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.