Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Here's an excerpt of a recent essay by Craig Hamilton, a Bay Area spiritual teacher and a (former) student of Andrew Cohen.  I also posted this to my IPS pod, with a little commentary, but I am just posting this without comment here (for now).  There are parts of it I appreciate and parts I have concerns about.  What do you think?
 
 
~*~


“…much of the spiritual metanarrative of the past forty years of Western spirituality reads like a tragic soap opera. We’ve watched as one after another of our most promising spiritual teachers publicly fell from grace, committing serious moral transgressions, collapsing into corruption and scandal. And this has been an extremely challenging reality for millions of contemporary spiritual seekers. Many have been wondering whether enlightenment is really all it’s cracked up to be. Or if authentic spiritual attainment is even possible. To compound the problem, many half-baked spiritual teachers have capitalized on this doubt, making light of their “human imperfections” as a demonstration of their humility and “spiritual maturity.” And in so doing, they have only continued to erode our sense of what is actually possible.

So, into this sea of confusion walks this notion of Lines of Development—a clean, simple, commonsense theory that seems to elegantly explain the whole problem. It tells us that the reason that these great Masters acted inappropriately was not due to any deficit in their spiritual attainment. They were still Great Masters. They were just undeveloped in some other Lines. For instance, if a Great spiritual master acts in ways that are abusive, we should see this not as a spiritual deficit but as a deficit in their moral line of development, or their interpersonal line of development, or perhaps in their emotional line of development. If a spiritual teacher can’t seem to keep their pants on, this is probably due to some lack of psychosexual development and is not necessarily indicative of any limitation in their spiritual attainment.

At first blush, this seems like the day has been saved, right? We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater after all. The possibility of Great Enlightenment still exists. We just have to understand that it is one line among many. We can still believe in and aspire toward higher spiritual development. We just have to realize that no matter how spiritually evolved we become, it’s not necessarily going to make us a better human being.

Now, I need to be honest. For all of its elegance and simplicity, this theory never quite worked for me. And not just because it lets all the gurus off the hook. Pardon my brief aside, but I mean, what a relief, right? We no longer have to strive to appear superhuman in order to meet our disciples’ expectations. And, more importantly, we don’t have to hold ourselves to a higher standard of conduct. Aaaahhh. If we get caught with our pants down or our hand in the cookie jar, we can simply acknowledge our lack of development in some of the non-spiritual lines—like morality—and we’re out of hot water! And you know what that means, guys: more of those fringe benefits!

But seriously, spiritual teachers aside, the deeper reason why this Lines of Development theory never worked for me in the spiritual domain is this: If all of our spiritual practice and striving isn’t going to make us a more conscious, sensitive, decent, caring, wise, respectful, and moral human being whose behavior in the world shines as a beacon of enlightened consciousness—then A) what good is it? And B) if our definition of spirituality doesn’t include any of those things, what exactly do we mean by spirituality at this point anyway? If we’re going to separate out all of these other lines, it seems that the only thing that’s really left is our ability to access altered states of consciousness. And, for me, that is a definition too small for the domain it attempts to define.

To explain why, I want to bring us all back to where I started my talk. To that spiritual luminary—dead or living—whom you revere and look to for inspiration. What is it about them that inspires your admiration and respect? Is it their ability to access higher states? Or is it something else? And if something else, what is that something else?

If I were to put a word on it, I might call it “enlightened humanity.” I think that if we step outside of all the talk about different developmental lines, we can acknowledge that there is something called our humanity which has to do with the depth of our interiors, our moral sense, our character, our values, our wisdom, our decency, our compassion, our willingness to risk for a greater good. And I think we all have a basic commonsense intuition that spirituality is about the enlightenment and transformation of our humanity on a fundamental level. What makes a truly spiritual person so extraordinary and unusual is that all of the best human qualities and virtues seem to naturally shine forth from that person, while all of the worst human qualities and vices seem to have subsided. And the more enlightened a person is, the more this should be the case. And I think that deep down we all know this, even if our theories have managed to confuse us on the surface.

You see, I think this notion of Lines of Development as applied to spirituality is a great example of an elegant theory talking us out of our common sense. I think the reason it has been so successful at doing so lies in a series of fundamental confusions in contemporary spirituality. And while there is not time here to discuss them all, there is one that’s important to address, as it’s one which some Integral Theorists have helped to propagate.

It is a confusion about what nonduality—and nondual realization—really means. The vast majority of contemporary “nondual” teachings and teachers—including some influential Integral theorists—have propagated the idea that nondual realization is when you discover that only the Absolute or Unmanifest is ultimately Real, and the entire manifest domain is either unreal, an illusion, a cosmic joke or divine play with no ultimate significance. We’ve all by now heard the notion that satori is the realization that everything leading up to satori—including any notion of evolution—is meaningless. And that, after enlightenment, we might still play in the world, but we wouldn’t take it seriously.

So, with this as our idea about where our path is taking us, it’s easy to understand how someone with a high or even ultimate level of spiritual development might not be very highly developed in their humanity. Because that version of enlightenment really has nothing to do with the “relative” world of time, space, and action. So, in this view of ultimate spiritual attainment, the notion that spirituality is a single line divorced from all of the others I’ve been speaking about makes perfect sense.

There’s only one problem. That is not what nonduality really means. That is not what enlightenment really is.

Remember, the ultimate statement of nonduality is that form and emptiness, nirvana and samsara are one. Which means it is all REAL.

This is why the authentic realization of enlightenment is simultaneously blissful and painful. Because one sees, in a way one has never seen before, that the unmanifest ground of everything is a limitless perfection, but that the manifest world is a bloody mess. And they’re both equally real.

And in the face of this beautiful and terrible reality, there is a further recognition—IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. So much of the mess of the human condition lies in a fundamental ignorance of the way things are. So much of the horror show of the world is an outgrowth of our collective, unevolved consciousness. And it can all change.

Which is why, when someone truly realizes this, they usually become a fanatic. They have only one choice left. To give their every breath to awakening and evolving the world.

Now, it’s possible to experience all kinds of higher states and insights and not get to this genuinely nondual realization. Which is why most spiritual teachers and teachings are as confusing as they are helpful. Because, frankly, it is very rare that someone touches, let alone surrenders to this ultimate realization. Most spiritual teachers truthfully haven’t gotten anywhere near it. So, generally we get a cocktail of dharma mixed in with a bunch of erroneous conclusions. Like enlightenment is simply about being here now, or loving what is, realizing there is nowhere to go, nothing to become, nothing that needs to change. And various other half-truths that are absolutely deadening to the spiritual impulse.

Now, to summarize where we are at this point, I’ve said that saying that spiritual development is a separate line that excludes moral, social, emotional, and psychological development is problematic because it reduces spirituality to the ability to access altered states. I’ve also said that this way of defining spirituality flies in the face of our basic commonsense intuition that spirituality is about the enlightenment and transformation of our humanity. And then I said that the reason so many of us have been so easily talked out of our common sense lies in a bundle of confusing ideas being taught in the contemporary spiritual scene, and specifically the notion that nondual realization means we see the world as unreal or at best a cosmic joke.

By my count, there are two more questions I need to answer to bring this home.

1) If spirituality is not just a single line of development, then what is it?

2) If this Lines of Development theory does not explain the moral and social transgressions of so many Great Gurus, then what does account for it?

In answer to the first of these, there are many ways to speak about what spiritual awakening is, but one very good way that I think will shed some light here is to see it as the discovery of the Dharma. When one truly wakes up, one begins to see with the Dharma eye, or the eye of wisdom. Now, the word dharma is thrown around a lot these days, but if we look back at its roots, we find three meanings that tend to be associated with it. Dharma as Truth. Dharma as Law. And Dharma as Path. Simply put, one sees the Truth, which reveals the Law which guides the Path. And, when things are working properly, this is a discovery that engages every aspect of one’s humanity. One sees, suddenly with unimaginable subtlety, the delicate web of interrelatedness that binds us together. One sees the significance of every move we make, and how it impacts the whole through a complex chain of causation. One awakens to the Law of karma, the law of right action which reveals an inherent ordering principle in the Kosmos, and a Kosmic command to align with that order. In the theistic traditions, this Law was referred to as the Will of God, as in, “Not my will, but Thy Will be done.” Finally, one discovers the Path, the actions one must take to stay aligned with the Law, revealing themselves anew through clear seeing in every moment. And, in the face of this knowledge, one experiences the awakening of what Andrew Cohen calls the “Spiritual Conscience,” or what the Sufis called, simply, “the Heart.” That faculty within the awakening psyche which compels us to act in accord with the Law, and which feels a kind of Kosmic pain when we violate it.

What is the impact on an individual who realizes this kind of depth? It’s earth-shattering. The result is a complete revolution at the very core of one’s being, which then radiates outward, bringing about an integral transformation of every aspect of one’s humanity.

On a values level, it brings about a radical reorientation in one’s priorities, worldview and values. We begin to care about the evolution of the whole, and the evolution of consciousness itself more than we care about anything personal. We become a Kosmoscentric or even Godcentric individual.

On a moral level, it brings one into profound alignment with the moral order of the Kosmos, compelling one to always sacrifice self-interest for the good of the whole.

On an interpersonal level, it leads to a profound attunement to the evolutionary needs of others, and an unbearable sensitivity to the impact our actions have on others. Freed from the confines of self-concern, we find ourselves able to see deeply into others souls and respond to them with a precision, warmth and kindness unimaginable within ordinary egoic relationship.

On a cognitive level, it liberates our mind from rigidity and opens us to ever higher levels of spiritual cognition in which authentic intuition and reason are clarified and united in a higher embrace.

On an emotional level, it awakens a depth of feeling that would have been too much for us to bear in our previous ego-identified state. We become choicelessly present to our own emotional life, and that emotional life expands to begin to literally feel for the evolving whole. When we see ourselves or someone else acting selfishly and out of alignment with the Law, it causes us emotional pain, and that pain deepens our evolutionary response to life.

In essence, what I’m asserting is that spiritual attainment is integral at the deepest level of the psyche. It integrates our whole being from the top-down. Enlightenment really is all it’s cracked up to be. It is just exceedingly rare.

Which leaves me with the final question: If authentic spiritual attainment really does make us a better person, why, then, have so many spiritual teachers been less than exemplary human beings?

If you’ve followed me so far, you can probably guess my answer: Most spiritual teachers today have not attained the depth of realization I’m speaking about here. They may have had profound experiences. They may even have attained a kind of ongoing yogic access to expanded states of consciousness. They may even be able to transmit those higher states to others. But that does not mean they have surrendered their will before the throne of the Ultimate. It does not make them truly God-realized human beings.

Why are we in this predicament? Why, after all these years of Western seeking and practice, don’t we have more to show for it?

That’s another big subject, and more than I can do justice to here. But in broad strokes, here is my take.

Truthfully, I think it’s quite simple. I think that pre-modern spiritual practices and traditions are not sufficient to address the complexity of the postmodern world or the postmodern psyche. Those of us postmoderns who are engaging in spiritual practice today are at a completely different developmental level than any of the great traditions knew anything about. We have a kind of complex, layered interiority and individuation that never existed before. Our complex interiors are deeply related to and engaged with the interiors of others in ways that the great sages of yore never could have imagined. The great wisdom traditions are indeed great. And their highest wisdom is universal and timeless. But they really don’t sufficiently address us.
In recent years, many have recognized the limitations of pre-modern spirituality, and have offered various hybrids of Western psychotherapy and traditional contemplative practice. But from my observation, this has mostly just contributed to making the context for spiritual practice smaller, by anchoring it to the healing, recovery, and fulfillment of the traumatized personal self. Out of this marriage, there have also been a variety of what we might call postmodern spiritual practices born, but again, they all seem to be focused on healing and fulfilling the self, and have little or nothing to do with anchoring us into a context infinitely greater than ourselves. Spirituality has always been about bringing us into alignment with and submission to an Absolute principle, in the face of which our personal wounds, fears, and desires are revealed to be irrelevant. In the absence of this ultimate context, we have to ask: are we really practicing spirituality at all?

What I think will usher in a new era of authentic spiritual enlightenment—and, in my opinion, the only thing that will do it—is the emergence of new post-postmodern spiritual forms that are fundamentally Godcentric and Kosmoscentric. These new spiritual Teachings will address the complex relational sensitivity and individuation of the postmodern psyche, but from an authentically enlightened Dharmic context. This means that they will be derived from the Dharma itself—from a clear seeing of the Way with a capital “w”, and from there an engagement with the complexities of the postmodern psyche. New transformative practices will be born that harness our newfound interiority in the dismantling of its own egoic structures. And the path will become increasingly collective, in the recognition that consciousness is relational, and that a profound engagement with the evolution of our collective interiors is needed to support authentic development of our individual interiors.

There are a few such Teachings already emerging. I was part of one such experiment for nearly a decade and a half and the results were extraordinary. And I’m going to be putting forward another approach to this adventure with the release of my books, and the launch of a new kind of spiritual center here in the Bay area next year. If you’re interested in staying tuned, you can sign up for my mailing list on the homepage of this site.”

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

I think there are some good things in the article, but I don't like the lines criticism.

He says that integral theory regards the states line (and only the states line) as the “spiritual” line and that this is not a good idea because of course we should consider the moral line or “humanity” line spiritual as well, but in Integral Spirituality there are four different definitions for “spiritual” given, and moral development, interpersonal development, and such are included.

What he says would only be a problem for those who deny that moral, interpersonal, and other such lines are “spiritual” lines and believe that only state development is “spiritual”—living in the Bay Area I can see how he could come away with the impression that that's what everyone thinks! But of course it's not how integral theory views it.


Remember, the ultimate statement of nonduality is that form and
emptiness, nirvana and samsara are one. Which means it is all REAL.

But that's not what it means, right?

In essence, what I’m asserting is that spiritual attainment is integral
at the deepest level of the psyche. It integrates our whole being from
the top-down.

And then towards the end he apparently wants to collapse all the separate lines into one, all-inclusive spiritual line as if this will fix the problem he imagines integral theory to have.

He says some good things, but I don't think it's a legitimate criticism of integral or lines.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Hi, David,

I didn't start this thread to talk about Cohen – and I'll change the topic soon, to get on track with what I wanted to discuss! – but I have a quick question regarding “lines” as a means of accounting for teacher misconduct.  In the case of the incidents in question, where Cohen was possibly abusive and exploitative of some of his students (you mentioned that things in his community have gotten much better now), would it be reasonable to question his spiritual realization or attainment at that time?  He said he was spiritually awakened – that was his credential at the time, as a master, and he used that platform to make strong statements about the moral and ethical dimensions of authentic awakening (I read and was moved by his writings at that time) – and yet he apparently (if these stories are true) engaged in behaviors that are not becoming of someone we consider “authentically spiritually awakened.”  Would some say, possibly, that his spiritual awakening was authentic, but he still had some work to do in the psychodynamic and moral lines, among other things? 

I'm just using Cohen as an example (and could use any other teacher who has been caught up in controversy, like Krishnamurti, Chogyam Trungpa, Kalu Rinpoche, Sri Chinmoy, etc), so this isn't meant to be “directed” at him.  I ask because I do share Craig's concern that the “lines” model – which I do think has validity and is a useful tool – might, in conjunction with multiple definitions of spirituality, actually provide the context for a lot of slippery, self-defensive justification as well as critical analysis or discernment.  For instance, when there are no scandals on the horizon, one could argue for the multi-factorial, multi-dimensional nature of authentic spirituality (and perhaps call other teachers out on their failings); but when scandals arise that might seriously undermine the credibility of a teacher, one could then switch definitions and say, well, I really did have an authentic spiritual awakening, but I had some “pockets” of problems, some developmental issues, in a few lines, but those don't have anything to do with the authenticity of my awakening.  At least, I think that would be a strong temptation.

There is another issue that I think is worth considering, based on the direction that Craig takes in his essay – and it really is a different direction from the one I'm describing above – but I'll return to that later. 

Best wishes,

B.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Hi Bruce,

Would some say, possibly, that his spiritual awakening was authentic, but he still had some work to do in the psychodynamic and moral lines, among other things?

As you've said a few times, phrases like “enlightenment” and “awakening” are a little outdated, a little black and white. I use them, too, on occasion; it's hard not to.

I think we need to look at each teacher through an AQAL lens. In nearly all cases, as Craig said, the “realization” hasn't been the ultimate (Clear Light Supermind) or even close. Usually it has been plateau state plus Amber, plateau state plus Orange. plateau state plus Green, and then all the lines would come into play.

Andrew seems to have begun his career with some kind of Indigo awakening plus a causal or nondual plateau state, but that wouldn't tell the whole story. It is one thing to have Indigo cognition, another to have Indigo values, another still to have an Indigo self-sense. Cognition would come first, of course, and the other two would follow in that order, I believe. And then there are other lines to consider, affect, interpersonal, etc.

It's quite a complicated business, especially when we consider the psychograph of the students.

For instance, when there are no scandals on the horizon, one could argue for the multi-factorial, multi-dimensional nature of authentic spirituality
(and perhaps call other teachers out on their failings); but when
scandals arise that might seriously undermine the credibility of a
teacher, one could then switch definitions and say, well, I really did
have an authentic spiritual awakening, but I had some “pockets” of
problems, some developmental issues, in a few lines, but those don't
have anything to do with the authenticity of my awakening.

Yes, I see the issue there. A lot of it is on the side of the students, though, what they value. If all they value themselves is really state realization for themselves they might overlook ethical shortcomings as long as they aren't the ones who are harmed by it. I think that would be pretty common to see. The more spiritual they think the ethical line is and the more developed they are in it the less tolerance they would have for shortcomings there.

But also there has been so much confusion in the whole area, with crazy wisdom and such. Before Wilber I think it's safe to say that most people (from each tradition) would get hoodwinked pretty easily by the crazy-wisdom explanation. For all they knew it was crazy wisdom, and the teacher would likely think the same exact thing.

It is something of an issue (people using lines as an excuse), but I think to a large extent it is a cultural issue and a level issue. It would be easier to get a Green crowd to forgive you for certain shortcomings, for example (perhaps more difficult with others!). Once the culture really believes that behavior has as much to do with spirituality as feeling free or whatnot and once they can see ethical issues clearly themselves, teachers would be less able to get away with it.

Best,

David

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

I can see why people would want to introduce lines–Wilber-like lines–
into an analysis. It is a scientifically sound methodology. One
searches through the data for a coherent linkage, a chain, a line; find
an illusion of coherence, lifts it from the context and put it on the
table for inspection. It is the only way it can be done because the
world at large is too incoherent and there is no getting a purchase on
anything without a little context deformation and reduction. But once
the analysis is completed that aspect of the situation under
examination must be reinserted back into that specific context
unadulterated. Following, the next coherent chain–line if you will–is
to be extracted, examined, related to Specimen A, and reinserted,
unadulterated. And so–again and again–Specimen A (line A), Specimen B
(line B), Specimen C (line C) and etc. And then one puts them all
together again and finds that the world at large is still too
incoherent…

I spent 11 years sharing a life with (among other possibilities) a
forensic psychologist who was able to convince more than one judge and
jury that nothing..nothing..is predictable or certain–lines and levels
and the theoretical developmental research and color codes and centers
of gravity aren't worth a nickle. Only the situational context in the
moment counts. In other words human beings act out of our guts in the
moment in those moments that really count–the moment of seduction or
the moment of violence or greed or self-sacrifice; a moment that will
never be replicable. The point is that in that moment all the lines and
levels are dissolved into the whole being. It is the whole being that
acts, not a line or a retarded line, or an underdeveloped line, but the
whole being because the whole being has to take
full–whole–responsibility for the specific act. I hope you can see
why I think Craig Hamilton is dead on with his analysis of the lines
tool. Lines, like most inessential tools, are garbage and while
providing the illusion of facility and understanding rob the tool user
of the user's own fundamental capabilities. Lines are just more 50,000
ft. elevated fly-by banalities and are worth nothing on the street
except to make their proponent look like a fool.

I had more to say but this beautiful woman walks into this room and
Piaf is singing on I-tunes and the only tool is a bistro-table-top
rumba, and non-parallel Venezulana rum, and Gypsy King sambas to follow…this beautiful woman says something about passion–when a beautiful Griega talks of passion nothing else in the cosmos counts. All else descends to dust, y'all...sabes?
Ciao,
SN

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Hamilton is a moralist, and not a very deep thinker, IMO.  Here are a few of his lines:

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Let's put this another way.  A deep form of awakening is of such high value to certain people it can fetch a *very* high price in the market.  People have shown themselves more than willing to give time, money and their own integrity as payment in hope of catching a glimpse of the peace an awakened person can access.  Some awakened types accept that payment without question, which can constitute sexual willingness from a female, for instance.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Tom, I know you mentioned you didn't read to the end, but one of the reasons I posted this essay was because of his conclusion.  He makes an appeal to “post-postmodern” forms of spirituality, but in my opinion, the nature of his argument suggests to me that he hasn't grasped the postmodern critique clearly enough to even begin going “post” yet.  For instance: 

In answer to the first of these, there are many ways to speak about what spiritual awakening is, but one very good way that I think will shed some light here is to see it as the discovery of the Dharma. When one truly wakes up, one begins to see with the Dharma eye, or the eye of wisdom. Now, the word dharma is thrown around a lot these days, but if we look back at its roots, we find three meanings that tend to be associated with it. Dharma as Truth. Dharma as Law. And Dharma as Path. Simply put, one sees the Truth, which reveals the Law which guides the Path. And, when things are working properly, this is a discovery that engages every aspect of one’s humanity. One sees, suddenly with unimaginable subtlety, the delicate web of interrelatedness that binds us together. One sees the significance of every move we make, and how it impacts the whole through a complex chain of causation. One awakens to the Law of karma, the law of right action which reveals an inherent ordering principle in the Kosmos, and a Kosmic command to align with that order. In the theistic traditions, this Law was referred to as the Will of God, as in, “Not my will, but Thy Will be done.” Finally, one discovers the Path, the actions one must take to stay aligned with the Law, revealing themselves anew through clear seeing in every moment. And, in the face of this knowledge, one experiences the awakening of what Andrew Cohen calls the “Spiritual Conscience,” or what the Sufis called, simply, “the Heart.” That faculty within the awakening psyche which compels us to act in accord with the Law, and which feels a kind of Kosmic pain when we violate it.

If authentic spiritual attainment really does make us a better person, why, then, have so many spiritual teachers been less than exemplary human beings?

If you’ve followed me so far, you can probably guess my answer: Most spiritual teachers today have not attained the depth of realization I’m speaking about here. They may have had profound experiences. They may even have attained a kind of ongoing yogic access to expanded states of consciousness. They may even be able to transmit those higher states to others. But that does not mean they have surrendered their will before the throne of the Ultimate. It does not make them truly God-realized human beings.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Bruce, I didn't realize so much was on offer:

• earth-shattering … complete revolution at the very core of one’s being
• integral transformation of every aspect of one’s humanity
• radical reorientation in one’s priorities, worldview and values
• profound alignment with the moral order of the Kosmos
• always sacrifice self-interest for the good of the whole
• profound attunement to the evolutionary needs of others
• an unbearable sensitivity to the impact our actions have on others
• able to see deeply into others souls
• ever higher levels of spiritual cognition 
• authentic intuition and reason are clarified and united in a higher embrace
• a depth of feeling … too much … to bear in our previous ego-identified state


And, I note he's opening a new spiritual centre, ey?  I thought I could hear a sales pitch in his product-list.  [In valley voice:] “Uhh, I'll have an Earth Shatter/Unbearable Sensitivity Combo …”


I'm toying with a new rule in my head—for my own purposes of course.  It goes like this: anyone who capitalizes is somewhere pre-post-modern.  I'm not sure I can generalize the cap-tendency into a rule as such, but it would sure reduce time required to slot these people.


So, Hamilton's Cap Terms:


Dharma
Truth
Law
Path
God
Will 
Cosmos
Spiritual Conscience


The problem with fixating on (capitalizing) any of those terms is their meaning, universals that they are, is very context specific.  Go to Hamilton's description of the modern spiritual type.  Here are some descriptors:


• completely different developmental level 
• complex, layered interiority 
• individuation that never existed before
• deeply related to and engaged with the interiors of others 


The above surely differentiates modern humans from humans of yore, including probably the Buddha, IMO, but the list also describes matter in any form at any later point relative to any earlier point in the known history of the universe.


So he's not really saying anything more than that the universe develops.  But in capitalizing his terms, he presumably wants others to accept that those terms apply to them in the way he means.  This is pre-yellow evangelizing, and is not post-modern in the way it objectivizes, IMO.


Now, to answer David, because I can just feel him saying I'm denying universals and objectivity again … I'm not.  Or at least I'm not in my terms.  That something is is a universal and does not change for anybody or anything so far as anything at all remains in that being-form we call is.  Language would be rendered non-sensical if that statement weren't absolutely true. 

But the meaning that that universal holds for any given person, and the makeup of “is” conceived by that person—the entire panoply of qualities that might be associated with is, including experiential qualities—must refer to a historical point in time, a form of perception, and a form of experiencing.  This is the Wilber lattice.  

It is therefore, IMO, meaningless to suggest that any universal holds any sort of universally-true-for-you qualities beyond the most stripped-down banality one can conceive, like: that something is is true for you too.


In my view of post-modern, and apart from utterly banal definitions of words, there is no one Way, no one Path, no one Truth.  No fixation.  No non-context.  No non-history.


Finally, what Hamilton calls the Path is his path.  Yes, the universe carries a developmental grain, such that aligning with that grain can expectedly produce a certain ease.  But part of the universe is anything you see, and how can the universe's “grain” realistically be defined to exclude that?  Hamilton looks to overlook this point, and seems to me to err in preaching a result of a process as the process itself, when the process he took in his life probably looked nothing like the result.  How could it have?  One goes through A, B, C, D, E and reaches F.  F is not anything like A to E.  And, being F, and from F saying you need to “do” F to be F, like drop the ego (or align with the Universe), seems an absolutizing mistake very similar to the absolutizing (pre-post-modern) mistake of fixating on Cap Terms.  If the universe didn't want ego, it wouldn't have made it.  Try that universal on for size!  Sensitivity to developmental context—both life-span and cultural contexts—and to personal difference, suffer.


So, yes, I agree with you Bruce.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Tom: If form and emptiness are one, then immoral actions (to use Hamilton's
lingo) are as enlightened as moral.  What's beef, Jack?  For a
modification of that logic you'll need a different universe.

Tom, this is a postmodern, relativistic interpretation of nonduality.

Nonduality is not a perspective. You then offer this perspective, a relativistic one, that there is no right or wrong.


Tom: Then he shows his limited moral orientation in suggesting that because
anything in the world can be changed, is contingent, can be other than
it is, one is compelled to “change it for the better” (cough).

I think people should do what they can.

If you observe the people who make statements like the one above you will see that they will not hesitate to improve things for themselves, will not hesitate to “change things for the better” for themselves when they can, and likely for a certain in-group as well, a family, for example.

If you want an “embodied” nondual perspective like the one Hamilton is speaking about, an example of kosmocentric moral development, you can look no further than Roshi Bernie Glassman:


“If your hand is bleeding, you're going to do something about it. If you
don't have a bandage, maybe you'll have to just suck the blood with your own
mouth or tear off a piece of your shirt to use as a bandage. You're going to do
something. You clearly don't just sit there and think, “Is that me
bleeding?” You do something.

“So for example, if I see myself
on the streets as a homeless person or as somebody who's defoliating the
forest, I'll say, “That's me doing this, so what can I do about
it?” I'll do what I can. That's my only answer. I don't have any solutions,
because I don't know. That's the first tenet of our Peacemaker Community.” [1]


Tom: But the meaning that that universal holds for any given person,
and the makeup of “is” conceived by that person—the entire panoply of
qualities that might be associated with is, including experiential
qualities—must refer to a historical point in time, a form of
perception, and a form of experiencing.  This is the Wilber lattice.  

It
is therefore, IMO, meaningless to suggest that any universal holds any
sort of universally-true-for-you qualities beyond the most
stripped-down banality one can conceive, like: that something is is
true for you too.

Here is one thing I think might help: We often say, and Ken has often said, that “there is no pregiven world.” Some people interpret that to mean that there is really no objective world or at least that the subjective world is really much more important.

But I think what might be better is if we say there is no determined objective world; the objective world is indeterminate—turtles all the way down and all the way up, as well as to both sides.

That seems to leave us in a more balanced, less ambigous position than “no pregiven world,” which seems to leave people leaning a little to the subjective side of things.

 

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David: Tom, this is a postmodern, relativistic interpretation of nonduality.


Judging by Hamilton's language, which is all I have to go on, Hamilton looks to give the improvement drive considerable import.  I'm not decrying improvement.  I'm saying one form of awakening isn't contained by moral stricture and doesn't require, for its appearance in a person, the small distinctions of moral development Hamilton mentions.  I would include Ramana, Tolle, Nisargadatta and possibly Wilber as exemplars of that kind of awakening (that would be Wilber's capital-E Emptiness, no moving parts, nothing to break, etc.).  Regarding it, and speaking to that space, at the end of the day, there you are, again-is and again-improvable just as you were-is and were-improvable and presumably always will be, always in some specifiable, limited, definite form.  From within this experience of isness or suchness, call it what you will, you can improve all you like.  The fact of being something won't change, and the more so within the limited time frame of one human life.  I'm saying that aspect of awakening is not dependent on being nice to grandma.


But depending what you do, you'll spend less time running from those who want you locked up or penniless, more time is-ing and improving.


Not to gloss over Hamilton's language, it's pretty strong.  He uses phrases like “when one truly wakes up.”  I'd like to pull Nisargadatta from behind a wall to answer him on that one.


But a more obvious demonstration is available.  Many of the people Hamilton regards as abusive were awakened.  Quite evidently, awakening does not require that one necessarily and in all respects, or perhaps in any, be a genuinely nice person.  No dice on that claim in my books.


Do I think it a constructive step that people greenify their behaviour toward others?  Yes.  Do I think spiritual innovation is good?  Yes.  Do I think innovation is not a totally clean process?  Yes.  Do I think cigarette-selling Nisargadatta, or drunk-himself-to-death crazy-wisdom Chogyam, were awakened?  Yes.


(By the way, nonduality IMO is a perspective.  It's a stage and a step.  It has historical attributes like anything else.  It will be superseded in little more than a second or two on the overall evolutionary clock.)


David: Some people interpret that to mean that there is really no objective world or at least that the subjective world is really much more important.


Not me on both counts.  I think Ken's statement applies more strongly to descriptions of inner experience.  Children don't experience emptiness (the perhaps one historical exception granted).  But children can learn of atoms at pretty low levels of any form of development.  “Atoms,” of course, don't just simply objectively exist; the term refers to an interpretation, or a model, and that model has a real but limited scope for guiding behaviour, regardless if the person is Hindu or Muslim, atheist or Adi Da himself.


So aspects of the world—those the subject of science, at least—are objectively specifiable and have broad intersubjective agreement.  The realm of inner experience is a different ball of wax entirely, which I think is where you're going in your final paragraph.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Tom: I'm saying one form of awakening isn't contained by moral
stricture and doesn't require, for its appearance in a person, the … distinctions of moral development Hamilton mentions.

Yes, I agree. Nisargadatta even mentioned a murderer who was a jnani
(someone who maintains the causal witness throughout the sleep cycle),
though it may have been a mythological character, I'm not sure.

He and Ramana also spoke occasionally ahimsa and such—there was a
background of Amber Hindu morality that sometimes gets lost in
translation to the postmodern West.

Wilber also believes that jnani isn't dependent on moral development.
This is illustrated in the Wilber-Combs Lattice, the causal and nondual
circles on the far-right side.

What isn't illustrated in the lattice is the idea about states and stages merging in third tier.

It also doesn't illustrate lines or how states and stages interact, but
of course that is fine; it is a good start and illustrates some
important points.


Tom: Many of the people Hamilton regards as abusive were awakened.

Yes, they had plateau states.

I'm not sure we should even give plateau states a term like “awakened,”
though. I use that term because it is slightly less glorified than
“enlightened,” but I don't think I would consider an Amber
fundamentalist, for example, or a Red/Amber terrorist “awakened” in any
sense. Perhaps a word that's a little less exalted sounding still.

“Free,” perhaps, or “liberated.” The other words have some stage-like
connotation or ring to them even if we say there's not necessarily a
relationship.

However, this aspect of awakening that is not dependent on
moral development (theoretically) could only be so stable, could only
reach the level of what Wilber calls a plateau state.

I'm not sure, really, that a plateau state could be maintained with a
Red structure—maybe if you're Saddam Hussein and hold all the strings.

At any rate, structures are more stable, so if a person can achieve a
realization as a stage it will be more stable, less dependent on things
staying the same around the four quadrants.

Tom: (By the way, nonduality IMO is a perspective.  It's a stage and a
step.  It has historical attributes like anything else.  It will be
superseded in little more than a second or two on the overall
evolutionary clock.)

Perhaps you are right, but most realizers would say that you haven't realized it yet if this is what you think.

Wilber often tells the story of how Kalu Rinpoche would react when
people would come to him with stories of “realization” or experience.

They would say, “Wow, there was freedom, emptiness, no I, bliss, peace, etc.”

And he would ask, “Did it have a beginning in time?”

And they would say, “Yes, this morning at ten o'clock!” or “Whenever I meditate!”

And he would answer, “That's not it.”

That's something, those experiences; they are experiences of what Kulu
Rinpoche is talking about, nonduality, and terrific starts along that line, but according to he, Wilber, and others not the deepest level of it.


Tom:  Children don't experience emptiness (the perhaps one historical exception granted).

Some children apparently do have experiences of emptiness. Adi Da wrote
all about it; Adyashanti talks about it. Andrew Cohen wrote about one when he was 15. I have heard others.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“Children don't experience emptiness”

Here is one example of a woman who very clearly remember herself experiencing emptiness - the absence of inherent existence - as a child. She explains it, starting at 02:50. She clarifies that of course she didn't phrase it the same way as she does now - “This isn't the child's voice, it is the adult looking back.” - but the experience was the same.

Just like you can't have two differences experiences of space, even though the conceptual interpretations of the phenomenon (or non-phenomenon in the case of space and emptiness, more accurately) will come to change, so can't you have two different experiences of the emptiness of inherent existence. You either experience that a person or phenomena exist inherently and independently, or not.

If you people look at the white void over which this webpage is constructed, will we have a different experience of that absence-of-webpage? The only way to find out is to stare into the white-ness. Will it be different for all of us? Can we interpret this white void in any way? Sure, we can say: “I think it is empty”. Or: “I think it is not empty” or talk about space at various levels of subtlety. But apart from that conceptual overlay, is it not the same void/absence-of-webpage for us all?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

No, I don't think it is.  The notion that a particular experience is given and the same for all, even if interpreted differently later – the notion that experience and interpretation /”construction” are separable, independent, self-existing – is exactly what is critiqued by postmetaphysics and postmodern science.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Dawid, substitute “God” for “emptiness.”  Is everyone's experience of God the same?  Are any differences merely differences in interpretation of the “real” God-beyond-interpretation?  What's wrong with the notion “God-beyond-interpretation”?  Substitute “perspective” for “interpretation.”

Here's something else you'll disagree with.  To my sensibility, yellow takes green's relativizing further than green allows.  Green is still absolutistic, doesn't really yet see the value and meaning of stage specificity, the relativity, historicity and situatedness of stages and views.  Yellow does.  This is what David misses by calling me green.  I'm actually uber-green—superrelative—in many of my views, ie, yellow or perhaps a touch higher.

Saying emptiness-for-all is IMO pre-yellow.  Any absolutism IMO carries redish qualities, which are present all the way up to green (my relativity for you) and only relativized and moderated at yellow.

Of course, people like to think they're white light.  This might be called stage-creep, which I see in particularly the younger people who hang around integral sites, but is not confined to younger people.  The phenomenon is comparable to grade-creep between law schools, where over time curve averages in schools rose to “beat” the competition. 

If I'm right that emptiness-for-all is pre-yellow, Ken is himself still crawling into yellow in an important part of his mental orientation.  Why would anyone harp against green if one foot were not still in green?  Both SD and Cook-Greuter's theory suggest a person bucks against a stage they're leaving.  It's part of the posit-negate-leap process.  The bucking against is the negating stage.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“No, I don't think it is.”

Well, ok then. So how does your experience of the absence of web page differ from mine, you think? Not being sarcastic or anything, just curious.

“Saying emptiness-for-all is IMO pre-yellow.”

Perhaps you don't understand what emptiness points to? What you don't seem to understand is that emptiness is a non-affirmative negative only. It is not an assertion.

I have a book called Emptiness Yoga, in it is made clear that a consciousness directly cognizing an emptiness of inherent existence (of say, of chair) does not think “this is an emptiness”. The Dalai Lama says that if the assertive thought “this is an emptiness” arises as a consciousnesses thinks it is cognizing emptiness, it is not emptiness that is experienced, but the valid conceptual cognition called emptiness (a conventional truth). Emptiness must therefore always be a non-affirming negation, otherwise it is not emptiness.

So there's not actually something out there called emptiness, just like there isn't anything out there called space. I've said this before.

Because of this, it isn't possible to substitute emptiness with some God, because God is an assertion, while emptiness is a non-affirming negative.

(What's funny is that emptiness is actually the ultimate post-modern tool. It encapsulates everything healthy post-modernism is standing for. It is used to destroy all notions of essence, of separate existences, of givens. If you would only dare to let in some new knowledge, I think this tool and the logic that comes with it could help you alot in your various deconstructive escapades.)

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“Well, ok then.  So how does your experience of the absence of web page differ from mine, you think?”

What is involved, in your understanding, in the “experience of the absence of web page”?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

I don't see anything to understand. There is just this non-web page. What can I understand about an absence?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

What is involved in the perception of absence?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

So there is the conceptual knowledge I am giving out about absences, which I have learned in the past. And I said this, the conceptual overlay's are all conditioned and therefore empty of inherent existence.

Then, apart from concepts, there is also a conceptualization (which means even this in this paragraph is empty) of a seeing (eye-consciousness, in this case) of an absence of a web page. How can that absence be interpreted? How can I interpret something that I can't find?

And ultimately, since the absence is defined in relation to the web page, this means that the absence is not inherently existing either. (Which is what I think you're getting at, right?)

What emptiness points to is just this. Nothing in the world, no persons and no phenomena, can be found, and therefore not interpreted. Because of this non-finding of the things we thought we could find, we can't desire them, be averse to them, fear them, or be confused about them. So there's no suffering. It's all like space, or the absence of web page here, we can't say anything about persons or phenomena, because there is nothing that we find. We find only the non-finding, which is the definition of an emptiness. (Surely not Ken's definition, though.) And if we were to search for that non-finding, we would find only the non-finding of the non-finding.

The Prajñā Pāramitā sutra:

“In a place where there is something that can be distinguished by signs, in that place there is deception. If you can see the signless nature of signs, then you can see the Tathagata.”

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Is “not finding” not an interpretation?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Yes, “not finding” is an advanced concept that does not arise until atleast Green. All concepts are constructs of the percieving consciousness. I have already said this.

The drawback of this post-modern game you are now playing is that it doesn't lead anywhere. It's circular. The difference between it and Prangika analysis is that the latter has the potential to end suffering by actually reaching a point where concepts are all seen through - “If you can see the signless nature of signs, then you can see the Tathagata.”

And now you will ask “Is: 'where concepts are all seen through' not an interpretation?” and yes, yes, yes, it is. But where does your post-modern questioning ultimately lead? It leads into a cynical or hippie flatland where nothing is allowed to stand out, where every attempt at anything is instantly repressed. This mentality - which in my country has turned to politically correct society - is very annoying, I tell you.

Or, does it lead to freedom, wisdom, benefit and happiness?

This is the question.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Dawid: It's circular.

That's what the Newtonian camp said about the Relativity camp.  Guess which camp got the atom bomb?

Of course, any one can stick to their Newtonian absolutism, with its absolute space and absolute time ….

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Dawid: What you don't seem to understand is that emptiness is a non-affirmative negative only.

I disagree.  The emptiness mental activity refers, for its part, to a kind of mentation (thinghood mentation) to which it says: reality (call it what you will) is not what you think thinghood.  By definition, anything negative needs something to negate.  To illustrate, answer this question: can absolute nothingness experience its nothingnessness?  From this question, what can be experienced but not nothingness?  A pure absence cannot be experienced.  Can you experience the absence of red?  Language is idling to say an absence can be experienced, like it idles to say “round square.”  Can a round square be experienced? 

Language cannot just be used willy nilly.

As to space not existing, I think you need to brush up on your physics, Dawid.  Try Wilczek's Lightness of Being: space has mass.  It has “thereness” qualities that can be specified.

As to emptiness destroying givens, you're in one, IMHO.  I don't think you're simply not affirming anything whatever.  You're describingly saying “not anything describable” or some such contradiction.

Finally, “empty of inherent existence” only says a certain way of thinking is inadequate.  It doesn't apply whatever to any form of non-inherentness thinking: that thinking is not empty.  This is just to reiterate that emptiness requires thinghood thinking as its correlate, that a negative needs something to negate.  What is beyond emptiness emptiness doesn't apply to: it couldn't apply, because that which is beyond as such is not thinghood.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“This is just to reiterate that emptiness requires thinghood thinking as its correlate, that a negative needs something to negate.”
 
Nagarjuna's philosophy is first of all based on the cessation of suffering. So we need to keep that in mind all the time. So, Buddhism has recognized that belief in the inherent existence (thinghood, self-hood) of persons and phenomena is the cause of all suffering. So they conclude that if you destroy the belief in the inherent existence of persons and phenomena, suffering ends. Buddhism, and I personally, care about nothing else.

So therefore, the only goal is to destroy inherent existence. It is seen that persons all across the world has this, as you say, thinghood thinking, and that it causes them to suffer. So they start from there (people's thinghood thinking), and the negations follow. And Nagarjuna will through logic negate and negate until there is nothing left to negate, and then he will finally negate his own system of negation as well. And just so, there is then no belief in the inherent existence of persons nor phenomena, and suffering is relinquished. And in that absence of inherent existence - he replaces it with no assertion of his own. Nagarjuna ultimately asserts nothing - not nirvana, not bliss, not nothingness, consciousness, not ultimate reality, not emptiness, not Tathagata essence, not dependent arising, nothing, nothing, nothing. In his philosophy there is no ground, nowhere to rest, nowhere to abide - it is a complete freefall.

This is why he was such a controversial figure. And many individuals of Buddhism has not dared to accept this radical way, and thus started up schools which all negate as well, but always maintain some ontology, some belief in a reality that is actually independent of thought. (This way, the self is saved.) Be it consciousness, storehouse-consciousness, space, Nirvana, emptiness, the continuum of consciousness, the composite of the skandhas, the continuum of the skandhas, Buddha-nature, partless particles, etc, which they say, while perhaps not being ultimate existents, still exist naturally, inherently or as a true establishment.

But these schools - the Samkhyas, Vaibhashikas, Sautrantikas, Chittamatrins, Yogacharins, and the Madhyamika-Svantrantika - are in Tibet agreed to all be inferior to the one school which does not grant the status of true establishment, natural existence, inherent existence or ultimate existence to any person or phenomena, no exception. This is the glorious Madhyamika-Prasangika school, established on Nagarjuna's opus the Mulamadhyamakakarika, and then founded based upon the works and commentaries of this opus by Buddhapalita, Chandrakirti, and Shantideva. This superiority has been established through formal debates in logic.
 
Since this school does not grant - and through reason disproves - independent, pre-given existence to anything, all post-modernists like you should praise it.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Is: But apart from that conceptual overlay, is it not the same void/absence-of-webpage for us all?

Bruce: No, I don't think it is.  The notion that a particular experience is
given and the same for all, even if interpreted differently later – the
notion that experience and interpretation /”construction” are
separable, independent, self-existing – is exactly what is critiqued by
postmetaphysics and postmodern science.

1) “Is exactly what is critiqued by
postmetaphysics and postmodern science.”

I think we need to qualify this just a little to begin with. This is
the critique given by postmodernity but not all schools of
postmetaphysics, not Wilber's, for example.

I think the definition for metaphysics that we should adopt is “that for which there is no evidence.”

The other definition that people use, which amounts to either
modernism or postmodernism, seems like absolutism rather than
science—it requires a zone absolutism to stay alive.

2) Nonduality is not defined as an “experience.” Subject/object
experiences will not be the same for all, but nonduality is defined as
“not an experience,” “not a perspective.”

There is a lot of cross-cultural evidence to support the idea that
nonduality is available for everyone, at least temporarily. Because it
is nondual (no subject or object) it is the same “thing.”


3) Does it make sense to suggest that there is no common source or
sourceless source that the entire manifest realm has in common? If you
don't believe in some kind of sourceless source but prefer the
materialist view that everything is a product of the mind, what is your
cosmology? Where did it all come from?

That is a serious question! If nothing else is suggested but instead
there is just endless deconstruction I think we will have to call it
postmodern rather than integral. We would also have to say that there
is a performative contradiction: It is being said that there are no
absolutes or universals; yet this particular philosophy is being held
to be absolutely true without exception.


Tom: This is what David misses by calling me green.

I really don't believe you are Green! Perhaps I've thought you made a
relativistic remark here or there, but I wouldn't characterize you as
Green!  :)

I think we're all over the map just a bit as we dance from subject to subject, line to line.


Tom: Saying emptiness-for-all is IMO pre-yellow.

Nonduality is available for some people but not available for others?

Tom: What's wrong with the notion “God-beyond-interpretation”?

I like the basic idea here, that no one can ultimately conclude what is
truth, only I would prefer a hierarchical inexhaustability to a
postmodern “to each his own.”

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David, I don't think it's the case that I'm arguing a “Green” position – but let's see.  In my opinion, a lot of people in Integral actually haven't really digested postmodern insights to any great degree – beyond the watered down “mainstream” values which have leaked out in the form identified by SD, which should not be confused with critical philosophy, in my opinion.  I think many “Integralites” have moved beyond Green political correctness and so on, without having really adequately grasped deeper “postmodern” insights (which, as Hampson argues, for instance, might not be “Green” at all).

One thing I'm concerned about is that being “at” a particular level is coming to mean, essentially, holding certain beliefs – rather than having access to the perspectival sophistication that is imagined to constitute actual stage-growth. 

More on that later.

First, I want to respond to this statement:  I think the definition for metaphysics that we should adopt is “that for which there is no evidence for.”
 
I don't think this is sufficient – if, from this, being “post-metaphysical”  means only believing in that for which there is evidence.  I think it's an element, but as it stands, it is essentially indistinguishable from, say, an Orange empiricist approach.
 
What do you think?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Bruce, could you please differentiate between your view on nonduality and the postmodern view on nonduality? What is your view on nonduality? What is the postmodern view on nonduality? I would like to see them side by side.

Wilber has talked about how the earliest enlightenment schools were interested in a causal awakening. The Buddha was interested in Nirvana, and Buddhists from India, Tibet, Myanmar, Vietnam, Japan, North America, Europe, among other places have found the same thing, as well as people from other traditions in the same places, interpreting it in their own way.

Then, with Plotinus and Nagarjuna, we had the nondual revelation, and people from various traditions and countries have also found this. So, it wouldn't sound too far-fetched to suggest that there could be something deeper than nonduality, right? Wilber has also said this is a possiblity.

Would that not satisfy the demands of postmodernism, along with the cross-cultural support? In that case there would be no “ultimate ground,” just the most ultimate ground (groundless ground) that we know of.

I know that it wouldn't satisfy all postmodernists by a long shot, but I don't think that should be our aim. At the end of the day I think it's really the modernist critique that we're up against with regard to nonduality, whether or not it is merely a product of the mind/body or whether it preceeded the mind/body.

The postmodern critique helps us with interpretations, but I don't see how it helps with the question of nonduality unless we establish it as an absolute law that transcends all times and cultures, at which point it becomes an absolute given itself.


Bruce: I don't think this is sufficient – if, from this, being
“post-metaphysical”  means only believing in that for which there is
evidence.

Why isn't it sufficient? What would you like add?

Someone might say, “I would like to add the absolute law that everything is subjective to some degree,” but what if there is evidence that nonduality is not subjective because it is defined by the falling away of the subject to the point where the perceiver is also the perceived?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“In my opinion, a lot of people in Integral actually haven't really digested postmodern insights to any great degree – beyond the watered down “mainstream” values which have leaked out in the form identified by SD, which should not be confused with critical philosophy, in my opinion.  I think many “Integralites” have moved beyond Green political correctness and so on, without having really adequately grasped deeper “postmodern” insights (which, as Hampson argues, for instance, might not be “Green” at all).”
 
Bruce, I have been wanting to say just this for a long time, but haven't been able to find a post to. So now you did - excellent. I fully agree. Many so called “integral people”, have just discarded the pathologies of post-modernism, but haven't included the benefits. And if they haven't done that, they won't be able to thrive in the next stage.

I think is what happens has happened to you, David, a little bit. I think that before you will be able to reach a fully integrated Turquoise, you need to head back and include the absolutely relentless critical Green attitude, which Bruce has demonstrated in our discussion above. He criticizes everything I am saying. And this is a very healthy attitude, paramount in cultivating the middle way. You remember dangers of the non-critical, non-sceptical mind from the Derren Brown videos…

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David, I'll respond in more detail in my next post. 

Bruce: I don't think this is sufficient – if, from this, being
“post-metaphysical”  means only believing in that for which there is
evidence.

David:  Why isn't it sufficient? What would you like add?

I don't think defining post-metaphysics as 'only believing in that for which there is evidence' is sufficient, because only believing in that for which there is evidence could just as easily apply to a modernist, representationist approach (e.g., modernist empiricism).  But evidence does not appear in a vacuum; it always depends on interpretive contexts, as Kuhn points out.

About the last part of your post, I'm not sure why you're saying that to me.  I never denied nonduality, either as a state experience or as a developmental realization.  For me, “nondual realization” is an essential aspect of spiritual maturation.

Anyway, I'll address things in more detail in my next post…

Best wishes,

B.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Is: I think is what happens has happened to you, David, a little bit.

Well! Thanks, Mr. I-think-the-Tibetans-are-the-best-philosophers-in-the-world!  :)

You say this because … ?

I know, it's because you don't believe in 1) subtle energies; 2) subtle and causal bodies, only gross; 3) or Eros/evolutionary impulse/psychic being.

And because Wilber and I do, we're less than Turquoise.

Okay, but it's not Wilber and I who are missing the fully integrated Turquoise. I have had an unusual life and see a perspective or two that awfully few people can see. To you it looks less-than-Turquoise, but that is a pretrans fallacy. Not believing in subtle and causal bodies, subtle energies, and evolutionary impulse/psychic being is no higher than Teal, not Turquoise.

Honestly, when you have awareness of the frontal self, the modernists and postmodernists will have much less of a hold on you.


Is: I think that before you will be able to reach a fully integrated
Turquoise, you need to head back and include the absolutely relentless
critical Green attitude.

I'm afraid not! Fully integrated Turquoise requires that you take the necessary injunctions so that you can enact the metaparadigmatic aspect of IMP, not repeat the criticisms of one zone again and again as if they are absolutely true.

I integrate the finer points of postmodernism, and I have taken the injunctions. For example, since about the turn of the millennium, I have been doing a meditation where energy comes up the spine, out of the third-eye center, into my hands, and from there a few variations, after having learned it from a chi gong master.

And I have discussed it with other people who have experienced the same thing, read about similar things from several different cultures, read Wilber discussing it. So you can't tell me that subtle energies don't exist! You don't find Turquoise arguing against subtle energies; you find Turquoise wanting to work with them.


Is: He criticizes everything I am saying.

I have taken it easy on you because you're so young! I don't think it takes a lot to criticize everything a person half your age says.

Is, I think you're extraordinarily bright and evolved for
your age. However, you might be a little more open minded. Skepticism
can easily turn into dogmatism. You remember the quote from Andrew
Cohen about not leaving enough space in your mind for things you don't
know?

Also, though, I think maybe Bruce and I were getting somewhere, so please don't try to make it into a personal thing, you need to do this, he this, he that. If you have a point, make a point. One of the reasons I didn't respond to the “I don't think postmodernism is appreciated enough” remark is that it has been said before; the other is that it didn't contain a specific point.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

The Tibetan's are the best in the world! X(
 
That's my one and only point.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David: I like the basic idea here, that no one can ultimately conclude what is truth, only I would prefer a hierarchical inexhaustability to a postmodern “to each his own.”

Breakthrough!  Now we're getting somewhere closer to communicating.  I'm not arguing a “to each his own” version of truth.  In fact, my understanding comes very close to what you say by “inexhaustibility” set in a heirarchical—specifically holonic—frame.  My relativity emphasis in these discussions but intentionally focusses on and emphasizes the stage-specificity of any person's understanding, and particularly those that regard inner experience which, among mental movements, or accompaniments, call them what you will, cannot be separated really at all from one's overall and line-specific developments.

Thus would I answer your question “Nonduality is available for some people but not available for others?” — yes, nonduality is a stage-specific achievement, and looks to me to be a necessary pass-through on the self-line in the same sense that formal operations looks to be a necessary pass-through for the cognitive line.

I say “stage specific” because it's beyond dispute, IMO, that a certain level of development is required to experience—better, enact—nonduality.  The Buddha appeared at time X and not before; children (3 year olds) don't experience nondual.

I say “pass-through” because development does not stop, seemingly, ever, such that nondual will give birth to its own “later,” just like formal operations gives birth to later, more subtle cognitive modes.  That “giving birth,” IMO, is holonic: it takes what was previously attained into itself and gives it a larger context within an orientation defined by the new modality (atoms in molecules, for instance, molecules being the new modality).

And to ask why nonduality is a pass-through point is to broach mystery.  I don't know.  Perhaps its a necessary feature of the structure of matter itself; perhaps people just created it and formed it as a groove.  I favour something closer to the former.

Saying nondual is “the ground of being,” “the essence of things,” etc., is pre-post-modern, anti-evolutionary, absolutistic, stage-ignoring, non-integral, IMHO.  In the self-line as I understand it, nondual, once attained, will carry forward into all later self-movements, like atoms carry forward.

David: Does it make sense to suggest that there is no common source or
sourceless source that the entire manifest realm has in common?

I personally believe the universe is one, and if it has a source, it is one with that source, inseparable.  I know as little about that source as I do about the universe, which to me is fundamentally mysterious.  But mysterious to “knowledge,” not being.  I am that mystery.  Compared to amness, knowledge is a pittance.

Saying anything in the realm of knowledge, “this is …,” “that is …,” bears all the marks of limitation and movement, of my context, and of stage-specific and historical “learning.”  If I were to say “the source is X,” I'd feel I'd be overreaching and projecting.  What is X understood now compared to X understood in a million years?  I can't even imagine.  All knowledge is always already obsolete by an even greater degree than that.

Dawid: cessation of suffering

Dawid, I'm not denying that in the slightest, and not denying in the slightest that an experience of emptiness, representing, as it does for me, a stage achievement, ceases suffering in the person who achieves it, which achievement will seemingly never be lost (no more suffering ever).  That's a bit of a guess, but it's consistent with my knowledge and experience to date.

David: I think the definition for metaphysics that we should adopt is “that for which there is no evidence.”

I would add that a metaphysical statement be one that no experience can contradict.  “That something is” meets these two criteria.  The metaphysical, as such, would be the most general, the most universal, applicable to everything and always.

“Emptiness” doesn't meet those criteria.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David: The postmodern critique helps us with interpretations, but I don't see
how it helps with the question of nonduality unless we establish it as
an absolute law that transcends all times and cultures, at which point
it becomes an absolute given itself.

Let me draw a few scenarios here.  Tell me if anything twigs.

First, does it make any evolutionary sense that some never-changeable knowing or experiencing would be disclosed at one juncture in history?  Assume nondual appeared in humanity at 100 A.D.  Why would “the ever-unchangeable truth” be disclosed at a historical moment of time with possibly infinite time before (13 billion years minimum) and possibly infinite time after?

Second, isn't the desire to “say what it is,” the desire to have an unchangeable fixed place in knowledge satisfied by knowing that your not knowing is also what is?  Why not find security in being life rather than knowing it?  Recall my suggestion above that “that something is” is metaphysical, ie, always true, by definition must be to say anything at all.  The simple fact that you are, no matter the way you are—emptiness experiencer, muslim fundamentalist, Adi Dazzler—can IME be a place in understanding, a form of knowing that, because metaphysical, doesn't change, is absolutely quiet and unmoving.  That place is compatible with all movement whatever, is not separate from that movement whatever: if a new experience arises, as IMO it inevitably will, whether a post-nondual experience or what, you will be that too.  This is to restate, I think, Eckhart's form of awakening, and Ramana's.

And this experience too will change.  That experience and expression will change is seemingly changeless.  But again, I don't need to know it, because whatever it is and ever will be, I will be it.

Further, it seems to me that as soon as one steps out of the barest metaphysical, one has stepped out of the metaphysical.  “Nondual” refers to something stage-specific.  It therefore cannot be universal.  It's a growth in the line:

thinghood —> emptiness —> nondual.

Why should the universe stop there?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“Why would “the ever-unchangeable truth” be disclosed at a historical moment of time with possibly infinite time before (13 billion years minimum) and possibly infinite time after?”

Because to experience an absence of concepts, first of all you need concepts. So that takes us to the human age, like 200 000 years ago, or whatever. Because of the nature of biological evolution as well as in social and cultural conditioning, belief if the inherent existence of persons and phenomena appeared. And so it took a while for the social-economic base to settle down enough for people to be able to relax and chill without having to worry like crazy about the basic needs of a human organism - survival, shelter, food and water, etc. So after this, there could be an inner exploration of the nature of reality, because the society and natural enviroment at the time didn't prevent it. And around this time, there could be a seeing that the experience of inherent existence of persons and phenomena was false, and so it appears like non-duality arises at a discrete point in human evolution.

But of course, the belief in the inherent existence of persons and phenomena was false all along. We just didn't realize it at the time. So we should really not talk about “the discovery of non-duality”, we should instead talk about “the discovery of the misundertanding of persons and phenomena as appearing to exist inherently”.

I don't know if David would agree with this, but we'll see.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Dawid, IMO what you call a belief in inherent existence was not false all along.  “False all along” is a thinging representationalist mindset that merely repeats, in subtler guise, the thinghood thinking emptiness, for its part, negates, evidently not entirely.

Thus, for instance, is it entirely absolutely false that something exists?  Does your “thing” knowledge not guide you in any way in life?  Is that thinking absolutely entirely completely false—absolutely completely unconditionally forever and ever fictional?  If not, you have a problem with what you said.

What you call an absence of concepts is also IMO a reification of a form of mental activity (negating form) = representationalism, thinghood mentating.  Could not what you call an “absence” itself be a concept, an interpretation?  How can you be sure it isn't?

Note that what you call “absence” shares with conceptualizing the very area of mind in which concepts are activated.  “Absenting” presumably activates in that area, no?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Tom: “What you call an absence of concepts is also IMO a reification of a form of mental activity (negating form) = representationalism, thinghood mentating.  Could not what you call an “absence” itself be a concept, an interpretation?  How can you be sure it isn't?”

From the classic Emptiness Yoga by Jeffrey Hopkins, talking about the experience of the emptiness of inherent existence:

”There are two ways of incontrovertibly discovering what is true: inferential cognition [achieved through reasoning, is conceptual] and direct cognition. […]

An inferential cognition is conceptual, but concepts do not mean, in this case, a whole lot of talk. Rather, you are not seeing the object directly; there is still an image of emptiness as a medium of understanding, but only an image, not a whole lot of words.
 
Direct cognition is the other means by which we know incontrovertibly what exists. Both direct and inferential valid cognitions are non-mistaken about their main object; they cognize their main object correctly. They differ in that a direct cognition is of an object itself without the medium of a mental image of that object, whereas inference relies on an image.”

It goes on further to say:

”Inferential cognition can reveal the nature of these objects so that they can be cognized differently. If this proper cognition of the nature of things were always to be conceptual, it would be like superimposing an overlay on reality. But it becomes non-conceptual through meditative habituation and intensified analysis, and, finally, with the attainment of Buddhahood, removes even the error of false appearance.”

So they - people who have, after all, been studying their own minds for millennia - are saying that it is actually possible to cognize the absence of inherent existence directly, and non-conceptually. And that this equals the end of suffering. You'd like to disagree, I presume?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Craig Hamilton, a Bay Area spiritual teacher and a (former) student of Andrew Cohen.
 
I have concerns about almost everyone claiming to be a spiritual teacher (with exceptions of course…a handful of them) and even more so in the Andrew Cohen lineage. I could be wrong, but the first thing I would discredit is this nonsense about not seeing someone as a teacher because you are still a dreg of the earth and just not evolved enough to see it…or appreciate it. And because of this I take what these people say with a grain of salt. Why is it a huge number of these teachers hang out in California? Why not somewhere it's needed like Peoria, Illinois? Or is it that theres gold in them thar hills?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Hopkins' thinking is representationalist = thinghood mentating.  The giveaway is his concept (yes, IMO it's a concept) of “direct cognition.”  A tell-tale sign of representationalist thinking is belief that one has some form of direct access to, or is permanently barred from, the thing-in-itself.

Hopkins evidences this belief.  He says conceptual thinking “superimposes an overlay on reality.”  Notice the word “reality.”  His use of that word implies he knows and experiences and has access to reality-in-itself, the Real Thing, Real Real Reality.

Another signal that he's engaging representationalist thought is his assertion that conceptual thought operates by way of a “mental image.”  “Image” understanding is representationalist.  Moreover, and here we go a little deeper with a little more subtlety, Hopkins feels he as access to conceptual thought as though it were a thing; that is, he has direct, full access to it—it's something that lays an image over reality—just like he has direct, full, unmediated access to reality using direct cognition.

Remember how Wilber talks about states?  A person can have direct access to them.  That's representationalist.  That form of thinking excludes from its idea of direct access that the human brain or sensory system etc etc play no role in the experience of the thing so accessed, call it reality, or call it the Causal Ground, as Wilber sometimes puts it, call it Emptiness, etc.

The complex role played by the brain etc was what Bruce was pointing to in his posts to you.  Admitting that complexity causes one to necessarily include in one's understanding that element long lost to representationalist thought: history and context.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Dawid, let me go a little further into representationalism as I see it.  It seems to me that in the thesis-antithesis-synthesis process I see animating cognitive development (Wilber calls this subject-becoming-object … same thing), naive thinghood thinking is the thesis, negating that thinking is antithesis, and whatever results is the synthesis.

In that developmental process, both green post-modern flatland relativism and traditional Buddhist emptiness correspond to the negating leg.  What both miss, IMO—and naturally miss, because they're both engaging stage-specific behaviours—is they believe, like I said above, they have access to thing-thinking as if that thinking were a thing—got thing-thinking-in-itself in their sights!  That belief, which is a thinking pattern, repeats, but in negative guise, the same form or style or action of mentating that is thing-thinking.  It's essentially the same thing.

Of course “emptiness” must be closely related to “thing-thought” because the former, being a negative, requires, like all negatives, something to negate.  To that something, emptiness is fundamentally tied.

To call emptiness the ground of being, to consider it ultimate or absolute in any capital-letter way, to view it as anything but a pass-through stage, is to fixate.  But fixation, too, is stage appropriate because, again, that brand of fixation is but one form of one stage (here green) saying I'm better than all other stages.  Fixation of that fashion only dissolves with the extra relativizing push at yellow.

What both emptiness and deconstructionism miss, because they're not there yet, is the surrelativism that is heir to green, which is yellow.  That further measure of relativism relativizes the absolutistic self-contradicting flatlanding deconstructionism of Green Negate, which returns one again to thinking and concepting, whether in “nondual” form using Buddhist lingo, or as enactivism or some such in other spheres.

I say “returns one to thinking” because thinghood positing and emptiness negating have themselves become object to the more subtle thinking mind.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

One more note here, then I'll shut up for the evening.  I said the negative leg of that thinking development process thinks it has thing-thinking in its sights.  One example of that is deconstructionism.  That movement feels it knows what writing/texting/theory/thinking Really Is: it's nothing but a flimsly little unselfconscious structure, which of course deconstructionism, knowing what structure Really Is, and having by its knowing Direct Access to it, can at will deconstruct.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Tom: Breakthrough!  Now we're getting somewhere closer to communicating.

Yes, I felt like we were getting close to something as well.

Tom: “Nonduality is available for some people but not available for others?”
— yes, nonduality is a stage-specific achievement, and looks to me to
be a necessary pass-through on the self-line in the same sense that
formal operations looks to be a necessary pass-through for the
cognitive line.

Reading Susanne Cook-Greuter we would get the impression that nonduality is a stage along the self line, but she may have shifted that since then, as Wilber shifted from Wilber IV (states ontop of stages) to Wilber V (states as horizontal, stages as vertical).

I think we would have some questions to answer if we wanted to put it on the self line—what about narcissistic realizers like Adi Da? There have been many of those. Here is how Wilber descibed Da:

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

So, if any one person has a nondual realization, or even an experience that we agree is truly nondual, everything in the multiverse would already have to be empty. Thus, emptiness, if nondual realization is an actuality, has to be a given.

From non-duality emptiness is also seen to be empty.
Only from duality would anything be thought to be a given.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“From non-duality emptiness is also seen to be empty.
Only from duality would anything be thought to be a given.”

Commentary:

Think of a chair. From duality it is seen that it is a dependent arising and thus empty of inherent existence. But that emptiness can't be inherently existing/given, such as you suggest, because emptiness exists in dependence on the chair, and - more subtly - on the mind that imputes it. As Nagarjuna (who was from India, not Tibet! :P) says:

“Whatever is dependently arisen
That is explained to be emptiness.”
 
So therefore, from non-duality emptiness too is empty of inherent existence, and thus not a given.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

e: From non-duality emptiness is also seen to be empty.
Only from duality would anything be thought to be a given.

Is: So therefore, from non-duality emptiness too is empty of inherent existence, and thus not a given.

I would just amend this slightly: Nonduality isn't a metaphysical given; it is a postmetaphysical given.

Another definition of metaphysics is that it involves some kind of a Being before the Big Bang, and after, usually, but nonduality isn't a finite Being. It could never be an “it.”

Our minds really can't grasp infinity, though, so they end up either with something finite or with something nihilistic when trying to conceptualize nonduality.


Tom: Remember how Wilber talks about states?  A person can have direct
access to them.  That's representationalist.  That form of thinking
excludes from its idea of direct access that the human brain or sensory
system etc etc play no role in the experience of the thing so accessed,
call it reality, or call it the Causal Ground, as Wilber sometimes puts
it, call it Emptiness, etc.

He's quite aware of that. You might check out chapter 4 of A Brief History of Everything, “The Great Postmodern Revolution.”

The claim is, though, that noduality preceded the mind, which we have to admit it did if we believe nonduality is possible at all (because if anything in the manifest realm weren't empty/God, it couldn't be a part of someone's nonduality, and thus it wouldn't really be nondual).


Tom: That's what the Newtonian camp said about the Relativity camp.  Guess which camp got the atom bomb?

The relativists!

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“they have access to thing-thinking as if that thinking were a thing—got thing-thinking-in-itself in their sights!”
 
Tom, you and they (Prasangikas, and therefore I) are talking about the same thing. They, like Shakyamuni Buddha, too recognize the thing-thinking in humans beings, and that it causes suffering, and want to realize whether there are things or not. The non-finding of this thing-ness is called emptiness. This non-finding is not an assertion, it is a non-affirming negative which means that the analysis pulls the rug under your feet, leaving you nowhere to stand. (To stand, meaning = to hold and cling to an inherently existing view.)

I think you don't give the Prasangika philosophy enough credit, because you presuppose that they are caught in the myth of the given, while in fact they are the one school of Buddhism that I know of (along with Zen) that is not.

“To call emptiness the ground of being, to consider it ultimate or absolute in any capital-letter way, to view it as anything but a pass-through stage, is to fixate.”

As Bruce marvellously pointed out somewhere in another post, you are not talking about Prasangika philosophy here but about, for example, Yogachara philosophy, which considers emptiness to be a given, and thus capitalizes it. As I said below in the commentary to e's reply to David:

“But that emptiness can't be inherently existing/given, such as you suggest, because emptiness exists in dependence on the chair, and - more subtly - on the mind that imputes it.”
 
If you reinterpret what Hopkins is saying in terms of reality = a not-knowing, a free fall, perhaps things will make more sense.

Speaking of free falls, have you seen the movie Vanilla Sky? In the end, on that rooftop, don't you believe Cruise's character (David) directly cognizes the emptiness of the psychologist? (Within brackets is what I, in this interprative context, regard them to represent.)

<Psychologist [inherent existence] comes, running out from the door>

Psychologist: “David [you], don't listen to him! You were right, this is the seven dwarfs. It's a set up!”

Tech support [a Buddha]: “Don't feel bad for him, David. This winning man is your creation. It is in his nature to fight for his existence, but he's not real.”

Psychologist <starting to become anxious>: “I'm real. I'm real… I have two daughters, and you know that.”

Tech support <unleashing devestating Prasangika analysis> (Prasangika analysis because he doesn't say “You don't have any daughters” which would be a syllogism, but instead he asks him a question, forcing him to face the consequences of holding the affirmative view about having daughters): “What are their names?”
 
Psychologist <taken aback, gasping for words>: “I'm real… I'm… I'm mortality as home entertainment, this cannot be the future [be real]! Can it… can it?”

<David then directly realizes the emptiness of the psychologist, who in turn, as David realizes the psychologist's true nature, becomes silent, saying:> “Good-bye.”
 
Tech support: “It's been a brilliant journey of self-awakening. And now you've simply got to ask yourself this – what is happiness to you, David?”

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Is:Nagarjuna's philosophy is first of all based on the cessation of
suffering. So we need to keep that in mind all the time. So, Buddhism
has recognized that belief in the inherent existence (thinghood,
self-hood) of persons and phenomena is the cause of all suffering. So
they conclude that if you destroy the belief in the inherent existence
of persons and phenomena, suffering ends. Buddhism, and I personally,
care about nothing else.

To me the best part in Ngarjuna's thinking is his capacity to negate his own negating also. And hopefully he was also capable of perceiving the inherent emptiness of his own tradition, its practices, forms, rules and gurus, and also the idea of Buddha and Buddhahood.

My path has not gone through a realization of inherent emptiness. These lines of reasoning have never occurred naturally to my mind. And still there has been very little suffering in my life after age 16 in spite of a violent and traumatic childhood.
I do appreciate Buddhism as a potent and valid path. A lot of in it makes sense to me. And so many practitioners cannot be totally wrong. However this sort of realization does not seem to be the only route to diminish and even end suffering.
In my personal path suffering or percieving certain experiences as suffering ended at age 23, not through realizing the inherent emptiness of things, but through getting firmly grounded in Being and guided from Being. This however I did not perceive as an ultimate stage, but as a firm platform from which to grow.
A few years later I learned to meditate. However my purpose in meditation has never been experiencing some sort of inherent emptiness, but it was a vehicle to dive inwards. I have been mainly focusing in meditation to getting better connected to difficult feelings and emotions that are hidden in my body causing dysfunctions. This kind of subtle work can cause whirlwinds, and it is very useful to be grounded in Being for the storms to be enjoyable.
 
Craig Hamilton: Because one sees, in a way one has ever seen before, that the unmanifest ground of everything is a limitless perfection, but that the manifest world is a bloody mess.

How differently people can perceive life. Very often these hell scenarios, and bloody mess descriptions come from religious or spiritual people, who are escaping the horrors of everyday life. I often perceive the world, and my everyday pretty ordinary life as heaven.

Is:It is seen that persons all across the world has this, as you say, thinghood thinking, and that it causes them to suffer.

I see around me plenty of people firmly in thinghood thinking, but they are not suffering. At least they don't admit themselves to be, and don't look like suffering.
And I have also met very spiritual people, who not anymore so attached to thinghood thinking, who are suffering. However they mostly claim they are suffering because of the sins or the distortions of the other human beings. Therefore these people also get a strong urge to awaken others.
To me these spiritual teachers are mainly projecting out their own shadows.

I suspect thinghood thinking causes suffering only,  when a person starts to be developmentally ready for a shift to a next level, but stays stuck for whatever reason.

Irmeli

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“To me the best part in Nagarjuna's thinking is his capacity to negate his own negating also.
 
Yes Irmeli, I fully agree with you! Beautiful.

What would happen if post-modern deconstructuralists also deconstructed their own insistence on deconstruction? What would remain?

“And I have also met very spiritual people, who not anymore so attached to thinghood thinking, who are suffering.”
 
Wherever there is suffering, there is attachment to some belief. Wherever there is attachment, there is a core belief in inherent existence. Because if there were nothing that inherently existed, what could we attach to?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Is: Yogachara philosophy, which considers emptiness to be a given.

All of Buddhism considers “Emptiness” to be a given.

Calling it a “given” doesn't mean a person is reifying; it doesn't have anything to do with reifying or not reifying.

All it means is that it's something each person has access to at birth, that it is not an evolutionary given (a stage that someone has to build, including UR correlates) but an involutionary given (something that is always already the case).

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

So, there have been at least a few debates going on, and they have gotten mixed up a little. Here are at least three of them:

1) Whether nonduality is a thing or not, self or no self, Prasangika vs. Advaita or Yogacara. This isn't so much what we've been discussing recently. Whether or not nonduality is a “given” doesn't have anything to do with this debate, though the nature of nonduality or emptiness does have an impact on the given debate.

2) Whether nonduality is an evolutionary given or an involutionary given. When we have said “given” we have meant involutionary given. Those who don't think that nonduality should be considered a “given” have meant that it should be considered an evolutionary given; those who do think nonduality should be considered a given have meant that it should be considered an involutionary given. All Buddhist schools, including the Prasangika, basically believe that nonduality or emptiness is an involutionary given, though they don't use that phrase and wouldn't necessarily agree with Wilber's cosmology (they believe it is already avaliable to each person).

3) The modernist versus postmodernist debate, involving in part whether we are seeing the manifest world as “pregiven,” that is, some static thing waiting there to be discovered (representationalism, “thinghood,” etc.—sometimes this one is confused with emptiness/nonduality, but it is a different subject) or whether we are also considering how the mind co-creates or enacts the objective world it is seeing (that there is an objective aspect and an interpretative aspect), how new co-creations or enactments will continue to emerge, how there is a holonic nature to this unfoldment, etc.


They're all related in this discussion and intermix, but it's good to also see how they are distinct issues.


Tom: In fact, my understanding comes very close to what you say by
“inexhaustibility” set in a heirarchical—specifically holonic—frame. 
My relativity emphasis in these discussions but intentionally focusses
on and emphasizes the stage-specificity of any person's understanding,
and particularly those that regard inner experience.

I'm glad we understand better each other about this. I think part of the discussion hinges on the difference between plateau states and stage emotional development.

A plateau state is like an extended experience of a state. A really emotionally frazzled person can have an experience of a deeper state and feel bliss and peace. When the experience ends they feel like they did before, frazzled and confused.

A person who is frazzled can also realize a plateau state, which is essentially an extended experience (usually only with a lot of meditation, self-inquiry, and such), and have some of their emotional symptoms relieved indefinitely but not because of stage emotional development (though that could take place concurrently) but because they have slipped into a deeper state.

A third distinction that Wilber makes about state realization (in addition to experiences and plateau states) is a stage adaptation of a state, but that involves third-tier stages and is another discussion.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Non-duality is neither an evolutionary given or an involutionary given. Why?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Because it evolved.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Craig Hamilton: Because one sees, in a way one has ever seen before, that the unmanifest ground of everything is a limitless perfection, but that the manifest world is a bloody mess.

Irmeli: How differently people can perceive life.  Very often these hell scenarios, and bloody mess descriptions come from religious or spiritual people, who are escaping the horrors of everyday life. I often perceive the world, and my everyday pretty ordinary life as heaven.

I'm with you there, Irmeli.  Hamilton's statement reveals a split: it assumes his experience of limitless perfection of the “unmanifest” somehow does not arise as part of what is, here, as earth-and-everyday.  “Bloody mess” is of course a heroism platform that allows donning the cape of: Missionary Man.

Go Missionary Man, go!

Look at him swoop!  Clearing bloodymess in his wake!  And look at the bad spiritual teachers scatter!

Yayyyy!

[valley voice from the crowd] ”He's, like, so my hero. Makes me feel, like, less messy, you know?”

Irmeli: However this sort of realization does not seem to be the only route to diminish and even end suffering.

That is an observable fact, Irmeli.  My own route involved bouncing on a cognitive trampoline, trying to see life as clearly as I could, and a deliberate project to accept anything I saw.  No meditation whatever, no calming the mind, no getting beyond thought, no no-mind, no non-conceptual anything, no hyper-abstractness (except for evolutionary and quantum theory), no escaping suffering.  None of that—in fact, I had been actively pushing spirituality away from me for 10 years, all the while enjoying my suffering (why? because it was), when I experienced a profound shift.

I like what Osho was fond of saying: whatever you do, do it thoroughly.  That's among the wisest declarations of spiritual advice I've heard.

David: … stage adaptation of a state …

Can you say more about this, David?  I've not heard the phrase plateau state before.

David: The claim is, though, that noduality preceded the mind, which we have
to admit it did if we believe nonduality is possible at all ...

We don't have to admit that.  It seems to me an open question whether anything new was ever preceded in any fashion.  Did the laws of biology exist before biology?  Does any manner of freedom exist at all?

Also, the above sentence assumes nonduality is in some fashion “out there,” objectively the way things are, or something.  I'm not sure that's a sustainable position.  For instance, we now know the universe is not populated with Newtonian matter bits.  Thus, as we found, our Newtonian concepts, such as they were, don't correspond, except in bare recognizable outline, to what's “out there.”

I think what we do have to admit is that the experience or perception called “nondual” arises in some respect as a property of matter.  Just like Newtonian thinking seems to be a developmental stage (ie, arises as a property of matter).

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

(Tom, please respond to the Vanilla Sky question above, if you get time. I'd be interested in hearing your response! You can PM if you don't want to do it here. Cheers!)

David: “All Buddhist schools, including the Prasangika, basically believe that nonduality or emptiness is an involutionary given”
 
I think the word you're looking for is permanent phenomena, which they agree an emptiness is. But still, emptiness is only a permanent phenomena conventionally, not inherently - meaning it's not a given. Check out this chart, it's awesome. “The selfless” on the top is described like this by Hopkins in the book Meditation on Emptiness:

“In the Prasangika system 'the selfless' means that which does not inherently exist. The first category of the Buddhist world is the non-inherently existent because both existents and non-existents [and permanents and impermanents] do not inherently exist. Since nothing inherently exists, this is the broadest possible category.” 

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Hey Dawid, my sense is the Vanilla Sky clip captures a certain before/after movement much like your interjections describe.  Was there a question you were asking me there particularly?  I've seen the movie, but many years ago so I don't remember much about it.

For my part, discussion about inherent existence doesn't do much for me.  I've moved on from that form of mentating, much like I moved on from childhood forms of seeing—for instance, when I used to think a hidden object actually disappears.  From my mature perspective, I see obvious limitation of that way of viewing, but I don't call it illusion, because the stage is a building block on which more complex mental process are built.  The stage therefore was non-illusory from a developmental perspective, and was, very probably, doing certain functions that needed to be done in the way the needed to be done.  Having done those functions, a new mentating could appear.

Thus to speak of things as non-really-disappearing doesn't speak to me.  So, too, saying non-inherent-existence is for me but a negation of a limitation (“limitation” only viewed from the later, more evolved).  Actually, if you were to ask me, I'd say everything inherently exists as being what it is.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

e: Non-duality is neither an evolutionary given or an involutionary given. Why?

I don't think calling it a “given” has much to do with its ontological status, other than taking it out of the unicorn, flying-rabbit category.

Of course calling it a “given” sounds like a positive assertion, but all the Buddhist schools, including the Prasangika, do the exact same thing by implication, at least. (edit: “given” is basically synonymous with the “permanent phenomena” Dawid talks about; see the end of this post).

There are basically three choices:

1) nonduality is an involutionary given, that it is always already the case (which is the position Wilber and all the Buddhist schools take, Wilber and some of the Buddhist schools quicklly adding that it's not really a thing);

2) nonduality is an evolutionary given, meaning that it has to be cultivated and developed in a person, which doesn't make any sense logically;

3) nonduality is neither an involutionary given nor an evolutionary given—even the most nihilistic interpretations of Madhyamaka out there by implication believe that nonduality is an involutionary given. It's basically just Orange that takes this position (that nonduality is just some epiphenomenon of the brain, like a drug experience).


Craig Hamilton: Because
one sees, in a way one has ever seen before, that the unmanifest ground
of everything is a limitless perfection, but that the manifest world is
a bloody mess.

Irmeli:
How differently people can perceive life.  Very often these hell
scenarios, and bloody mess descriptions come from religious or
spiritual people, who are escaping the horrors of everyday life. I
often perceive the world, and my everyday pretty ordinary life as
heaven.

Tom: I'm with you there, Irmeli.  Hamilton's statement
reveals a split: it assumes his experience of limitless perfection of
the “unmanifest” somehow does not arise as part of what is, here, as
earth-and-everyday.  “Bloody mess” is of course a heroism platform that
allows donning the cape of: Missionary Man.

Go Missionary Man, go!


This is a let's-not-throw-the-dog-out-with-the-bathwater kind of thing. Now, I'm not accusing anyone here of postmodernism, but what some postmodernists will do is throw out all notions of service, positve action, and such, labelling it all delusional heroism or samsara or something.

The enlightened life, according to these postmoderns, involves satifying desires, avoiding fears, etc., though they will call all that “spiritual.”

Hamilton may err on the Teal side of this, which I think is a little missionary sounding (but not to be confused with Amber, see Susanne Cooke-Greuter's “Nine Levels of Embrace”), but there is a dynamic aspect to this that includes positive, (evolutionary) action, and if we're not integrating it in some way we're definitely not offering a third-tier expression or interpretation.

Tom: Can you say more about this, David?  I've not heard the phrase plateau state before.

Thank you for asking! I wrote about it in this blog. You'll find a reference for Wilber's discussion of it in One Taste in there.

David: The claim is, though, that noduality preceded the mind, which we have
to admit it did if we believe nonduality is possible at all ...

Tom: We
don't have to admit that.  It seems to me an open question whether
anything new was ever preceded in any fashion.  Did the laws of biology
exist before biology?

I think that if we are not integrating linear time at all we are misapplying the absolute truth (of the two-truths doctrine). The evolutionary, linear time perspective is a very important one to integrate. It's not the only important perspective (Almaas, for example, adds the perspective that creation occurs from the unmanifest to the manifest, for example, which I'm not sure is always the case but is still a very interesting perspective).

At any rate, the reason we have to (taking an evolutionary perspective on it for the moment) admit that nonduality preceeded the brain if nonduality “exists” at all is because even the atoms, oceans, and stars must also be empty—if they weren't, a person's nonduality wouldn't include them and would therefore not be nondual.

So either the entire multiverse is empty or it is not, but if we say it is not we cannot concurrently believe that it is possible for a human being to “experience” nonduality. Actually, a human being is nonduality, yes? But because people identify with something finite, we need nonduality as a given (adding that it is not really a thing just as Madhyamikas will talk about emptiness and quickly add that it's not a thing, that it is “empty, too”).


Is: I think the word you're looking for is permanent phenomena,
which they agree an emptiness is. But still, emptiness is only a
permanent phenomena conventionally, not inherently - meaning it's not a given. Check out this chart, it's awesome. “The selfless” on the top is described like this by Hopkins in the book Meditation on Emptiness:

Okay, great, so “permanent phenomena” and “given” are synonomous in this case. I use “given” because Wilber uses that word and it's more common in philosophy. 

That's a cool chart! (By the way, can viruses and such be embedded in pictures?)

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David: the reason we have to … admit that nonduality preceeded the brain if nonduality “exists” at all is because even the atoms, oceans, and stars must also
be empty …

David, did the Newtonian atom pre-exist our understanding of it?  Seems to me it never existed.  I'm not saying our ideas have no application to the world, but assuming any of our ideas properly describes reality is for me problematic.  Why should I assume that emptiness, as a description, is any more objectively correct than Newtonian atomic theory, which was way off, and is wayer off the more we learn?

This is the same difficulty I have with Dawid's talk about non-inherent existence.  I know what he's saying, but I don't take “non-inherent existence,” as a descriptor, to be but more than a smidgen more correct, if you will, than inherent existence.  I wouldn't hang my hat on it, as Buddhists have done, because the tidal wave of evolution will soon swamp it.  If that takes 50 or 1000 years, doesn't matter: those are both but miniscule drops in cosmic time.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David, I said “wouldn't hang my hat on it.”  Here's hanging my hat.  Referring to my 2-year old analogy above: non-really-disappearing is the Ground of Being.

Same as saying Emptiness is the Ground of Being.

One is in these statements taking a negating mental function and reifying it into absolute truth.  That's worth deconstructing, IMO.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“(By the way, can viruses and such be embedded in pictures?)”
 
Not inherently, only conventionally!!!!!!! :P

“Okay, great, so “permanent phenomena” and “given” are synonomous in this case.”
 
Before you start to use them synonomously, please understand that the permanent phenomena doesn't exist somewhere “out there”. They exist only because of thought. So strictly speaking, emptiness didn't exist either before or after some big bang. Only when people (philosophers interested in the concept emptiness) wake up in the morning do these permanent phenomena (emptiness, space, suchness) pop into existence.

If you say that emptiness does exist even though philosophers sleep, then you are talking from conventions. Then you are agreeing with what is agreed by humans to be true, like there being actual cups, tables, skies, moons, rabbits, etc even when we are not thinking or looking at them. Just wanted to make that clear. A “given” to me sounds like reifying an object as being ontologically real, existing regardless of whether we think about it or not. This kind of thinking is exactly what the doctrine of shunyata is out to destroy.

“Was there a question you were asking me there particularly?”

Yes, but since you don't have the movie fresh in memory, let's skip that example and go with this instead:

Have you ever been lucid while dreaming? Inside these dreams, when you recognize that you can, for example, press a finger through your own hand - are you then not directly cognizing the emptiness of your hand?

I'm asking this because you claimed that there can be no such thing as direct cognition, and I wanted to pursue this further. :)

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Dawid, see my post directly above.  “Direct” perception assumes one is perceiving absolutely correctly, no?  Absolute correctness in perception is representationalism.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Non-duality is neither an evolutionary given or an involutionary given. Why?

Because it evolved.
 
How can something that is not a construct i.e. an I/WE/IT
evolve?
 
A swing and a miss…strike one.

–

3) nonduality is neither an involutionary given nor an evolutionary given—even the most nihilistic interpretations of Madhyamaka out there by implication believe that nonduality is an involutionary given. It's basically just Orange that takes this position (that nonduality is just some epiphenomenon of the brain, like a drug experience).
 
A swing and a foul ball…strike one.
 
-

Non-duality is neither an evolutionary given or an involutionary given. Why?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Because it evolved.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“Dawid, see my post directly above.  “Direct” perception assumes one is perceiving absolutely correctly, no?”
 
The way Hopkins describes it is that direct perception is a seeing without the need of a mental imagine, or a without the need to reason your way to the understanding. Further, you can't percieve something that is empty “absolutely correctly” because something that is empty is neither correct nor incorrect.

For example, if you see smoke, you directly cognize the presence of fire. You don't go over reasoning in your head “Where there is smoke, there is fire. Here there is smoke, therefore - there is fire…” etc. Also, you don't have a mental image of fire in your head when you see smoke. You just directly recognize that there must be fire.

So, when a buddha sees a phenomenon that has been produced (is a dependent arising), he immediately and directly cognize that phenomenon as empty. He needs not an internal image of a void/absence of the phenomena, and he needs not go over reasonings in his head.

Also, why don't you answer my question? When (if) you become aware that you're in a dream, how come you are not bound by the ordinary conventions of the world? For example you can move through walls, abuse dream-people, fly, change form, etc. Is it not because you directly experience the non-inherent existence of the dream-objects?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Dawid, this is where modern research in cognitive science, the study of perception, etc – for instance, the enactive paradigm for autopoeitic systems that we talk about here – can, I think, meaningfully contribute to the traditional Buddhist understanding.  For instance, while Buddhist thinkers might argue that we “directly perceive” the color red, without a mental or conceptual “overlay,” biological enactivists will point out that “red” is not a property of objects that can be directly perceived, but rather that “seeing red” is the result of a complex, evolutionary history of structural coupling and involves environmental, biological, conceptual, and sociocultural dynamics.  Red is unconsciously constructed by the organism, in other words – something that would not be immediately apparent upon phenomenological inspection.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Imagination, in other words, plays an important role in supposedly “direct sense perception.” 

You may already be familiar with this, but I'll post it anyway (since it's fun):  http://www.blindspottest.com/

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

I fully agree with you, Bruce. I'm reading this book at the moment, integrating philosophy with cognitive-, neuro-, biological science, psychology, AI-research, etc. It's an awesome book from one of my favourite philosophers.

This kind of studies for me celebrates the don't-know-mind as well as the sheer wonder and richness of the world, whatever we mean by “world”. For me, all Prasangika is about is to lead us to the don't-know-mind, which is the key to the cessation of suffering.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Sanna (perception) was considered a construct from the get go. It was somewhat synonymous with memory. What is usually implied by 'direct perception' is perception without the overlays of obscuring thoughts and emotions. That it co-arises in dependence with other aggregates has never been denied as far as I know. So what is implied with direct perception is really phassa (contact) without giving rise to clinging or desire, etc. in dependent origination. It is pre-perception without the biases of the past conditioning of memory. Because the mind has been made pliable and wieldy and brought to the present moment via meditation training, the conditioning aspect of memory can be dropped or prevented from arising so “perception” is “direct” and not mitigated by memory. It is one place we can practice to prevent suffering from arising but it takes a bit of work to get “there”. Most will work a bit downstream with feeling (vedana -sensations not emotions) for a long while before being able to stabilize awareness at phassa. I think “direct perception” was a first attempt to find dhamma correlates with western philosophy i.e. phenomenology. But I don’t think it is apropos to criticize the dharma because of issues with phenomenology is it? The dharma after all is not an easy thing to comprehend.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“It is pre-perception without the biases of the past conditioning of memory.”
 
And what Tom is saying is that that is impossible. It's an interesting question, worthy of being asked. You know that video on youtube with Trungpa (who never gets to speak!) and J Krishnamurti? They have this as a topic as well.

Is it possible to have Sparśa (sensory contact) without there being a conceptual overlay of memories, judgement, discriminations, etc. Like, “raw perception”. This notion is something post-modernism has been trying to destroy for a long time. That the mind is like an innocent mirror just reflecting the pure “is-ness” that is somehow out there.

I guess my own current view would be that there is no mind to even mirror something. (And no intrinsic objects to be mirrored.) “Mind”, “is-ness”, “direct perception” and so on are all really just concepts, right? What is here right now can't really be grasped by concepts. That's the way I see it, looking around. It's like… colours, sounds, breathing. What does it mean? I don't know. Huineng famously wrote:

There is no Bodhi tree,
nor is the mind a standing mirror bright.
Since all is originally empty,
where does the dust alight?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Dawid: Is it possible to have Sparśa (sensory contact) without there being a conceptual overlay of memories, judgement, discriminations, etc. Like, “raw perception”


Flat out no.  Brain evolved in conjunction with senses, such that sense-brain-mind are all one fundamental unit the operation of which cannot be defined apart from the (huge) evolutionary history that coordinated them.  By “coordinated,” I mean the senses are structured and operate in brain-referred ways and vice versa.  A poor analogy is how lungs were designed in oxygen-referred ways: you can't define lungs without primary reference to and specification of oxygen.  The poverty of that analogy is it is not bi-directional: brain and senses co-evolved—and co-evolved with reference to and in an evolving environment—and in a practically mysterious bootstrapping way.


Consciousness doesn't get off the ground without a massive evolutionary non-conscious history.  By the time we're at anything mental, like ideas or concepts or experiences, call them what you will, we are fundamentally suspended in an interactionism 99.99% of which cannot be perceived.  We can't even perceive that we have cells without highly evolved science.  And how many of those cells are operating in the very simple act of feeling the temperature of water?  Tens or maybe hundreds of billions; maybe trillions.  How many molecules, each of which is structured/conditioned by its own massive evolutionary history?  The complexity of even a very simple consciousness implicated act (hand testing water temp) boggles the mind.  Every one of those cells has a massive evolutionary history.  The coordination of those cells likewise, including the information system—the hard and soft structures, including concepts and guiding informational pathways—that allow the thing to run.


Nonduality is a concept—a mental something—with a massive evolutionary history (read: massive conditioning).  But for that history, that conditioning—which form is, including anything that has form, like the idea of formlessness—and the myriad interactions and structurings it involved, no nondual experience, call it what you will.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

That's a nice scientific story, Tom.

I'm just wondering what would happen if that story would be seen as empty. Pre-modern stories, modern stories, post-modern stories, trans-personal stories, etc. If they were all seen as nothing more than phenomena without any intrinsic reality at all, because they are coming and then going. And there'd apparently be only sitting on a chair, fingers tapping, tastes and sounds, mental movies and stories coming and going, shapes and colours, sensations, breathing? And this unknowable, mysterious, ineffable action-reality is always direct and immidiate.

To me, this is what's real. Not a story about how this is or isn't real, no matter how relatively true or false that story may be compared to other stories. Or we don't even have to use the word real, or story. Happening is happening, whether there's a conceptual story trying to describe it, or not.

And everything I wrote above is a story. Now I am going to take a sip of this water here.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Nice story of happening, Dawid.  If everything is a story, what is the non-story the distinction “story” implies?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Story or non-story … This “action-reality” is happening right now, and you know it. And since I can't find a separate self, that action-reality is what I am. Words fail after that. All spirituality comes down to this. Some zen story:

A monk asked, “What is the basic meaning of Buddhism?” The Master gave a shout. The monk bowed low. The Master said, “This fine monk is the kind who's worth talking to!”

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Dawid, everything other than pure nothingness nothingness [wat dat? – ed.], IMO, involves structure.  Human perception is IMO always and never not a con-struction, an active co-activation, if you will, of brain and sensory structures at play with, among other things, the structure of information inputted to such.  This might be called perceptual relativity.

People who have been blind all their life who then have their sight restored cannot initially make sense of what they're seeing.  The reason is they lack the required informational “guide”—the light-patch interpretation key—in the overall act of perceiving light patches. 

As to Bruce's example regarding red, go outside on a sunny day and put your face to the sun with eyes closed.  Then after two minutes open your eyes and notice the blue tinge in everything you see.  That “blueness”—the difference you're noticing between post-sun and normal sight—doesn't exist, as such, in what you're seeing, but is produced by your retinal light cones having been affected by red.  That effect is a form of interaction memory at the cellular level.  It subsides, of course, but is sufficient to show that what we see as red is never just pure red-out-there.

The concept of direct perception, so far as I can make any sense of it at all, omits from its understanding of perception everything done on the human side.  By “done” I mean to say that activity or action or movement occurs and must occur on the human side.  That's why this view is often dubbed en-activist.  The “direct” camp are by contrast representationalist, because they believe the mind is but a mirror or some such (ie, zero activity on the human side).

The conditioning behind perception is, IMO, the history of the universe.  Bruce pretty much implied this.  Thus could one say that any perception now is the whole history of the universe activated as perception here.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Dawid: Also, why don't you answer my question? When (if) you become aware that
you're in a dream, how come you are not bound by the ordinary conventions of the world? For example you can move through walls, abuse dream-people, fly, change form, etc. Is it not because you directly experience the non-inherent existence of the dream-objects?

Dawid, there are several assumptions in your quote I don't agree with.  For instance, to me the dream world is the dream world where day-world concepts, like non-inherency, don't apply.  And FWIW, lucid dreaming is to me but a crude analogy to moving from a more to less separative dayworld view.  When Tibetan monks sat in caves between yak butter churning sessions, they had very few observables at hand to analogize and apply.  So they used what they had, like so-called states of consciousness.  Wilber carried this forward, presumably because he really likes the traditions as they presented to him.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Tom: David, did the Newtonian atom pre-exist our understanding of it?  Seems to me it
never existed.

The atom subsisted our understanding of it. It subsisted with the dinosaurs, with Archaic, Magenta, Red, Amber (none of them would be able to function without atoms), and then with Orange—existence for the atoms! Finally a little recognition!

Wilber talks about this in a footnote on pages 250-251 in Integral Spirituality. The view that they subsisted is an enactment of a particular worldview, Orange or Turquoise, say, and the whole thing would change a little with the higher enactment.

But I think it's important to recognize the tetra-enactment perspective or the tetra-structure of each occasion. Often I hear a bias toward the UL or LL, with the right-hand quadrants sounding less real or important than our understanding, as if we create things with our minds and the things have a lesser ontological status than our minds.
 

e: Non-duality is neither an evolutionary given or an involutionary given. Why?

Nagarjuna and the Buddha both thought that emptiness is an involutionary given, though they of course didn't use that phrase. It has nothing to do with reifying or not reifying, whether it exists or doesn't exist. If it is not an involutionary given, you have to move it to the unicorn, flying rabbit category or to the evolutionary given category. Of course we could not put it in any category and never mention it again, shutting down all of Buddhism. Would you prefer that?

How about “non-existing involutionary given?” It's a paradox. The Middle Way expressed in language is going to look either like a paradox or a tetralemma. Saying “no-self” or “non-existence” is not an accurate description of the Middle Way. It's simply beyond all concepts.

Is: So strictly speaking, emptiness didn't exist either before or after some big bang.

But it doesn't not exist either, does it? Nagarjuna:

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“Buddhas teach neither self nor no-self.”
 
Indeed, they don't. So don't use that quote to support your theory of involutionary givens. Buddha's teaching neither self nor no-self is an ultimate expression, to help you eradicate the tendencies to lean towards either eternalism (involutionary & evolutionary givens, self) or nihilism (utter nothingness).

“The “direct” camp are by contrast representationalist, because they believe the mind is but a mirror or some such (ie, zero activity on the human side).”

Yes, this post-modern understanding is extremely important. And I have already agreed that the concept emptiness is a construct. What I mean by direct cognition is not that one pops out from the mother's womb and instantly cognizes the complicated concept shunyata. What I meant by direct cognition is that it is possible to, by analysis and meditation, recognize emptiness (the lack of a thing-ness as inherent in the subject or the object) without having to think about it, mull over reasonings, or through the medium of an internal image. Just like the fire example. It's not that you know what fire is when you're a child, but you learn it.

All the great Mahayana masters have said that Nirvana is not some “fixed state”, such as you accuse them of believing. They all say that withdrawal from life (such as going to a cave in between yak butter churning sessions to do formless meditation, drugs, sleep, etc) doesn't lead to the cessation of suffering. Only by analyzing phenomena and then internalizing the analysis in meditation can one cause suffering to cease. Here's the King of Meditative Stabilization Sutra:

If the selflessness of phenomena is analyzed
And if this analysis is cultivated,
It causes the effect of attaining nirvana.
Through no other cause does one come to peace.

Through insight I know that the aggregates are empty.
After knowing this, I do not associate myself with the afflictions.
I engage in ordinary activities only by convention.
I move about in this world, having finally attained Nirvana.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Is: So don't use that quote to support your theory of involutionary givens.


First of all I want to thank you again for all the Prasangika stuff. I think it is quite powerful, and I hadn't really considered it enough until you began talking about it.

But the idea that emptiness is an involutionary given really doesn't contradict Prasangika at all. All it is is emptiness in an evolutionary context (3p, L8 or 9); that's it, nothing more. It doesn't mean eternalism at all.

Wilber could be more clear about it, as I said, but I think you're just objecting to it on a semantic basis. What if instead of “involutionary given” he just said “involutionary emptiness” or “involutionary nonduality”? They mean the same thing.

“Involutionary given” just sounds a little on the eternalism side of of the Middle Way, while emptiness sounds a little on the nihilistic side. “Emptiness” and “nonduality” are also entirely dualistic words.

Now if Wilber said that he subscribed to the Mahamudra or Yogacara definition of nonduality, then you could say it was reifying, if you like. But he doesn't. He explicitly says what he means by it is the Middle Way. So it's just a fancy name for it in an evolutionary context, nothing more.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David: The atom subsisted our understanding of it.

Yes, unquestionably.  But what do you mean by “atom”?  The Newtonian atom is so wrongly conceived as to be barely recognizable by its closest developmental neighbour, quantum physics.  The Newtonian atom, in that very real sense, never existed.

In light of how our understandings change as highlighted by this single example of a single paradigm shift (Newtonian —> quantum), what confidence have we to say something like “nondual” is more descriptively correct about reality than the Newtonian theory of the atom?  Now consider the shift that has occurred from pre-Newtonian to quantum, and what will occur between quantum and post-quantum.  And we with our understanding of “nondual” have a grip on description?

Doesn't work for me; sounds very fixated, which is the opposite of what these teachings teach.

Note that I'm not saying we create things with our minds.  Better understanding is better understanding.  Quantum physicists make nuclear bombs; Newtonian physicists pour cement sidewalks.

Here's fixation: the Newtonian atom is the Ground of Being.  What a joke.  Do you see how absurd religionists, with their Absolutely sure Ultimate Eternal knowledge, sound?  Now I'm going to continue laughing and make myself a coffee.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Dawid: What I meant by direct cognition is that it is possible to, by analysis and meditation, recognize emptiness …

Dawid, yes, I agree.  I think the developmental leap from pre- to post-emptiness is rather large, and carries, as you've said in these discussions, the consequence, for those who really engage the analysis and allows its effects, of pushing one over the suffering hump where it's then all down hill from there.  What you call internalized analysis is one important indicator, I think, of why terms like awakening and gnosis (knowledge, jnani, buddha—all the same root word) are used to describe this process. 

Note that “emptiness” concerns relationship—it's essentially a relationship contruct that says: “me here, other there is incorrect.”  The separation which emptiness nullifies can be seen as a form of absolutism or wrongly conceived relationship: the absolute (ie, separate, unrelated) self.  What emptiness does is to relativize this absolutism by saying, essentially, you are that other, and anything.

On this analysis, the problem of suffering can be put as a problem related to absolutizing, to relationship, to relativity.  One could say that any fixation is a form of absolutizing.  Absolutizing is relationship conceived in one's mind, body and feeling in a certain manner.

To put the matter in broad relationship terms is to open the door for recognizing that female ways of inner process, with their focus on relationships, share fundamental commonality with what men do when they process the way they process in their more abstract realm: both are about relationship and its consequences.

But notice in each case how we arrive at relativity as the base of suffering-work.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Actually, relate, differ and suffer share the same etymological root.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

“First of all I want to thank you again for all the Prasangika stuff.”

Well, thank you, David. I have learned so much more through our lively discussions than through book reading.

“What if instead of “involutionary given” he just said “involutionary emptiness” or “involutionary nonduality”? They mean the same thing.

“Involutionary given” just sounds a little on the eternalism side of of the Middle Way, while emptiness sounds a little on the nihilistic side. “Emptiness” and “nonduality” are also entirely dualistic words.”
 
You're lost in concepts. (Feel those dukkha-contractions when I say that.) The middle way is not about concepts or no-concepts; the middle way is a dying into a complete don't-know mind. When we truly understand the Madhyamika analysis, we are left completely naked and clueless in a mystery without any railings to hold on to.

This is really what I've been arguing for all the time. When the emptiness of a person or phenomena is directly seen, that does not mean we learn something new. It means we loose everything we thought we knew about that object or subject. I've personally noticed that when I keep the don't-know mind, I don't suffer or experience confusion. Gutters become gutters and bird-sounds become bird-sounds. Form is form, and emptiness is emptiness.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Non-duality is neither an evolutionary given or an involutionary given. Why?

Tom : Because it evolved.

Strike 2.

Don’t they play baseball up in Canada? You can’t take the same swing at the same pitch, otherwise you will strike out. So you have to change your stance and move back in the batters box or choke up on the bat if the pitches are coming too fast. :-)

Do you think Non-duality is a construct? By definition non-duality is ‘not a dualistic (construct)’.

–

David : If it is not an involutionary given, you have to move it to the unicorn, flying rabbit category or to the evolutionary given category

A swing and a foul ball. Strike 2.

Agreed it is not an involutionary given but what happens to it if you don’t move it to the evolutionary category?


How about “non-existing involutionary given?” It's a paradox. The Middle Way expressed in language is going to look either like a paradox or a tetralemma. Saying “no-self” or “non-existence” is not an accurate description of the Middle Way. It's simply beyond all concepts.

The path to the Grand Canyon is not the Grand Canyon. But you at least hit the ball in the park with your last statement. If it is beyond all concepts, how can we talk about it without thinking of it as a given? What you say next will determine if your hit is going to be home run or an out. :-)

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

e, yes, nonduality is a construct of the mind, and the duality of the nonduality construct is contained in the exact middle of the word nonduality, and also of course found dead centre in the construct itself.

Here's my third answer: because it evolved, it's relative to time, space and development, and requires the backdrop of anything that went before it (including all relevant evolution) to make any sense.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Tom: What confidence have we to say something like “nondual” is more
descriptively correct about reality than the Newtonian theory of the
atom?

That's a good point. The interpretations will certainly improve. There could even be something deeper “experienced,” so it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to use words like “absolute.” It's not necessary. There are other words that seem to be more descriptive and accurate, anyway.

That said, we need to go with our best interpretations, right? We won't ever get those deeper realizations or interpretations unless we at least swallow part of the fish, or a big part of it, anyway, spitting out the bones, of course.



Is: You're lost in concepts. (Feel those dukkha-contractions when I say that.)

Hahahaha …  :) You're very funny, Is.  :)



Is: This is really what I've been arguing for all the time. When the emptiness of a person or phenomena is directly seen, that does not mean we learn something new. It means we loose everything
we thought we knew about that object or subject. I've personally
noticed that when I keep the don't-know mind, I don't suffer or
experience confusion. Gutters become gutters and bird-sounds become
bird-sounds. Form is form, and emptiness is emptiness.

Yes, I think that's very good, and very eloquently stated. And it's always good to hear that. However, we need two types of discussions: 1) the dharma-type you just discussed and 2) conceptual discussions, about View, about the map, etc.

No matter how enlightened or no self one becomes, what is happening on a conceptual level will make a difference, will have an impact. To think otherwise is to believe in some kind of mythological or metaphysical enlightenment.

That isn't to say that we can't really rest and live beyond the ego; we can. But it's always good to refine View, and I think that the more refined and integral one's View is, the easier it will be to rest and, especially, act as that no-self/emptiness/Self, whatever you like to call it.



e: The path to the Grand Canyon is not the Grand Canyon. But you at least hit the ball in the park with your last statement.

You're mixing metaphors here. You should have written, “The path to the World Series is not the World Series,” or “The path to the batting title is not the batting title.” Something like that.



e: But you at least hit the ball in the park with your last statement.

It was a stand-up triple.  :)



e: If it is beyond all concepts, how can we talk about it without thinking of it as a given?

Sometimes we can just look at this talk about givens as putting Buddhism and all the other methodologies into conceptual order. That will be of great benefit for everyone.

Other times we can have a fine-tuned dharma talk, perhaps not even using words like “emptiness” or “nonduality.”

And then sometimes we can just say in each other's ear, “Bodymind dropped!”



Tom: Here's my third answer: because it evolved.

I think you are saying that nonduality “itself” is an emergence, right? I think it's clear that evolution has played a crucial role in how human beings have learned to access it, but I have shown that it is illogical to say that nonduality “itself” is an emergence, like wings.

Logically, you cannot believe in both nonduality and that nonduality is an emergence.

If you believe that nonduality is really some kind of a hallucination or illusion, then you can logically take the latter position.

But, as I have shown, you cannot say that actual nonduality emerged in one person but is not present in others and everything, because if everything weren't already empty, there could be no such thing as nonduality.

But I think we need to be careful about one thing here, and this may be what is causing the confusion. Action will always be colored by a construct of the mind, even if a person has taken the injunction to the very furthest reaches (which hardly anyone has, even among teachers).

No one, not Wilber nor anyone—aside from those with mythological or metaphysical views of enlightenment—is saying that a person can act or speak or write entirely beyond a construct.

The claim is, though, with the deepest meditations or experiences, one rests, so to speak, beyond the mind altogether. Not a lot of people experience that. Most people experience a little bit of the subtle or causal and perhaps very brief experiences of nondual but not strong enough to convince them they have really gone beyond the mind.

Of course it doesn't prove anything conclusively, but people who have had those very deepest of the meditation/state experiences believe that it is beyond the mind rather than a construct of the mind or an epiphenomenon of the brain.





           

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Hi, David, I have been reading your exchanges with Tom on the notion that “nonduality” evolved and wanted to just chime in with my 2 pesos.  I don't think Tom is saying that he thinks that nonduality, as a “thing-in-itself,” evolved at some point in history; nor do I think he's saying it is merely an illusion.  Both of those possibilities are representationist possibilities.  I think the suggestion is that “nonduality” is a human understanding-experience, and that understanding-experience has an evolutionary history.  If you look at the development of Eastern thought, for instance, you'll notice that the notion of “nonduality” was proposed as a corrective to “monism.”  It didn't just arrive full-blown, derived directly and immaculately from a particular experience.  Some scholars and contemplatives at the time felt that “monism” (all is one) was an inadequate understanding, and the notion of non-duality (a-dvaita / “not one, not two”) was proposed in its place, as a subtler form of understanding that was not as reductive or substantialist as the previous notion of “monism.” 

Regarding your description of contemplation taking you beyond the mind, into states of formlessness and then cessation, I don't think we can say that such experiences lead “directly” or “automatically” to a particular interpretation, if only because we can see they already are associated with a range of interpretations – mythical, monistic, nondual, naturalistic, etc.  (And isn't this what the W-C Lattice tries to account for?)  We might argue that “nondual” is the best available interpretation (I happen to think it is), but that doesn't mean it is an absolute or final one.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David: people who have had those very deepest of the meditation/state experiences believe that it is beyond the mind rather than a construct of the mind or an epiphenomenon of the brain.

These descriptions, which I've read in various versions, leave me wondering what possibly could be meant by “mind.”  Presumably any such experience has a conscious component—presumably we wouldn't be talking of them if they didn't.  Having a conscious component, the experiences are mental, involve mind.  Am I missing something?

What could be at once conscious and beyond mind?

I'm fine with changing common definitions to communicate, so long as we understand definitions we're using.  If by “mind” is meant an idea, like my idea of the atom, then I think I can understand “beyond mind.”  But why not then say “beyond idea”?

I often hear in no-mind, no-thought, no-concept languagings, or beyond-mind, beyond-thought etc. languagings, a contradiction that says, in effect, I have God in my grasp, or I perceive Truth directly, or etc.  This is, to me, the same old ascenderism with its heaven-leaning denial of context, body, history and evolution favouring, as it does, a decontextualized spiritism that presumes to “know” “formlessness” “directly.”

Thus further to Bruce's input above, each experience has a developmental context that, to me, forms an intimate part of the description of that experience.  “Emptiness,” for its part, empties something, and that something is a certain form of thinking.  A form of thinking, to my mind, constitutes a form of relating and thus a form of being and acting in the world—an entire system and structure, in other words, of being-perceiving-doing.  “Nondual,” as I understand it historically, arrived to say, in effect, that that material world we thought we left behind, well, we didn't, it's part of us.  That was a good first step to post-modernism.

The developmental chain:

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Tom: “'Emptiness,' for its part, empties something, and that something is a certain form of thinking.”
 
Yes, of course it empties something. It empties the thinghood-thinking which is the cause of suffering. If everybody were enlightened right now, we wouldn't need the concept emptiness. Emptiness co-exists with inherent existence. When inherent existence is destroyed, emptiness too is destroyed. I hope you can see the difference between this presentation of emptiness and David's theory that emptiness is some involutionary or evolutionary given existing out there somewhere like a huge and aware Kosmic Background or whatever.

David: “it's always good to refine View”

Well, yes of course! All I'm saying is that view it is part of the dream. And the dream is beautiful, no need to deny it. The dream is what allows us to sit here today, talking about these complex intellectual dream subjects without having to worry about getting eaten by tigers, or whatever. 

It just so happens that for many people the dream becomes a nightmare (seen Vanilla Sky?) and then it's good to wake up and realize its non-inherent existence.

David: “the easier it will be to rest and, especially, act as that no-self/emptiness/Self”
 
The idea that it is possible to “rest as no-self”, or “act as no-self”, causes a tremendous amount of suffering. It's like the idea “you have to be aware of the now”. People turn that into a project, like any other, you know? And when the project inevitably fails, suffering results. How can one be aware of the now? By trying to be aware of the now one becomes very unaware of the now, I've noticed.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Tom: Here's my third answer: because it evolved, it's relative to
time, space and development, and requires the backdrop of anything that went
before it (including all relevant evolution) to make any sense.
 
Dualistic sense, agreed.
 
–


e: The path to the Grand Canyon is not the Grand Canyon. But you at least hit the ball in the park with your last statement.


David: You're mixing metaphors here. You should have written, “The path to the World Series is not the World Series,” or “The path to the batting title is not the
batting title.” Something like that.


Riding the L to Wrigley field and taking a break and getting drunk in the Cuby
Bear and watching the game on TV is not sitting in the ball park.




e: If it is beyond all concepts, how can we talk about it without
thinking of it as a given?


Sometimes we can just look at this talk about givens ….
 
What I was after was seeing the actual experience of
non-duality and trying to talk about it from there or as close as we can get to
“there” without the past dualistic view of an involutionary given or the future
dualistic view of an evolutionary given. You guys want to talk about it from
people language, I am trying to talk about it from dharma language. Oh well…maybe next time.
 
You popped up to the right fielder btw.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Bruce, great to have you chiming in!

Bruce:  I think the suggestion is that
“nonduality” is a human understanding-experience, and that
understanding-experience has an evolutionary history. … If you look at the development of Eastern thought, for instance, you'll
notice that the notion of “nonduality” was proposed as a corrective to
“monism.”  It didn't just arrive full-blown, derived directly and
immaculately from a particular experience.

Yes, I think it's quite true that there is an evolutionary perspective that we can take on it. There seem to be at least couple of aspects about the way it has evolved:

1) There seems to be a experiential depth aspect to it. I don't think that the difference between the Buddha's Nirvana and the Mahayana nonduality, for example, is just interpretative; I think the Mahayanas were able to access greater depth (not only causal but nondual), probably because of evolution throughout the four quadrants.

2) There also seems to be an interpretative aspect to the evolution of the whole thing, and this has a vertical (stage) element and a horizontal (type) element. The shift from monism to nonduality was probably a vertical advance (Amber to Orange?); Maharshi's preference for sat (being)—while saying that it is really neither sat nor asat (nonbeing)—would be an example of a horizontal difference. Of course, it's possible that, in some cases anyway, the shift from monism to nonduality was also a matter of increasing depth in experience.


Bruce: I don't think we can say that such experiences lead “directly” or
“automatically” to a particular interpretation, if only because we can
see they already are associated with a range of interpretations –
mythical, monistic, nondual, naturalistic, etc.  (And isn't this what
the W-C Lattice tries to account for?)  We might argue that “nondual”
is the best available interpretation (I happen to think it is), but
that doesn't mean it is an absolute or final one.

Yes, I agree. Such experiences wouldn't necessarily lead to a particular interpretation, and, as I said in my last post, any interpretation we have now, even the best one, would not likely last for all of time, so words like “absolute” are probably not only not necessary but not the most accurate either.

The discussion seems to have been about 1) whether there is an actual referent for states (!, 1p/c, 1p/nd) or whether they are simply epiphenomenons of the brain; 2) whether nonduality should be considered an involutionary given (meaning nonduality, emptiness) since the Big Bang or whether it emerged at some point; and 3) whether nonduality a perspective or the one perception that isn't a perspective.

And my point is that with the emergence of nondual “experience,” nonduality is seen to have subsisted all the way back to the Big Bang and thus is rightfully regarded as an involutionary given. If it didn't, if, say, quarks and atoms weren't empty, no one could have a truly nondual experience. Of course this view is also enacted and has a kosmic address, and things might get rehung later on.

So, with regard to the question whether it is an epiphenomenon of the brain or the groundless ground that's beyond all concepts, if we agree that there is such a thing as a nondual “experience” I think we must say it is the groundless ground, because any genuine nondual experience implies that everything else in the multiverse is empty and always was (unless we take the position that all quarks, atoms, and gokumis somehow became empty over time).

But, once again, that perspective is an enactment like any other, though if everything in the multiverse is empty and always was (which is the case if there is any genuine nondual experience) I don't think it can be entirely reduced to a human-understanding experience. I think that offers a blend of the modern and postmodern  methodologies, as well as the zone-#1 injunctions.

I think conceptually that leaves us with a bit of paradox: a perspective that nonduality isn't a perspective, though that isn't to say that the experience of nonduality (!) is necessarily a perspective. I think we also have to consider deep-sleep experiences of nonduality. Is that possibly entirely free of the body/mind?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Tom: The developmental chain:

thinghood —> emptiness —> nondual

The only trouble with this is that it assumes the waking state as a baseline and that the dream- and deep-sleep states are epiphenomenons of the body/mind. This is primarily thinghood thinking—it assumes that the material is the most real.

It admits that we can have experiences of emptiness, nonduality, perhaps even become that, but it assumes that we are fundamentally material beings. That might well just be the myth of the given.

The zone-#1 explorers say that we are not fundamentally material beings. This isn't, or isn't always, an Amber worldview; it is based on experience and a comparison of different people's experiences.



Tom:  Everything
mental is an epiphenomenon of the brain, because it involves brain.

That's true, but it's not necessarily true that everything is mental.



Tom: I don't take you as supposing that deep meditation takes one beyond brain? 

I have gathered that that is your position. Is it not? To me it seems that meditation takes one beyond the brain, introduces one to what is beyond (or before) the brain, or reveals that one was always beyond the brain. Of course we can also take the perspective that there is no separation, but that also implies beyond the brain, right?



Is: The idea that it is possible to “rest as no-self”, or “act as no-self”,
causes a tremendous amount of suffering. It's like the idea “you have
to be aware of the now”. People turn that into a project, like any
other, you know? And when the project inevitably fails, suffering
results. How can one be aware of the now? By trying to be aware of the now one becomes very unaware of the now, I've noticed.

Yes, I agree with this and have often felt the same way. This seems to be an issue with every spiritual teaching, including the most “nondual” ones like Dzogchen. There's virtually always some kind of practice offered, which is seen to be, at least ultimately, an obstruction. Yet, we also notice that people who don't take up a different orientation tend not to develop horizontally or vertically/horizontally.

Of course some people can get somewhere without some unusual orientation, but I don't know of anyone who has taken it to its furthest reaches without some kind of spiritual orientation.

Another thing to consider, though, is that spiritual teachings can sometimes pop us out of a disassociated position, out of the search, and put us in touch with pain that is already there. So, in some cases, it may not be a matter of the teaching causing suffering but the teaching putting us in touch with unresolved stress, emotion, UR illness, etc.



e: Riding the L to Wrigley field and taking a break and getting drunk in the Cuby
Bear and watching the game on TV is not sitting in the ball park.

Now I can relate to that!

I think you're suggesting “direct-path teachings” like what Adyashanti often offers, when he says things like, “Why not just step out of it, idiot!” But I don't know how evolved or helpful that aspect of his/their teaching really is.

I often contemplate an entirely dynamic approach that doesn't make any attempt at horizontal development but rather just works with the dynamic aspect of it. I think it might be a good idea. Almaas claims that this is his approach (the path of inquiry, which doesn't posit another state), but I'm not sure his approach is entirely dynamic, and I haven't been fully convinced by what he says yet, partially because of metaphysical ideas (I still haven't seen beyond part one of that video series; I may have the chance to soon, though).

Some people might say, “Why have any goal at all?” But that is also a strategy with some kind of a goal, a passive one, or simply how people behave without any awareness of higher states or deeper stages, which clearly doesn't often leave a person in a deeper or higher state/stage.



e: You guys want to talk about it from
people language, I am trying to talk about it from dharma language.

I think it would be great if we could do both, only I would call “people language” theory talk or map talk, which is also important. It is important for vertical growth, seeing more perspectives.

We could even use headings like Theory or Dharma Talk within posts. It's good to differentiate between them and also not think one is wrong because it is not the other, because theory doesn't often make good dharma and dharma doesn't often make good theory. We need both.



e: You popped up to the right fielder btw.

I hit a screaming line drive to left center that hit the ivy on the fly.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David: The zone-#1 explorers say that we are not fundamentally material beings.

I don't know what you mean by “fundamental.”  Material and mental, IMO, cannot be separated.  If they cannot be separated, one cannot give one more (fundamental, foundational) weight than the other.  True, I read UR for indications of structure, because only because structure-stuff cannot be seen by UL perceiving.  That we have cells was not something Tibetans discovered (UL).  It took a microscope (UR).  Does that make cells fundamentally more material?  No.  AQAL applies to everything.

Zone 1 explorers are also, and always in every instance, if you follow AQAL, UR, LL and LR.

David: That's true, but it's not necessarily true that everything is mental.

What, in your opinion, is non-mental in conscious experience?  Something given to experience, to mind?  What is given to mind?

David: Of course we can also take the perspective that there is no separation, but that also implies beyond the brain, right?

How is that?  AQAL implies that no quadrant is reducible to any number of quadrants less than 4.  Brain is those other quadrants, in other words.  “Beyond brain,” to me, is improper language because it assumes brain-the-material is separable from brain-related correlates of any other quadrant.

But if you want “beyond” language, and you speak within AQAL, then brain is also beyond mind.  Wilber thinks there's something beyond AQAL, of course.  I say that's inconsistent, and given-speak, because of course any description of that “beyond,” and any experience of it, will correlate strictly with one's AQAL location.  Let's trim the theoretical fat, I say, and ditch the beyondism.  It adds nothing new, and cannot.  It's superfluous.

David: Of course, it's possible that, in some cases anyway, the shift from
monism to nonduality was also a matter of increasing depth in
experience.

I don't doubt it was fundamentally a deepening.

David: The discussion seems to have been about 1) whether there is an actual
referent for states (!, 1p/c, 1p/nd) or whether they are simply
epiphenomenons of the brain …

Peoples' understanding of God (one form of such referent, emptiness being another) has been changing ever since the idea emerged in human language, and probably down as many different lines as people since that time.  Either God is changing every time any person changes his or her view of God, or …

Change the referent.  Did the universe change when Einstein discovered relativity or Planck quantum physics?  When Newton discovered gravity?  When Copernicus discovered solar structure?  Did the planets then suddenly at the very time of Copernicus' discovery rearrange themselves?

What or who is doing the changing?

Notice any difference in answering the above question for the universe as referent and for God/emptiness as referent.  IMO, any such difference, where one resists answering that I am changing, not God, is pre-yellow my-view fixation.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

e: You guys want to talk about it from people language, I am trying to talk about it from dharma language.

That's fine as far as it goes.  I would add that there is no one dharma language appropriate to all.  Even for those within a preferred tradition, say Buddhism, and here using my oversimplified thinghood—>emptiness—>nonduality developmental chain, a person in thinghood cannot jump straight to nonduality.  That person needs an intervening developmental step through emptiness.  That person's nondual dharma, if you will, is not the teaching of nonduality, but the only teaching that can lead that person to nonduality, which is emptiness.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

Tom, your questions raise a lot of interesting points. One thing they have brougth up for me again is the question about spiritual practice in terms of interior/exterior. You've spoken about that before. I actually didn't address that in my responses here, but I'd like to later. I don't think it's necessarily the case that the more nondual sounding a practice or orientation is the better, but in some cases it might be.



Tom: I don't know what you mean by “fundamental.”  Material and mental, IMO,
cannot be separated.  If they cannot be separated, one cannot give one
more (fundamental, foundational) weight than the other.

Yes, I think that's true, only I don't see that this addresses the idea of deeper states, the subtle, the causal.



Tom: Zone 1 explorers are also, and always in every instance, if you follow AQAL, UR, LL and LR.

I don't think that's necessarily true. Are there all four quadrants in dream sleep, in deep, dreamless sleep? The most intrepid zone-#1 explorers take their meditation through the sleep cycle.

You keep insisting that nonduality is within the four quadrants, but isn't that something better to be agnostic about if you don't want to believe it? Most of the zone-#1 explorers, including Wilber, believe that it isn't a perspective, so why should you be so adamant about believing that it is?

You seem to be speaking for a lot of people in the statement I excerpted above.


Tom: How is that?  AQAL implies that no quadrant is reducible to any number of quadrants less than 4.  Brain is
those other quadrants, in other words.  “Beyond brain,” to me, is
improper language because it assumes brain-the-material is separable
from brain-related correlates of any other quadrant.

Brains have a particular location in time and space. We can't say that the brain is the legal system. The brain is a finite thing. When we are discussing things here there are several different brains operating in different locations. It isn't the brain that unites them.

Of course we can say that the brain is the legal system and also the ecological system and the sun and the moon, too, if we want to engage in nondual-speak, but we can't have a clear discussion about theory unless we enact the two-truths doctrine and are very careful about when we apply each truth.


David: Of course, it's possible that, in some cases anyway, the shift from
monism to nonduality was also a matter of increasing depth in
experience.

Tom: I don't doubt it was fundamentally a deepening.

I think it surely was in many cases, if what you mean by deepening was further along the horizontal axis of the Wilber-Combs Lattice. What I meant was that in some cases it may have been a vertical shift, from Amber to Orange, for example, and in others a horizontal shift, from causal to nondual.



Tom: What or who is doing the changing?

Notice any difference in
answering the above question for the universe as referent and for
God/emptiness as referent.  IMO, any such difference, where one resists
answering that I am changing, not God, is pre-yellow my-view fixation.

I'm not really sure what you're arguing or arguing against here.

Who has said that it is God changing? Or did you mean who is doing the changing?

At any rate, I don't think we can view either the self or the universe as a fixed thing. For one thing, the universe is expanding, right? For another, whatever we are aware of now will not be viewed as the whole in a hundred years, or even next year.



Tom: Wilber thinks there's something beyond AQAL, of course.  I say that's
inconsistent, and given-speak, because of course any description of
that “beyond,” and any experience of it, will correlate strictly with
one's AQAL location.

Yes, any description of that “beyond” will have a kosmic address, but that doesn't mean that nonduality is a product of the brain.

What, after all, created the human brain? The world had been evolving for several billion years before the human brain emerged, and now everything is a product of the brain?

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David:  Bruce, great to have you chiming in!

Thanks.  I owe you a response above, too… 

I wrote:  I don't think we can say that such experiences lead “directly” or
“automatically” to a particular interpretation, if only because we can
see they already are associated with a range of interpretations –
mythical, monistic, nondual, naturalistic, etc.  (And isn't this what
the W-C Lattice tries to account for?)  We might argue that “nondual”
is the best available interpretation (I happen to think it is), but
that doesn't mean it is an absolute or final one.

You responded:  Yes, I agree. Such experiences wouldn't necessarily lead to a particular interpretation, and, as I said in my last post, any interpretation we have now, even the best one, would not likely last for all of time, so words like “absolute” are probably not only not necessary but not the most accurate either.
 
The discussion seems to have been about 1) whether there is an actual referent for states (!, 1p/c, 1p/nd) or whether they are simply epiphenomenons of the brain; 2) whether nonduality should be considered an involutionary given (meaning nonduality, emptiness) since the Big Bang or whether it emerged at some point; and 3) whether nonduality a perspective or the one perception that isn't a perspective.
 
And my point is that with the emergence of nondual “experience,” nonduality is seen to have subsisted all the way back to the Big Bang and thus is rightfully regarded as an involutionary given. If it didn't, if, say, quarks and atoms weren't empty, no one could have a truly nondual experience. Of course this view is also enacted and has a kosmic address, and things might get rehung later on.

I think we can say that non-duality is both an evolutionarily emergent concept and an 'involutionary given.'  But notice that the notion of 'involutionary given' is also an aspect of an overall stage-dependent interpretive structure.  Recall how Wilber argues that eco-systems didn't ex-ist prior to the emergence of a particular stage of evolutionary development, but that from that perspective, we can 'retro-read' the ecosystem-undertanding back into the past and recognize its subsistence – the operation of 'ecosystemic' principles back into our prehistory?  But then Wilber points out that 'ecosystem' is also a stage-dependent understanding, likely to be replaced by different understandings in the future.  So, from a particular (evolutionarily emergent) perspective, we can 'read back' that understanding into the 'past' (prior to the historical emergence of that perspective) and 'see it' as a given, universal feature of the world (whether people in the past would have recognized it at the time or not).  But such a reading, while universalizing, is not absolute.

The recognition of Kosmic 'involutionary givens' is just such an historically situated, retro-active / universalizing interpretive movement.  Do you follow what I'm saying?  Using the AQAL range of knowledge available to us at a given time, we can legitimately 'read back' that understanding into the past, assessing conditions then, making pronouncements about universal and evolutionary features of the kosmos, etc.  But the point I believe Tom and I have both been making is that that movement is still a (historically situated) reading.

You wrote:  So, with regard to the question whether it is an epiphenomenon of the brain or the groundless ground that's beyond all concepts, if we agree that there is such a thing as a nondual “experience” I think we must say it is the groundless ground, because any genuine nondual experience implies that everything else in the multiverse is empty and always was (unless we take the position that all quarks, atoms, and gokumis somehow became empty over time).

But, once again, that perspective is an enactment like any other, though if everything in the multiverse is empty and always was (which is the case if there is any genuine nondual experience) I don't think it can be entirely reduced to a human-understanding experience. I think that offers a blend of the modern and postmodern  methodologies, as well as the zone-#1 injunctions.

So, if you acknowledge that that perspective (the assertion of a nondual groundless ground) is an enactment, and that the concept of 'nonduality' is not absolute and that new understandings will likely emerge in the future, then what happens to the 'groundless ground'?  It goes the way of the Newtonian atom or the mythic God:  the 'foundational' element was the foundation of an enacted worldspace.

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

I've moved the above post to a new thread, since our discussion has gone in a different direction from the topic of this thread:

Evolution and Enactment

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

(Note: I moved this post to the thread Bruce links above.)

David: And my point is that with the emergence of nondual “experience,”
nonduality is seen to have subsisted all the way back to the Big Bang
and thus is rightfully regarded as an involutionary given. If it
didn't, if, say, quarks and atoms weren't empty, no one could have a
truly nondual experience. Of course this view is also enacted and has a
kosmic address, and things might get rehung later on.

Bruce: The recognition of Kosmic 'involutionary givens' is just such an
historically situated, retro-active / universalizing interpretive
movement.  Do you follow what I'm saying?

Yes, I said the same thing in the last paragraph you quoted before this and which I excerpted again above, so it seems that we are basically in agreement there.

Wilber also acknowledges this; he says that Integral Spirituality is written from a Violet perspective.

He says something similar in this guru-and-pandit discussion:

Re: Integral Spirituality - More Than a Line of Development?

David: “We could even use headings like Theory or Dharma Talk within posts.”
 
Heh, cool idea. I think it's a bit redundant though; just recognize Dharma Talk as either:

1: Non-affirming negations. (Example: “It follows that the subject, a car, is not inherently produced because of being a dependent arising.”) Or,
2: Sayings or doings that makes absolutely no sense. (Examples of doings include shouts, putting a shoe on one's head, or slamming a hand against a table. Examples of sayings might be koans like: A monk asked Ummon: `What is Buddha?' Ummon answered him: `Dried dung.')

Everything else is theory, trying to make dualistic sense of a non-dualistic world. A non-dualistic world being a world not composed by discrete, separate parts, but being more like a flowing wave (3-p, L/8).

Now, the two Dharma Talk-points above are a kind of theory too of course, in the sense that people learn it. (They are “kosmic adressable”). People don't just jump out from the womb and instantly make non-affirming negations or compose koans. So, first of all we simply need to realize that nobody can ever hold a view that is True regarding reality - be it Dharma Talk or People Talk - we can only say things that are more or less true relative to other views.

Then we need to distinguish between non-analytical pointers, analytical pointers and assertions. Assertions can be defined as claims mistaking the map for the territory. (“Atoms actually exist out there.”) Analytical Pointers can be defined as assertions not mistaking the map for the territory, but using the map anyway because we have no other means of communicating. (“A car is not inherently produced from other, self, both, or causelessly.”) Non-analytical pointers can be defined as an action or statement forcing you to take a hike in the territory without a map. (“IIIEEEAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”, “Go wash your bowl”, or “Buddha is dried dung”.)

The territory, finally, can perhaps be defined as that which is neither inherently existing nor utterly non-existent (x-p, L/9).