The Wilber-Combs Lattice and the Pre/Trans Fallacy

Hi Bruce! Excellent post. Here's a brief reply at my blog…

Hi Bruce, just a quick technical note: The word “transpersonal” first appeared in English on a Harvard syllabus for one of William James' courses in 1905. Jung used the German equivalent of the term – uberpersonliche – a few years later (1911, I think; Jung later dropped uberpersonlich in favor of whatever the German for “collective unconscious” is).  I look forward to reading your essay in its entirety and to possibly commenting.

Hi Balder.

Just some random comments that I started writing yesterday and tried to pull together this AM while also dealing with septic tank and plumbing problems. ;-)

The Salon interview of Wilber you quote from is a transcript of Steve Paulson's 2006 interview of Wilber for Paulson's Wisconsin Pubic Radio program To the Best of Our Knowledge. Parts 1 and 2 of the interview appeared at Integral Naked in 7/06 and 8/06 respectively, and Integral Spirituality was published in 10/06.

So it seems that Wilber was not sure back then if he wanted his notion of the pre/trans fallacy to apply to states or stages. I no longer own a copy of IS, but you say that in it Wilber says that the pre- and trans- distinction applies to stages rather than states. But in the Paulson's interview Wilber applies the distinction to states rather than stages.

In any case, I've followed Wilber's work from when he first began to get published and I have always agreed with him that those who dismiss all mystical states as regressive infantile states are mistaken. However, I know of no way to convince such folks that they are mistaken. If there was a pill that produced bona fide mystical experiences it is always possible that someone who takes it would end up confused about the experience or would have a “bad trip” (as happens with entheogens, psychedelics, etc.). And I have always agreed with Wilber that since the sixties (he discusses this in SES), many people in the human potential movement have had a tendency to elevate “prerational” states to “transrational” status. However, just as I don't know how I could convince the skeptic about mystical states that he is mistaken when he says that all mystical states are regressive, I don't know how I could convince someone who has elevated a prerational state to transrational status that he is mistaken.

We usually hear talk about fallacies in the contexts of logic, reasoning, critical thinking, and argumentation, areas where the most important skill is the ability to reason. In the context in which Wilber speaks about the PTF, that being the context of transpersonal and integral theory, the ability to reason well is usually secondary to “skillful means.”

I think the most effective skillful means in many cases where mystical, spiritual, or religious beliefs are concerned are means akin to the skillful means employed by the physician in the movie Lars and the Real Girl. Without spoiling the movie for those who haven't seen it, I will simply paraphrase the movie's synopsis from its website.

Lars is an introvert whose emotional baggage has kept him from fully embracing life. After years of near solitude, he invites Bianca, who he met on the web, to visit him. He introduces her to his brother and sister-in-law and they are stunned because Bianca is a life size inflatable doll who Lars treats as if she is a real person. They consult the family physician and she explains that Lars has created a delusion and she suggests – for a reason she does not yet understand – that everyone should go along with it.

To say more would be to spoil the movie, but I'll mention that it's often described, accurately, as a heartfelt comedy.

Would it be skillful for the physician to tell Lars that he's not being rational about the situation, and that his belief that Bianca is a real woman is a “prerational” delusion? One will have to see the movie to decide if Lars' delusion when it is supported in certain ways by the physician et al is a “conveyer belt” for Lars' growth or development.

I think Wilber's discussion of the PTF would benefit from some concrete examples, but Wilber has so far failed to offer any. For decades he has been telling his readers that Jung was an “elevationist,” but as far as I'm aware Wilber has never offered any concrete examples of Jung committing the elevationist type of PTF.

Jung said that while such the appearance of symbols of the Self in the psyche anticipate wholeness, “they do not invariably indicate a subliminal readiness on the part of the patient to realize that wholeness more consciously, at a later stage; often they mean no more than a temporary compensation of chaotic confusion.”

In other words, Jung is saying that the appearance of symbols of the Self in the psyche could be trans, but often they are pre, which is the exact same thing Wilber says, e.g., when in One Taste he says the following about UFO abduction experiences: “It’s theoretically possible that some of these experiences are stemming from the psychic or subtle levels of consciousness, and that, precisely because these people do not grow and evolve into these levels, they experience them as an ‘other.’ Instead of their own higher and deeper luminous nature, they project it outwardly as an alien form.”

Speaking about “the manure of experience,” Trungpa said: “The lion's roar is the fearless proclamation that anything that happens in our state of mind, including emotions, is manure. Whatever comes up is a workable situation; it is a reminder of practice, and it acts as a speedometer. It is a way to proceed further into the practice of meditation.”

“In this way we begin to realize that all kinds of chaotic situations that might occur in life are opportune situations. They are workable situations that we mustn't reject, and mustn't regard as purely a regression or going back to confusion at all. Instead, we must develop some kind of respect for those situations that happen in our state of mind.”

Trungpa likened this process, which he sometimes called “transmutation,” to “the alchemical practice of changing lead into gold.” That is the exact metaphor that Jung used to point to the process of what he called individuation. There is no fallacy in recognizing that lead, prima materia, manure, or what Suzuki Roshi called “mind weeds” have the potential to be used for development toward and into transpersonal dimensions. (“We pull the weeds and bury them near the plant to give it nourishment,” said Suzuki. He said you should be grateful for the weeds “because eventually they will enrich your practice.”)

I would say that we can only tell in retrospect if we can tell at all if certain manure had the potential to help one develop in a transpersonal direction, and that ultimately we may not be able to tell, because we are talking about an organic rather than a mechanical process.

There is also a sense in which I think the PTF is like a grammatical rule that we learn to apply and then forget about. Most English speakers don't need to think, “Most nouns form the plural by adding s to the singular” every time they need to use a plural noun, and I doubt that many people who have even a basic working understanding of transpersonal-integral theory need to think too hard to recognize a PTF.

On Wilber's Kosmic Consciousness audio set, interviewer Tami Simon asks a question related to the PTF. “We have a diviner sitting in the corner, throwing their I Ching coins or using the tarot. From the outside, how do you know if this person is operating at a prerational or transrational level?”

Wilber says that if the diviner says, “'I am going to give you empirical evidence of what's going to happen tomorrow afternoon,' we should check and see if their prediction comes true. That's a simple scientific test at that point; if they're making an empirical claim, check it empirically. And most of them, you know, they are. They're somehow claiming that this ritual they're doing is going to have this kind of effect, and you can actually check it out. And if that's the case, check it out. On the other hand, if they frame what they're doing as a, 'I'm gonna give you an interpretive reading about events that are important to you and your life right now,' that's fine, that's a metaphoric orientation.”

Wilber goes on to say that “There's been no evidence that [astrology] does a scientific kind of thing in terms of predicting objective Its, and what they're going to do. So we can't say astrology - at least based on the evidence - we can't say astrology does that. But it does do other things in terms of I and We, in terms of the meaning structure at that stage or wave or band of consciousness in terms of the value structure it gives people, in terms of the interpretive overview it gives people. If you are trying to believe in astrology as if it covers everything, then that's probably not right. That's where you sort of have to curb a belief system, is when it pretends to cover all the bases but isn't really doing it in a way it claims to.”

He adds that astrology applies to a specific band of development that is “not a band that's transrational for the most part as far as we can tell.”

From this it seems that Wilber's test of whether a diviner is operating from a prerational level depends on whether the diviner makes empirical claims which the diviner can support with empirical evidence.

All best,

Jim

Thanks for posting this Balder!  This brings up some important issues I'm interested in.

And thanks Jim for your perspective.  I think you're right on target.

There is a difference between theory and experience.  And experience can be quite messy.  We don't experience these coneptual categories because our experience is always a mix of different states and stages… and also a mix of various paradigms and memes that influence our views that are entirely outside of this model.

Even scientifically testing emprical claims is tricky when it comes to all things consciousness-related including divinatory predictions.  For anyone interested in the challenges of consciousness studies, I'd recommend Lynne McTaggart's books or The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen.

God is in the manure.  This is an idea of alchemy.  The figure that represents the alchemical/individuation process is Mercurius and he is a Trickster.  Tricksters are known for breaking the distinctions between things… especially between intellectual distinctions such as prerational and transrational.

Mercurius relates to Hermes.  And Hermes acts as a mediary between the popular distinction of Apollonian and Dionysian.  Wilber's view (or at least the model that he has created) is very Apollonian.  Whereas, Dionysus is about the transformative experience that can't be understood or controlled.  Can integral find a way to include and use the Jungian model of the Trickster/mediary to overcome this divide?

Jim, you said:
“Would it be skillful for the physician to tell Lars that he's not being rational about the situation, and that his belief that Bianca is a real woman is a “prerational” delusion?”

To play “as if” would be an act of the imagination.  The imagination is the realm of the Trickster.  Can pretending that the false is real transform it into a real positive result?  This depends on what is defined as real.  The imagination is about what is metaphorically real and this is just as important as what is rationally real.  Besides, the distinction between the two is never absolute.  So, how do we rationally speak of what is or isn't skillful means?  In considering this question, I'd agree with what Jim says here:

“I would say that we can only tell in retrospect if we can tell at all if certain manure had the potential to help one develop in a transpersonal direction, and that ultimately we may not be able to tell, because we are talking about an organic rather than a mechanical process.”

And here:

“There is also a sense in which I think the PTF is like a grammatical rule that we learn to apply and then forget about.”

Also, like a grammatical rule, there are many many exceptions to the rule.

Marmalade

Hi Bruce,

Well, from my perspective, you can probably guess that I aplaud the egalitarian tendencies being suggested in the matrix approach.  It seems to me that “trans” experience of any kind should yield deeper (rather than higher, looking for egalitarian terms here…) access to authentic truth, from any cognitive level or perspective.   

Perhaps a baby's experience of transcendent mystery is the most authentic, without the burden of cognitive evolution.  Perhaps that's what cognitive evolution grows towards, recapturing the innocent acceptance of wonder that a baby has.  Perhaps we “grow” to a point, after which we start letting layers of cognition go and just accepting the wonder of it all.

I saw that baby-like look of wonder in my grandmother's eyes before she died at 94 years of age.  I'll never forget that. 

Blessings, and thax for sharing,

Dave

Ha ha, there's a pre/trans for us. A baby's mystical experience is equally authentic, not more authentic. “Authentic” is one of those new-age over-applied words that confuse rather than clarify in these contexts.
An adult may have more tools (greater cognition) to interpet the experience. Tools are neutral. Used poorly, tools can mess something up, but used properly, tools can help to make something more. Cognition is a tool.

An adult may try to utilize cognition before it is appropriate such as in a mystical state, and the attempt may distract from fully experiencing the state. A good mystic should be able to suspend inappropriate cognition and later utilize the cognitive function for interpetation.

Are there definitions for 4th and 5th person perspectives? Where can I find them?

Hi Bruce.

You write:

If we follow the implications of the W-C Lattice, however, this suggests that the individual will have an experience which is shaped and constrained by his level of cognitive development; it won't be a transrational mystical experience, but a rationally interpreted altered state experience.  For an experience to be genuinely mystical and transrational, must one have developed beyond conventional-level rationality or formal operational thinking?  The W-C Lattice suggests this - and Wilber's concern about Buddhism being “translated down” into the terms of Green postmodernism reinforces this - but if this is the case, then it appears to me to be insufficient to describe or define transrationality in terms of a particular state experience in which rationality is available but currently suspended.  Authentic, transrational mystical experiences, rather, would entail not only state development and access, but a sufficient level of post-formal cognitive development as well.

You also write that “transrational mystical experience would not be available to an individual performing a practice such as Holotropic breathing, which induces sometimes profound altered state experiences, if that individual did not also have access to expanded 4p or 5p perspectives.”

It seems that what we end up with when the term “transrational” is used to refer to stages rather than states is a tautology: That someone who is not at a transrational stage cannot have a transrational mystical experience is true by definition.

I'm inclined to agree with elementstew (who I guess is also Marshall - hi Marshall) about the use of the term “authentic” in this context. Does saying that someone who is not at a transrational developmental stage cannot have an authentic or genuine transrational mystical experience mean that they cannot have an authentic or genuine mystical experience?

One way to approach this (and I'm thinking out loud here), is to understand samadhi in the way that some American and SE Asian insight (or vipassana) meditation teachers understand it. Larry Rosenberg, as one example, uses the term ”samadhi” in a way that can be applied to any type of merging experience at all, such as drinking a beer and being into it (e.g., as opposed to someone who says, “Ew, I don't like the taste, and I don't like the way it makes me feel!”).

In this sense, any merging experience, including the “oceanic oneness” of the infant, is a kind of samadhi, and what distinguishes the samadhi of, say, an advanced Buddhist meditator from the samadhi of an infant or a guy who is merging with a six-pack on the weekend is the quality of insight that the advanced meditator has. Because I'm thinking out loud about this I'm not sure which terms might best apply here. Many Buddhists of course teach that meditation is a combination of samatha and vipassana, and if we go with those terms we could say that the infant or ordinary beer drinker may realize some degree of samatha but without vipassana.

In order to make this fit with the Wilber-Combs Lattice, one might say that the more developed one is along cognitive lines and in terms of perspective-taking abilities, the more one is capable of vipassana or insight. I wouldn't say that, in part because I don't like hierarchical developmental models or holarchical developmental models, not because I think they are wrong but because I have no use for them. And I think Wilber sometimes forces things to fit his model for the sake of having a nice, neat model. I'm okay with messy (and I thank Marmalade for bringing the term “messy” into the discussion).

Much lovingkindness,

Jim

hey jim - thanks for nudging me - i have printed this up to look at with my tea this morning and will get back later - in the midst of packing and preparing to leave for kripalu!

i think what you are trying to clarify here is interesting and important bruce.

my sense is that there are:

prerational states and prerational stages

as well as

transrational states and transrational stages

for me the W/C lattice merely adds to the far more important Pre Trans Fallacy.

it does so by pointing out that there are indeed transrational states available to all regardless of their stage, but as you rightly point out - they will be interpreted and indeed perhaps experienced through the lens of whatever developmental stage one happens to be at…

this still means it is important to differentiate pre and transrational states as well as stages though, yea?

so there are transrational states.

these states can be experienced from any stage.

genuine transrational states offer a glimpse of transrational stages (where the altered state becomes a permanent trait) but will nonetheless not be interpreted in their fullness or integrated in their depth of import until the stage development takes place that will allow the necessary “software” to be in place..


also: there are pre rational states.

these states are the norm when we are in a prerational stage.

once we have developed to rational, prerational states are a temporary regression (transrational states would be a temporary elevation).


the important difference here viz being in a rational stage is that one can MORE adequately interpret prerational states from rational stage than from a prerational stage.

where as as you point out - one can LESS adequately interpret a transrational state from a rational stage than one can from a transrational stage.

HOWEVER, highly developed rational, especially when integrated with some genuine transrational experience can and does sniff out prerational silliness pretty quickly and can differentiate it from transrational depth - even if it cannot fully grasp it…

for me the above is important and goes to a place we have wrestled in before:

* rational does in a way negate prerational, (it transcends almost all of it)
* but transrational does not negate rational - it adds to it (includes almost all of it, perhaps.)

in fact i would say my sense of higher stages is that they have more to do with integrating lines of development that require both rational and transrational stage capacities to be healthy.

i think the point you stress about the development of transrational cognition is a powerful and important one - and this development no doubt takes years of both intellectual and meditative practice. practice of the sort that a tiny percent of the population and perhaps a slightly less tiny percentage of people who read ken wilber have (perhaps unlike yourself) engaged in…

given this observation we are still left with the crucial importance of the pretrans fallacy in helping to point out that the vast majority of what people associate with “spirituality” (and if they are integrally minded, “transrational”)  is almost of necessity going to be prerational.

why?

because as you say a tiny percentage of the population is at a transrational stage. (i would add that a tiny percentage of people interested in spirituality are stable in their rational development, have an actual ongoing practice and have done significant work on the psychological material that allows one to surrender prerational defensive fantasies.)

telling the difference between pre and trans rational spirituality (be it states, stages or interpretations) is still of central importance and is not transcended by the W/C lattice.

given that wilber is the developer of the theory, i would personally tend to take him at his word when he makes the statement you quoted from last month's salon.com article and when he says later - as you alluded to that what makes it transrational is that we have the capacity for rational analysis but it is temporarily suspended.  (i haven't seen wilber make any statements to the effect that W/C radically changes the PTF or that it is of great importance in his latest version of the model as you start out by saying.. and these two very recent quotes seem to suggest that the PTF still stands, right?)

i would add as i always do that the state experience is transrational if indeed it is not at odds with rational awareness of reality once we return form that suspension - or perhaps better if it allows for an interpretation that simultaneously deepens our sense of reality without contradicting reason, science etc.. in ways that would make the interpretation plainly pre-rational.

for me most of this turns on the simple distinction between inner vs. outer reality, metaphorical vs. literal interpretation supernatural vs. intrapsychic explanation etc..

transrational stages still sit on the foundation of rational stages and are radically different from prerational stages but easily confused until we know better..

transrational cognition would have to satisfy the conditions of not committing category errors, quadrant absolutism, etc, abide by the three strands of science and the methodologies and truth claims of different modes of knowing and then also ADD novel, penetrating, integrative insights in to the nature of reality that are not available to mere rationality.

these insights would have to be genuinely transrational - meaning rationality cannot grasp them, but not merely irrational, nonsensical etc…

too much of what i see in the current new age/unhealthy green climate is a using of the integral concept of transrational to give cover to ideas and beliefs that are merely irrational, prerational, regressive wishful thinking, category errors, confusions of the three modes of knowing etc… the PTF remains a powerful tool for getting beyond this - if we'd only use it!

for me what allows genuine transrational stages to develop is exactly what you say - developing transrational cognition, which can only begin on the foundation of healthy rational critical thinking and solid reasoning.

in addition of course we know that dedicated long term practice takes this all out of the realm of abstraction and into direct experience  - and that nothing else will substitute, and that doing psychological shadow work around the existential angst and denial of suffering, death, injustice etc helps to alleviate many of the tensions that make regressive prerational spirituality so ubiquitously attractive.

again i think its complex.

was not aware of him saying that but would love to see the context.

however limiting PTF to talk about stages makes sense in this context b/c we are acknowledging per W/C that one intertprets those particular 4 states according to one's stage and that is what makes all the difference. i have always said this..

it still seems obvious for practical reasons that if i had a momentary psychotic episode, brain injury or drug experience that took me into a state in which i had prerational interpretations of reality, a weak sense of self as differentiated from my experience - a kind of infantile fusion - we coould call that a prerational state. (just b/c these kinds of states are not included on the lattice doesnt mean they do not exist!) in other words a state that is the norm when one is at prerational stages of development but indicates an altered state of the prerational (or pathological) kind if i am at rational or transrational stages… likewise i think many ardent devotees of authoritarian gurus who are plainly abusive have regressed into a prerational state-experience of a stage of childlike dependency/surrender in perhaps one line or under certain specific conditions… while sometimes still operating at rational and even transrational stages in their other lines/endeavors.

i am sure this kind of logic has not been overturned.

it may have more to do with  context and terminology. so please show me or direct me to the quote.

i think between  worldviews, stages, and states, the relationships are complex - but decipherable.

perhaps it is also useful to add the notion of say varying degrees of pathological non-conventional states vs varying degrees of suprahealthy non-conventional states?

paranoid schizophrenia is a pathological (and i would say in some sense prerational) state of non-conventional awareness.

samadhi is a suprahealthy (and i would say transrational) state of non-conventional awareness.

in our current society rational = conventional.

so for me these are all ways of trying to differentiate health and pathology, or perhaps states and stages and worldviews that have succesfully integrated rational/conventional sanity from those that have not…

sounds right. i like that you are emphasizing cognitive development here, and i agree.

i am saying that the temporary state will be realized once the various variables have coalesced to create the stage development.

i am not suggesting that the state alone is sufficient to lead to the stage itself - merely that it is a glimpse of something that will be more stabilized once the necessary stage work (including cog dev)  has been done.


thanks for he quote - i agree with it completely, and am still interested in the exact context in wich he is making that distinction. so far i dont think it is contradictory to what i am saying above..

yea?

Shit! I prefer to type right into the “add comment” box because it's immediate, but it often happens that when I do, I accidentally hit a wrong key and everything I've written is gone forever and cannot be retrieved by hitting the back button. I just lost another one!

Hi Bruce. Thank you for your response! It seems we are in agreement about all this.

Today I glanced at some of what Wilber's said about the PTF over the decades, specifically in Eye to Eye, One Taste, and Ken Wilber in Dialogue. I wanted to see if he has always applied the PTF to stages, because the parenthetical comment he makes in Integral Spirituality that you posted suggests that this is the case. The comment in question is: “(Incidentally, the pre/trans fallacy applies only to stages, not to states. The only criticism I have seen of the PTF makes that confusion. Apart from that invalid criticism, there has been a fairly widespread adoption of this concept among experts, since it helps enormously to sort out otherwise intractable confusions.)”

My first guess was that the criticism to which he refers came from Washburn, but now I think it could be someone whose criticism appeared at Frank Visser's site. (In any case, I look forward to reading anything you might post about the relation between Wilber's present model and Washburn's and Grof's work if you do decide to post something on that).

I think that Wilber may have always intended for the PTF to apply to stages, but the language gets confusing and I don't think one would be wrong to say that the PTF also applies to states.

Let's say that Freud observes someone who is at a transpersonal, transegoic, transrational (terms Wilber has used interchangeably to refer to stages) developmental stage who enjoys mystical states. If Freud infers that the individual in question is regressing to an infantile state of oneness when she is in a mystical state, Freud is committing a reductionist PTF. But what is he reducing, the state or the stage? In Wilber's earlier writing, e.g., in his chapter on the PTF in Eye to Eye, he refers to the “prepersonal and transpersonal dimensions” and he says that “people tend to confuse” these, “and there is the heart of the ptf.” He also refers to “the prepersonal realm” and the “transpersonal realm,” and he mentions things like the elevation of the prepersonal realm “to quasi-transpersonal status.” His use of terms like “dimensions” and “realms” is pretty abstract, and when he then speaks of states and stages in the same context, things can get pretty vague.

In a previous comment, I wrote:

In order to make this fit with the Wilber-Combs Lattice, one might say that the more developed one is along cognitive lines and in terms of perspective-taking abilities, the more one is capable of vipassana or insight. I wouldn't say that, in part because I don't like hierarchical developmental models or holarchical developmental models, not because I think they are wrong but because I have no use for them.

I take that back and I agree with you that “until one attains a certain degree of cognitive development, one would not be able to mindfully track one's experience.  For example, I don't think a normal 2-year-old could follow his breath and note when thought arises, interrupting his stream of attention.”

One reason I am somewhat averse to Wilber's hierarchical or “holarchical” developmental model is because of the way I have seen it used or rather misused (IMO) by any number of Wilber readers over the years. Yes there is development. Yes, some people are more developed along certain lines than others, and some are at higher stages than others. Some men have bigger penises than others too, and some women have bigger breasts than others and some get breast implants to make their breasts bigger. I have seen the whole focus on development feed into spiritual materialism and status seeking so much that I prefer not to focus on development at all.

So I completely appreciate your number 2 reason for emphasizing what the term “transrational” means in Wilber's model:

because folks in Integral circles still appear to be thinking in terms of the older model, where causal and nondual states were developmentally “above” rationality, and therefore they also frequently speak of certain state experiences as inherently transrational, or of transrationality as a sort of “peak experience.”

As an aside I'll mention that I've seen the term “transrational” (as well as “vision-logic”) used by some Wilber readers in ways that seem to suggest that they believe there is a form of reasoning (where “reasoning” is used in a textbook sense to refer to informal logic, modal logic, critical thinking, etc.) that “transcends and includes” ordinary reasoning (i.e., the kind of reasoning taught in university philosophy departments). I think there is some confusion here between how one reasons or how one experiences the process of reasoning, and reasoning as a means of argument analysis. I agree with what David Loy writes about “nondual thinking” in his book Nonduality, and there is no doubt in my mind that it is possible to arrive at propositionally contentful insights in a manner that does not involve thinking in the usual sense. Such insights may seem to appear spontaneously or to come from a “higher Self,” etc. What I take issue with is the idea that there is some “transrational” way to analyze and justify arguments and propositions. My point is that if Integral University were to offer courses on informal logic or critical thinking, the courses would have to cover the same basic material that is taught at other universities. An I-I professor who would teach that “x is true and we know x is true because the eye of contemplation reveals that x is true” would not be transrational but would be a doofus.

Thanks for reminding me that Wilber offers 4 or 5 different definitions of “spiritual.” You say that the Wilber-Combs Lattice allows for at least 28 variations on how an experience of oneness can manifest and be interpreted. No wonder so many spiritual seekers often seem to be talking past one another! I'd say we have the makings for an Integral Tower of Babel.

You say you can think of challenges Time, Space, Knowledge (TSK) might pose to the Wilber-Combs Lattice. I'd be interested in hearing more about that.

Be well,

Jim

really enjoting your reflections jim!

 i am agreeing with you bruce. cognitive (and other line) development is necessary for movement to higher stages, and in the case of transrational i think the case you are making for transrational cognition is strong and accurate.

yup i am referencing wilber's “altered states become permanent traits” idea, but with the added observation that this is not in and of itself sufficient - and of course as we are discussing the altered state peak/peek experience will be interpreted through the lens of the current stage.

i still maintain (and dont think wilber would disagree) that there are states like infantile fusion or narcissistic wishful thinking, say, that could be called prerational and which are often mistaken for spiritually deep transrational state experiences that qualify a person as being at a high stage…. of course we could also formulate it to say that this is about one or more lines regressing into an experience of an earlier stage (rather that using the word “state”) but the fact remains that viz the PTF infantile omnipotence ( a la the ideas of the secret  or what the bleep- and the ensuing state one enters in believing those ideas - and the stage that those states and ideas/worldview are indicative of - which in our interview wilber said “as you have been pointing out a lot of this can be explained using the PTF and category errors.”) is often mistaken for enlightenment.

if:

* transcendence is not the same as dissociation but the two are often confused,
* if satori is not the same as creating your own reality, but the two are often confused,
* if mind-body integration is not the same as the rational self being submerged in purely instinctive and emotive experience,
* if a sense of one-ness with the environment and other people is not the same as pre-differentiated infantile fusion

- and all of these are often confused in alternative psychological and spiritual circles as the PTF points out, then we are talking about stages of development certainly, but we are also talking about experiences and how we interpret them - and that conversation perforce will include states of consciousness, because that is what an experience is…..

so i think he is making an important point, as are you, that has technical import (though without a more elaborated context i couldn't spell out exactly what it is), but in practical terms states and stages seem always to be in this interwoven relationship and i dont think the quote you offered is intended as a negation of the whole set of ideas contained in the “peek” experience/altered states become permanent traits idea.

i also do want to stress that i agree with what you are saying viz the necessity of actual development in order to fully integrate and actualize higher stages.

would LOVE to see some written examples of what you are calling transrational cognition, and would love to see it differentiated from relativist green interpretations of integral which i think are far more the norm…


i also think we need to be careful about giving permission to that unhealthy green meme in integral circles to overturn the PTF as it is one of the view pieces of theory that addresses  such a prevalent problem.

what is your intention with this exploration - how do you think the W/C lattice impacts practical applications of the PTF and how do you account for the apparent inconsistencies in the wilber quotes you used?

yea i think so.

please go ahead and discuss your reservations viz that position bruce - it is one i am comfortable standing in for the purposes of our discussion here.


yes: i think there are states of consciousness, or altered state/peak experiences that give one a  glimpse (or peek) of something beyond one's current stage. however as we have said this will be interpreted and therefore limited somewhat by whatever one's current stage/wordlview is… therefore it is not until the necessary developmental work has been done (including cognitive, psychological and perhaps spiritual) that the permanent trait is really integrated and appropriately interpreted…

this is congruent with the W/C in that one may have a subtle state experience but (because of the ubiquitous immature stage development  in the spiritual line) interpret it as meaning your spirit guides want you to live in abundance until (if you are lucky and dedicated) the necessary work happens to bring you to a stage of development where that subtle experience is more the norm and is more adequately integrated with healthy rational and transrational cognition that is both grounded in reality and possessing of the necessary internal depth to “hold” the experience correctly..

i think it is a fairly standard transpersonal/integral concept, no?

however i get that  you are wanting to get into some of the nuances of the newer developments in this area, so please go to it…

Hi Marmalade, thanks for your comments.

Two important influences on my thinking about how the psyche functions are Carl Jung and Arnold Mindell. Mindell became a Jungian analyst in the sixties at the Jung Institute in Zurich, and he then spent many years training students of the Institute to become Jungian analysts. Over time he developed what is known today as Process Work or Process Oriented Psychology, which of course has strong Jungian roots.

One of the basic ideas of PW is that our awareness and behavior are governed by a “dreaming process” that only makes itself known at the edges of our awareness. This dreaming process appears as events that disturb and attract us, e.g., in relationships and relationship problems, social and political problems, dreams, fantasies, symptoms, feelings, etc., i.e., in some of the very things that some Westernized Buddhist approaches to meditation deal with by “noting” and “letting go.” In PW, instead of letting go of disturbances, one uses the disturbance or symptom as a way to enter more deeply into the dreaming process and help it unfold. In Jung's paper “The Transcendent Function” he points to potential forms of “active imagination” beyond the ones he typically worked with. PW is in a sense a broadening of standard Jungian active imagination that enables one to work in dynamic ways with “the unconscious” in relationship work, movement work, inner work, group work, etc.

Ideas about “higher” and “lower” states and stages don't come into play here, for the simple reason that when we enter into and unfold the dreaming process we don't and can't know beforehand where it will lead us. Working at the edges or boundaries of our awareness and sense of identity is always risky, and comes with no guarantees.

Starting with his first book, Wilber has often repeated the idea first advanced by Korzybski that the map is not the territory. In PW one must let go of the map in order to enter into the territory. This isn't to suggest that maps aren't useful. They have their place and utility, but I would say they are of limited use and at some point can become like security blankets.

Have a good weekend,

Jim

Hi Bruce. I'm so glad you've brought up this subject, as it is a central one where thinking and modeling has to be done. I've read with attention your blog post, but not the comments yet. I do this purposefully as I want to react spontaneously to it. I'll read the comments in a few minutes, as soon as I'll have written my post.

The W.-C. Lattice blew me away at first. But then, I felt some nostalgia for the “stacking-up model”. I intuited that a re-definition of the notions of pre/trans should be done after the introduction of the WCL.

This said, I tend now to think that the pre/trans fallacy is a very powerfull concept. The problem seems to me to lie more in the WCL. Basically I intuite that a new model is going to come that mixes the old Wilber stacked-up model and the WCL.

I have no clear idea but just fantasies:
- the 2D model of the WCL is bound to failure. A 3D model will help us. I'm working now with “lego”, a brick game for children, in order to get a clear picture. It helps but it's quite at the beginning.
- The distinction between states and stages is important. We needed to distinguish these two concepts as they were entangled. But now that we have done so, I think that the distinction is not so clear.
First of all:
- In the WLC we have an axis (X) that goes from gross to non-dual. It may be that this dimension is a gradual disidentification from the stages (The relative ego). Basically the idea is that a state visit to the subtle will keep you quite involved in your stage, as a state visit to the non-dual will strip you of any stage ego. That dimension does not appear on the WLC. There are many pre/trans fallacy with such a model, as much as there are dots on the WCL!
- Now each state visit has a certain impact on the stages (I say this from experience, but with no other proofs). It may be that a visit to the subtle state will help us see and build the next stage. It may be that the visit to the causal will or will not do the same. A visit to the non-dual will probably not help you see the next stage, but it may help build it - or not - I really don't know! But these are questions of impotance to me, that the WCL cannot show for the moment.

Basically I think that the pre/trans fallacy is not at fault …for the moment! But the WCL is, as also the state and stage rigid division.

A big work of conceptualisation, based on experience and thinking, can to be done on the relation between states and stages.

attention, the next paragraph is a bit  Iconoclast and is rated PG 189:
-I am convinced that the next step in knowledge is not going to come from Wilber himself, as he has done a tremendous work already and he seems busy with bringing integral to everybody, more than deconstructing his own concepts.
- it won't come from “integral folks” (does that exists?) as they can't yet distance themselves from KW. It's a loyalty thing that we all have towards our Masters. And it takes a while to be trans/masterised! KW never was my Master so I can lightly pre/demasterise him!

Ok enough. Let me read the comments now.

Tulim

Jim, thanks for your reply.

Carl Jung and Arnold Mindell are also two important influences my thinking.

“Ideas about “higher” and “lower” states and stages don't come into play here, for the simple reason that when we enter into and unfold the dreaming process we don't and can't know beforehand where it will lead us. Working at the edges or boundaries of our awareness and sense of identity is always risky, and comes with no guarantees.”

I understand what you're saying.  Nonetheless, what exists outside of our cognitive maps can give us a useful perspective in a discussion such as this even if they can only be imperfectly conceptualized.  Its important to keep in mind the limitations of the map even as we're using it.  We can't have a clear discussion about where the real boundaries exist in a model if we don't actively bring into the discussion those alternative experiences of the reality the model is attempting to grasp.  If there are experiences that don't fit into the model, then that is extremely important information.

“Starting with his first book, Wilber has often repeated the idea first advanced by Korzybski that the map is not the territory. In PW one must let go of the map in order to enter into the territory. This isn't to suggest that maps aren't useful. They have their place and utility, but I would say they are of limited use and at some point can become like security blankets.”

I'm familiar Wilber's writings about the map not being the territory.  I agree that it isn't to suggest that maps aren't useful nor was I suggesting that.  It just seems to me that in discussions like this that its easy to forget how limited maps are.  The only way around the limitation of a map is by balancing it out with other maps (by other mapmakers) that give a different perspective.  Looking at a single map is only useful to the extent that it is kept in a larger context.  The moment we focus too closely on a single map to the exclusion of all others, we begin to make a fetish out of it.

Marmalade

Hi Marmalade. It seems like we agree.

You said: “I'm familiar Wilber's writings about the map not being the territory.  I agree that it isn't to suggest that maps aren't useful nor was I suggesting that.”

I didn't think you were suggesting that. I was just trying to explain why I personally find maps (such as Wilber's) to be of limited practical use where actual psychospiritual work is concerned.

All best,

Jim

Ok, what an amazing discussion. Just amazing!

The more I think about it, the more I think the WCL is an impediment! Actually I'm dropping it right now! Lol. It puts us in a frame that prevents us from going further.

For example,as a visual tool, it seems with the WCL that there are many non-dual states. But I think that we all agree there's only one, but differently conceptualized. So we find ourselves more with a triangle shape: a sumit beeing the non-dual and the two other angles containing in there distance the stages.

Actually, I'm stuck with a vision that goes like this:
- a central axis which is the non-dual. It goes from bottom to top, but is non-temporal.
- around it a causal circle, then a subtle one and then
- the stages as partial circles, depending on the development of the lines (cog, emot, sex and the like)
- this circle is expanding and at it's end you have the stages, the more developped, the outter. This way of illustrating is consistent with the notions of egocentrism to worldocentism. It is consistent with the notion of expansion of the universe (the big bang is at the center…at least that's how we visualize it) - it is consistent with the notion of consciousness expanding…getting conscious of matter and God's Lila.

- at one point, this expanding circle should invert itself. don't ask me why! So much for Julian!

-Time is horizontaly disposed, but it shouldn't. I don't know how to do it. It's a certainty that time as we percieve it now is a “perspective” and we portray it as a linear dimension. This is blocking us.
- integral says it is at a this and that stage, but it still uses a linear vision of time which is scientific and rationaly biased. The WCL is an example of it.

I wish I could be with you all with my legos and show you, cause I think this may be a little difficult to visualize.

Anyway,  to sumarize my thinking:

- Pretrans is not the problem: the way the WLC is portrayed seem to me to be the real problem.
- States and stages is bugging me.

Be wheel,

Tulim
 

I see what you're saying Jim.
I'd love to discuss this with you more sometime.

Thanks for explaining your view!

Marmalade

Damn, ya'll write a lot, it's hard to respond. Altered states, permanent traits and peeking huh?
Waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep are all states, no? People at all levels of development undergo state fluctuations, dont they?
Perhaps what makes this confusing is is that all those stages get included. It's easy to become distracted by those higher reaches and forget the ground we stand upon.

Hello Bruce. Yes, this is Marshall, delighted by your grace and that of others here. Thanks for the links!

Just a little something from the Cook-Greuter stuff that Balder linked a while back….last four lines of page 34 about that lofty Unitive stage: “Doing or thinking are just modes of existing, but not intrinsically more valuable than feeling, being or non-being. The last is probably the most difficult idea to understand by most people who have not developed beyond the personal realm. As a buddhist percept says: Understanding is the ultimate illusion.”

Yeah, it's damn hard to understand if you're committing PTFs and forgetting the lessons of earlier stages (historical contextualization).
The above quote seems like a pluralistic misinterpetation even if it is the way an aperspectival stage should interpet it……hehehehe

Sure, it may feel like that, but it doesn't account for the impetus of holoarchy, the thrust of Creation, the course of the Kosmos. Thinking is more “valuable”. More complex, more significant.
Humankind was God's greatest creation, the crown jewel of the seven days of Creation, no? If we can see a timeless Truth in that……

PTF? What do ya'll think?

Hey Balder!  :)

First off, I wanted to say that one of my favorite things about Wilber's books are the diagrams.  To me, they are Jungian mandalas, symbols of the archetype of the Self.

The Suicide Dictionary looks like it could be interesting.  Have you read his work?

“I think you're looking more for a way that the fluidity and messiness of actual experience can be communicated in the overall presentation of Integral Theory, as part of Integral Theory itself.  Is that right?  Do you have any thoughts on this?”

Yeah, something like that.  I don't have any clear ideas at the moment, but many thoughts. 
I've been reading some books recently that strive to find balance between the rational and non-rational, the messy and the ordered.  I mentioned one of them already: The Trickster and the Paranormal.  This book is extremely intellectual and yet it tries to get at a subject that isn't easily grasped intellectually.  Also, its a subject that Wilber has intentionally avoided because of this difficulty and because its being unacceptable to academia. 

I'd love to discuss this some more, but I don't know how it fits into Integralism.  I've only begun the book and its a large tome.  It will take me some time to process it.

As for the pre/trans thing, I really liked what Goddard had to say about it.  I was reading some of his take on it a while back.  Have you read Goddard?  He made me interested in what Grof had to say, but I still haven't delved into Grof's writings yet. 

My general feeling about Wilber's view of pre/trans is that it doesn't quite capture the complexity of the actual experience.  Its easy to point to a pre-rational experience such as with an infant because all of their experience is pre-rational, but it gets more complicated when speaking about mature adults and more complicated still when speaking about 'spiritual' experiences.  There is no way for me to label any particular expeience as being wholly pre or trans.  Even so, as general categories, they're still generally useful.

“But in this case, I'm curious what particular “paradigms and memes that influence our views” you believe are entirely outside of the Integral model.  Do you have some examples?”

Wilberian diagrams and other cognitive maps have a way of not only clarifying experience but altering it.  There are certain maps that forever change our experience and we never can fully see outside of them once they've been introduced into our psyche, and in most cases this probably occurs outside of consciousness.  These paradigms/memes do connect and crossover with eachother in various ways, but in other ways they can be considered separate as they can't be reduced to eachother.  That is partly what I meant by “outside of the integral model.”

I was speaking more generally, but surely there are some specific examples I can come up with.  Let me think on it and I'll get back to you.

Blessings,
Marmalade

hey guys - just returning from teaching at kriplau…

wanted to add that i think this is a big theoretical mess - but an important one to try and sort through.

i think i get more now the importance of taking certain kinds of state experiences and their correlated (hypothetically) permanent trait development off the table in terms of being themselves higher stages…


this actually makes sense to me.

however at the same time it still remains important to differentiate genuine subtle, causal and nondual experiences from their regressive and kitschy doppelgangers…

what we have in many ways right now is “enlightened” awareness being oversimplified and peddled in the spiritual marketplace, often without reliance on serious practice or distinction making a la PTF - and then the concomitant conflating of “non-duality” with non-judgment and/or relativist kitsch interpretations of wilber's “partial truth” idea… so that non-dual starts to laughably mean we never use the words “wrong, incorrect, pathology, false, problematic” etc…

however i think clarifying the distinction between higher level spiritual experience and actual  transrational structures seems really important and something i need to look into more.. so thanks for getting us into it bruce!

still dont think W/C is as important as PTF or that it very much changes the contribution and powerful (underused) tools it provides!

Balder,

I blogged about some of my recent thoughts on this matter.  Check it out if you so desire.  I'd be curious what you think about it.  My thoughts are only conjectures at the moment.  Maybe my thoughts will clear up with more reading and dicsussion… probably not, but its a happy thought.  :)

Integral, the Paleolithic, and the Liminal

I don't know if that provides any examples for you, but its the best I can do for the moment.

Marmalade

Bruce & Julian,

The way I read the lattice, it strengthens rather than weakens are ability to make PTF distinctions. Here's the problem with states stacked on stages: if you have a traditional Japanese Zen monk who says things that we'd normally take as coming from an ethnocentric center of gravity, but he clearly has access to profound meditative states and deep realizations, we have to say that he's transrational, not pre-rational and ethnocentric. And what is that called? A pre-trans fallacy. The stacking model is constantly making them.

Looking at the spiritual marketplace, I think a few things are going on. First, some people are regressing to red or purple and calling it spiritual, and a lot of the time there's no state training at all, which is what you find with the Secret. This is just confusing narcissistic self-absorption with mystical states, confusing me-ness with Oneness. Then there are people who are having genuine state experiences, and interpreting them in various ways, some healthy and some in the context of pathological repression or regression. But these don't seem like obvious examples of PTF. What is clearly a PTF interpretation is to say that a literal, pre-rational metaphysics transcends rational metaphysics.

Regarding the apparent contradiction between the Cook-Greuter model and the WCL, I lean towards the view that it is theoretically possible for someone to be at second-tier or third-tier, but haven't had deep state experiences at all. Under this view, deep state experiences tend to come with the territory of whatever the leading edge of consciousness is at the time, not second or third tier as such. This is because socialization is the main technique of stage development, and that only goes up to Orange or Green right now. State training is a generic stage booster, so of course you'll find a lot of people at second and third-tier (and even Green) who've used it - there's not many other ways up. 25 or 50 years from now, it's likely that you'll be able to get to second-tier just by going through the mainstream school system without any state training whatsoever.

Bruce, I have made the same point myself many times, so I definitely appreciate what you are doing here. Reading 9 Levels of Increasing Embrace, I notice that the original paper was published in 1985, so it's certainly possible that the stacking assumption was introduced into the model.

Mr T

This paragraph of yours got me thinking…

” This is because socialization is the main technique of stage development, and that only goes up to Orange or Green right now. State training is a generic stage booster, so of course you'll find a lot of people at second and third-tier (and even Green) who've used it - there's not many other ways up. ”

This is the first time I have come across such a statement, i.e. that socialisation is the main technique of stage development. This resonates with me completely but I don't think I have ever seen it written down before. If this is your own personal idea could you please say more? If Wilber et al have written on this can you point me to any articles /  books / chapters?

Also, are you saying that even though state training practices are great for jumping up the conveyor,  socialisation has a greater impact on stage development than even state training practices?

James

James, this is mainly my idea, I haven't seen it made explicit in any integral writings, although I think it is strongly suggested. Without knowing exactly what information you are looking for, I can try to quickly summarize what I've learned:

Individuals are taught to fit in, and adopting the culture's morality, norms and values is part of it. I'm sure every culture acknowledges development on some level, one or several stages between infancy and maturity and perhaps beyond. Naturally there are institutions such as family and schools that require individuals to adopt certain perspectives. In the West and many other countries, the implicit developmental model is Red-Amber-Orange (and sometimes Green), and in general I think you find that Red is not often tolerated in children, and great pressure is placed on children to adopt Amber values, mainly because egocentrism is not seen as a valid moral developmental stage. This leads to the famous teenage rebellion years, when the child has more freedom and takes the opportunity to integrate previous repressed Red values. In the final years of childhood and into adulthood, parents and schools often emphasize Orange goals, university, career and achievement. In many cases, overbearing Orange parents cause a child to develop to that stage, but prevent the him or her from developing into Green, and a different kind of separation can occur there too.

Green is unique in that it doesn't acknowledge development, and believes that Green is the natural perspective of all human beings, and all other perspectives are viewed as corruptions. For example, a Green mother I know is convinced her infant feels deep empathy for others, despite the fact that he probably hasn't development mirror neurons yet. So if there is Green socialization available, it tends to be present at all stages, even when it's developmentally inappropriate, and as a result of that, Green parents often feel guilty for, or struggle to rationalize away their children's non-Green behaviors. They also do things like interpreting a child's Amber rule-oriented sharing in terms of the Green worldcentric morality.

So all of these examples are LL intersubjective interventions that are largely responsible for the conscious movement of individuals up the developmental ladder. Individual agency tends to not play that much of a role, so just looking at the numbers, socialization moves more people through more stages than any other method by far. (How healthily it does that is a different story). At the higher stages of Orange and Green, the air thins out a bit, and further development seems to require a strong sense of self-sufficiency that is at the same time not hostile to communion. We shed some of the strictures of the culture we grew up in, and set off in a new direction, carefully mapping and recording what we find for those that follow.

This is where I see state training playing a major role, simply because there aren't any other options. What we discover and create in response to those experiences becomes the groundwork for a new level of socialization.

This is fascinating stuff Mike.

I'm glad about your confirmation that you haven't seen this made explicit in most integral writings, otherwise I'd be worried I have been mis-reading Wilber & Co. on what is a major point.

I agree with what you're saying and have 2 questions - Do you know of any counter arguments, or examples to the contrary, regarding the statement “Green is unique in that it doesn't acknowledge development”? You sound 100% sure on this, but I'm thinking about a close friend who I'd say is basically green yet through his meditation practice and associated hybrid cultural lense interpretations, he recognises development of sorts on what we might call the spiritual line. It's like his centre of gravity is green but there's part of him that senses his world view does not make for a complete explanation with regard to what he is experiencing in his day today.

Secondly, much of your explanation above is relating to children and education. Do you think that, once someone has reached adulthood and they are at say Green, socialisation and cultural factors can still be a factor in furthering their development, e.g. through contact with “the integral sub-culture”, and hence being on the receiving end of more integral “LL intersubjective interventions”?

James 

Do you know of any counter arguments, or examples to the contrary, regarding the statement “Green is unique in that it doesn't acknowledge development”? You sound 100% sure on this, but I'm thinking about a close friend who I'd say is basically green yet through his meditation practice and associated hybrid cultural lense interpretations, he recognises development of sorts on what we might call the spiritual line.

I guess I should be more precise - Green doesn't acknowledge universal development. A Green individual might have a personal sense of growth and development - although even then its frequently seen in terms of a corruption narrative. But for Green, that should never be applied to others, and that's what we are talking about here: UL growth through LL socialization.

Do you think that, once someone has reached adulthood and they are at say Green, socialisation and cultural factors can still be a factor in furthering their development, e.g. through contact with “the integral sub-culture”, and hence being on the receiving end of more integral “LL intersubjective interventions”?

That's definitely possible in theory, but in practice, I believe the effect is quite limited. One important feature of the integral subculture is that it is primarily made up of weak ties - it is more like a group of acquaintances than a family, so that means in reality, we don't have an integral community so much as we have an integral social network. This is good for transmitting information, spreading the idea of growth and integral consciousness, and that might have some indirect value in terms of stage growth, but this is nothing like the conscious, direct shaping of individuals that happens with socialization.

I definitely think there is potential for the online integral community to be more directly transformative, but people seem unwilling to go in that direction. I have found that people are unwilling to share the psychodynamic work that they do in any real depth, probably because when they do share them, they aren't handled very skillfully or insightfully. I think people still adopt a Green-ish perspective where psychological work is an exploration without any particular goal, and try very hard to just be accepting and supportive of anything anyone says. Except if they say something judgmental, in which case they come down on them like a ton of bricks, but has no idea how to transform people. The concept of helping people find insights into their situations is truly absent, because of the idea that everyone has their own unique path. Here, equanimity is rendered into a kind of pleasant apathy towards the inner lives of others, where everyone lives in their own private bubble universe, and your moral obligation is really to maintain the bubble so that no two lives truly intersect; this avoids conflict, but also avoids transformation.

Thanks Mike

Your point about Green not recognising universal development makes sense.

And I totally get your point about the integral subculture being made up of weak ties, and therefore less likely to stimulate real growth - avoiding conflict and also avoiding transformation.

All The Best

James