The Integral Church of AQAL?

In the early days of Integral Naked, noticing a number of developments in the Integral movement (many of which were issuing from I-I), I raised the following question, which I think might be interesting to reconsider here in light of the themes of this forum…

~*~

AQAL provides a way of looking at (and potentially invigorating) various traditions individually, and also of relating them to one another.  But with the emergence of preferred ILP practices (including new perspective-based exercises); specialized jargon; novel variations on traditional concepts; a hierarchy of teachers, initiates, and neophytes; a group of organizations dedicated to communicating the Integral vision to society; and so on, the transformation of Integral into a religion in its own right appears to be a distinct possibility.

What do you think of this?  Do you see signs of it?  What concerns and issues does it raise?  Is it necessarily a negative development, or might it also be positive?

Re: The Integral Church of AQAL?

Hi,

I think that AQAL is only a grid thrown upon the real, the reality. And in a grid, there are holes, blind places. AQAL cannot encompass all as the real is huger.

Sometimes I read books or articles using AQAL and I find that AQAL is very present in the formulation or the expression. Then what is said lacks sometimes of novelty and freshness (“déja vu”).

For me AQAL is only a method and one has to fill it cracking the very boundaries of AQAL.

If AQAL become a religion, then we should have only dry formulations and a kicking out of the wondering before reality.

But AQAL definitely helps as a methodology to set and understand the problems (for me as an introductory phase).

Best regards.

Serge

Re: The Integral Church of AQAL?

Hi, Serge,

In titling this thread, “The Integral Church of AQAL,” I mainly chose that wording for its “sound” or aesthetic appeal; it was a stylistic flourish, which I did not intend literally.  :-)

I fully agree with your assessment both of the strengths and limitations of the AQAL grid.

My question is concerned not so much with the AQAL model or map, but with the Integral movement as it is taking shape under Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute.  The question is rooted somewhat in a sense of concern for the direction this movement is taking, but also a sense of curiosity and interest.  I am a paying member of Integral Institute and a fan of Wilber's work, so I am not intending this especially as a criticism, but it does strike me as possible – given the various developments I mentioned, such as the specially designed practices, the institutions being created for disseminating the vision, and so on – that Integral is becoming like a religion in its own right, with its own praxis and teachers and community, rather than the philosophical model of religions and other human knowledge streams that it started out as.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: The Integral Church of AQAL?

Hi,

I think that Integral Thinking or Integral Movement should not lead to totalitarism, the sole way of thinking or behaving. Diversity is a good thing and we must not build Babel again.

In my understanding, Babel is a metaphor of the risk for humans to speak all the same langage. It illustrates the need that has humanity to speak, to include itself, to understand, to carry out great projects, as well as the risk to see failing these projects when everybody is only allowed to speak the only jargon (“specialized langage”, here integral) about its discipline.

But, in fact, it seems that we are still far from that : we belong and create tribes with our common interests. We can belong to several tribes and tribe members can communicate inside the tribe and outside the tribe ? The tribes may live together and cross-pollinate each others.

One of these tribes may be Integral but there are so far many other tribes we can relate to.

Regarding this, it is important to allow diversity and also search, set and build commonalities in the diverse cognitive frameworks of all human beings but not solely with Integral.

Best regards.

Serge

Re: The Integral Church of AQAL?

Hello Balder,

I think it's a wonderful question to ponder. I have been thinking recently about the distinction between the words 'Religion' & 'Spirituality'.

The word 'Religion' in todays culture (although in flux) typically conjures up either rigid social/physical structures or fixed beliefs/cultural groupings.

I think we could also look at the word perhaps closer to its' root meaning, 'to bind back', and see it more as a way to group together a set of practices/practice communities and to point to the physical/social structures where the practices are carried out.

I think there is no denying that in the second way of 'looking', a new religion is already forming…already taking shape.

It is also true that those who mainly relate to the first meaning above will tend to resist idea of a new 'integral religion' for 2 or more reasons.

1. It will be seen as 'in competition' with their current religion
or
2. All religions will be seen as anathema to healthy society

3….??? F U, gimme my goodies, (LOL)

I think these considerations are very important both to allow evolution & novel emergence of new forms
and
to deal with status quo resistance (and perhaps genuine immune response) against threats to the existing established order.

Another way Religion could be seen as more like an eternal Dharma/Way that constantly renews/emerges/manifests as the very evolution we see before us.

These are demanding and complex issues, yes?

Thanks for the Question,
Cheers,
Doug

Re: The Integral Church of AQAL?

Balder,

Just a couple of ideas:

As preface, I think “Integral Movement” is a misnomer. I suspect it would be impossible to prove “movement” in the traditional sociological sense of that word and difficult in the philosophic use of it. I believe the phrase was internally generated as a marketing tool.  But Integral can be positively identified in the sense that Deleuze and Guattari used the word “territory” as a ground of authority. It is in following this line of thought that I refer to Integral in my blog as the Integral Province…not yet a full-blown nation, but essentially an upstart anabolic sovereignty that includes a great deal of diversity, inner controversy and contested genealogy that still prohibit it from being a “movement.”

In this light it seems to me that the Integral “church” has already been established to the full extent that the neophytes who would claim citizenship as Provincials within the Integral Territory can be “churchified” (as the say in the southern USA). In an overview of the entire Province, which goes beyond just Pastor Ken and II, one sees that the vastly predominate but not exclusive denomination is The Communion of the Spiritual but Not Religious, the name alone indicates how the adherents are resistant to churchification, though they are susceptible to seminars, workshops and intensives.

But what the Spirit of Integral Provincialism has in common with the concept of The Church is that it offers a pathway to redemption. If I recall correctly from my first encounters with Wilber's writing 20 years ago in the Theosophical journal “Quest,” a search for a “redemptive truth” (as the late Richard Rorty defined it here) was an undercurrent below all of his syncretic analysis. AQAL is the methodological matrix on which Wilber hangs the cosmology that substantiates the redeeming truth of his vision of transcendent consciousness and culture within a divinely immanent ontology. The vision preceded its implementation via reason, scholarship and contemplation, a philosophic amalgam that could be called Integral Theology. Even though elements of it are drawn from strictly secular sources that are directed to secular ends, their appropriation in support of a spiritually redeeming vision bumps these elements into the catagory of theology.

I think very few show up and and then linger in the Province without a slight sense of seeking redemption of some kind, including those who are almost exclusively attracted to the analytic aspects. Here the demographics break down substantially along the same lines as in the general population. There are those who value the theology and want to examine it at its various levels and nuances in a path toward their redemption. And there are those who seek social contact and community (The Communion) along the same path; these are the majority, the rank and file supporters of any denomination; seekers whose needs, expectations and tastes often run counter to those of the theologians.

There is in Christianity a branch called Pastoral Theology; that which covers tending to the communicants and which also includes, I am sure, cajoling the communicants in turn for their support of The Church. If a denomination is deprived of a churchified church because of  the communicants' resistance to churchiness, then the symbiotic Pastoral support system takes forms such as the current evangelical developments at Integral Life.  (It is amazing to see that techniques and styles of New Age marketing have not changed in 30 years. Is this because of a lack of imagination on the part of the marketing agents, or because of the continual effectiveness of the old stand-by formats, cheesy though they are?)

Finally, Integral Spirituality might not need a church, either as a building or a concept, because it has media…a mediated university, mediated social structures and contact…call it mediated fellowship, a mediated pulpit, a mediated mall, mediated maps…mediated redemption. I have often wondered if Jean Baudrillard had the Provincials' simulated alternative to human existence in mind when he conceptualized the sorry soul he called Integral Man.

(I am currently in the middle of writing an essay that examines the ideas of redemption as found in places like Integral Journal and other extra-Wilberian outposts throughout the Province in the light of Picaresque literary traditions and as a way of showing that this quaint form of human neediness is not just limited to Wilberites.)

Re: The Integral Church of AQAL?

Hi, Nickeson,

Astute observations as always, sir – if not very sympathetic!  But I hear you.  I wrote my original post on the “Integral Church of AQAL” several years ago, just as some of these Integral products – practice kits, workshops led by an Integral “cast of teachers,” etc. – started to make their appearances.  It obviously is even more developed now, and I think it is fair to say that something of a “church of the unchurchable” has emerged. 

I have a rather ambivalent attitude towards this development.  On the one hand, I'm part of it; I do value the Integral/AQAL perspective, I pay dues to I-I, and I actually teach the basics of Integral thinking to students.  On the other hand, ads like the MyILP one you linked to above do make me cringe a bit.  I hadn't seen it before, but yes, it is very much an evangelical statement by an emergent spiritual movement.

I am not actually bothered by Integral morphing into its own spiritual vehicle or path.  That's not what made me cringe when I read that ad.  It's more the corny marketing…

So, are you ready to awaken to all of who you truly are?

Re: The Integral Church of AQAL?

“So, are you ready to awaken to all of who you truly are?

Re: The Integral Church of AQAL?

I also have been turned off by the tone and the hype around “Integral” these days – at the recent Integral conference in California, when they showed a “commercial” they had created to promote Integral and its products, groans and giggles went around the room of 500 dedicated Integralists (so we're not alone in our reactions!) – but I do think there is value in this work and it is still worth studying and exploring.

Best wishes,

B.

Re: The Integral Church of AQAL?

What's wrong Balder, you want the sausage, but don't like seeing how it's made?

Integral spirituality [AQAL] is already a religion; however that offends your tastes.

And the reason why that is the case and the reason why that is unavoidable is:

THE NATURE [OR FALLEN NATURE ] OF THE HUMAN SPECIES!


Proverb:
Buddha said:
” Anything that comes into this world will partake of its corruption”

That is a is a paraphrase

Re: The Integral Church of AQAL?

One of my early posts on Integral Naked was a response to a very similiar question. I responded that religion was the product of a long past age and of a different level (yellow not blue)…..man oh man did I get a bashing. What a cold dive in that was.

I'm in favor of an integral church. Hell, I might even create one. I have some unexpected time on my hands, my livelihood has dried-up. Literally. I could work until November as a river-guide, but all the rivers are too low or polluted to run, frickin drought…climate change?…

These days I prefer Holistic to Integral. At least in the old models, holistic was the stage after integral, and that's where a bunch of us are at. We've transcended and included. I personally tossed tossed the baby and horded that precious dirty bath-water. damn drought.

I take an anti-fundementalist stace and fundementalists can be found in every level. I was quite an integral zealot for a few years.

I think Marx had it mostly right, religion is the opiate of the masses. He overlooked the significance of spirituality, though.

Re: The Integral Church of AQAL?

A Church?

Maybe for some childish types.)

AQAL a psychoactive framework as KW defines in INTEGRAL SPIRITUALITY.

A church needs a pope. Not eben Andrew Cohen pretends to be some pope:) And KW?

As he described early in his essay ”On Heroes and Cults” EVERY new trend and insight in all areas of culture can become cultish.

So nothing new in this reagrd under the sun:):)