Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

One of Adi Da's greatest insights, perhaps his greatest, is what he called “Radical Understanding.” It's quite important. Once you get it you will be changed forever, and you will have no doubt that the light shines from within, that it is always already the case.

I will copy a few of his writings on Radical Understanding, which involves the “self-contraction,” a word or two from Wilber on the subject, and finally embed a video montage of Da speaking about this important, transformative insight, which is arguably the greatest of its kind.

By the end, you might well be a completely different person!

I will start out by copying a summary of Radical Understanding written by his students and published in the beginning of Da's spiritual autobiography, The Knee of Listening:

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Nice thread, David. Fantastic! Very interesting indeed. Also seeing what emerges in people - like bruce (and at times others, hope you don't mind me saying that btw bruce, I don't mean it offensively), upon the mention of Adi da, or Cohen or other more 'controversial' teachers, adds an extra dimension of intrigue to the mix.

I like what he is saying very much. And together with the Ken's One Taste quote you used up there, I also think they have hit the jackpot with how we generally recoil.

Ken: It is an effort and a sensation of contracting in the face of the world. It is a subtle whole-body tension… .

It's such a chronic and serious thing this isn't it. What a way to put it, 'a subtle whole-body tension.' Why do we en masse, opt for that? Doesn't that just capture the prolificness of this dilemma. And such a big thing to unlearn. And the culture of the postmodern times we are in just encourages and cements this conditioning all the more. Just one dose of self honesty will tell any person in any given minute that this is always the case, and they too can feel that tension surf through themselves with frequency. At such rate, it is as present as a metaphoric second heart beat!

Yep, that is certainly one corker of an insight of Da's. I even like how he frames it in funny, very earthbound harsh terms.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

I think Ken's One Taste quote is absolutely brilliant. Thanks David.

“As Chuan Tzu pointed out long ago, “Is not the desire to get rid of the ego itself a manifestation of ego?”  This part of Ken's quote made me think of Andrew Cohen - I may well misreading him but I thought one of AC's main teachings was to overcome the ego?

Also, when Ken says this “It is an effort and a sensation of contracting in the face of the world.” my own response is to see this as completely natural, rather than a dilemma, or bullshit as Da says (but I do know what Da means). We are mammals that have evolved with a fear of being eaten. Watch chimpanzees drinking at a water hole on any natural history documentary and you'll see them glancing up every other second on the lookout for predators or bigger and unfriendy chimps. Damn right there's a subtle whole-body tension. And it's gonna take a whole lotta One Tasting to help our species relax into “abandoning the search” as Da calls it.

I really like this part from Ken: “We assume that the self-contraction hides or obstructs Spirit, whereas in fact it is simply a radiant manifestation of Spirit itself, like absolutely every other Form in the universe…” Yep, even the fear is cool. It's one aspect of how we are. And we can change it if we want. Man, what a weird and wonderful universe.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

From an article on the Shiva Yoga of Kashmir Shaivism:

Shaivism is known as ‘the three’ because it discusses these three subjects:

 
– The nature of the Absolute
– The nature of the human being and contraction
– The method by which contraction is overcome

 
Shaivism holds that pure awareness and not matter is the basic stuff of the universe. This can be compared to the situation in a dream, in which the awareness of the dreamer is the fundamental substratum of everything that appears in the dream. The one Consciousness that underlies the universe can also be called God. Here we are referring to God as the Absolute, beyond any specific form.


For reasons known only to Him, God decides to create a universe and become many. By means of His Power, which can be personified as His feminine aspect, He creates the universe in His own being, Himself becoming the individual soul by a process of contraction. Though it appears in Consciousness, the created world is real. The universe is actually Consciousness vibrating at different frequencies, becoming more material and gross as it unfolds.


The human individual is nothing but God in a contracted form. When the individual looks at himself, he notices that he has the same qualities as the Absolute, though they are shrunken and vitiated. God has perfect will, perfect knowledge and perfect ability to do, while the human individual has all of these powers in limitation. They show up in him as three basic knots within his being.


The first knot is limitation of will. The human individual experiences it in his heart as a painful sense of separation, weakness and grief. This is the fundamental birth trauma in which God becomes the individual. The limitation of knowledge is experienced in the mind. The human mind experiences darkness and confusion and strains to understand the truth. The third knot is experienced in the navel area and is felt as a sense of frustration and lack of fulfilment.


Shaivism asks us to recognise our similarity with God and ultimately our oneness with Him. It minutely examines the human condition as a contraction that moves us from the divine status to that of a human being. It recognises a power of contraction and delusion that brings this about. The power is real but is actually an aspect of God. One of the ways it shows up is in language. The language that God uses in His true state expresses His ecstatic song of oneness, while human language tends to perpetuate separation and weakness.


Having looked at the human situation, Shaivism now turns to the solution, a methodology for overcoming the woes and limitations of the human being. Shaivism proposes a comprehensive inner technology designed to restore the human being to his inherent oneness with God. For this, he has to loosen the knots in his heart, mind and navel by means of three methods.


To heal the contraction in his navel, he tries to act well in all situations and come into harmony with the higher power. To heal the contraction in his mind, having discovered its cause in the misuse of language, he tries to bring his thinking into alignment with his highest good. To heal the existential angst in his heart, he tries to transcend thinking altogether and merge himself in the oneness of pure Consciousness.


Having profoundly practised these spiritual methods, the Shaivite seeker recognises the divinity within his own Self and also outside himself in the world and in other people. His main insight is that the subject, or Consciousness, is not separate from the object, or matter. In fact, he experiences directly that the object is contained within his subjectivity, that is, within Consciousness. He has now reached the culmination and the goal of the practice of Shaivism and he stands as a liberated being, fully free within himself, shining with divine wisdom and radiant with love.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

I'm glad you liked it, Lisa. I thought you would.  :)

Lisa: It's such a chronic and serious thing this isn't it. What a way to put it, 'a subtle whole-body tension.' Why do we en masse, opt for that? Doesn't that just capture the prolificness of this dilemma. And such a big thing to unlearn. And the culture of the postmodern times we are in just encourages and cements this conditioning all the more.


Yes, I think you're quite right: postmodern culture does encourage and cement this conditioning, especially the way it reacts to things like Peak Oil, climate change, terrorism, and the like.

I think the word you chose there is just right: “conditioning.” It's a fear response recoil at each level that usually gets reinforced by those around us, including spiritual teachers often times. They say, “Yes, there is very good reason for your fear and self-contraction! Keep doing it by all means! That is the way!”

And I think we are left with the impression that if we don't contract something dire will happen, that our survival depends on the self-contraction. If we didn't think this way and if it weren't reinforced people would be an uncontracted state and there wouldn't be any arguments about whether nonduality were available from each stage because everyone would have experienced it for him- or herself.


James: “As Chuan Tzu pointed out long ago, “Is not the desire to get rid of the ego itself a manifestation of ego?”  This part of Ken's quote made me think of Andrew Cohen - I may well misreading him but I thought one of AC's main teachings was to overcome the ego?


I think this is a very interesting point and one of the most important issues for integral spirituality to come to terms with. With simply a first-face of Spirit teaching, all ego is often held to be wrong, all thinking is often held to be wrong; discrimination wrong, any kind of ambition spiritual or otherwise wrong.

But with stages (meaning structure stages like Amber, Orange, which take at the very least a year or two to develop and often more) and the third face of Spirit (spirit as evolutionary process)  all that gets thrown into question.

So traditional teachings sometimes spoke of absolutely no striving or comparative judgment between better or worse, right and wrong, and I think there is still a lot of truth there, but it's a “let's not throw the dog out with the bathwater” sort of thing.

Andrew is intent on moving people away from personal motivations, which is what the ego or personal self is involved in, and to more process-oriented motivations—that's more of a third-face of Spirit teaching, but the first teaching about self-contraction and the like retains validity, so integrating the two gets very interesting.

How to work through these stages and yet not contract? That's an interesting question and one we might look into. Da didn't integrate the third face of Spirit and in the video at one point he even seemed to undermine the second face of Spirit with a little hedonism, but generally he seemed strong with the second face of Spirit (which Muktananda, for one, instilled in him), but without the third face of Spirit and the idea of moving beyond personal motivations (ego) one can simply surrender into one's own narcissistic fears and desires, which apparently was what happened to Da now and then.



James: We are mammals that have evolved with a fear of being eaten. Watch chimpanzees drinking at a water hole on any natural history documentary and you'll see them glancing up every other second on the lookout for predators or bigger and unfriendy chimps. Damn right there's a subtle whole-body tension. And it's gonna take a whole lotta One Tasting to help our species relax into “abandoning the search” as Da calls it.


James, yes, I think it's good to bring the evolutionary perspective in there: it is a learned, conditioned response that has some good reasons behind it. I think the trouble is when it simply gets habitual, when we are always in a contracted state, not just when we need to descend for one reason or another.

It's also interesting to see it at different levels—one the mental level it appears as “life is a problem or dillemma,” which is another important, related part of Da's teaching that he originated as far as I know. I will post something more about that because I think that is one of the best pointing-out instructions and one that Andrew Cohen uses as well.



James: I really like this part from Ken: “We assume that the self-contraction hides or obstructs Spirit, whereas in fact it is simply a radiant manifestation of Spirit itself, like absolutely every other Form in the universe…” Yep, even the fear is cool. It's one aspect of how we are. And we can change it if we want. Man, what a weird and wonderful universe.


Yes, that might be one place where Ken surpasses Da on this issue because Da tended to speak of the self-contraction as a problem, a dillemma that needed to be solved. Still, Da does make the argument that first a “counter egoic” action must be employed, and I will offer a quote on that later. Wilber also says that the desire for enlightenment is the last desire to give up, and I think we could say that this view of Radical Understanding is ultimately a contraction itself that would have to be given up.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

I wonder, what is the shadow side of this notion of contraction?  Seems a little binary or anti-developmental to me.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Bruce, that's an interesting article on Kashmir Shaivism. I really appreciate your posting it because I hadn't studied that very much and am glad to have learned something more about it. However, it does not show that Da didn't originate Radical Understanding.

For one thing the guy who wrote it, Shankarananda, is an American-born teacher now living in Australia (and occasionally appearing as one of the Three Gurus along with Master Charles and Swami Chetanananda) who also happens to have been a student of Muktananda's at the very same time Da was a student of Muktananda's. In fact, they probably knew each other; they were both at Muktananda's ashram at least in 1970 (perhaps other times), though Da went on a pilgrimage of sacred sites at some point in that year.

So, even if Shankarananda did teach the self-contraction as Da did it would be highly unlikely that he did it without knowledge and influence of Da, the more famous student of Muktananda who had actually been with Muktananda at the same time. But what Shankarananda has written there and everything else I have read from him, as well as Shaivism and Muktananda, is not the same as the Radical Understanding that Da is teaching.

Muktananda's yoga was basically some kind of guru-jnana-kriya yoga as far as I have read and as Da reports. And when he uses the word “contraction” it tends to be like this:

Amazing as it is, this aphorism is completely true. Our inner states–contraction or expansion, joy or sorrow, anxiety or ignorance–are all reactions to outer stimuli. Knowledge of the external world is the root of all sorrow when it seeps inside and we identify with it.[1]

The same with the rest of Shaivism as far as I have read. Most often the word “contraction” is used there to be mean something similar to involution, like this:

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hi, David,

I think it is likely that both Da and Shankarananda both learned about the Kashmir Shaivite notion of 'contraction' (samkoca) from Muktananda.  The doctrine of contraction is much broader and more elaborate than simply a doctrine of involution, and forms a central part of the Kashmir Shaivite yoga.  Abhinavagupta (950 - 1020 AD) wrote extensively about it.  I will provide some quotes by him in a moment.

I just spoke with a Gaia friend of mine – Kelamuni, a member of the IPS pod and an Indologist – for his opinion on the question, and he also said he thought it was likely that Muktananda was the source of this teaching for both Da and Shankarananda.  He said he thought that Da might have put his own spin on the teaching – I think that's likely too – but that he didn't find Da's “Radical Understanding” to be really very different from the “advanced” teachings you find in Zen, Dzogchen, or Shaivite schools.

I also asked Kela if he knew much about the Siddha Yoga teaching on the “knot of the heart,” which I believe is related to the notion of the Shaivite notion of the heart-contraction that is the constitutive condition of the ignorant, “small” self.  He said he thought the notion of the “knot of the heart” came from the Upanishads, but that it was later picked up (and operationalized) by various yogic traditions.

Anyway, there are a number of passages by Abhinavagupta, the 10th century Shaivite mystic, that I think you might find interesting and relevant to Da's teaching in this thread.  I've typed up a short one and I'll provide links to the others (all from the book, The Triadic Heart of Shiva).  I read this book back in the 90s, but looking at it again, I see I might see more in it now than I did then…

“The notions of the contraction and expansion of the Heart are directly related to the spiritual conditions of ignorance or enlightenment of the individual soul.  Abhinavagupta describes this relationship as follows:

When the heart is in a state of contraction the awakened awareness of the individual self is in fact a state of ignorance.  But when this contraction ceases to function, then the true nature of the Self shines forth.”

 

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Great post, David. Although I dispise the actual manifestation of Da's message (drenched in Shadow, the Amber elements, etc), the message itself is sublime.

“Also, when Ken says this “It is an effort and a sensation of contracting in the face of the world.” my own response is to see this as completely natural, rather than a dilemma, or bullshit as Da says (but I do know what Da means). We are mammals that have evolved with a fear of being eaten. Watch chimpanzees drinking at a water hole on any natural history documentary and you'll see them glancing up every other second on the lookout for predators or bigger and unfriendy chimps. Damn right there's a subtle whole-body tension. And it's gonna take a whole lotta One Tasting to help our species relax into “abandoning the search” as Da calls it.”

Well said, James. Original Sin first emerged in this world as a biological condition, later taking root in the LL and LR as well.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Bruce, thank you for the Shaivite and Abhinivagupta material. I wasn't familiar with any of it, and it's pretty interesting stuff. One of the interesting things about the tradition, which Almaas points out in Inner Journey Home, is that there is a dynamic element, though not exactly an evolutionary, developmental element:

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hi, David, this is just a quick note before I go to bed; I'll be happy to say more in a subsequent post.  I wanted to ask if you are identifying the recognition that “seeking is contraction” as a unique insight on Da's part.  If so, that's not the case – there are many teachings in which that is recognized, including in the yogic and Dzogchen schools we've been discussing.  Jean Klein and Krishnamurti also both addressed it fairly extensively.

About the relationship between contraction and psychic inflation – I had wanted to edit that, but the opportunity to go in and do that had passed.  I wasn't clear.  What I meant was that the counter-movement to contraction, the expansion that Shaivism describes, upon the release of contraction, could possibly lead to psychic inflation.  Kela jokes that there is actually a history of “yogis gone bad” in these sorts of traditions, because of the inherent psychic dangers of some of these perspectives and exercises.  My Dzogchen teachers warned about this as well.

That's all for tonight!

Best wishes,

B.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Is: Great post, David. Although I dispise the actual manifestation of Da's message (drenched in Shadow, the Amber elements, etc), the message itself is sublime.


Thank you, Is. I'm glad you liked it.

And yes, I think shadowwork is another thing Da could have used.


James: And it's gonna take a whole lotta One Tasting to help our species relax into “abandoning the search” as Da calls it.”

Is: Well said, James. Original Sin first emerged in this world as a biological condition, later taking root in the LL and LR as well.


Right, I believe I read Da once say that the self-contraction was even in the DNA. There is a Self-contraction in the entire AQAL matrix. Da talks about the self-contraction manifesting as a cult—excluding, scapegoating, enthroning, dethroning—an intersubjective, collective self-contraction:

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hi Bruce,

Hope you slept well!

I wanted to ask if you are identifying the recognition that “seeking is contraction” as a unique insight on Da's part.


I had hoped it would be clear by the context that I was referring to within the Shaivite/Muktananda tradition in that case—Abhinavagupta, for example, didn't speak of contraction as seeking as far as I know, nor Muktananda.

Surely others spoke of seeking as counter to enlightened meditation as well, though most didn't use the word “contraction,” but Da spoke of it as a biological/emotional/mental/psychological habit, one that also crept into spiritual practice—he also made this and related inquiries the center of his yoga, which wasn't the case in these other traditions. They said “Relax,” in Dzogchen, sure, but they didn't make a big deal out of this psychophysical habit.

Most of these other traditions emphasized the illusory nature of ego rather than studying it and understanding the pattern of its behavior, which was the main thrust of Radical Understanding.

As for Jean Klein, I haven't read a word of his on the subject that predates Da so far, so I think it's likely that he began stressing it because of Da, and perhaps because of Wilber as well. I have seen Krishnamurti use the word a couple of times, but that's it; I haven't seen that he centered his yoga around it or anything.

Deep-state experiences (“expansion”) could lead to psychic inflation, but that would be a possibility that all the traditions would all share, right? I don't see why this particular type of inquiry would make a person more susceptible to it than others.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hi, David, thanks – I did sleep well.

A few more thoughts to add to my previous post:

I don't have any evidence that Jean Klein ever studied or was knowledgeable of Da's works, but he didn't have to be – the teachings on 'contraction,' and its association with seeking, effort, etc, are not unique to him. 

If Jean Klein was influenced by any modern individual other than his own teachers, I would say it was more likely Krishnamurti than Da – there's a greater similarity between their messages.

Krishnamurti talked about contraction (and both the 'I' and its seeking as forms of contraction) in a number of ways, and in fact this was quite central to his teachings.  I believe all his (critical) teachings on effort, psychological becoming, idealism, seeking, following, deliberate or formulaic meditation, identification, belief, and so on, were all related to this.

Other examples:

Wu wei in Taoism is similar to the effortless radical understanding, emphasizing no-effort, non-trying.

And as you well know, Buddhism employs a word similar to contraction, which is 'grasping,' as in 'self-grasping' (bdag-'dzin). 

Buddhist teachings on 'right effort' distinguish between fixed, restrictive, heavy-handed, deliberative effort and a more 'spontaneous' effort.  Trungpa calls it a spontaneous 'flash.'

Jigme Lingpa, a Tibetan master from the 17th century and one of the teachers who expounded on “non-meditation,” argued that intention – as in intentionally oriented meditation or spiritual seeking – is a restrictive form of identification, a subtle form of self-grasping.

Tibetan Tantric teachings, such as highest yoga tantra, teach forms of releasing not only intellectual self-grasping, but also what it calls 'innate self-grasping.'  Part of the path involves the 'loosening of knots' in the energy channels (particularly at the level of the heart, but elsewhere in the body as well), in conjunction with increasingly subtle recognition and releasing of self-grasping and its manifestations.  I am less familiar with Shaivism than I am with Buddhism, but the association of 'self-grasping' and 'knots at the heart' is common to both Buddhist and Shaivite yogas.

In Dzogchen, there are several stages of meditation.  The first is recognizing the alaya for habits (the foundational awareness for the habits of grasping, karma, and memory); the next is recognizing effulgent rigpa (rigpa in its aspect of effulgently giving rise to cognitive appearances); and the last is recognition of essence rigpa (in its aspect as a space or cognitive sphere which allows for the arising of appearances).  This is called effortless meditation or non-(deliberate)-meditation.  In my understanding, Dzogchen and Mahamudra teachers generally would not teach effortless non-meditation prior to the student's recognition of one taste; but when it is taught, it is taught as relinquishing of all effort, conviction, habitual tendencies (conditioning), and striving.  It is much subtler and more sophisticated than simply saying “relax.”

These teachings (Highest Yoga Tantra and Dzogchen) most certainly recognize 'grasping' or 'contraction' as a powerful psychophysical-energetic phenomenon, and working with it is, in fact, central to the path.

I believe Adi Da did create a unique expression of these sorts of teachings, but he did not originate them.  And I think it is important to remember, even as we appreciate this, that his 'yoga,' in practice, in his community, actually had some significant dark spots or problems as well.

The following quote, from a blog by an online friend of mine who was a disciple of Adi Da, deals with some of the problematic applications of Da's teaching on the self-contraction of seeking and self-contraction as denial of relationship:

Da is a master of the fallacy known as arguing in a circle. By explicity or implicitly asserting in the premise of an argument what is asserted in the conclusion, (A is true because A is true), Da takes advantage of the enormous length of his arguments and the relatively limited memories of his devotees. Arguing in a circle is effective when the premise and the conclusion are spaced so far apart that unless one is very aware and has a sharp memory, detecting the sameness of the premise and conclusion may go unnoticed.

Da’s basic premise is that the separate self sense, (Narcissus, the ego-I, etc.) is unreal, yet leads to seeking for that which it is apparently separate from. Such seeking is rooted in error and therefore the way to be free from the bondage of the separate self sense is to stop seeking.

So far so good. This is a good argument, a clear and articulate way of stating the same ideas which appear as the first and second noble truths of Buddhism: Life involves disatisfaction, and the cause of disatisfaction is the constant movement of desire for objects and experiences outside of the present.

But Da adds a number of other premises to this basic argument: that he is enlightened, that his enlightenment is unique, that this makes him a guru, that one can only be awakened spiritually by being in relationship to an enlightened guru, that the only fruitful way to be involved with a guru is to do absolutely everything the guru says, that this entire matter is not something which can be understood by the rational mind, that the process of awakening spiritually in relationship to a guru is an ordeal and therefore necessarily involves going beyond conventional taboos, personal edges, and all ordinarily desirable levels of comfort, safety, and sanity, that doubt is a sign of resistance to the spiritual process, that doubting the guru is a sign of resistance to the spiritual process, that doubting the guru when the guru behaves in ways that makes one extremely doubtful is a sign of extreme resistance, that the egoic, Narcissistic, limited self-sense or ego - “I” will do absolutely anything possible to resist the ego’s death, which is necessary if spiritual growth is to occur, and therefore, if you doubt Da in any way, shape, or form, it is because you are resisting the process of your own growth and ego-death.

And that’s not all! Everything the guru does is for your own good, when the guru acts weird it is a reflection of you, the extremes the guru pushes you to are for the purpose of purifying your karmas and have nothing to do with his neurosis or shadow, and so on.

These premises and many many more are woven into volumes and volumes of Da’s writings and transcribed talks, making his arguments virtually impossible to deconstruct. If enlightenment is what he defines it as being, and if he is enlightened, and if one really must trust the true guru absolutely and unconditionally, and if doubt really is a sign of the ego defending itself against the one thing that will make the difference between spiritual awakening and lifetimes of ignorance and confusion, then Da has caught you in his big, sticky spider’s web.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hi Bruce,

Thank you for all that information; I appreciate that. We could spend time on any number of those paragraphs, and it is great to get overviews like that, with some particularly interesting items here and there.

Yes, well, as I said above and in our earlier conversation it wasn't the general notion of seeking being potentially problematic with meditation or the notion of a contracted self (generally speaking, termed in various ways) that was unique to Da but the particular angle he was taking on it, including the terminology, the context, and so forth. He was most likely the first Westerner to deliver that view in a Western cultural context, in language that made complete sense to Westerners, though I think it's clear also that it wasn't simply a translation, that he did add some novelty himself.

For one thing there was an implicit and sometimes somewhat explicit evolutionary view there; there were the specific inquires regarding seeing life as a problem, which is quite important and profound in and of itself (different than seeing life as suffering), and avoiding relationship, which included also ideas about victimization and love. I posted a little bit about that in the earlier thread, but I might again because it all ties into his view on Radical Understanding.

The terms are also important: grasping is different than contraction, which is different from self-contraction. Though there is a great similarity among these different meanings there are subtle differences that can be quite profound. And as you said earlier—when Klein secretly indoctrinated you into the Way of Adidam  :)—you yourself had a breakthrough when you heard those teachings, which were nearly identical to those of Da's, though published nearly twenty years after The Knee of Listening and after Da had been quite famous for it, writing about it in book after book (I did also see a slight mention of the subject from Klein in a book that came out in 1972, a year after the first edition of The Knee of Listening and the year of the second edition).

So, whether Klein plagiarized Da or just didn't want to associate himself with him or felt he had put some original spin on it himself, which I think he did, or came up with it simultaneously as in the case of your novel idea, or some combination of all those things (actually, I don't think good spiritual teachings should be copyrighted, though perhaps it's fine for some brand names to be copyrighted like ITP) your own experience seems to testify to the idea that there was something original about Da's treatment of the matter, which was apparently quite different from Krishnamurti's from your own experiential point of view.

While again, many similarities among these teachings—and most of them are talking about the same basic ego and the same basic states and stages—many people seem to feel that Da had a particularly penetrating view on this, and his view had considerable breadth, including the intersubjective even. The phrase “self-contraction” also appears to be original to Da, if I haven't said that already—I haven't seen that anyone used it before him, at any rate—and I think the importance of that could be underestimated.

Whether it's “original” or not in the end hardly matters. Even if he borrowed every bit of it but delivered it with greater clarity and power for some people that would be enough to give him special credit for it. Finally I think it is quite telling that many people feel as though they have heard it for the first time when they hear it from Da even though they have heard similar ideas from many others.

At any rate, there are lots of other interesting things in the paragraphs you wrote about the various traditions. One important difference between some of them is Da's connection of the idea to the second face of God. I don't see how one goes entirely beyond the self-contraction without that idea. At any rate, Almaas puts the two together:

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David: … in language that made complete sense to Westerners …


Err, to some.  : )

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Though there is a great similarity among these different meanings there are subtle differences that can be quite profound. And as you said earlier—when Klein secretly indoctrinated you into the Way of Adidam  :)—you yourself had a breakthrough when you heard those teachings, which were nearly identical to those of Da's, though published nearly twenty years after The Knee of Listening and after Da had been quite famous for it, writing about it in book after book (I did also see a slight mention of the subject from Klein in a book that came out in 1972, a year after the first edition of The Knee of Listening and the year of the second edition).
 
Ha ha.  Those teachings on the I and psychosomatic contraction in The Transmission of the Flame are from Kashmir Shaivism, not Adi Da.  Klein taught a form of Shaivite “subtle body yoga,” which I studied with several close students of his while I lived in India.  But if you want to keep giving credit where it ain't due, that is your prerogative… Da certainly had no compunctions about grabbing as much of that as he could.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Tom, what didn't make sense?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Bruce: Those teachings on the I and psychosomatic contraction in The Transmission of the Flame are from Kashmir Shaivism, not Adi Da.


If that is the case I do wonder why you haven't backed it up with evidence.

I showed that Muktananda's yoga didn't have anything to do with that inquiry. There wasn't anything from Abhinavagupta about this; it was like Muktananda, up to the divinities.

Now maybe somewhere there is something in Kashmir Shaivism, predating Da, that is like Radical Understanding, but if that's the case we haven't seen any evidence of it.

Also, why don't you go over to Integral Life and take up Ken on his challenge?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David, in your comment that I quoted in the last post, I had taken you to be playfully teasing me by arguing that Klein had secretly indoctrinated me in the Way of Adi Da.  I was responding to that with my own repartee.

But I did think I had backed up my previous arguments with evidence.  I guess just not enough!  I had intended to come back and address your comment about a 2nd-person approach and “leaving it up to the deities,” because I don't think that's really accurate.  The Kaula method of Abhavinagupta does involve a 2nd person dimension, through practices of guru yoga and devotional ritual, but it also involves other yogic practices (meditation, bodywork, mantra, sexual yoga).  It's also important to keep in mind that, in Shaivism, as in Dzogchen, the deities are recognized as none other than one's own mind; in Shaivism, the practitioner himself is Shiva, and the “deities” in the heart are Shiva-Shakti.  This notion plays a special role in the meditation and bodywork exercises, which involve gradual releasing of contraction and increasing realization of expansion and freedom, in behavior and perception, via the transfiguration of the “heart” (the knotted seat of the Aham or “I”).  The meditation and body yoga are done in conjunction with each other – where realization of nondual consciousness (nirvikalpa samadhi) is expanded out, and integrated with, the experience of the body and the world, so that all experience is nondual and blissful.

In Abhavinagupta's discussion of the visarga in the text I linked, you can see how nirvikalpa samadhi is believed to bring the practitioner into the heart, where the creative expansion-contraction of Shiva is discovered, operating first in a relatively contracted form.  But through various practices, the practitioner learns to work with this energy and release the knot of the “small I” (which is one phase of Shiva's activity) and discover increasing freedom and expansion of being. 

In Jean Klein's work, you will notice that he also describes the heart as the “final door.”  He says that practice first takes you back into the rear part of the brain, where one rests in a non-discursive, open state; and then at some point, consciousness “drops down” into the heart, which he describes as the last door – the gate of the release of the contracted self into full, nondual realization.  His Shaivite bodywork complements this, involving various postures and sensing activities to release tension and to discover and amplify what he calls the (more flexible, workable) subtle energy body, and various visualization exercises to uncontract conscious identification with the observer (such feeling yourself “behind” yourself, either in the rear brain or just in the space behind you; or “seeing”/experiencing yourself from multiple perspectives at once; etc).

About Adi Da's work, I agree he had a powerful way of expressing these ideas.  I attempted a couple years ago to read several of his books, after the scandal around Wilber's endorsement was mentioned on an internet discussion somewhere, but I couldn't get through them.  They just didn't speak to me.  But I recognize his intelligence and scholarship, and I am not saying that he brought no novelty to the expression or formulation of these teachings; I think he did.  I'm just saying he didn't originate these teachings about the self being a 'contraction' or seeking being a furtherance of contraction.  I also don't believe that Jean Klein was copying him or borrowing from him; I think he was rather offering his own expression of what are, fundamentally, Shaivite and Advaita Vedantin ideas.

Best wishes,

B.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Thank you for the rundown on Shaivism and Jean Klein, Bruce. Klein has interesting language.


Bruce: He says that practice first takes you back into the rear part of the brain, where one rests in a non-discursive, open state; and then at some point, consciousness “drops down” into the heart, which he describes as the last door.


It's interesting to me that he talks about the “rear part of the brain.” The reptilian brain stem is in the back of the brain. It's also been my experience in meditation that consciousness has a way of going back there—as if you're going back in time … to the Big Bang!!!!!

Yes?  :)

Do you see what I mean? I think there is a sense in the process that one is going back, as it were, down the evolutionary timeline to the more fundamental levels of the evolved human body. It may not be absolute proof, but I think it would likely be an important part of the meta-paradigmatic mix—it means something, I think. We would want the zone-#1 adepts to weight in on some of these questions right?

Well, perhaps we're slightly closer on the originality question.

I appreciate all the information you have written down; I will go back at some point and read some of it again. However—let's examine the question as to whether we've seen evidence that Radical Understanding predated Da.

It seems to me that you have basically just said that Radical Understanding predated Da rather than showed that this was the case. Here are two quotes from the original post (I have now bolded a few things):

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hi, David,

The “Radical Understanding,” the “only-by-Me Revealed and Given Way of Adidam,” beyond having roots in Shaivism, is contained in virtuality its entirety in the pre-Da teachings of Krishnamurti.  It is easier for me to quickly respond to this part of your challenge, because I'm more familiar with K than with Shaivism (or even Klein), and also because his works are widely available on the net so it only takes a moment to locate examples.

The following texts are only a small selection of a huge number of K's writings which illustrate this.  All are from the 1950s and early 1960s.

The I (1957)

The Problem of Search (1960)

Fear (1953)

Effort (1953)

Problems and Escapes (1956)

On another note, I just wanted to comment, on behalf of the friend whose blog on Adi Da I cited, the passage I quoted was not intended (by him, or by me) to discredit or invalidate Adi Da's teachings on “Radical Understanding.”  He says he wrote it to illustrate problematic issues with Da's teaching and behavior.  I quoted it to show how aspects of his Radical Understanding teachings had eventually been applied in a distorted and questionable way. 
Best wishes,
B.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David, have you had a chance to read any of the above selections?  What do you think?  It seems clear to me that what Da calls his “only-by-Me Revealed Way,” the Radical Understanding, is essentially identical to what Krishnamurti calls seeing, where “the seeing itself acts,” and that all of the elements of Da's teachings in your above paragraphs (on seeking, self, separation, problems, effort, fear, liberative seeing or understanding, and so on) are all contained, and explicitly stressed, in K's early (pre-Da) teachings.

Again, not to knock the way Da phrased things, but this “only-by-Me” stuff is just begging for a little dose of reality.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Ah, the Da-zzler.  What a show.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hi Bruce,

Yes, I have been on my way to reading all five. I've only read three at this point, as well as a few other things from both Da and Krishnamurti, but I think I have enough to respond. They are very good articles from Krishnamurti, though, so I do want to get to the last two.

Basically I think it's very likely that Krishnamurti was one of the largest sources for Radical Understanding, though he wasn't really teaching Radical Understanding himself. I think Maharshi and all the traditions to some extent have something along the lines of non-doing, so it is building on that general idea, and Krishnamurti does hone in on it a little, but I still think there are important differences and that there is something original about what Da offers.

Da used Krishnamurti (among others) for his thesis at Stanford, so we know he read Krishnamurti, which I would have pretty much assumed even without reading that, right? I have the sense that Krishnamurti was quite widely read at that time. Da also wrote a couple of pages; let me check … yes, it's nearly a two-page response to people who think that Radical Understanding is like Krishnamurti's work in The Promised God-Man is Here—one of the books that caught your eye when you were looking into Da?  :)

I was also going to re-read that passage—might as well do it now … I think it's largely true but also has a little of the nonsense that your friend mentioned. I might as well start quoting a thing or two from that:—come to think of it; since it is Da's response to the question I might as well copy it all out; it's not too long:

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hi, David,

Thanks for your detailed response; it's helpful.  I was not aware that Da had directly discussed K's work…or attempted to one-up them!  I think one of the only books of his that I've looked at is the Dawn Horse Testament, which I found on a friend's bookshelf, and which I decided to look over at the time because of recent conversations about Wilber and Da on the net.
It's late now, so I will respond in detail tomorrow.  A very short, to the point answer would be that, even if Da's criticism of K was on target – I do agree with parts of it – it doesn't seem to me that his “radical understanding” helped him to see through or let go of his own pervasive state of ego inflation.  So, I'm not sure what good having “direct access” to Truth did him, if it left that narcissistic knot in place and allowed it to continue to cause harm to others who were holed up with him in his contracted, increasingly cultish and insular little island community.  It sort of calls into question, in my mind, how 'radical' his understanding really was, if it couldn't cut the root of his own very powerful self-contraction.
Would you agree?
Best wishes,
B.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

To continue…

In the excerpt you typed up, I think Da does pick up on some shortcomings in K's teaching (which I have also found limiting or problematic).  I disagree with some of his claims about K, as you do.  But I do agree with him that an evident split remains in K's teaching, such as a clear privileging of choiceless awareness over against thought.  Part of the issue is a terminological one, possibly, since by “thought” K didn't mean all thought, but only a certain dualistic, self-centered mode of it.  But I still get the sense of a lack of integration and splitting here.

I'm not sure I agree with Da that K was aiming simply at a particular 'state' realization, however.  I think K clearly saw problems with trying to make any particular state, experience, or insight permanent, and spoke often about the need, for instance, to “live in learning” and to continually “die to what is” (or “to what is true”), not holding onto any experience or insight as an “anchor point,” no matter how profound.  He has discussed this at length, for instance, in some of his 1950 dialogues with Pupul Jayakar, Achyut Patwardhan, and others.  So, he does seem to see into the problem of 'fixation of states,' even profound states of choiceless awareness.  But something still remains unintegrated, in my view.  I think Da is pointing at this lack of integration when he talks about K's emphasis on silence over thinking, for instance; and I see it also in his anti-self language.  But I don't think this is because K is only teaching deliberate cultivation of a particular state.  What K is up to, in my opinion, is subtler than that.  I personally see value in his emphasis on open-endedness, and prefer it (at this time in my life) over Da's emphasis on realizing the Most Prior, the absolute Truth behind all existence (teachings which could lead to their own forms of fixation, and in his case, probably did). 

K did not appear to use 'contraction' in the way that Da did, I agree.  As I said, I think Da got that term from Shaivism, and then apparently combined it with insights from Krishnamurti as well as from some of the “higher” Buddhist schools, like Highest Yoga Tantra, Mahamudra, or Dzogchen.  (Schools which appear to me to have a more integrated view of thought, the self, etc, than K did.) So, that is unique on his part – he brought together a number of powerful perspectives and gave them a new articulation. 
K did talk about the self in terms similar to self-contraction, however, such as his descriptions of the activity of the self as 'self-enclosing' and 'self-limiting,' the 'restricting me,' etc, all of which he relates to fear (among other things).  He also has talked, again prior to Da, about opening mind, body, and senses – saying, for instance, that ego, as a limiting process, tends to function through one sense at a time, and that opening to multiple senses at once cuts through this narrow egoic focus.  So, there are some relatively close similarities, though they are more diffusely presented, and they do not receive the same emphasis as 'self-contraction' apparently does in Da's teachings (based on what you're telling me).

Best wishes,

B.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hi Bruce,

Bruce: It doesn't seem to me that his “radical understanding” helped him to see through or let go of his own pervasive state of ego inflation.


It doesn't seem to me that it did either!  :) In fact, it might have just made it worse.

I think the Way of “Radical” Understanding is probably best seen as a state-training exercise, or Understanding. Da didn't understand anything about higher stages as conceived by Wilber and Aurobindo. His was basically a Kosha, states-on-top model so that once you reached the highest or deepest state (nondual) everything you did was pure gold.

It's not the most uncommon thing to think, even today. And especially then there hadn't been the integration of the developmental states with the wisdom traditions in anyone but Aurobindo, as far as I can see, and most people weren't really listening to him, apparently. (Some schools weren't bad with it, though, like Zen's returning to the market with open arms, etc.)

Wilber has called the second face of Spirit the “great ego killer,” and there's something to that, but if there isn't also the third face, Spirit as evolutionary process, with a keen understanding of higher and lower stage wise a person can simply end up surrendering to their own narcissistic self, which is evidently what Da did quite a bit.

He had a lot of shadow and narcissistic issues, and as Wilber has pointed out that stuff can get inflated with state realization. It's kind of hard to tell whether his cultish and outlandish behavior was the result of “self-contraction” as such or had to do with some underdeveloped lines and shadow.

The traditions he was coming from also were of the God-man type, though I suppose most of them are to one extent or another, and then we add the cultural era, the Green free for all of the 70s, and we have Adidam. Muktananda was also a philanderer, as I recall.

His legal problems in the U.S. had something to do with the move to Naituba, I believe, so, from one perspective, we could say that the U.S. government had a hand in that isolation, in a similar way it had a hand in Jonestown. I'm not blaming the government at all; I'm just saying that in both cases the reaction seems to have made the situation worse.

But Radical Understanding can still be helpful as a state-training technology, I think, as long as it is included with these other understandings and in the right context.



Bruce: I personally see value in his emphasis on open-endedness, and prefer it (at this time in my life) over Da's emphasis on realizing the Most Prior, the absolute Truth behind all existence (teachings which could lead to their own forms of fixation, and in his case, probably did).


Yes, I also see value in K's emphasis on open-endness. It sounds very much like Almaas' open-ended inquiry only I think K explained it better in the quote near the end of my last post.

I've been contemplating this pretty much: the tension between open-endeness or surrender and our maps and understandings.

If we had just open endedness or some kind of metaphysical interpretation of Enlightenment in which our evolved capacities and ongoing development didn't have a place (where it was exclusively a matter of a pre-existing stage or God) I think it would cause issues, and I think that has caused issues.

The “surrender” that is possible is quite profound, I believe, even radical—at the same time I think our evolved capacities need to stay online, our development needs to continue. If the “surrender” keeps an evolved capacity from uploading when necessary I think it will cause issues.

So while I do think open endedness is important, and perhaps one of the hardest things to get (in such a way that it's differentiated from common aimlessness, confusion, moral relativism, postmodern culture, etc.), I think the maps and understandings also will play a role ideally, including the Most Prior/Always Already business—because it's good to know what's possible and what sort of parameters there are. It's good to know the depth of state realization that's possible, the height of stage realization (generally)—and these understandings will affect the unfolding. Without them, we may simply make mistakes that people made in the past and which don't need to be made again, get stuck where people have gotten stuck in the past, not differentiate from culture as much as is possible.

I think what dragged down Da most is the lack of understanding about evolutionary stages—he was basically just doing state training with the Kosha model (states on top), Radical No Seeking (my paraphrasing), and I don't think that's a very good guide in and of itself. I think the whole thing needs to to be recontextualized with the evolutionary stages, particularly Aurobindo's/Wilber's ideas about third-tier stages, which would likely keep people on track a little more than Da. I wonder to what extent Patten, Deida, and Bonder integrate Radical Understanding. I will look into that.


Best,

David

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

For the life of me, I don’t know why one would compare and contrast “enlightened” beings. I mean we all know there is no such thing as an enlightened being but in the minds of the unenlightened, right? If we look at a teaching as being time dependent or situational generated then we know no one ever can or will speak the truth. So the only real benefit is to look at it historically or anthropologically and look at the views of the taught that are similar to the one’s we cherish and see how the teaching was aimed at neutralizing those views (falsehoods) at that particular place and time. I mean we all know truth cannot be encapsulated by words. During K’s time, he was about the only one talking about non-duality in the west in the way we currently conceptualize it. If you have ever tried to talk about that, you see the difficulties inherent in whom you are speaking with and your own cultural and personal biases i.e. limitations. If you try and remove your bias and culture, very few understand what the hell you are talking about (like K). You come off sounding like you are speaking in koans. If you talk more personally or try to “relate” then the ideas get watered down and people think they have a handle on the ideas and can grok them within the bounds of dualistic thought alone. You get nonduality-speak. K is difficult or problematic because he refused to relate “down”.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Those are good points, e.

One more thing to consider is that the words that really have an impact are often not just words: There is something else communicated, silence, moksha, etc.

I have heard of people having big experiences or even some sort of realization (plateau or stage) by just reading, so I don't rule out that such things could happen through the printed, filmed, or recorded word, but usually it is the word in combination with the presence or sometimes even just the presence.

I think it's just more likely to happen when there has been some association, not that that's the only way it can happen. Some people have their breakthroughs when they're all alone, but even in those cases it may often have partly the result of some association (though, again, I am not saying that that is 100% necessary).

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

That’s the thing though and isn’t it brutally obvious after all these years? Can you point to God or emptiness and say “that’s it”? So they cannot be an I, We or It. Which means there is no real referent for those signifiers. Saying 1st, 2nd or 3rd face of God is just a way to get closer within those quadrants to that dropping away or breakthrough. Good literature, art, a sound or a benign being may aid in that breakthrough. But what are we breaking thru too? To me it is more like something falls away and nothing is put in I/We/IT’s place. The relative presence allows intuition of what is absolutely absent. Humpty can’t be put back together again. It’s unqualifiable as an I, We, It. And I, We It is all that can be dualistically known, thought about or expressed. Even the contraction has no real substance. What is the contraction contracting around? It just feels like there is something substantial for awhile and the contraction dissolves or peters out. It’s like a baby, there is a feeling of hunger or discomfort and the whole world revolves around that sensation. Later with the help of memory of past discomforts an imagined center will be produced that needs to ward off future pains and the drama of life will begin. An enlightened being has simply seen the imaginary center for what it isn’t.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David: It doesn't seem to me that it did either!  :) In fact, it might have just made it worse.


Isn't it then plausible that Da's radical understanding had something to do with his attitude?  Why assume those two can be separated fully or at all, that a person can be so unintegrated?  Doesn't Da's radical understanding contain an essential nub of me-me-me-for-you?  The man loved the word me, radically.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

 Tom: Doesn't Da's radical understanding contain an essential nub of me-me-me-for-you? 


Yes, I said so earlier, that he had won the contest for saying ”Me” the most times and that his was a divine egoism that knew no bounds.


Tom: Why assume those two can be separated fully or at all, that a person can be so unintegrated?


I don't think that's been assumed. I think there is evidence to suggest that people do evolve along separate lines, that becoming a good golfer, for instance, won't necessarily improve you're logical/mathematical line or your ethical line. Wilber cites the work of Howard Gardner in particular in Integral Psychology, and there are the others like Suzanne Cook-Greuter, Carol Gilligan, etc.



Tom: Isn't it then plausible that Da's radical understanding had something to do with his attitude?


I think it probably did. State realization or even state experiences have a way of making ego maniacs out of people, or at least releasing some deep-seated narcissism.

We also have to keep in mind the guru yoga that Da was orchestrating—guru yoga involves students viewing the teacher as God in form, and the teachers tend to play along with that and encourage that (hopefully “giving back the projection” at the end).

Da certainly went over the deep end with it, and I think that probably has to do with narcissistic issues special to Da but also the era, the traditions he had been a part of.



e: Which means there is no real referent for those signifiers.

I think we might say that there are no gross- or subtle-realm referents for the causal and nondual, no referents like there are referents for apple and orange or a subtle visions.

More like they are modes of being/not being.



e: To me it is more like something falls away and nothing is put in I/We/IT’s place.


Yes, I think that's exactly right, and when people see that they will quit arguing about whether it should be a given or not (meaning an emptiness that is “there” already rather than something cultivated like a golf swing).

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: Which means there is no real referent for those signifiers.

David: I think we might say that there are no gross- or subtle-realm referents for the causal and nondual, no referents like there are referents for apple and orange or a subtle visions.

More like they are modes of being/not being.

The casual is a state (most intuit via meditation or lucid dreaming) of nothingness. The state of objectlessness is the object itself. Non-duality is not a mode of an I/WE/IT or of an I/WE/IT’s absence. It can be apperceived via an absence without anything else put in the absence’s place i.e. Absolute Absense. So I don’t intuit it as pertaining to modes of anything.

 
-


e: To me it is more like something falls away and nothing is put in I/We/IT’s place.


David: Yes, I think that's exactly right, and when people see that they will quit arguing about whether it should be a given or not (meaning an emptiness that is “there” already rather than something cultivated like a golf swing).
  
To say that “it” is not a given is in line with there being no referent existing like everything else in the AQAL space. It is philosophically more elegant, lighter or less ontological. That is, non-duality is not a thing that exists in time. Time is dualistic and non-duality by definition isn’t. Any attempt at qualifying it in no way qualifies it because it is not an I/We/It nor an I’We’It’s relation to any other I/We/It. One can say when all attempts at qualification or relation ceases, non-duality is. 

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

“The reason angels can fly is that they take themselves so lightly.”
- G.K. Chesterton

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: The casual is a state (most intuit via meditation or lucid dreaming) of nothingness. The state of objectlessness is the object itself. Non-duality is not a mode of an I/WE/IT or of an I/WE/IT’s absence. It can be apperceived via an absence without anything else put in the absence’s place i.e. Absolute Absense. So I don’t intuit it as pertaining to modes of anything.


That's a cool interpretation, e! I'm down with that!



e: To say that “it” is not a given is in line with there being no referent existing like everything else in the AQAL space. It is philosophically more elegant, lighter or less ontological. That is, non-duality is not a thing that exists in time. Time is dualistic and non-duality by definition isn’t. Any attempt at qualifying it in no way qualifies it because it is not an I/We/It nor an I’We’It’s relation to any other I/We/It. One can say when all attempts at qualification or relation ceases, non-duality is.


I think saying that “nonduality is” is the same as saying that “nonduality is a given.” When I say it is a “given” I don't mean to say it has any thingness or ontological status; I just mean to say that it is available to everyone, nothing more.

If it were not a given, we have two choices: either 1) it doesn't exist but is rather some kind of delusion like Santa Claus, in which case Buddhism, Advaita, and the like should all fold up their tents and go home; or 2) it is something that can be cultivated, kind of like the ability to do multiplication.

At birth, none of us have the ability to do multiplication. Such mathematical abilities are not givens. However, from birth we do have access to the causal and nonduality, so they are givens—it doesn't mean they are things.

Either they are givens or evolutionary emergents (like Amber, Orange, etc.) or they don't exist at all like Santa Claus. But if they are givens it doesn't mean they are gross objects or subtle objects or the like.

The word “given” makes it sound like an object. But in every Buddhist school (with the possible exception of some extreme, perhaps pathological postmodern Buddhist schools) emptiness is a given (an empty given!), meaning it is available to everyone from the start and has been available since their birth.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: To say that “it” is not a given is in line with there being no referent existing like everything else in the AQAL space. It is philosophically more elegant, lighter or less ontological. That is, non-duality is not a thing that exists in time. Time is dualistic and non-duality by definition isn’t. Any attempt at qualifying it in no way qualifies it because it is not an I/We/It nor an I’We’It’s relation to any other I/We/It. One can say when all attempts at qualification or relation ceases, non-duality is.


David: I think saying that “nonduality is” is the same as saying that “nonduality is a given.”  


Is saying “nonduality is not” also positing nonduality givens? You are glossing over all I said before and focusing on the last “non-duality is”. Non-duality is Absolute Absence. How is Absolute Absence a given? What referent is there for an Absolute Absence? But you understand what I mean nonetheless right? 
 

When I say it is a “given” I don't mean to say it has any thingness or ontological status; I just mean to say that it is available to everyone, nothing more. 


That’s fine but I feel it is more accurate not to make it a given like all the other givens that are also available to everyone as it is NOT given in the same way, even if stating it in a similar manner has a different meaning. You see the potential confusion yes?


If it were not a given, we have two choices: either 1) it doesn't exist but is rather some kind of delusion like Santa Claus, in which case Buddhism, Advaita, and the like should all fold up their tents and go home; or 2) it is something that can be cultivated, kind of like the ability to do multiplication. 


There is another choice. It does not exist as a choice.



At birth, none of us have the ability to do multiplication. Such mathematical abilities are not givens. However, from birth we do have access to the causal and nonduality, so they are givens—it doesn't mean they are things.


 I am not splitting hairs here but you are mixing levels or columns, whatever. Human beings don’t have access to non-duality. When all ontology ends, non-duality is. If we don’t always have that in mind then we wind up telling lies about it which you can see from miles away i.e. “I am the greatest realizer”, etc. Because if there is any sense of “I am” there aint realization.


Either they are givens or evolutionary emergents (like Amber, Orange, etc.) or they don't exist at all like Santa Claus. But if they are givens it doesn't mean they are gross objects or subtle objects or the like. 

See here again you are stuck in subject/object dualities trying to talk about non-duality within that framework. You can’t do it. You have to make an attempt at removing some of the reified framework and leave meaning that is non-dualistic. I know, it aint easy!



The word “given” makes it sound like an object. 


 Because every single object is a given. They all have a referent for their signifier. Non-duality doesn’t. This is why it is so difficult to intuit for a being raised on subject/object dualities. Saying it is a given only confuses people, especially if non-duality has not been intuited to any degree or the person has not started to be weaned off of subject/object dualities. 
 
But in every Buddhist school (with the possible exception of some extreme, perhaps pathological postmodern Buddhist schools) emptiness is a given (an empty given!), meaning it is available to everyone from the start and has been available since their birth.
 
 
Historically here is what happens. Someone intuits selflessness or emptiness, etc and starts to talk about it. Few, if anyone, understand. So the misunderstood create a program of practices to get the gross and subtle givens out of the way so the same non-thing can be intuited by others. (This is why Buddha spent like a week hanging around the Bodhi tree. He was trying to formulate a teaching that others could work with and gain traction with.) Time goes by and the program gets pretty codified into laws. Now because all that people know are subject/object reifications, they treat this non-thing as a thing. They are “ignorant” and don’t know better and have no other choice in the matter. Then the program and practices get written down and the scholars now have something to study and schools of dualistic understanding emerge. So instead of being a Buddhist practitioner, you become a Buddhist scholar and spend your time writing and talking about this non-thing as a thing because again you also are ignorant. So a constellation of Buddhist objects is reified real and you can get a degree in the Abhidhamma which of course has nothing to do with this non-thing. And so it goes…

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

“And so it goes…”

Well said.

”Because every single object is a given. They all have a referent for their signifier.”
 
What?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hold your horses. I am just talking about conventions. I am not saying objects inherently exist with structures. :-) All I am saying is within the convention of signifier/signified/referent, emptiness or non-duality has no real or illusory referent we can point to. This is the only way it retains it’s original import without being a (meta)physical given. After emptiness or non-duality is experienced even objects are seen to be empty. That is, their empty nature is intuited and there is no mapping from signifier/signified to referent because there really aren’t any objects nor subjects. Just a tautology of signs pointing at other signs. We latch onto some and say “that’s me”, “that’s you”, “that’s a rotting apple”, etc. etc.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Right. I was close to fainting there! :P

Would you agree with me in my new system if I said that while non-duality / the dharmakaya has no referent, it does have a signified? That is, it doesn't exist “out there” or “in here” or “both or neither” as a referent, but when the signifier lights up, so does a perticular kind of discrimination in the UL? In enlightenemnet, the signified is: “no discrimination”. Or: “just this”.

I've been arguing with David for quite some time about this in the other thread. He says that sentient beings are inherently born with the knowledge about “no discrimination” or “just this”. I say it needs discrimination because of biological/social/cultural conditions causing ignorance at birth. What do you think? (If you don't want to mess up this thread you can PM me or answer in the other thread.)

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David: “That's all it means to say that Emptiness is a given.”

Psst. Emptiness can't be a given, simply because it depends 100% on inherent existence for it's own existence. That's why it is senseless to capitalize the E in emptiness.

Thus, like inherent existence, emptiness too exists only when there's ignorance.

Only when we've got this far into the analysis of phenomena are you authorized to posit this quote.

“Empty” should not be asserted.
“Non-empty” should not be asserted.
Neither both nor neither should be asserted.
They are only used nominally.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: Is saying “nonduality is not” also positing nonduality givens? You are glossing over all I said before and focusing on the last “non-duality is”. Non-duality is Absolute Absence.


David: We'll put it this way then: It is a given that nonduality is Absolute Absence, or it is a given that nothing inherently exists, or it is a given that the core of everyone's being and the entire universe is Absolute Absence or Nonduality.  
 
It is a given that there are no givens. Truth is unqualifiable and unquantifiable!   
 
We're also not in the zendo right now, nor in the monastery nor ashram; we're in the Map Maker's Room, putting together a map, which we will then use to enact Integral Methodological Pluralism and other such things (a representational map being a necessary first step).  

Are you lost? Don’t you know the Earth is a zendo?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Is: Psst. Emptiness can't be a given, simply because it depends 100% on inherent existence for it's own existence.

Congratulations on the first metaphysical comment of the day!

In fact, there is no evidence that emptiness is dependent on relative existence for its own existence or that it isn't. You have thus skipped the three strands of science in favor of materialist dogma.

At any rate, whether it survives the body is neither here nor there. The fact is that people of all ages, stripes, and structures have had experiences of nonduality. Thus, everyone has access to it OR it is what remains when I/We/It fall away OR it is a given for human beings, simply meaning that no human beings inherently exist (are empty).

So that's really what it boils down to: Do you think human beings inherently exist? If you think so, Emptiness for you is not a given. If you think that human beings do not inherently exist, Emptiness for you is a given.

It is as simple as that.

It is not making any ontological statement about nonduality, nor is it reifying. It's not doing anything different than any Buddhist that ever lived! (With the possible exception of extreme Green Buddhists like Batchelor.)

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

“Congratulations on the first metaphysical comment of the day! In fact, there is no evidence that emptiness is dependent on relative existence for its own existence or that it isn't. You have thus skipped the three strands of science in favor of materialist dogma.”

I think most of the confusion in these discussions comes from the fact that when I use the signifier emptiness, the signified that comes to my mind is different from the signified that comes to your mind when you use the word emptiness (Emptiness). I made no metaphysical assertion in my post.

The signified coming to my mind by use of the signifier emptiness is: absence of intrinsic existence. The signifier coming to your mind is an intrinsically existing Blob of Consciousness which is the base of all sentient beings. (Evidence of this is in your supposed choice nr 1.) Not strange, the same signified - the BoC - became activated for me after reading SES some two years ago. It took some time, help and effort to discard it. Because of all this mentioned, it has become clear we can't have a fruitful debate.

“Do you think human beings inherently exist? If you think so, Emptiness for you is not a given. If you think that human beings do not inherently exist, Emptiness for you is a given. It is as simple as that.”

Only because you do not understand the signified that the signifier emptiness is designed to point towards do you make this confused statement. Stating that human beings do not inherently exist in no way reifies emptiness.

“That is nothing other than the Buddha's way of saying that Emptiness is a given.”

In my post about The Natural State I, without hesitation, assert the two givens I use. And one of them is suchness, not emptiness. Emptiness can't exist without that which is empty, therefore emptiness is empty as well. Non-dual suchness, “unqualifiable and unquantifiable”, is what all this talk boils down to in the end, and could thus be called a given.

“Fine, but that is just the absolute truth (or one description of it) and will be of little or no use to someone new to the whole enterprise.”

I have never been opposed to the use of lies or falsehoods that may be of help to newcomers.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: All I am saying is within the convention of signifier/signified/referent, emptiness or non-duality has no real or illusory referent we can point to. This is the only way it retains it’s original import without being a (meta)physical given.


I agree with this for the most part. Nonduality doesn't have a referent as we usually think of referents. But we also can't say absolutely that it doesn't have a referent. If that were the case,  either it would be Santa Claus or a flying rabbit, and people should ignore meditative spirituality, at least as we know it or an experience of it would be characterized by a complete blackout.

We can't say it's a thing, but we can't say it's not a thing either—as Nagarjuna says: we can't assert emptiness nor non emptiness. So I agree that we can't say that there is a referent because a referent could never be nondual. Yet there is not Absolute Disappearance either (a total blackout), so we can't say absolutely there is no referent.

I think we might say that there's a strong no-self doctrine and a weak no-self doctrine. The strong version would be nihilistic; the weak version would mean that it is beyond all personality or the sense of being something separate.


e: Are you lost? Don’t you know the Earth is a zendo?


That's a good interpretation! In other words, there is a process that is not chaotic and therefore not entirely devoid of meaning. Also, within the Big Zendo there are little sub Zendos where the rules and injunctions and aims are different from one to the next.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: All I am saying is within the convention of signifier/signified/referent, emptiness or non-duality has no real or illusory referent we can point to. This is the only way it retains it’s original import without being a (meta)physical given.


David: I agree with this for the most part. Nonduality doesn't have a referent as we usually think of referents. But we also can't say absolutely that it doesn't have a referent. If that were the case,  either it would be Santa Claus or a flying rabbit, and people should ignore meditative spirituality, at least as we know it or an experience of it would be characterized by a complete blackout.  

Santa Claus and flying rabbits have illusory referents. They can be found in fables. Non-duality does not have a fabled referent nor a real referent. Non-duality does not have a dualistic referent. A complete blackout (the state of nothingness) has a real referent. A state that you can experience. Non-duality is unqualifiable and unquantifiable with signifieds/signifiers/referents or I/WE/Its. 
 
I think we might say that there's a strong no-self doctrine and a weak no-self doctrine. The strong version would be nihilistic; the weak version would mean that it is beyond all personality or the sense of being something separate. 
 
Buddha: sabbe dhamma anatta. All things are non-self. Is that strong or weak nihilism or none of the above? Nihilism is a philosophy that has meaning (in this case meaningless) to someone. If there is no-self, how can there be eternalism or nihilism but in the dualistic realm of thought with it’s imagined empty center where meaning revolves around like debris around the eye of a hurricane? The larger the imagined self the more the debris, Hey look at ME, I AM the universe since the beginning of time.  
 
Also, within the Big Zendo there are little sub Zendos where the rules and injunctions and aims are different from one to the next. 
 
Only in imagined meaning can there be separation between zendos, as there is no place on earth that is not steeped in suchness.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Is: I made no metaphysical assertion in my post.


Okay, I believe you.  :)



Is: The signified coming to my mind by use of the signifier emptiness is: absence of intrinsic existence. The signifier coming to your mind is an intrinsically existing Blob of Consciousness which is the base of all sentient beings.


The interpretation “absent of intrinsic existence” is the interpretation of one Buddhist school. Other Buddhist schools have different interpretations or ways of describing it, and a few non Buddhist schools also have different descriptions that are also just as good.

If a school agrees that really we can't say what it is, it is beyond all description, beyond all concepts and opposites, beyond dualistic ideas like “self” or “no self, “existence” or “non existence” then it doesn't really matter whether, as a shorthand, they say “absent of intrinsic existence” or “absolute subjectivity.”

One will resonate with some types; others will resonate with others. I like both, actually. I don't know that the via-negativa interpretations work particularly well for action, though, for structure, for four-quadrant action and development. I'm not saying it couldn't work, just that sometimes it seems not to, sometimes it seems to lead people into a frame of mind that undervalues life and evolution.

Also, my interpretation is not just based on reading books like SES. It is based on very hard work at meditation and such for many years. If the interpretation “absent of intrinsic existence” is perfect why would a Zen master like Shibayama and other Buddhists choose something different?

I think we can say that “absent of intrinsic existence” is perhaps the best interpretation—but we can also make arguments that others are the best. The imperfection in “absent of intrinsic existence” is that the sadhaka doesn't disappear absolutely: he or she remembers somehow what it is like, and also there are no gaps; there is continuity (no black outs).

But there are imperfections in all interpretations. The imperfection in something like “Absolute Subjectivity” is that there is absolutely nothing personal in the deepest experiences or realizations and that this way of looking at it could cause clinging to self. “Absent of intrinsic existence” could cause some kind of self-annihilating move in some people that is degenerative rather than evolutionary and transcendent. It will depend on the person. I go back and forth between the two and really couldn't say at this point which I think is the absolute best. How could I know until I have realized turiyatita Most Perfectly?

I don't think in the end we will be able to say that one is the absolute best. I think the most we will be able to say is that some will be the best path for some people, and others will be the best path for other people, but that is not to say that all interpretations are necessarily equally good.



David: “Do you think human beings inherently exist? If you think so, Emptiness for you is not a given. If you think that human beings do not inherently exist, Emptiness for you is a given. It is as simple as that.”

Is: Only because you do not understand the signified that the signifier emptiness is designed to point towards do you make this confused statement. Stating that human beings do not inherently exist in no way reifies emptiness.


All I mean by the word “given” is “it is true that” or “it is so that.” So, it is so that nothing inherently exists (technically an error because it asserts emptiness). Or,  it is so that the deepest truth of who we are is absolute subjectivity (technically an error because it asserts non emptiness).

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

“as Nagarjuna says: we can't assert emptiness nor non emptiness”
 
You shouldn't interpret this as if he is actually asserting now that emptiness inherently exists. It is more subtle than that. What he is getting at in that verse is that to assert that something does not exist - whatever it is - assumes that it has somehow existed in the first place, but doesn't any longer, a view which is as wrong as saying that it still exists. Alternatively, in order to have nothing, you need to have something, without which that nothing wouldn't make any sense. Nagarjuna has already shown that there can't be a something, so how can there be a nothing? Finally, it could also mean that emptiness is asserted as a a mere conceptual imputation - conventionally - but nothing extra.

Because of these reasons, the extremes of permanence as well as nihilism are shown to be impossibilities. This is what Nagarjuna means by “'Non-empty' should not be asserted”.

“Other Buddhist schools have different interpretations or ways of describing it, and a few non Buddhist schools also have different descriptions that are also just as good.”

Then they are wrong. It's like saying, one school of botany calls this flower a rose, and some other calls the same flower forget me nots or rhododendrons. And those names are just as good! See how this is ridiculous? A rose is a rose because we, out of convenience, have agreed to call one perticular kind of flower rose. If we start using other names all of the sudden, massive confusion will ensue.

When you use the signifer emptiness, the signified that comes to your mind is a completely different one from the one intendend by those who invented the signifier emptiness (Nagarjuna in perticular). Therefore you should do everyone a favour and use a different signifier for your signified, and spare the world a whole lot of needless confusion. “Turiya”, is good perhaps? “Storehouse-consciousness”? “BoC?”

“One will resonate with some types; others will resonate with others. I like both, actually.”

This isn't about Green solidarity. This is about truth. And truth doesn't make compromises.

“The imperfection in “absent of intrinsic existence” is that the sadhaka doesn't disappear absolutely: he or she remembers somehow what it is like, and also there are no gaps; there is continuity (no black outs).”

If you truly knew Nagarjuna's signified this confusion wouldn't arise. Emptiness has nothing whatsoever to do with consciousness or unconsciousness. I have noticed this is a very common difference between those in the Advaita path and those on the Buddhist path. Advaita people cling to an idea of Constant Consciousness; their entire metaphysics, and thus well-being, revolves around it. Someone with knowledge of buddhism clings to no such idea, because s/he knows all clinging to empty phenomena falsely appearing as non-empty generates suffering and death.

“So, it is so that nothing inherently exists (technically an error because it asserts emptiness)? Or,  it is so that the deepest truth of who we are is absolute subjectivity (technically an error because it asserts non emptiness)?” [added questionmarks]

Something interesting happens when we have come this deep in the analysis. Somewhere around here do we loosen up on the negations and instead, enter into Truth. It is because the deeper we walk into the analysis, the further away we are from the two extremes. So to your question here I would say: the tea is hot. Why do I say this? Because your question demonstrates ignorance. The same ignorance as when the zen monk asked the teacher: “Does a dog have buddha-nature, or not?” The question doesn't have an answer because the question itself is completely erroneous.

My answer is also just another way of saying:

“Empty” should not be asserted.
“Non-empty” should not be asserted.
Neither both nor neither should be asserted.
They are only used nominally.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Is: You shouldn't interpret this as if he is actually asserting now that emptiness inherently exists.


I'm not. I am simply saying it's beyond those opposites, existence or non existence, as he did.



David: “Other Buddhist schools have different interpretations or ways of describing it, and a few non Buddhist schools also have different descriptions that are also just as good.”

Is: Then they are wrong. It's like saying, one school of botany calls this flower a rose, and some other calls the same flower forget me nots or rhododendrons. And those names are just as good!


There is a big difference here. We are talking about the Indesribable, not a particular species of plant. Of course we want only one name for a particular species of plant, but we are talking about that which nothing can be accurately said. So calling it by just one name and insisting on that one name would be missing that point, which was Nagarjuna's point: that it is beyond language altogether.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

“but we are talking about that which nothing can be accurately said.”
 
Yes, and exactly that is the signified. But for you it clearly isn't - for you emptiness has characteristics. For example: it is the base of all sentient beings, it is continues forever, it existed before the big bang, it has an evolutionary impulse, it can ferry souls from one body to the next, etc, etc. This clearly isn't the signified Nagarjuna intended to provoke by his signifier.

“As long as people are just using them nominally and understanding that truth is only found in satori, it is fine to use either. That was Nagarjuna's teaching.”

I agree.

“You are projecting this Blob of Consciousness stuff onto me.”

No, no. I have carefully figured out that this is what you mean, by having these in depth debates with you. And since Tom is directing some of the same criticisms your way, I'm not the only one to have noted the fallacies of your (or should I say Wilbers and Cohens?) current metaphysical model.

“Don't you think it would be a good idea to realize nonduality before deciding conclusively which is the best interpretation? Otherwise the decision is based on faith or logic, neither of which has anything at all to do with satori.”

Even though I have not seen Pulp Fiction, I can look at IMDB to see what it is not. For example, it is not an animated Pixar movie, nor is it a romantic comedy. What's more, I've personally seen trailers and a few random scenes of the movie here and there over the years, which makes me quite certain indeed that Pulp Fiction is not a Pixar movie, nor a romantic comedy.

“At each level there will be a via-negativa type and a via-positiva type. So Shibayama's, “Absolute Subjectivity,” was a via-positiva interpretation, but he knew just as well as anyone that the “experience” was beyond words altogether, which is what is important. The signifier is not the most important thing; it is on the surface.”

Well, if we're gonna use this casual attitude logic, it follows that for you it doesn't matter in the slightest what signifier we use. We could just as well use “tomato”, “confused and narrow consciousness”, “inherently existing personal diety”, “permanent toilet”, “dimension of constant suffering”, etc to point at non-duality. Because in your system, it doesn't matter what terminologies we use; all are apparently equally clear and accurate in describing it. Flatland warning, I'd say.

“They both need to be let go of.”

Yes, I agree. But the reason I am persuing this subject with you is that you seem to reify the BoC (and infuse it with intrinsically existing qualities), which to me doesn't indicate anything near a letting go.

“Most Advaita types these days aren't into Constant Consciousness.”

Consciousness, then. They reify Consciousness/Awareness and build their prison around it.

“Truth is never found in the analysis. Nonduality is beyond the analysis. Mu.”

Yes.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David: “But we are talking about that which nothing can be accurately said.”

Is: Yes, and exactly that is the signified. But for you it clearly isn't - for you emptiness has characteristics. For example: it is the base of all sentient beings, it is continues forever, it existed before the big bang, it has an evolutionary impulse, it can ferry souls from one body to the next, etc, etc. This clearly isn't the signified Nagarjuna intended to provoke by his signifier.


Clearly it is!!!!!  :)

Let's take these things one by one:

It is the base of all sentient beings


I've said many, many times that this is just a bridging metaphor, a bridging metaphor. Wilber has also said that many times, as I have quoted. One of the great ironies of all these “post-metaphysical” criticisms is that all along it has been a criticism not of the position but of a bridging metaphor. Many times, for example, I have quoted Wilber's official position on nonduality:

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

KW: “Spirit is radically shunya of drsti (empty of any and all qualities, including that characterization itself).”

Yeah, yeah. This is something he says. But we all know that in the next sentence he'll, as usual, contradict himself by infusing spirit with inherent (not “bridging metaphor”) characteristics. Tom and James has noticed this as well.

“I think the nihilistic metaphors and reifying metaphors are equally inaccurate and that both the paradoxical metaphors and the tetralemmical metaphors are superior.”

I expressed somewhere my view of the class of expressions we can make of Spirit. Again:

Affirming positives (inferior): “Spirit is X”
Affirming negatives (inferior): “Spirit is not X, but it is X.”
Non-affirming negatives (superior): “Spirit is not X.” “Spirit is not X, not not X, not both X and not X, not neither X nor not X.”
Direct Expressions (beyond inferior and superior): Koans. “Crazy Wisdom”. The Flower Sermon. (Paradoxial, silly, confusing, illogical.)

The one at the top is the least subtle and least true of the four. This is because 1: it causes the most logical contradictions, and 2: it causes more clinging and is thus the least helpful for people seeking true spiritual enlightenment. Going down they become more subtle, and more true. None of them contains any Truth capital T in the words, but relative to one another they can be accurately said to be more or less true.

“1) the person always comes back to say how nothing was there (there was no black out);”

Again, only because you don't understand emptiness do you make this confused statement.

“2) there is a performative contradiction if we take it literally: “nothing inherently exists, including this statement” is nevertheless a statement that some appear to hold to be eternally true”

Since in Reality there is nothing that could inherently exist or not inherently exist, the statement is not eternally true. Only when there is ignorance is the statement true.

“But I do think it has great soteriological value.”

Yes. And so has Advaita.

“They were straw-man arguments against bridging metaphors…”
“Another bridging metaphor…”

There's a simple way to alleviate yourself from my criticism: In these precise philosophical discussions, stop using these idiotic “…bridging metaphors…” and instead use words and concepts you can get behind, like I do. I'd prefer that we didn't lie to one another here at the forum. ;P

“This has nothing to do with the absolute truth (nonduality). It is on the relative side of the street.”

So in Reality, there's absolutely no such thing as evolution? Ah - don't think you're ready to take that step, now are ya?

“Once again a relative question having nothing to do with the absolute truth.”

So in Reality there's absolutely no such thing as reincarnation? Oho - you ready to accept it? :P Dude, I accept them all, evolution and reincarnation and time and space as a relative truths: mere conceptual imputations when there is no logical analysis to find the object posited. Nothing new here.

“Yes, indeed, while the via-negativa types build their prison around nihilistic concepts and so on.”

This may be the case, people of low capability will fall into this trap. Those of true intention and honesty don't fall prey to either positive or negative methodologies.

“pre-paradoxical”

One ignorant person discussion with another ignorant person (relative to relative) = no paradox. “Mountains are mountains.”
One ignorant person discussing with another enlightened person (relative to absolute) = paradox. “Mountains are not mountains.”
One enlightened person discussing with another enlightened person (absolute to absolute) = no paradox. “Mountains are mountains.”
 
“The most important point is that the only way to see nonduality is through realization: it can never be represented in language, so criticisms against language for not being nondual or against metaphorical descriptions of nonduality for being metaphysical are silly indeed.”

Yes, but we use language in our daily, conventional lives. And since Truth exist (as a given, inherently existing) all expressions will either be closer or further away from “it”. So when we speak, we could choose to be closer to Truth, or further away from Truth. This is a non-flatland philosophy. So my four classes of expression above judge the relative truth-value of any linguistic expression of Spirit.

“There is the self-understanding of emptiness by emptiness itself.”

And congratulations - he not only reifies emptiness but to boot he also infuses emptiness with an inherently existing quality: discrimination. Thus is it has been reified, thus we are back into medieval metaphysics, and ignorance saunters on happily. Cheers!

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: Non-duality does not have a fabled referent nor a real referent.


Strictly speaking it does not have a “referent,” but people do sit on their meditation cushions and such and have a “non experience” of nonduality, while others are out there having experiences, so in a sense we can say there is a “referent” or at least a particular kind of event or awakening. There is a difference between a Zen master in satori and what is happening with most everyone else. Broadly speaking, then, we can say there is a “referent” (since it is different from what nearly everyone else is experiencing/not experiencing).

Some students come to their Zen master with a story about a conceptual understanding, an experience of subtle quietude, an experience of causal radiance; they ask their Zen masters is this it? Is this enlightenment? The Zen master answers, no. He or she is looking for something quite particular. I'm not saying it has a location in time in space, but there is something “real” about satori, yes?

When you say “nonduality does not have a fabled referent or a real referent” I wonder how you would differentiate your view from some Orange materialist who thinks all Buddhists are delusional and who also thinks that nonduality doesn't have a real or fabled referent. He might say the same exact thing. How is your view of nonduality different?


e: Buddha: sabbe dhamma anatta. All things are non-self. Is that strong or weak nihilism or none of the above?


Let's forget about the word “nihilism” for the moment and just see it in terms of strong or weak versions of the no-self doctrine. I think it would depend how literally or absolutely a person is taking it. What do you mean exactly by “all things are non self”? Do you agree with what Wilber said earlier?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: Non-duality does not have a fabled referent nor a real referent.


David: Strictly speaking it does not have a “referent,” but people do sit on their meditation cushions and such and have a “non experience” of nonduality, while others are out there having experiences, so in a sense we can say there is a “referent” or at least a particular kind of event or awakening. There is a difference between a Zen master in satori and what is happening with most everyone else. Broadly speaking, then, we can say there is a “referent” (since it is different from what nearly everyone else is experiencing/not experiencing).  

It just seems that way. Ultimately there is no difference. No one (separated self) experiences non-duality. All experience is non-dual, belief in a separate self disallows re-cognizing that. Did you ever hear of the story of a person looking at someone getting pick pocketed in a store and then they realize they are looking at an image of themselves in a mirror? How the sense of self is fabricated via identification with images. No-self or non-duality is similar. All that is previously thought to be me, mine and myself is simply seen not to be.

Some students come to their Zen master with a story about a conceptual understanding, an experience of subtle quietude, an experience of causal radiance; they ask their Zen masters is this it? Is this enlightenment? The Zen master answers, no. He or she is looking for something quite particular. I'm not saying it has a location in time in space, but there is something “real” about satori, yes?   

Non-dual suchness is unqualifiable as a separated self. What sort of real or illusory referent can we single out that signifies this? The zen master is looking for an absence of selfishness. If the story starts out with “I” had this experience, he knows self view has not been dropped and it’s back to the zafu.

When you say “nonduality does not have a fabled referent or a real referent” I wonder how you would differentiate your view from some Orange materialist who thinks all Buddhists are delusional and who also thinks that nonduality doesn't have a real or fabled referent. He might say the same exact thing. How is your view of nonduality different?


All separation is an illusion predicated on a delusion of self. 
 
–

e: Buddha: sabbe dhamma anatta. All things are non-self. Is that strong or weak nihilism or none of the above?


What do you mean exactly by “all things are non self”?   

What is permanent in your experience? If there is nothing permanent, how can you posit a self? Self view becomes untenable when this is completely understood.  

Do you agree with what Wilber said earlier?  

Wilber in his quest to integrate thought forms is massaging meanings to synthesize his AQAL system. Where he finds overlap, he stitches a seam to make his quilt of meaning. All meaning (and meaninglessness) along with selves and others dissolve in non-dual suchness.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

KW: “Spirit is radically shunya of drsti (empty of any and all qualities, including that characterization itself).”

Is: This is something he says. But we all know that in the next sentence he'll, as usual, contradict himself by infusing spirit with inherent (not “bridging metaphor”) characteristics. Tom and James has noticed this as well.


I think he's allowed to make bridging metaphors like everyone else, including the Prasangikas, who use “Emptiness,” I believe.

Zen says that with one taste you can drink the Pacific in a single gulp, Suzuki that the blue jay will fly right into your heart. Metaphors are very important.

And I suspect there was a time when they were very important for you, too, Is!  :)

You recently said you got into Wilber's bridging metaphors for awhile—what if, instead of talking about empty space and oneness and such he started out with, “Spirit is not X,” “Spirit is not X, not not X, not both X and not … “-–would it have been the same? Would you have known what in the world he was talking about?

I'm not sure you would have gotten interested in it, at least not as quickly, perhaps not until you heard someone else's bridging metaphors to orient you first. I think that orientation is very important, a prerequisite perhaps.



Is: The one at the top [“Spirit is X] is the least subtle and least true of the four. This is because 1: it causes the most logical contradictions.


What if “Spirit is X” is: “Spirit is Emptiness, but Emptiness is Empty, too” or “Spirit is Empty Consciousness” (a paradox)?

I think “right view of emptiness” is important, and I have benefited from all our discussions on the subject, but one more thing to consider is clinging to all concepts, whether they are right view of emptiness or not—ultimately it is about letting all of them go, at least in meditation (we still need to use them at times).

A lot of teachers stress “not knowing.” Here is Adyashanti, who practiced mostly as a Zen Buddhist, talking about it:

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: All experience is non-dual.


This is the same as saying that “nondual is a given.” “Given” is just theoreticians' language.

But I agree with you that it's not good dharma talk. I think AQAL would be better dharmically with just three states and then some subtle way to indicate nonduality on the map, as I know you've talked about before.



e: It just seems that way. Ultimately there is no difference… . Non-dual suchness is unqualifiable as a separated self. What sort of real or illusory referent can we single out that signifies this?


I think you're right that we can't technically say that there is a referent for nonduality because nonduality is Always the Case, and if we said it had a referent it would imply that it was not the case for other referents or all the time.

Yet I don't want to let you off the hook just yet.  :) Doesn't the Zen master feel differently?



e: All separation is an illusion predicated on a delusion of self.


Great dharma talk, e! I mean it. As I've said before, you are a force for the nondual!

Even in the very heart of the self-contraction, in our most separate-feeling moments when we grasp and make some effort to escape, there is non-separation.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

“Metaphors are very important.”

Yes of course. I for example think that the thought: “I am not the body nor the mind - I am infinite space” is a very good lie to use in order to see through the extremely strong and deeply ingrained falsehood of identification with body and mind, as is created by biological, social and cultural conditioning. One just have to remember that while using metaphors/tools like these, that they are not Truth, but a mere ferry to carry you across to the shore of enlightenment. At that shore, all ferries are let go of. (Only “Level 3” discrimination remains.)

The criticism I, Tom, Bruce and Balder are often putting forth is that Wilber is not using just metaphors, but actually givens - hidden in smooth talk - which he wants us to just believe Exists independent of any discrimination.

“one more thing to consider is clinging to all concepts, whether they are right view of emptiness or not—ultimately it is about letting all of them go”

Yes. But since we are doing nothing but talking here on the forum, we might as well - if we try to point towards Truth - do it with the least possible amount of logical contradictions and fallacies. This is what philosophy is all about, right? I love poetry, but that's not why I am here on this board.

“Of course, the “problem” of memory and continuity has bugged Buddhist thinkers ever since the rise of Abhidharma in early common era.”

Memory arising is no different from a flower arising. Only because of belief in inherent existence do we reason that memory is somehow not natural or unspiritual and to be gotten rid off for spiritual enlightenment to occur. This is nonsense.

“Okay, I'll stop using bridging metaphors if you do as well. Is that a deal? No more “Empty,” no more “Emptiness”?”
 
Before we agree on this deal, I first need to ask you to make this one thing clear. I openly state that in reality, there's no such thing as emptiness. I don't cling to this concept; it is let go. I ask you again: would you please also say out loud, and without hesitation, that in reality there's absolutely no such thing as evolution, small self, Big Self, subtle energies, and reincarnation?

Yep… didn't think so, right? Evidently alot of clinging going on here still. What happened to the “don't know mind”?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Dawid: The criticism I, Tom, Bruce and Balder are often putting forth is that Wilber is not using just metaphors, but actually givens - hidden in smooth talk - which he wants us to just believe Exists independent of any discrimination.

Yup, bingo.  And FWIW, I don't think what we sense as givens are but lesser formulated teaching aids for the lesser realized.  Why?  Because he gives no alternative.

Dawid: Memory arising is no different from a flower arising. Only because of belief in inherent existence do we reason that memory is somehow not natural or unspiritual and to be gotten rid off for spiritual enlightenment to occur. This is nonsense.

You rock, dude.  If things are empty, they are empty just as they are.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: All experience is non-dual.


David: This is the same as saying that “nondual is a given.” “Given” is just theoreticians' language. 
 
Please buddy, try and understand that it is not a given, it is a sign with no dualistic referent (what is a non-dualistic referent? See, all referents are dualistic!). If you understand that you understand why saying All experience is non-dual is not a (meta)physical given. You just about get this when you say this here.

I think you're right that we can't technically say that there is a referent for nonduality because nonduality is Always the Case, and if we said it had a referent it would imply that it was not the case for other referents or all the time. 
 
-
 
Doesn't the Zen master feel differently?
 
Someone asked Sariputta if there was any vedena (feeling) in Nirvana and he said no, there wasn’t. We can say there is no Zen master in nirvana either. As there ultimately is no Zen master nor Buddha but in the minds of the unenlightened.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hey guys, I am going to try and bring the Wilber bashing back to the middle. Ken says he started all this AQAL stuff to validate spiritual practice. So in order to do that he had to make a bridge from science to religion. Now since traditionally both these endeavors suffer from metaphysical givens, how is Wilber going to accomplish this without allowing some givens as inroads from these domains? Do you see? I personally think he gets all this but he can’t talk without these givens without sounding nihilistic and losing his intended audiences. (I mean, look at how David keeps accusing me of being nihilistic over the years!) Ken loses many of them nonetheless because he won’t privilege either of their truth claims. And no one likes their Absolute Truth played with!

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e, the problem is Ken has his own Absolute Truth which in terms he describes is not referable to AQAL.  The interesting thing about this is that, so far as I can see, Ken's formulation of this Universally Applicable is quirky and particular to Ken, and required a certain development Ken underwent, a certain Ken-specific AQAL address, years of work that Ken undertook, etc., and didn't appear on the planet before Ken formulated it, yet is somehow for all that un-Ken, that is, Universally Applicable as the highest reach of Truth anywhere. History, development, particularity and relativity are thus conveniently set aside.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

I listened to Ken's live broadcast from Boulder today, and he was asked about the implications of emptiness for causality.  He appeared to be feeling very weak and tired (which made my heart ache for him), and unfortunately his answer was not at all clear.  But one part of it was:  he reiterated the sharp distinction between emptiness as formless and without qualities, and form as the world of qualities and distinctions.  He said that scientists didn't recognize the Formless as an aspect of reality, but only looked at what had form.  So, here again, Emptiness did seem to show up in strong, nominalized form – a definite timeless Ultimate “thing” or dimension that science had not yet recognized.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Yes, Bruce, I heard that also.  From what I can tell, Wilber has been on a 30+ year climb down from a major separation between what he calls form and formlessness viewed, as you say, as nominalized 'realms.'  Of course, viewing reality as separable and separated nominalized 'realms,' one dives immediately into the Kantian problem of the thing-in-itself, which is the nominalist hell-realm par excellence, entirely inaccessible and requiring a mythological access-point or entry, if any.  That access-point is Wilber's pre-given states, which are the thing-in-itself, form-matched to the Emptiness-itself or the Enlightenment-itself they convey.  Any such thing, moreover, posited within this access myth—the states, Emptiness, Enlightenment—is necessarily off-AQAL, for being of this strange nominalized reality these elements are necessarily the realm of givens: the nominal doesn't evolve, and that which doesn't evolve is permanent, and don't these things convey Permanence?  That's what Ramana says.  And Permanence, in an evolutionary world, must be given and round we so go.  I personally doubt he'll take this duality to a different understanding in his lifetime, but that's a guess.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hey Tom, In a Sounds True interview some years back he said AQAL was an Orange reconstruction of all states and stages, etc…  i.e. a rational ordering of conventional truths. Do you have Eye of Spirit? Read the last chapter and then report back if you still think Wilber is full of metaphysical privileged access bullshit regarding Absolute Truth. 

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: ... and report back if you still think Wilber is full of metaphysical privileged access bullshit regarding Absolute Truth …


Actually, I'll report now: said metaphysicalitis resides in such notions as “conventional truths.”  There is no AQAL access to what is deemed non-conventional, no?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Is: The criticism I, Tom, Bruce and Balder are often putting forth is that Wilber is not using just metaphors, but actually givens - hidden in smooth talk - which he wants us to just believe Exists independent of any discrimination.


This criticism misses one very obvious but very difficult aspect of the model: that absolutely everything he says, absolutely everything, has a kosmic address and that it often carries an injunction as well, and thus he is not asking anyone to believe that anything exists apart from discrimination or structure or injunction.

The kosmic address means that that statement—whatever it was, even if it was declaring some sort of absolute—is dependent on the enactment of that particular worldview. Thus, it only exists from that worldview. It may have subsisted at lower worldviews but only ex-ists at that worldview at least. If he is saying that there is an absolute, that statement has a kosmic address, and to see that view ourselves we have to be capable of holding a paradox (at least strong Turquoise, though some of his views require more). Moreover, we may have to take a difficult injunction to have more than a conceptual understanding of it.

What is difficult about this is the person really, really needs to be able to hold opposites in their mind—people don't want to do this; they want a world either with universals and absolutes or a world without universals and absolutes. If they are among those postmoderns who want a world without absolutes, they will say, “There are no givens. Nothing eternal. No universals.” That is the Green performative contradiction—they drop absolutes backed with phenomenological or other evidence and substitute their own a priori metaphysical absolute (“there are no givens or absolutes, nothing eternal”—that is the eternal absolute in the Green worldspace).

If anyone says, “But no, look! He says nonduality exists independent of anything, is the very paper the map is printed on. That's metaphysical!” they are simply missing the finer points of Madhyamika philosophy (reifying) and evidently don't have any real “experience” with nonduality, which is not an experience of higher understandings, concepts, or discriminations. Nonduality is not a thing. Thus, it is not metaphysical, floating anywhere—it is simply who they are, but they take themselves to be something else.

Then there are those who think Wilber is reifying or something because Wilber sometimes phrases things in a non-Buddhist-orthodox manner. But what Wilber is saying when he says that “nonduality is a given,” for example, means exactly the same thing as what e has been saying, that “all experience is nondual.” Exactly the same thing! The exact same signified! Wilber is simply using a different figure of speech.

Once people are fully construct aware and can juggle different paradigms, different ways of looking at nonduality and everything else, they will see that sometimes Ramana Maharshi, for example, is talking about the same thing as the Buddhists only using different language.

Finally, once again, it's quite clear if you read Integral Spirituality, particularly the appendix again, that every word in it has a kosmic address and often has an injunction as well. The entire thing is an enactment, from a Violet perspective, which is the largest reason people have difficulty grasping it fully and want to knock off little pieces of it, because some pieces simply do not exist in Orange, in Green, in Teal, in Turquoise.

When we see the (!) injunction language it means that if we want to find out whether, for example, people are just making it up or imagining it when they speak of kundalini energy rising up their spine and filling their head and heart with causal bliss, we can go to Myanmar for a few months and spend some time with the Buddhists there, do what they say, and find out for ourselves.




David: “one more thing to consider is clinging to all concepts, whether they are right view of emptiness or not—ultimately it is about letting all of them go”

Is: Yes. But since we are doing nothing but talking here on the forum, we might as well - if we try to point towards Truth - do it with the least possible amount of logical contradictions and fallacies.


I was simply adding one more perspective, not subtracting anything. There are two ways we can go beyond concepts: horizontally and vertically.

Horizontally going beyond concepts means not knowing, in meditation. One simply sits there and eventually the one who is doing all the conceptualizing, analyzing, deconstructing falls away—and you have an experience of nirvikalpa. Or the meditator doesn't fall away but nothing is separate. This is another injuunction: Big Mind (1p, s/nd)!

Vertically we go beyond concepts first by becoming construct aware, developing the ability to see from many perspectives, Buddhist, AQAL, Advaita, Diamond Approach, etc. Thus, all these perspectives can float through our awareness, and we can carefully choose one, integrate them, or let them float away and do something else or nothing. Before then people tend to look at it from the perspective one religion, one zone, one level, etc. and think when someone looks at it from a different perspective or uses different language that they are simply wrong. Finally there is ego awareness: one can see one's personal motivations (fears and desires) rising and falling away and choose in the most wholesome way. The two, horizontal and vertical, are beginning to come together, finally to come together completely in Clear Light (which is quite different than nondual at the far-right side of the Wilber-Combs Lattice).

It's from these constuct- and ego-aware perspectives that Wilber writes from, and people object because 1) Wilber is not promoting their particular value sphere, religion type, and favored zone, and 2) what he is suggesting at the end of the day is very demanding on the ego—people sense that, that they will have to change, and they will “die,” and they say, “No! I don't want to change. I don't want to die. All those injunctions seem very hard, and I hate it that he says there are people higher than me on the spiral. I will instead have a bong hit, make a cynical comment, and read some Derrida.”



David: “Of course, the “problem” of memory and continuity has bugged Buddhist thinkers ever since the rise of Abhidharma in early common era.”

Is: Memory arising is no different from a flower arising. Only because of belief in inherent existence do we reason that memory is somehow not natural or unspiritual and to be gotten rid off for spiritual enlightenment to occur. This is nonsense.


You are exactly right, Is. However, that is not what I was talking about. I wasn't saying anything at all about memory itself, nor was Hokai.

The Buddhist meditator closes his or her eyes (or not), sits down—nonduality is, as e would say. The Buddhist meditator than decides to give a talk.

“There is no self,” he says smiling.

“Absolutely?” The student asks.

“Absolutely,” the master says.

And thus we have the Theravadan no-self doctrine, which Nagarjuna rejected. What I am pointing out is that if what the “master” says is true, that there is absolutely no self and that this is an accurate description of nonduality, then how would he know? How would anyone know? I am speaking about the “experience” of nonduality, not the concept of it.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David,


Is said: The criticism I, Tom, Bruce and Balder are often putting forth is that Wilber is not using just metaphors, but actually givens - hidden in smooth talk - which he wants us to just believe Exists independent of any discrimination.


You replied:  This criticism misses one very obvious but very difficult aspect of the model: that absolutely everything he says, absolutely everything, has a kosmic address and that it often carries an injunction as well, and thus he is not asking anyone to believe that anything exists apart from discrimination or structure or injunction.


I don't find the kosmic address / injunctive aspect of his model difficult, and I don't think I've missed it, either, even though I've been one of the people voicing the criticism that Is describes.  He does say that everything he says has an injunction and a kosmic address (in his system, everything anyone says is theoretically addressable), but the problem is (and this is the source of the objection), there are some elements of his system which he does seem to exempt from this. 


Concerning satori, for instance, would you say that it has no address (it is not a perspective), but it nevertheless depends on an injunction to be realized?  If so, what this suggests is that a particular practice is capable of disclosing a perspective-free, same-for-everyone reality, which is essentially a metaphysical (extra-AQAL) 'given.' 


But even if we grant that people at any stage can have the same perspective-free perception if they perform the right injunction, if we then also say that they are likely to interpret that perspective-free perception differently, based on their own stage of development (among other things), one question that arises is, how are we to differentiate between the experience-itself and the interpretation?  If someone performs the injunction, and *something happens*, and then they come out of it with a different understanding or interpretation of its import than you or Wilber or Ramana does, how will you be able to determine whether they've had the same (non)experience?  Is there any way to do so beyond comparing interpretations?
 
 
David:  If anyone says, “But no, look! He says nonduality exists independent of anything, is the very paper the map is printed on. That's metaphysical!” they are simply missing the finer points of Madhyamika philosophy (reifying) and evidently don't have any real “experience” with nonduality, which is not an experience of higher understandings, concepts, or discriminations.

 
Or maybe Wilber is reifying and missing the finer points of Madhyamika philosophy when he says such things.  (He didn't do too well with the Madhyamaka question last night, for instance – but he was feeling quite tired, so that might be why.)

 
David:  Finally, once again, it's quite clear if you read Integral Spirituality, particularly the appendix again, that every word in it has a kosmic address and often has an injunction as well. The entire thing is an enactment, from a Violet perspective, which is the largest reason people have difficulty grasping it fully and want to knock off little pieces of it, because some pieces simply do not exist in Orange, in Green, in Teal, in Turquoise.

 
This is an appropriate statement for a thread originally about Adi Da.  The suggestion is that Wilber is speaking from the highest-known, most evolutionarily advanced perspective ever to emerge in 14 billion years, and therefore any questioning of his pronouncements is de facto evidence of the critic's evolutionary inadequacies.  Where have I heard that before?

 
I am not denying development, or resenting the idea that anyone could possibly be more developed than me.  I know quite a few people whom I regard as smarter and more developed than me.  But the claim that Wilber's model is a Violet enactment is not something that should be taken on faith.  It is something that should be open to confirmation and verification – and until clear means of doing so are available (at the recent Integral Theory conference I attended, a number of the developmentalists on the discussion panels there said there was not), I question whether it is wise or advisable to make such pronouncements in public debate.  It amounts to little more than a cultish power grab.

 
David:  When we see the (!) injunction language it means that if we want to find out whether, for example, people are just making it up or imagining it when they speak of kundalini energy rising up their spine and filling their head and heart with causal bliss, we can go to Myanmar for a few months and spend some time with the Buddhists there, do what they say, and find out for ourselves.

 
Some of us have done this.  But experiences don't simply deliver their own interpretations.  I personally have found Buddhist contemplative practices to be quite powerful and effective.  I have just grown a little more cautious regarding some of the interpretations of their 'results' and their 'import.'

 
David:  It's from these constuct- and ego-aware perspectives that Wilber writes from, and people object because 1) Wilber is not promoting their particular value sphere, religion type, and favored zone, and 2) what he is suggesting at the end of the day is very demanding on the ego—people sense that, that they will have to change, and they will “die,” and they say, “No! I don't want to change. I don't want to die. All those injunctions seem very hard, and I hate it that he says there are people higher than me on the spiral. I will instead have a bong hit, make a cynical comment, and read some Derrida.”

 
Are any people like this actually participating in this discussion, in your opinion, or are these just random caricatures of Green folks?  Just checking.  :-)

 
Best wishes,

 
B.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David, I think you need to read Wilber a little more carefully in areas relevant to this discussion.  I'll give a few quotes from Wilber which suggest his Emptiness is a metaphysical given, is ex-AQAL:
In IS, he says:

Hindus, Buddhists and Christians follow the same general stages (gross to subtle to causal), but one of them experiences these stages as “absolute Self,” one as “no-self,” and one as “Godhead,” depending on the different texts, culture, and interpretations given the experiences.  In other words, depending on the Framework, the View.Those individuals who assume otherwise are simply assuming a pre-modernist epistemology, that there is a single pregiven reality that I can know, and that meditation will show me this independently existing reality, which therefore must be the same for everybody who discovers it; instead of realizing that the subject of knowing co-creates the reality it knows, and that therefore some aspects of reality will literally be created by the subject and the interpretation it gives to that reality.* (111-12)

Emptiness itself is not created or co-created, but Form is, and Emptiness is co-emergent with Form, therefore Nondual realization is in part interpretive. (112)

Let me make a simple clarification here, just once but with emphasis: when I say that a person will interpret a particular state or experience “according to the stage they are at,” the more fleshed-out version is “according to the entire AQAL matrix” operative at that time.  As always, interpretation is an AQAL affair. (94)

… ever-present Nondual awareness, which is not so much a state as the ever-present ground of all states (and can be “experienced” as such). (74)

When you correctly follow those injunctions, you will have a series of phenomenological experiences.  Whether those phenomenological experiences … have actual ontological referents … is, needless to say, an interesting question (which we will return to below …). (73)

[A] clear majority of those who complete this experiment report that the signifier Ayin or Emptiness has a real referent as disclosed by injunctive paradigm.  That is, those who are qualified to make the judgment agree that it can be said that, among other things, Spirit is a vast infinite Abyss or Emptiness, out of which all things arise. (269)

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Here are a few more quotes that IMO show Wilber's metaphysics.  Notice the objectified, nominalized “realm” language, among other things:

I am not denying pure Emptiness or unqualifiable Consciousness as such, but that is something that belongs only to the purely unmanifest, whereas the world of manifestation is the world of perspectives, hence of semiotics.  In other words, “the philosophy of consciousness” is a critique not of absolute-unqualifiable consciousness or shunyata or nirguna, but, in the manifest realm, a critique of the UL divorced from the LL.  If you think of a diagram of the 4 quadrants, the nondual or ultimate reality is the paper on which the diagram is written … (288)

Another way to put it is that there is Absolute Subjectivity (Brahman-atman), which is actually Nonduality or pure perception (which is also unqualifiable shunyata and formless, unmanifest nirvana), and then there is the manifest realm of relative subject and object (which is a realm not of pure perception but perspectives).  In the manifest realm, the relative subject is actually embedded in chains of intersubjectivity (as is the object enmeshed in interobjectivity)—and failing to see this is referred to as the myth of the given …

So where the West tends to deny Absolute Subjectivity of Consciousness as Such—or, more accurately, pure Emptiness (the paper on which the 4 quadrants are drawn)—the East is caught in the myth of the given and the philosophy of the subject.  The East gets the Absolute right, but the manifest realm it badly mangles.  As we have said throughout the text, the Nondual might indeed be the union of Emptiness and Form, but he world of Form is AQAL, and failing to see this is to fail to have an adequate Framework or View.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Tom :  Hey e, what do you think of that phrase “real referent”?

I know buddy. I have brought up very similar criticisms on the old group and here. From the perspective he is taking I understand why he says it. He is talking from and to the relative side of the street. Again his main impetus going way back was to legitimize spiritual practice. So he has to say this to keep his intended audience interested. If he said you are going to work your ass off for 5-10 years and you won’t get anything for it, would you? But please check out the last chapter in Eye of Spirit. I can forgive him all this because of this one chapter alone! :-) So given what he has tried to accomplish, validating spiritual practice and unifying conventional understandings, I think he has done a great job!! So he has a few metaphysical place holders for various reasons. If you try and unify all relative understandings with their corresponding (meta)physical beliefs, you would have to have one metaphysical belief to tether those understandings. Kinda like God relativized all previous gods. Now maybe you and I have seen thru that metaphysic but in the grand scheme of what he is trying to accomplish I can allow it with a wink and play along like it is true…at least some of the time. ;-) 
 
PS I have heard him say that he feels 80% of SES is still valid given today’s understanding. I thought that was a pretty cool admonition for someone enamored with their own IQ.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: Try and understand that it is not a given, it is a sign with no dualistic referent.

You are just misunderstanding the word “given.” When Wilber is saying that nonduality is a given, he is saying, just as you are, that “it is a sign with no dualistic referent.”


e: See, all referents are dualistic!


Please read more carefully. What did I say in my last post?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: Try and understand that it is not a given, it is a sign with no dualistic referent.


David: You are just misunderstanding the word “given.” When Wilber is saying that nonduality is a given, he is saying, just as you are, that “it is a sign with no dualistic referent.”  
 
I am not talking to Wilber I am talking to you. Are you telling me you understood it this way from the beginning of this thread?  

My point was, aside from our conceptual understandings of nonduality, there is a difference between a person who has realized the Svabhavikakaya and one who hasn't.  

Yes from the standpoint of duality there is a difference.  

That's why one person sits at the head of the zendo on a raised platform, and the others sit on their cushions. One pontificates; the rest ask questions politely and respectfully, though in a postmodern and post-postmodern context we would see some flexibility in that relationship.  

This is simply a given human condition. There is no one on the dais but the dharma! You keep wanting to ontologize the dharma and elevate the person to some high status. This should not be done. Why? You get a legion of priestly intermediaries between you and God, between you and the truth. It becomes another large hurdle to overcome. And again going back to referents, how can non-duality be contained within a person. It verges on the ridiculous! So yes there may be relative conventional differences, the person is more chill or smiles a lot…whatever… but do you want to bottle their exhale and sell it on ebay as non-dual air freshener?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

“…the person is more chill or smiles a lot…whatever… but do you want to bottle their exhale and sell it on ebay as non-dual air freshener?”

LOL

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Tom: The problem is Ken has his own Absolute Truth which in terms he describes is not referable to AQAL.


As I said in my post to Dawid (it ended up being to everyone in parts) every single word in Integral Spirituality has a kosmic address. In addition, there are injunctions to take if you want more than a conceptual understanding. Every interpretation has a kosmic address, including “nonduality is the one perception that is not a perspective.”



Bruce: He reiterated the sharp distinction between emptiness as formless and without qualities, and form as the world of qualities and distinctions.


He is integrating different perspectives. Quite often he discusses the non distinction between emptiness and form as well as the distinction. In Buddhism they call the non distinction Svabhavikakaya, among other things, and the latter, the formless, the Dharmakaya.

Because it's been demonstrated that people can meditate their way into the formless or Dharmakaya (cross culturally, the Vietnamese monk who burned himself to death, for example) we can speak of a formless that is distinct from form. In meditation one, phenomenologically, loses the body, the world of form—and a few of these people have burned themselves to death without flinching, indicating that it is more than simply a subjective illusion.

It's a paradox: there is emptiness and there is form, and they are not one thing, nor two things. It's instructive to speak of it in both ways. There are benefits of realizing or experiencing the formless, and benefits to realizing the non distinction between the two.



Bruce: So, here again, Emptiness did seem to show up in strong, nominalized form – a definite timeless Ultimate “thing” or dimension that science had not yet recognized.


Often he goes to great pains to say that emptiness is not a “thing,” but we can't speak of it in any other way, right? All language is dualistic, so any time anyone speaks about nonduality (even as “Emptiness”) it will at least imply that it is some kind of separate entity.

This is a “thing” or dimension that science has not yet recognized because most scientists have not taken the proper injunction to bring forth that data. It's not a thing but rather the non thing they tend not to have experience with. How do you have experience with a non thing? That's a metaphor for something that can't really be put into words. To really understand it one has to practice formless and nondual “meditation” (speaking broadly).

I've quoted him many times saying that emptiness (either causal or nondual) is not a “thing,” but I will give another:

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

One of the main points about states is that they are right in our experience right now: saying there are different states is just a way to organize things and make sense of them, but we can find “distinct” states, nonetheless; the wisdom traditions have been really good at that.

So is the causal simply existing somewhere without discrimination? Well, it's one's awareness before discrimination—the same awareness that is reading these letters right now. Do you realize how you will become aware of phenomena before you label it? That's causal awareness, that awareness that is there right now and no other before we begin interpreting.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: I am not talking to Wilber I am talking to you. Are you telling me you understood it this way from the beginning of this thread? 


Absolutely. It was just a miscommunication if you didn't think so. I had written on it before, but maybe it wasn't with you and you weren't reading, so I thought we understood each other a little better. In the past I had used phrases like “referentless referent.”


e: You keep wanting to ontologize the dharma and elevate the person to some high status. This should not be done. Why? You get a legion of priestly intermediaries between you and God, between you and the truth.


You have a point there, for sure. But in the beginning at least people do need priests and gurus, right? At least they will tend to save time. Even a lot of time.

With regard to the referent, all I mean is that something particular has happened to the person who had the satori, something that wasn't happening to others or most others at the time. The person came to know that nonduality is not simply something someone imagined but is something that is quite true. The experience of others was also nondual at the time, but they didn't know it. The difference is in the knowing. So I'm not saying that nonduality has a referent like apple or orange but rather that satori is a singular kind of event (the person actually wakes up to nonduality, at least for a moment).

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

“The difference is in the knowing.”

Hi, David. Just out of curiosity. Do you agree with me when I say that between a person in non-dual awareness and a person in dual awareness there is one difference:

“Stage 3 (enlightened wisdom) - the discrimination which discriminates that there is nothing to discriminate.”

Apart from this discrimination/knowing, there is no difference whatsoever. The zen master sits on a raised platform because s/he knows that there is nothing to know, hence there is no suffering and no delusion. Everyone else believes there is something to know, hence there is suffering and delusion - so they get to sit on the floor! 

Now e may say that not even is this discrimination part of a person's experience of non-duality. But that is, I think, a pre-Green error subscribing to the myth of the given.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Dude…really!?! I have said on many an occasion that emptiness, suchness, non-duality, etc. does not have a referent and now you say I am saying this is the myth of the given!! More like the non-myth of the not-given. :-) You still want to assert differences where none exist but in your mind. There are no persons with discriminatory awarenesses in non-duality!! If I ate a Zen master and a person sitting on the floor, they would both taste the same to me!! LOL

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Bruce: Concerning satori, for instance, would you say that it has no address (it is not a perspective), but it nevertheless depends on an injunction to be realized?  If so, what this suggests is that a particular practice is capable of disclosing a perspective-free, same-for-everyone reality, which is essentially a metaphysical (extra-AQAL) 'given.'


You have posited an a priori metaphysical given here yourself: that there simply couldn't be a perspective-free, same-for-everyone reality. You are saying: “there could be no perspective-free, same-for-everyone reality”—this is the performative contradiction I have been speaking of: you drop Wilber's absolute (based on centuries of phenomenological research by Buddhists, Hindus, etc.) and insert your own true-for-everyone absolute. You base this on postmodern and/or modern studies, which come from different zones, different methodologies.

Do you see how you are criticizing Wilber for positing an absolute while doing the exact same thing yourself in the same moment?

Your analysis also seems to assume a single pre-given world that different zones have different views on when these different zones open up not views on the same world but different worlds. If we want to examine the truth claims of one zone, we have to take their injunction; the injunctions of other zones, which open up different worlds, won't be good enough.

So, if we wanted, we could take the meditative injunctions to their conclusion and then decide which true-for-everyone absolute makes more sense, the nondual one as brought forth by the zone-#1 injunctions or the performative contradiction of postmodernism. And if more people with integral sensibilities would do that we would probably get some interesting interpretations, but I think it's premature to do that without taking the injunctions fully first.

Finally, I don't think the “extra AQAL” phrase works—AQAL includes all levels, all lines, all states, all types, all quadrants, self. So it's not “extra AQAL” because AQAL includes it. So I think people should be more specific about what they mean. For example, they might mean that there isn't anything that's not an evolutionary emergent (except for that statement, of course), or they might mean that the UR is really the Base, the Ground of Being. But saying that nonduality is the paper that the map is printed on is part of the map, part of AQAL.


Bruce: If someone performs the injunction, and *something happens*, and then they come out of it with a different understanding or interpretation of its import than you or Wilber or Ramana does, how will you be able to determine whether they've had the same (non)experience?  Is there any way to do so beyond comparing interpretations?


I think it would be up to adepts to determine whether they have had the same experience or not. A lot of people do come in with experiences of the subtle in the waking state, experiences of the causal in the waking state, experiences of the nondual in the waking state and claim they have experienced enlightenment or perhaps are enlightened, but it would take an expert or a group of experts to determine whether a person actually knew of the same territory. I think a group of qualified human beings is capable of ascertaining this. There would also be ways of simultracking the experience, seeing if there are Delta waves, which indicate constant “witnessing,” for example.


Bruce: Or maybe Wilber is reifying and missing the finer points of Madhyamika philosophy when he says such things.


I've quoted his writing on Madhyamika several times. Where is he reifying?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David: I don't think the “extra AQAL” phrase works … saying that nonduality is the paper that the map is printed on is part of the map, part of AQAL.


David, did you read my Wilber extracts above?  The entire absolute “realm”—the Nondual Absolute, Emptiness, all states, experience—the entirety is extra AQAL so far as I read those quotes.  Extra-AQAL means, among other things: this (experience of Emptiness, Nonduality, etc.) is not a perspective, it has no kosmic address, it is outside evolution, etc.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David,

I understand your point, but I don't think I'm committing a performative contradiction.  I am not saying there there is absolutely no same-for-everyone reality, since I don't think I could know that.  Rather, I am making a more targeted argument:  Wilber says he is trying to put forward a post-metaphysical model or approach to spirituality, a project which I support, and yet he is also making arguments which still appear to be metaphysical – a move which I believe undermines the rest of his project.  I am saying he's not being consistent, not consistently applying postmetaphysical principles to his model, but is instead doing exactly what postmetaphysical thinkers have critiqued about other traditional religious approaches:  preserving a pre-given, perspective-free, timeless, non-evolutionary anchor right at the heart of the model.

I am not saying that Buddhist or Hindu 'injunctions' do not 'work'.  I think it is possible through them to have both 'causal' and 'nondual' experiences or realizations (I've experienced both through practice).  But I am questioning how such Zone 1 insights are applied:  Do they really tell us anything about the 'absolute nature of reality', such that we can say we have direct, unmediated, perspective-free access to reality-in-itself?  For my part, I can say from experience that in the causal state thought does not move; I can say from experience that in the midst of the causal state, it is possible to witness the 'senses' come back online, one by one, until eventually a body-in-a-room is constituted out of what appeared to be open space.  But experiences such as this don't come prepackaged with ready-made interpretations.  To say that experiences of causal awareness, for instance, put me “directly” in touch with the Eternal Empty Pre-Big Bang Ground of Being, Reality As It Really Is Beyond All Interpretation (as Wilber does), is most definitely an interpretive move. It's not something I “automatically know” by following the injunction; it's an interpretation of a phenomenological experience, and from my perspective now, it appears to be a metaphysical one.

There's more I want to address, but I'll save that for a post tomorrow.

Best wishes,

B.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Tom: I'll give a few quotes from Wilber which suggest his Emptiness is a metaphysical given, is ex-AQAL.


It's not “ex-AQAL” as I've said to Bruce. AQAL includes nonduality. I am simply saying if you mean it is not evolutionary or not a developmental stage or whatever, say that, because AQAL includes the perception that isn't a perspective (as it includes all states) and gives it a kosmic address, as well as an injunction, which you will see below.

It's a given (meaning only that it's something to human beings have access to or already are at birth), but it's not metaphysical because it follows the three strands of science and is based on an awful lot of phenomenological research.

You say that there is no Absolute, that such an idea is “metaphysical,” but what you don't seem to understand is that you've just created an absolute there yourself (“there could be no absolute”), and what makes this even worse (in addition to the performative contradiction) is that it isn't based on the three strands of science—it's simply the a priori metaphysical given of the pluralist worldview.

Is there a perception that isn't a perspective? One way to find out: take the injunction and compare your data with others who have taken the injunction. Is it universal? All evidence suggests that it is: the same experience crops up cross culturally, in all the wisdom traditions (more in some than others concerning this particular claim), and it's also occurred in children, in people who haven't taken the injunction: this suggests it isn't a developmental stage like the spiral dynamics stage.

As a way to move things forward I have suggested breaking the question into two categories: 1) Is it “something” that is available to/the “nature” of all human beings today? 2) Is it really timeless, absolute?

We know that it's phenomenologically nondual, which implies timelessness, and that that's been demonstrated cross culturally—if we could agree to that I think it would be a step forward. The idea that there could be no universal for all human beings is, again, the performative contradiction of relativists and dismisses centuries of phenomenological research with an absolute of its own that rose out of another zone, another methodology.

I believe I did end up answering your question about interpretation and experience, even though in the beginning of my response I said I wouldn't be able to do it at the time. First of all, it cannot be done perfectly, but that is no reason not to make the distinction or explore the distinction (for the same reason it makes sense to divide things up into four quadrants as heuristic device).

However, as I said, we can do cross-cultural, cross-gender, cross-type, cross-level, cross-line studies and see if we can find universals. For example, we could ask the question, is there anything universal about the experience of getting burned by fire for human beings? And we study it by asking people in all these different cultures and groups. If they all agree that getting burned by fire hurts, we have something about the experience that is at least global (“universal” for human beings, planet earth) and not interpretative. Whether it is truly “universal” will depend on what those space aliens have to say about it when we meet them and compare notes.



Tom: So, David, “absolutely everything” has a kosmic address?  Wrong.  Absolutely-everything has no kosmic address.


If we say, “Nonduality is the one perception that isn't a perspective,” that statement is interpretation and has a kosmic address. If we want to find out whether it's true or not, we have to take the injunction, and I did say that some of the interpretations came with injunctions. This is the kosmic address of nonduality: (1-p, S/nd). So you will notice that it does land within AQAL, and of course it does come with an injunction to bring forth the data. He writes:

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David, I think you've misunderstood me.  I don't think “electrons” exist as discrete thing-like particles with defined boundaries of XYZ extension, etc.  Do I think electrons exist otherwise?  Yes.

I don't think “the Absolute” exists as a discrete thing-like “realm.”  I do think some absoluting movement in mind, having a meaningful experiential correlate, exists, but probably only for people at a certain level of development (post-formal operations and above) and not before, and maybe not after, or not at least on terms now comfortable to me given the nature of change.  Do I think the word relative has any meaning apart from absolute?  No.  Can I personally separate absolute and relative into “realms”?  No, that sounds and feels split to me.

By “absoluting movement,” I mean something like a way of viewing-without-comparison, the highest reach of which, in my own private experience, is a dead-still feeling and perception of suchness in which experience no differences appear, exist or manifest.  I contrast what I call absoluting with “relating,” which to me is absoluting's natural pole absent which absoluting has no meaning.  Relating, to me, is a movement-based, comparison-based, discerning, judging, measuring mode.

Note this assertion: one cannot relate unless one simultaneously absolutes.  The relateds are the absoluted perceiveds so there is no separation between these two: absolute and relative co-emerge.  This is not to say one cannot slide back and forth between emphasizing more one pole over the other.  In fact, I would define spiritual maturity as a balance between these two and an ability to choose one over the other at a given time.  I don't doubt that the absolute mode is an important cornerstone of higher spiritual experience, but I don't call this mode a “realm” that has no AQAL address, in part because I don't more than notionally and, if at all, only for certain functional experiential purposes separate relative and absolute.

And for the record, AQAL IMO does not include Nonduality.  I think the Wilber quotes above are fairly clear on that account.  Note that I'm not saying Wilber is really clear on any of these matters or free of contradiction.  What I read in the above-reproduced extracts corresponds to the basic split I feel many places elsewhere in his writing, and is metaphysical IMO.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David: This is the kosmic address of nonduality: (1-p, S/nd). So you will notice that it does land within AQAL …


That's not an AQAL address, David.  It's a state address.  As a state address, it indicates a “pure perception” existing in the absolute realm, and not a perspective.  Let me again reproduce Wilber on this point.  The extracts are pretty clear IMO:

Another way to put it is that there is Absolute Subjectivity (Brahman-atman), which is actually Nonduality or pure perception (which is also unqualifiableshunyata and formless, unmanifest nirvana), and then there is the manifest realm of relative subject and object (which is a realm not of pure perception but perspectives) …

As we have said throughout the text, the Nondual might indeed be the union of Emptiness and Form, but he world of Form is AQAL, and failing to see this is to fail to have an adequate Framework or View.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Tom, I'm just asking you to be more precise in terms. AQAL means all levels, all lines, all states … Nonduality is  explicitly in the map. And he's explicitly given it a kosmic address (1-p, S/nd).

And yes of course: nonduality is also held to transcend the map and the dualistic world (we know what he means by the context in the above quote). So I'm just saying if you object to the claim that nonduality really transcends duality or the world of form or time and is just some subjective illusion, say so, because it's a more precise way of phrasing your view.

I don't think that nonduality as “a perception that is not a perspective” is metaphysical because it is based on centuries of phenomenological research in several different cultures. You think that it is without taking their injunction, which is why I consider your view to be the metaphysical one.

You want to make judgments about it without following the three strands of science, and that's as bad as some non physicist making judgments about claims within the world of physics.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David: AQAL means all levels, all lines, all states … 

Wilber's being inconsistent there.  I take him on what I hear as his stronger word that Nonduality, per the quote above, is, with its cousin Emptiness, not of the manifest world.  It's of the Unmanifest Formless Object world.  AQAL applies only to the manifest world.

Another way of putting it is that Emptiness doesn't evolve.  Only AQAL designatables evolve.

(1-p, S/nd) is not a kosmic address.  It's a state address.  The two are very different.  Kosmic addresses are underlain by, and are abstracted from, evolutionary process; state addresses refer to ever-present givens (these are Wilber's words).

For the record, I don't not believe in interior sciences.  I graduated past that disbelief at age 8.

David: I don't think that nonduality as “a perception that is not a perspective” is metaphysical because it is based on centuries of phenomenological research in several different cultures …


So are reincarnation and bardos based on ….

David: So I'm just saying if you object to the claim that nonduality really transcends duality or the world of form or time and is just some subjective illusion, say so, because it's a more precise way of phrasing your view.


Hey, light transcends time.  That's pretty objective in my definition of that term.  My view is given a few posts up: formless timeless suchness (Wilber uses those words too).  But my formless timeless suchness is not but without form time and comparison.  These co-emerge IME (1-p, 46 years old, Canadian, post-grade 12 education, quirky) <— injunction and address rolled into one.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Is: Do you agree with me when I say that between a person in non-dual awareness and a person in dual awareness there is one difference:

“Stage 3 (enlightened wisdom) - the discrimination which discriminates that there is nothing to discriminate.”


Hi, Dawid. You're talking about along one level on the Wilber-Combs Lattice, right? Say, the difference between (L/8, s/g) and (L/8, s/nd)? The reason I say that it is because we can also realize nonduality as a stage as the spiral is now conceived, and that will also include more perspectives, refined motivation, affect, etc. Nonduality realized as a plateau experience is a slide to the right side of the lattice.

I think we can see it that way, that it's a valid way of looking at it, but I see a couple of things about it that could be misleading. For example, “enlightened wisdom—the discrimination which … ” Discrimination is a pretty dualistic sounding word. It implies the act of thinking. Usually they use words like “recognition,” which doesn't involve thinking so much but some kind of realization or perception or understanding.

The state-stages leading to nonduality (the horizontal trip on the lattice) involve more stillness, quiet, not knowing, so it's more like discrimination as we usually think of it falls away. There may still be some small effort to maintain the posture or attention or something, the discrimination not to grasp or seek or contract—is that what you mean? The discrimination that nothing needs to be done, or understanding that nothing needs to be added? Or is this in line with Madhyamika seeing that nothing inherently exists only nothing to discriminate?

It's interesting to look at the state-stages described in the charts in the back of Integral Psychology. Often these state-stages are described metaphorically with light and such. The phenomenological signs of appearance of the highest state-stages of Highest Yoga Tantra go: clear autumn moonlight, clear autumn sunlight, thick blackness of autumn night, clear autumn, dawn.

There could be other differences between the students and the zen master: the students may not be able to hold their attention for long enough; some people say you need to be able to fix our mind on something for at least five minutes or longer maybe. Some people also think that ethics have a lot to do with whether deeper states will hang around.

We might say the difference between the Zen master and students is what they are identifying with: the students think they are the body, the mind, this finite being, and the Zen master no longer believes in that, has seen through that illusion. So we could say, assuming they are all at the same structure, the difference is that the Zen master no longer has that mistaken identity about him- or herself.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David, let me give you another angle on my perspective of things absolute, which relates to my shunning dualist dividing.  I've never been fond of the so-called spirit-material divide, because those two aspects have long seemed to me but expressions of aspects of what is.  If matter at some stage of complexification shows signs of mentality, then that tells me mentality is something of a law or quality of matter.  I put matter first in this description only because it appears first in historical sequence, or at least appears to so far as current instruments and understandings convey.  But in any case, my view is decidedly un-divided: if mind emerges from matter, a common statement you hear, matter is defined at least in part as that which “minds.”

Here's a quote from Peirce that expresses this:

To be idealists we must be materialists without flinching.

When minds themselves are show to be purely physical, then the physical itself is shown to be purely psychical.  Materialism, if sufficiently radical, will lead us to a new type of idealism in which matter is not denied but transfigured.  For we must remember that there is a mighty energy that creates the expanding hypersphere of our four-dimensional universe.  As the systems of energy that pervade our brains are our very souls, so, too, that cosmic energy may be in itself a soul, akin to our own, and in touch with our own.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

“So we could say, assuming they are all at the same structure, the difference is that the Zen master no longer has that mistaken identity about him- or herself.”

Right, the students think that the thought “I am the body” is a correct thought that has to be known. Or alternatively they think that the thought “I am not the body” is a correct thought that has to become fully known. The zm, if I understand zen and the middle way correctly, has no fantasies about such knowledge. There's just what's happening, and no control over it.

“You're talking about along one level on the Wilber-Combs Lattice, right?”

I think that this discrimination holds true at every level from like Amber and up. I doubt Red and below can have a stable non-dual experience. Whatever spiritual experience happen for them will more be caused by some pathological reaction (injury or psychoactive substance), in which case they will not discriminate in any of my three Levels, but more or less just die into it, meaning, that when ignorance returns (and it will), they will have no idea what happened, and no way to remove ignorance again.

”Discrimination is a pretty dualistic sounding word. It implies the act of thinking.”

Umh, yeah…?

“Usually they use words like “recognition,” which doesn't involve thinking so much but some kind of realization or perception or understanding.”

Ah, a direct, pure and stainless perception existing independent of any kind of memory/discrimination/cultural influence/thought/knowing - a Perception just delivering Eternal Truths to you on a silver platter.

Good luck with that at the Green border station, lad! The way I try to get through the that border station without dumping precious luggage (like complete spiritual liberation) is to posit the three (an arbitrary number) levels of discrimination. By this, I think I'll have a safe passage through.

Oh yeah, you were by the way already stopped by Tom at the Orange border station:

Tom: “So are reincarnation and bardos based on ….”
 
“Or is this in line with Madhyamika seeing that nothing inherently exists only nothing to discriminate?”
 
That's where all Madhyamika logic and reasoning is ultimately going: that level 3 discrimination. But before level 3 (buddha), and in order to make level 3 stable and firm in one's mental continuum, you need to go through level 1 (inferior) and 2 (superior) as well. Otherwise a non-dual experience will be no different than the confused Red non-dual experience I describe above, i.e., not based on insight.
 
“There could be other differences between the students and the zen master: the students may not be able to hold their attention for long enough; some people say you need to be able to fix our mind on something for at least five minutes or longer maybe.”
 
Yes, without concentration, it will be extremely hard to induce ascertainment regarding the 3 discriminations (the three wisdoms).

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Dawid: ”That's where all Madhyamika logic and reasoning is ultimately going: that level 3 discrimination.”
 
In my opinion, that's indeed where all religions and spiritual traditions will ultimately meet up and unify. All religion and spirituality is a path or a pointer to level 3 discrimination, which is the highest form of knowledge. (The path will be more or less accurate at pointing to that discrimination, so it does matter which path we choose.)
 
This is the gateless gate to Heaven - the knowledge that there is nothing to know.
 
“Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.”
- Jesus, Luke 18:17

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Tom: Another way of putting it is that Emptiness doesn't evolve.  Only AQAL designatables evolve.


Emptiness doesn't evolve. It's not a thing, and only things evolve. Show me the evidence that it does evolve. You've said that the shift during the axial period to the nondual traditions is evidence of the state evolving—I think that's quite a stretch. So it evolved once then, and it's stayed the same ever since?



David: I don't think that nonduality as “a perception that is not a perspective” is metaphysical because it is based on centuries of phenomenological research in several different cultures …


Tom: So are reincarnation and bardos based on ….


You win the straw-man argument of the day award for this one—when have I ever claimed that they existed? I have said they could exist, which is the scientific view since there is no evidence that they don't exist. Only idealogues and metaphysicians would rule out something that hasn't been proven wrong.



Tom: That theory, to my sensitivity, posits a hardish line between unmanifest/absolute/formless/infinite/etc and manifest/relative/form/finite/etc.  He calls these respective territories “realms,” among other things, as if they are truly distinct, and he clearly IMO favours one pole over the other.  Only an assumed separability can in my perspective ground such preference.


It's because he, Eckhart Tolle, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, many Buddhists have had experience or realizations of the formless that they talk about the unmanifest. It feels to them as though that is where they are living; they are no longer living identified in the gross state. You need to understand, though: it is based on experience, years of taking the injunctions very seriously. If you realized constant consciousness through the sleep cycle you would start talking about manifest and unmanifest as well. It's because you black out every night for sleep that you don't.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David: If you realized constant consciousness through the sleep cycle you would start talking about manifest and unmanifest as well. It's because you black out every night for sleep that you don't.


I think somewhat the reverse on this, actually.  IMO, realization in the spiritual sense you mean, to the extent of its strength and depth, allows one the very freedom to explore any expression around that realization, to question if such expression can be moved one way or another beyond ancient or otherwise accepted forms, to view an expression critically without accepting face value understandings, and to resultingly, with enough effort and fidelity to the experience and the evolutionary thrust, produce a new expression fitting to the context in question (goes by the general name now).  Thus IMO the evolution I see in the move to causal (axial 600 BC), then into nondual (150 AD), is up for renewal in the very kinds of questioning performed in threads like these by people like Bruce, Dawid and me.  Given the conservatism of the holding pattern nature of anything at all, I'm not surprised this questioning meets resistance of various sorts.


Thus to your assertion that emptiness doesn't evolve: has your idea of emptiness ever changed, David?  Mine has, and that evolution makes me wonder: was any previous idea of emptiness not the Real Emptiness?  Having looked at this question, I personally don't think that notion of “real” is appropriate, but represents a thinging mindset that is now wanting new expression.  Will my notion of emptiness ever change again?  I expect it will.  Do I take any current expression of anything to be the absolute final word forever ever?  No, but something in me l-o-v-e-s permanence—look, even Ramana fell for it.  It's one of the most seductive and subtle temptations of mind I've experienced.  But it goes against the grain of movement, growth and evolution, so I watch it like a hawk wherever it may rear its head in any interpretation or otherwise whatever.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David to Tom:  Emptiness doesn't evolve. It's not a thing, and only things evolve. Show me the evidence that it does evolve. You've said that the shift during the axial period to the nondual traditions is evidence of the state evolving—I think that's quite a stretch. So it evolved once then, and it's stayed the same ever since?

If I may interject:  It seems that David here is talking about the state-in-itself evolving, while Tom is talking about an understanding or an understanding-experience that evolves.  David is talking about emptiness as a cosmological constant, while Tom is talking about emptiness as a human experience.  David sees the state itself as timelessly given, always already the case, and is arguing that it is absurd to say that the State Itself evolves.  Tom is saying we can't separate out the 'state' from our 'situated' experience of it, from our historical-developmental understanding of it, and that historical-developmental understanding changes over time, both individually and culturally, historically. 

Is this a fair representation of the perspectives working at cross-purposes, or flying past each other, here?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Hi Bruce, I think your wording states my perspective, particularly: “we can't separate out the 'state' from our 'situated' experience of it.”  State and situatedness to me are one, with perhaps a further small remark about the generality of individual situatedness: emptiness, whatever its meaning to a given person, probably defines something of a stage of growth in a somewhat generalized sense, a cloud of probability, if you will, with fuzzy edges, relevant to humans at a certain stage of development.  This view gives some explanation why one finds people talking about an experience using the word emptiness or an equivalent descriptor.  Also, the notion of “stage” implies that the meaning given the emptiness descriptor—the meaning for the experiencing person—draws from that which preceded it, and on and on back in a holonic evolutionary unfolding.  Thus from this angle also can I not separate out emptiness as a thing without context, as something not meaningfully contextual.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

Bruce: Preserving a pre-given, perspective-free, timeless, non-evolutionary anchor right at the heart of the model.


A couple of things right off the bat—nonduality is a not a thing. It has sounded as though you have been projecting a reification onto Wilber from the beginning.

And once again there is the performative contradiction of pluralism here: that there could be no timeless given—except for that one, their a priori metaphysical assertion that there could be no perception that isn't a perspective.

This is really about the “I,” or the “ego 'I' ” we might as well call it since it's in the Adi Da thread. The postmodernists and modernists did not study this zone-#1 “I.” This is why you are making a methodological error in saying that they, with their intersubjective studies, their linguistic studies, their right-hand empiricism can debunk the wisdom tradition's zone-#1 claims.

The modernists and postmodernists assumed that the “I” was who they are, that it is REAL, that it is REALITY, and this is what the wisdom traditions criticized about them. They did not investigate it to see whether it were really true that they were the ego-“I”—they simply assumed it was the case.

The wisdom traditions did not assume it. They investigated and found out it wasn't true that they were the ego-“I,” that if you investigate deeply enough that your very “self” or non self is nonduality. You are positing a pre-given world when you say that the modernists and postmodernists studied the same world as the wisdom traditions and can therefore debunk it with their materialist or relativistic dogma, but the wisdom traditions were bringing forth a different world. Until we get that point we won't get Integral Methodological Pluralism.

They were opening up different worlds. If you are convinced that you are the ego-“I” you might think that Wilber's nondual is some kind of metaphysical given. But if you have found out that you aren't, the modernist and postmodernists who criticize the wisdom traditions start to look very naive and unaware.


Bruce: Do they really tell us anything about the 'absolute nature of reality', such that we can say we have direct, unmediated, perspective-free access to reality-in-itself?


Only one way to find out and that's take the injunction and find out for ourselves. There is no other way. Then it is up to a group of adept meditators to hash this out. It will be interesting to see what sort of interpretations would come out of a group of serious integral meditators, but if we haven't taken the injunction we simply do not get to vote on it. It's like weighing in on a physics question without becoming an expert in physics.



Bruce: To say that experiences of causal awareness, for instance, put me “directly” in touch with the Eternal Empty Pre-Big Bang Ground of Being, Reality As It Really Is Beyond All Interpretation (as Wilber does), is most definitely an interpretive move.


Of course it is interpretive. Who said it wasn't? Not Wilber nor I. Nothing can be said about nonduality. We then have bridging metaphors, and we give each of those metaphors a kosmic address, including this one that you mentioned (3-p, L/9, s/nd—not a given, an interpretation enacted by a particular worldview).

So on two counts it's not metaphysical: 1) it's not his position on nonduality but a teaching metaphor, 2) it has a kosmic address, so it's only true from that enacted worldview.

We also have to look at the kosmic address of these “postmetaphycisists”–either (1-p, L/5, s/gross) or (1-p, L/6, s/gross). They were just assuming the ego-“I” was who they are, without investigating, in the throes of the self-contraction—of course they're not going to agree with meditative masters of the nondual traditions, some of whose kosmic address on the issue is more like: (1-p, L/10, s/nd). Why would we think that the former group has anything cogent to say about nonduality?

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David:  A couple of things right off the bat-—nonduality is a not a thing. It has sounded as though you have been projecting a reification onto Wilber from the beginning.

Like others here, I think Wilber has been inconsistent in his discussion and use of the terms, Emptiness and Nonduality.  In some places, he points out some of the subtleties of the Middle Way understanding of these terms; in others, he uses them in ways that don't line up with that subtle understanding.  In this case, I'm not looking so much at what he says – I have read the same books and can see where he provides a quote or a qualification here or there – but at what he does, how he uses these terms, what roles he assigns them in his system.  And this usage is what strikes me as problematic.  Saying “emptiness is not a thing” is not good enough if you then end up using it like one, turning it into a nominalized ultimate, a timeless, formless, pre-Big Bang state or realm, or equating it with world-creating God or Spirit.

I'm going to respond to the rest of your post in a new thread; this one is getting too long and unwieldy for my browser to handle.  It takes forever to load.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

David: ”Discrimination is a pretty dualistic sounding word. It implies the act of thinking.”

Dawid: Umh, yeah…?


Yeah!  :) The point I wanted to make is that some traditions conceive of the highest state-stages without making reference to thinking.

Daniel Brown, in Integral Psychology, p, 210, gives what he calls “cross-cultural stages of meditation”:

preliminary practices

concentration with support

transcending gross perception

subtle perception

luminosity

insight

cessation

advanced insight

enlightenment




Dawid: Ah, a direct, pure and stainless perception existing independent of any kind of memory/discrimination/cultural influence/thought/knowing - a Perception just delivering Eternal Truths to you on a silver platter.



For one thing, the Green intersubjectivists did not study zone-#1 phenomonology. See? They weren't meditators. They did things like mess around with signifieds and signifiers. That's in a different zone. Just because you're an expert in one zone doesn't mean you're an expert in all the zones. In other words, the Green intersubjectivists have something to say about the intersubjective but cannot debunk the zone-#1 truth claims of the wisdom traditions anymore than tulkus can debunk claims of physics.

That doesn't mean some of their insights can't be brought to bear on the situation. We can apply these Green insights and see, for example, that the causal is global since it has been found in all the wisdom traditions, but the interpretation that it has something to do with Jesus is not.

We can similarly strip away the specific cultural trappings around nonduality but still see that there is a nondual “experience” in each of these traditions, some more than others. See? Integral can apply these Green insights and come away with some idea of nonduality that transcends culture because it has been demonstrated in each tradition, but if we strip away nonduality as something that's available to all human beings as well then it is not integral but just Green.

It is not just one person that had an experience of nonduality and said it was truly nondual (which would necessarily mean free of perspectives because perspectives are dualistic). If that were the case you might be right in saying this person had simply fallen prey to the myth of the given. But In fact it is many people cross culturally who have had the same finding.

You are making the same mistake these others have made in thinking that the myth of the given invalidates the interior science of the wisdom traditions. You've taken away nondual as a universal (stripped of cultural baggage in integral, thus applying one of the gifts of Green) and inserted a metaphysical universal: that there simply couldn't be a perception that isn't a perspective. Do you see the contradiction there? How you've said that there couldn't be a perception free of perspective but at the very same time inserted one of your own?

At the end of the day, if we make claims about zone-#1 without following the three strands of science, without taking the injunction, we are simply engaging in metaphysics. Now, if you can gather a bunch of nondual realizers together who say that, “Yes, you're right! The postmodernists were right! It's not really nondual at all!” then you have a case. But making this claim without any evidence, without even taking the injunction yourselves, is metaphysics.

Re: Radical Understanding: The World-Blessing Work of Adi Da II

e: I am not talking to Wilber I am talking to you. Are you telling me you understood it this way from the beginning of this thread? 



David: Absolutely. It was just a miscommunication if you didn't think so. I had written on it before, but maybe it wasn't with you and you weren't reading, so I thought we understood each other a little better. In the past I had used phrases like “referentless referent.”

 
OK I am sorry, if you said those things in threads with Cohen or Da, I usually don’t read them or just skim them. 
–
 


e: You keep wanting to ontologize the dharma and elevate the person to some high status. This should not be done. Why? You get a legion of priestly intermediaries between you and God, between you and the truth.


You have a point there, for sure. But in the beginning at least people do need priests and gurus, right? At least they will tend to save time. Even a lot of time. In the old Canon Buddha used kalayanamitta which usually gets translated as spiritual or noble friend. He said you need noble friends. I like that a lot. This way your noble friends turn you onto the dharma which allows you to find out for yourself (take the injunction) and therefore we don’t get nor need intermediaries.

With regard to the referent, all I mean is that something particular has happened to the person who had the satori, something that wasn't happening to others or most others at the time. The person came to know that nonduality is not simply something someone imagined but is something that is quite true. The experience of others was also nondual at the time, but they didn't know it. The difference is in the knowing. So I'm not saying that nonduality has a referent like apple or orange but rather that satori is a singular kind of event (the person actually wakes up to nonduality, at least for a moment).  I understand. Thanks for the back and forth!