the world of form did not include that understanding. So that wasn't part of their realization, even though their realization of emptiness was exactly as great as ours can be today because emptiness is emptiness, it doesn't change, it has no moving parts, and so on. So we're not taking anything away from the sage who lived a thousand years ago. We have one thing on that sage, however–we're alive now. And a thousand years from now, people will look back at our world of form and laugh hysterically over what idiots we were. But in the meantime, we have to get on with embodying this world of form with radical emptiness, and the result is, yes, a type of evolutionary emptiness. Or “evolutionary enlightenment,” sure.”
Some people feel that this directionality is dualistic, but really it is more fully nondual. It's just a more complete understanding of emptiness is form, form is emptiness–an evolutionary “love affair between Shiva and Shakti” as Ken put it elsewhere in the discussion. Also, it should be noted that this, of course, is all taking place at the mental level and to call the energetic aspect of being evolutionary is just an approximation or a beginning, but it is a good beginning and one that aligns us fairly well on the mental level. Eventually we have to learn that it doesn't emenate from the personal self, that the personal self is an important tool and vehicle but that it distorts the “evolutionary impulse.”
So, the idea in Andrew Cohen's Evolutionary Enlightenment–theoretically, I'm not referring to how he applies it himself and in his school, which I consider a different matter–is to free the self of that distortion so that it can become a more perfect expression of that creative force. This is also the thrust of Aurobindo's teaching on the psychic being, A. H. Almaas' teaching on the Optimizing Force, and it is Wilber's view of the deeper psychic and third-tier stages as well, though of course each emphasizes it in a different way (Cohen being the most “masculine,” Aurobindo the most “feminine,” Wilber and Almaas in the middle). Andrew Cohen talks about this (he calls it the “Authentic Self”) in a three-minute video here. He makes some ontological claims there, but I think we should recognize that people are always operating according to some ontological claim, regardless of what they think philosophically, so we want the best one available, provisionally, the one that is backed by the most up-to-date and best science.
David
David, just a quick note, since I'm heading out the door: the formatting didn't work properly on my last post. All italics are mine, everything else is Greg's (bold and Roman). Sorry!