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The two truths of Nagarjuna

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

Ken sees nonduality as the integration of the absolute and relative realms. But it’s in how Ken frames the absolute and relative wherein I think Nagarjuna might differ. Ken sees the absolute causal realm as an ultimate and unchanging, whereas the relative realm is the realm of change and flux. Nagarjuna’s two truths doctrine though doesn’t seem to see it this way. For example the following excerpt shows their identity, not their distinction. Their distinction arises from a causal theory of a fixed nature which reifies their dualistic differences. Nagarjuna clarifies how a fixed causal is erroneous within his notions of emptiness and dependent arising. 

From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nagarjun.htm 

 

In his revolutionary tract of The Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, Nagarjuna abjectly throws this elementary distinction between samsara and nirvana out the door, and does so in the very name of the Buddha. “There is not the slightest distinction,” he declares in the work, “between samsara and nirvana. The limit of the one is the limit of the other.” Now how can such a thing be posited, that is, the identity of samsara and nirvana, without totally undermining the theoretical basis and practical goals of Buddhism as such? For if there is no difference between the world of suffering and the attainment of peace, then what sort of work is a Buddhist to do as one who seeks to end suffering? Nagarjuna counters by reminding the Buddhist philosophers that, just as Gautama Sakyamuni had rejected both metaphysical and empirical substantialism through the teaching of “no-soul” (anatman) and causal interdependence (pratityasamputpada), so Scholastic Buddhism had to remain faithful to this non-substantialist stance through a rejection of the causal theories which necessitated notions of fixed nature (svabhava), theories which metaphysically reified the difference between samsara and nirvana. This later rejection could be based on Nagarjuna’s newly coined notion of the “emptiness,” “zeroness” or “voidness” (sunyata) of all things.” 

 

Another article also explores these 3 elements in Nagarjuna and how they relate. Here the two truths doctrine is not about an ultimate, unchanging and absolute truth in distinction to a changing relative realm. The “higher” truth is again about the reification of an ultimate essense, as in a “causal realm” formulation. Thus the nondual of Nagarjuna is not about integrating an ultimate with a relative but about undoing an ultimate in the first place. In Ken’s terms it is postmetaphysical in undermining the metaphysical assumption of an ultimate. And Ken is still making such assumptions with his intepretation of an unchanging causal realm. 

  

From “The Zen Teachings of Nagarjuna” by Vladimir K. at http://www.thezensite.com/zen%20essays/zenteachingsofnagarjuna.pdf 

 

The two truths doctrine is based on the view that there are two realities: conventional reality and the truth about this reality (a “lower truth”), and ultimate reality and its truth (a “higher truth”). In the final analysis, however, Nagarjuna rejects this duality and teaches that both realities are one and the same. It is our so-called ‘common sense’ understanding of the world that causes the problem because we tend to see the world as a collection of discrete entities interacting with each other and with the self. In the Buddhist view, this is called ignorance and leads to suffering (dukha). The two truths doctrine is based on the practicality of teaching (upaya) rather than dogma. From a conventional viewpoint, we can say that things are causally produced and are impermanent but from a higher viewpoint, causal production and impermanence (or permanence) cannot be established and dualistic thinking must be rejected. (Cheng, 1991:45) 

 

Ultimate truth for Nagarjuna is the truth of an enlightened clarity which does not mistake the conventional for something essential (reification). This is where emptiness comes in as Nagarjuna teaches that all things are empty and the understanding of this emptiness leads to a greater truth of the way things really are. Of course, fundamentally, there is no real difference between the two realities as this “truth of the highest meaning” posits that “individual existence cannot be grounded outside the context of everyday experience,” (Huntington, 1989:48) thereby linking the two realities into one. In other words, a ‘higher’ truth is based only on conventional reality, not on a metaphysics.

Posted in Integral Metatheory, Philosophy | 78 Comments »

The God delusion

Sunday, October 29th, 2006

My blog writing has slowed because I’m now well into my novel. My protagonist is now in the Gaza strip and is about to be taken to an Ishraqiya Sufi meeting on the outskirts of Gaza city. He is being guided by Jamal, whose family can trace their lineage back to the ‘assassins’. This basically means Jamal is Ismaeli. Jamal is also a DJ and ‘blogger’ who uses ‘culture jamming’ techniques to wage an electronic jihad against the forces of darkness, the Sunni ’salafiya’. They’ve just produced a copy of a typical jihadi suicide martyr video, with the young martyr appearing with guns and paraphenalia making a serious jihadi speech, then we see him sitting in the car and driving off, the rousing music and propaganda slogans plays in the background. And then the car stalls and he gets out to look under the bonnet, steam is pouring out and he gets angry and kicks the car – cut to long shot of the car blowing up and rousing music. I think he’ll call the satirical series ‘Nasruddin the jihadi’, after the famous satirical figure, sheik Nasruddin.

Anyway – I bought a copy of ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins. Now I know many have dismissed Dawkins as a reductionist but this does not mean he does not make many valid points. I was aware that things had got bad in the US but after reading Dawkins I was not aware that it had got ‘that’ bad. It seems atheists are the new blacks and gays – actively discriminated against. Seems you have to believe in God otherwise you face all sorts of minor and even major acts of discrimination. Given that many of the founding fathers were atheists how did it get to this point?

Dawkins calls for atheists to get organized but admits its a bit like herding cats. He claims that atheists have a duty to out themselves and says that there are a significant number, greater than many strident and proud religious lobby groups.

I appreciate his argument that religion is afforded a priviliged position and he points out how in the name of religion all sorts of absurdities and nonsense are tolerated and rationalised. This is itself a form of discrimination. How absurd is it that a court will grant an exemption to take hallucinogens for completely irrational ‘religious’ reasons but deny the exemption for very sound ‘rational’ reasons.

I also appreciated his dismissal of Stephen Jay Gould’s ‘Non-overlapping magesteria’ concept. He’s particularly scathing about this and it is worth integral theorists understanding his point. The first thing he objects to is that science cannot or ought not to try and answer the ‘why’ question. The second thing he objects to is the idea that religion and theology has any greater expertise than anyone else to answer the ‘why’ question. In fact he dismissive of theology in general and provides examples of theological ‘utter nonsense’.

Most of the book is an attack on the Abrahamic faith. He does not include Buddhism because he regards it as a philosophy.

I think that integral theory leads us logically to atheism. A nondual ultimate reality is both nothing and everything. A creator God automatically leads us to dualism. So I often wonder why some Integralists seem to go soft on ‘theism’. Dawkins argues that there is an unexamined cultural norm to treat religious delusion with kid gloves. And yet I would argue this has very serious consequences. The reason the US has moved from a position where the founding fathers were either atheists or deists to where politicians cannot win office unless they declare they believe in God is precisely because religion has been accorded a ‘criticism-free’ status along with its ‘tax-free’ status. This has given it almost free reign to propagate nonsense. And when ‘nonsense’ based only on faith is allowed to trump reason then what we get is a devolution. We are supposed to move from the mythic to the rational and then to the integral. Integral should not be tolerating to move backwards from rational to mythical.

Posted in Ray's Integral Blog, Spirituality | 8 Comments »

Postmetaphysical Thinking 3

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

So what is a 1st person perspective anyway? Where does self-consciousness originate? This is particularly where postmetaphysical thinking (PT) makes its most important advances. PT arises within the cultural-historical context of the differentiation of the value spheres. With this humanity begins to see within an intersubjective matrix that transforms the focus from a subjective, 1st person account looking at an objective, 3rd person account into a 2nd person, intersubjective context. And this intersubjective matrix is founded on a shift to the philosophy of language as mediator of communication in the 2nd person adding a context for 1st and 3rd persons. And of course Habermas is key in this shift of thinking. H devotes an entire chapter of PT to Mead’s influence on this. I will provide excerpted quotes from PT forthcoming but for now let’s look at some of Mead’s ideas from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosopy.

From http://www.iep.utm.edu/m/mead.htm

In Mind, Self and Society (1934), Mead describes how the individual mind and self arises out of the social process. Instead of approaching human experience in terms of individual psychology, Mead analyzes experience from the “standpoint of communication as essential to the social order.” Individual psychology, for Mead, is intelligible only in terms of social processes. The “development of the individual’s self, and of his self- consciousness within the field of his experience” is preeminently social. For Mead, the social process is prior to the structures and processes of individual experience.

The essence of Mead’s so-called “social behaviorism” is his view that mind is an emergent out of the interaction of organic individuals in a social matrix. Mind is not a substance located in some transcendent realm, nor is it merely a series of events that takes place within the human physiological structure. Mead therefore rejects the traditional view of the mind as a substance separate from the body as well as the behavioristic attempt to account for mind solely in terms of physiology or neurology. Mead agrees with the behaviorists that we can explain mind behaviorally if we deny its existence as a substantial entity and view it instead as a natural function of human organisms. But it is neither possible nor desirable to deny the existence of mind altogether. The physiological organism is a necessary but not sufficient condition of mental behavior (Mind, Self and Society 139). Without the peculiar character of the human central nervous system, internalization by the individual of the process of significant communication would not be possible; but without the social process of conversational behavior, there would be no significant symbols for the individual to internalize.

The emergence of mind is contingent upon interaction between the human organism and its social environment; it is through participation in the social act of communication that the individual realizes her (physiological and neurological) potential for significantly symbolic behavior (i.e., thought). Mind, in Mead’s terms, is the individualized focus of the communicational process — it is linguistic behavior on the part of the individual. There is, then, no “mind or thought without language;” and language (the content of mind) “is only a development and product of social interaction” (Mind, Self and Society 191- 192). Thus, mind is not reducible to the neurophysiology of the organic individual, but is an emergent in “the dynamic, ongoing social process” that constitutes human experience (Mind, Self and Society 7).

The self, like the mind, is a social emergent. This social conception of the self, Mead argues, entails that individual selves are the products of social interaction and not the (logical or biological) preconditions of that interaction. Mead contrasts his social theory of the self with individualistic theories of the self (i.e., theories that presuppose the priority of selves to social process). “The self is something which has a development; it is not initially there, at birth, but arises in the process of social experience and activity, that is, develops in the given individual as a result of his relations to that process as a whole and to other individuals within that process” (Mind, Self and Society 135). Mead’s model of society is an organic model in which individuals are related to the social process as bodily parts are related to bodies.

The self is a reflective process — i.e., “it is an object to itself.” For Mead, it is the reflexivity of the self that “distinguishes it from other objects and from the body.” For the body and other objects are not objects to themselves as the self is.

It is, moreover, this reflexivity of the self that distinguishes human from animal consciousness (Mind, Self and Society, fn., 137). Mead points out two uses of the term “consciousness”: (1) “consciousness” may denote “a certain feeling consciousness” which is the outcome of an organism’s sensitivity to its environment (in this sense, animals, in so far as they act with reference to events in their environments, are conscious); and (2) “consciousness” may refer to a form of awareness “which always has, implicitly at least, the reference to an ‘I’ in it” (i.e., the term “consciousness” may mean self- consciousness) (Mind, Self and Society 165). It is the second use of the term “consciousness” that is appropriate to the discussion of human consciousness. While there is a form of pre-reflective consciousness that refers to the “bare thereness of the world,” it is reflective (or self-) consciousness that characterizes human awareness. The pre-reflective world is a world in which the self is absent (Mind, Self and Society 135-136).

Self-consciousness, then, involves the objectification of the self. In the mode of self- consciousness, the “individual enters as such into his own experience . . . as an object” (Mind, Self and Society 225). How is this objectification of the self possible? The individual, according to Mead, “can enter as an object [to himself] only on the basis of social relations and interactions, only by means of his experiential transactions with other individuals in an organized social environment” (Mind, Self and Society 225). Self-consciousness is the result of a process in which the individual takes the attitudes of others toward herself, in which she attempts to view herself from the standpoint of others. The self-as-object arises out of the individual’s experience of other selves outside of herself. The objectified self is an emergent within the social structures and processes of human intersubjectivity.

Although the self is a product of socio-symbolic interaction, it is not merely a passive reflection of the generalized other. The individual’s response to the social world is active; she decides what she will do in the light of the attitudes of others; but her conduct is not mechanically determined by such attitudinal structures. There are, it would appear, two phases (or poles) of the self: (1) that phase which reflects the attitude of the generalized other and (2) that phase which responds to the attitude of the generalized other. Here, Mead distinguishes between the “me” and the “I.” The “me” is the social self, and the “I” is a response to the “me” (Mind, Self and Society 178). “The ‘I’ is the response of the organism to the attitudes of the others; the ‘me’ is the organized set of attitudes of others which one himself assumes” (Mind, Self and Society 175). Mead defines the “me” as “a conventional, habitual individual,” and the “I” as the “novel reply” of the individual to the generalized other (Mind, Self and Society 197). There is a dialectical relationship between society and the individual; and this dialectic is enacted on the intra-psychic level in terms of the polarity of the “me” and the “I.” The “me” is the internalization of roles which derive from such symbolic processes as linguistic interaction, playing, and gaming; whereas the “I” is a “creative response” to the symbolized structures of the “me” (i.e., to the generalized other).

Although the “I” is not an object of immediate experience, it is, in a sense, knowable (i.e., objectifiable). The “I” is apprehended in memory; but in the memory image, the “I” is no longer a pure subject, but “a subject that is now an object of observation” (Selected Writings 142). We can understand the structural and functional significance of the “I,” but we cannot observe it directly — it appears only ex post facto. We remember the responses of the “I” to the “me;” and this is as close as we can get to a concrete knowledge of the “I.” The objectification of the “I” is possible only through an awareness of the past; but the objectified “I” is never the subject of present experience. “If you ask, then, where directly in your own experience the ‘I’ comes in, the answer is that it comes in as a historical figure” (Mind, Self and Society 174).

The “I” appears as a symbolized object in our consciousness of our past actions, but then it has become part of the “me.” The “me” is, in a sense, that phase of the self that represents the past (i.e., the already-established generalized other). The “I,” which is a response to the “me,” represents action in a present (i.e., “that which is actually going on, taking place”) and implies the restructuring of the “me” in a future. After the “I” has acted, “we can catch it in our memory and place it in terms of that which we have done,” but it is now (in the newly emerged present) an aspect of the restructured “me” (Mind, Self and Society 204, 203).

Because of the temporal-historical dimension of the self, the character of the “I” is determinable only after it has occurred; the “I” is not, therefore, subject to predetermination. Particular acts of the “I” become aspects of the “me” in the sense that they are objectified through memory; but the “I” as such is not contained in the “me.”

The human individual exists in a social situation and responds to that situation. The situation has a particular character, but this character does not completely determine the response of the individual; there seem to be alternative courses of action. The individual must select a course of action (and even a decision to do “nothing” is a response to the situation) and act accordingly, but the course of action she selects is not dictated by the situation. It is this indeterminacy of response that “gives the sense of freedom, of initiative” (Mind, Self and Society 177). The action of the “I” is revealed only in the action itself; specific prediction of the action of the “I” is not possible. The individual is determined to respond, but the specific character of her response is not fully determined. The individual’s responses are conditioned, but not determined by the situation in which she acts (Mind, Self and Society 210-211). Human freedom is conditioned freedom.

Thus, the “I” and the “me” exist in dynamic relation to one another. The human personality (or self) arises in a social situation. This situation structures the “me” by means of inter-subjective symbolic processes (language, gestures, play, games, etc.), and the active organism, as it continues to develop, must respond to its situation and to its “me.” This response of the active organism is the “I.”

The individual takes the attitude of the “me” or the attitude of the “I” according to situations in which she finds herself. For Mead, “both aspects of the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ are essential to the self in its full expression” (Mind, Self and Society 199). Both community and individual autonomy are necessary to identity. The “I” is process breaking through structure. The “me” is a necessary symbolic structure which renders the action of the “I” possible, and “without this structure of things, the life of the self would become impossible” (Mind, Self and Society 214).

Mead’s concept of sociality, as we have seen, implies a vision of reality as situational, or perspectival. A perspective is “the world in its relationship to the individual and the individual in his relationship to the world” (The Philosophy of the Act 115). A perspective, then, is a situation in which a percipient event (or individual) exists with reference to a consentient set (or environment) and in which a consentient set exists with reference to a percipient event. There are, obviously, many such situations (or perspectives). These are not, in Mead’s view, imperfect representations of “an absolute reality” that transcends all particular situations. On the contrary, “these situations are the reality” which is the world (The Philosophy of the Act 215).

Mead’s theory of perspectives is, in effect, an attempt to make clear the objective intentionality of perceptual experience. In Mead’s relational conception of biological existence, there is a mutual determination of organism and environment; the character of the organism determines the environment, just as the character of the environment determines the organism.

In his opposition to outright environmental determinism, Mead points out that the sensitivity, selectivity, and organizational capacities of organisms are sources of the control of the environment by the form. On the human level, for example, we find the phenomenon of attention. The human being selects her stimuli and thereby organizes the field within which she acts. Attention, then, is characterized by its selectivity and organizing tendency. “Here we have the organism as acting and deter mining its environment. It is not simply a set of passive senses played upon by the stimuli that come from without. The organism goes out and determines what it is going to respond to, and organizes the world” (Mind, Self and Society 25). Attention is the foundation of human intelligence; it is the capacity of attention that gives us control over our experience and conduct. Attention is one of the elements of human freedom.

The relation between organism and environment is, in a word, interactive. The perceptual object arises within this interactive matrix and is “determined by its reference to some percipient event, or individual, in a consentient set” (The Philosophy of the Act 166). In other words, perceptual objects are perspectively determined, and perspectives are determined by perceiving individuals.

The perceiving individual cannot be explained in terms of the so-called external world, since that individual is a necessary condition of the appearance of that world.

Mead thus abandons, on the basis of his interpretation of relativity theory, the object of Newtonian physics. But in addition to denying the concrete existence of independent objects, he also denies the existence of the independent psyche. There is nothing subjective about perceptual experience. If objects exist with reference to the perceiving individual, it is also true that the perceiving individual exists with reference to objects. The qualities of objects (distance as well as contact qualities) exist in the relation between the perceiving individual and the world. The so-called secondary sensuous qualities, therefore, are objectively present in the individual-world matrix; sensuous characters are there in a given perspective on reality.

In actual perceptual experience, the object is objectively present in relation to the individual. Whereas the relation between the world and the perceiving individual led Berkeley to a radical subjectification of experience, Mead’s relationism leads him to an equally radical objectification of experience.

Perspectives, in Mead’s view, are objectively real. Perspectives are “there in nature,” and natural reality is the overall “organization of perspectives.” There is, so far as we can directly know, no natural reality beyond the organization of perspectives, no noumena, no independent “world of physical particles in absolute space and time” (The Philosophy of the Present 163). The cosmos is nature stratified into a multiplicity of perspectives, all of which are interrelated. Perspectival stratifications of nature “are not only there in nature but they are the only forms of nature that are there” (The Philosophy of the Present 171).

 

Posted in Integral Metatheory | 25 Comments »

The politics of experience

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

To begin to answer Matthew’s question (that I’ll restate below) I’ve started a new blog entry. For here I think it takes a turn into the practicality of politics.

Matthew Newsham Says: “So you are more OK with the WC lattice now, but your original issue of anything beyond self is now at the forefront? The pomo-augmented witness arises out of consciousness, yes? If you do feel that the pomo movement has the juice to do anything useful in our modern context then where is the juice coming from?” 

First off I’m not ok with the WC lattice because it’s still interpreted from a metaphysical standpoint. Granted Ken no longer puts the state-stages on top the structure-stages as further developments of that scale. But it seems he still interprets the states within the traditional contexts that founded them. “So what” you ask? How can this help us in the practical world of everyday life? 

Well let’s apply that same question to Ken’s project of debunking the metaphysical myth of the given in IS, as it relates to said traditions. Why does he do it and for what purpose? How does that help us? One key can be found in the excerpts where Ken says that we can free the paradigm by limiting it. Once washed of its metaphysical assumptions a paradigm can more effectively serve its function without imposing its paradigm on other paradigms. 

Recall when you asked this question about Habermas I pointed you to a link on critical theory. And the entire purpose of the Frankfurt School is about exactly the above as applied to human freedom and democracy. It’s about a way for humans to live together without the dominating forces of totalitarian rule that Europe saw first-hand, as did early America. It’s the Enlightenment’s project of freedom. 

So how does this apply to states and stages and a more accurate way to contextualize them, i.e., the pomo context? Pomo, like critical theory, continues the project of freedom from totalitarian control. And by continuing to frame meditation in a metaphysical context of “enlightenment” we continue to create a special system of dominance by those “in the know” and those who are not. And it’s not just an ordinary elite; it’s the elite of the Absolute Reality. The west has bought into this interpretation of what meditation is and what it does. So we must prostrate ourselves before the Master to receive the teaching, even if the Master is completely fucked up in psychological terms. We’ve had plenty of criticism about Ken, Cohen and Adi Da is this regard. But this is in large part because they propagate this totalitarianism via the special gifts of enlightenment. 

Therefore, by taking Ken’s project to contextualize the traditions’ meditative states to its vision-logical conclusion and seeing them for what they are (or at least what I’m hypothesizing they are), as laterally developed aspects of ego development that looks back at earlier stages of development, this frees meditation by limiting it. It allows us to use it to integrate our past heritage. It allows us to study with a meditation teacher without thinking they’ve got the secret to the Absolute so that they can dominate our lives. It allows us to let go of our need of absolutes and final answers that tend to form relationships and governments of dominance and control that we unwittingly support with our own metaphysical assumptions about Enlightenment. 

Posted in Politics | 7 Comments »

A Roman night

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006

I’ve stopped working. Long story but I’m going to take three or four months off to finish my novel. So to celebrate I stayed up late Sunday night (whoopee) and slept in late this morning. Anyhoo – a bit of a Roman theme last night.

First an execrable series on the life of Nero, an Italian production. The usual santized, romanticized Christian take on Roman life that has the young Nero falling in love with a slave girl and having the role of emperor forced on him by his ambitious, manipulative mother. But I watched it for a laugh – the delights of bad TV.

Second was a discovery after channel surfing. I missed the beginning – but what a contrast. It was an interview with Robert Harris, the author of ‘Pompeii’. The program concentrated mainly on the engineering wonders of Rome. There was an amazing scene where Harris was describing the great Augustine aquaduct that spanned from Vesuvius to the port of the Roman navy, feeding twelve towns, including Pompeii and Herculaneum (sp?). The camera panned around the bay to show just how massive the project was, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Harris said that he wanted to avoid the usual cliches about Rome; gladiators, political intrigue and decadence, to show just how sophisticated a society it was.

The other interesting aspect of the program was that they interviewed experts who contrasted Rome with modern America. Both societies were in reality ruled by powerful and wealthy elites/families. They talked about the elections in Pompeii and how the same names kept appearing and a joke was made about Kennedys, Bushes, and Clintons. There was also corruption and intrigue. The recent scandal over gay Republicans and pages reeks of Roman sexual scandal (one piece of political propaganda in Pompeii accused a political rival of being a pederast). Contrasting Roman empire with the American empire is not new. This program was just a timely reminder that despite all the Christian rhetoric to the contrary human nature has a way of repeating patterns – and one of those patterns is the use of power and imperial hubris.

It reminds me once again that Western society is based on the Greco-Roman tradition and that the Judeo-Christian tradition is really something of a parasite feeding off the main body. In the film on Nero he wants to travel to Greece to study.

In addition to this I’m researching the biographical details of Plotinus. I’m only just beginning but a few things stand out. He was trained in Alexandria and then he wanted to travel to Persia and then to India to study with philosophers there. The expedition failed and he returned to Rome where he became a teacher. He gained the favour of emperor Gallienus (213-268) and there were discussions about rebuilding Campania, the ‘city of philosophers’, which would be based on the constitution developed by Plato.

Okay, time to take a breath – this was around 250 ACE. Here we have an emperor who was an intellectual taking a shine to a nondual philosopher and contemplating setting up a city devoted to philosophy, perhaps to even build a library to rival Alexandria. This is a story about the two Romes because the tragedy is that some of the rougher generals thought that the emperor should be a soldier, not an intellectual (remind you of anything? – like the obsession in the US about politicians’ military records) and Gallienus was destracted by attacks from northern tribes and internal rebellion, so Plotinus never got to build Campania.

Another interesting tidbit is that the enneads of Plotinus include criticisms of other extant doctrines, including Gnosticism. But there is no mention of Christianity. Being raised in Alexandria Plotinus must have known about Christianity. Perhaps he didn’t think it worth mentioning? We already know that ‘Greek’ philosophers had already made severe criticisms of Christianity, basically for being simplistic, based on myth, full of contradictions and well, just plain wrong. Plotinus ignores it altogether.

What has this got to do with anything integral? Precisely this, despite all the violence and depravity of Rome it still managed to create philosopher emperors who were prepared to sponsor nondual philosophers. In other words, Rome was a full spectrum society that was able to build massive engineering projects and entertain support for high philosophy. Plotinus was a product of his times – he prospered in the Roman empire.

There is an interesting story about the death of Plotinus. According to Eustochius, who attended him at his death, a snake crawled under his bed. At the moment it slithered into a hole and disappeared Plotinus died. A snake? If you know anything about the symbolism of this you will also know that this hints at much more. Snakes have always been associated with mysticism. If you read the works of Peter Kingsley (‘Reality’) you get the sense that the ancients actually had a very profound knowledge of mysticism. Two things have crushed our understanding of the depth of the ancients. 1. Suppression by Christians 2. Reductionist revisions of Greek philosophy by flat land materialists.

Posted in Philosophy, Ray's Integral Blog | 5 Comments »

States & Stages & Whatnot

Thursday, October 19th, 2006

We’ve branched off in the PM2 blog into an interesting topic that deserves its own blog. I’ve copied and pasted from that blog to here. .

  • Edward Berge Says:
    October 18th, 2006 at 6:45 pmebuddha said: “A point I”m trying to make here, is that THOUGHT-MAKING process – the same process that allow us to reason, and for me to write this – becomes transparent, to awareness, in meditation.”

    Agreed.

    Now I have a couple of questions. Just because we can have an awareness of watching thoughts does that make such awareness post thinking? And can we have a “watcher” that watches the thinking prior to developing to egoic rationality?

  • Edward Berge Says:
    October 18th, 2006 at 6:50 pmAndy, So what is it that mytics or meditators are aware or conscious of that others are not?
  • ebuddha Says:
    October 19th, 2006 at 11:25 amWell, I would say intelligence and cognition are present – but – in the way I’ve defined it above – not “thinking”.

    And I’m not sure how you would define “post”, but, in the sense that “thinking” is an object, rather than a subject, yes, it would be “post”.

    “And can we have a “watcher” that watches the thinking prior to developing to egoic rationality?”

    No clue. I would say no, given developmental studies, and the cases of “feral children”.

  • Andy Smith Says:
    October 19th, 2006 at 11:43 am“So what is it that mytics or meditators are aware or conscious of that others are not? ”

    Just about everything! The point is that in the ordinary state we are barely conscious. We think we are conscious, but that is not the same thing as being conscious.

  • Edward Berge Says:
    October 19th, 2006 at 12:05 pmI’m not sure if it’s excerpt or sidebar G that Ken goes into the notion that at each stage, from sensori-motor to whatever, we have access to the 3 states, realms and bodies of gross, subtle and causal. So perhaps this relates to what both Andy and ebuddha are saying, in that we can achieve paradigmatic heights of cognition but only in the gross realm-state-body. Whereas one who meditates and learns to “watch” or “witness” might access the causal state-realm-body, but perhaps only in a lower level. But there is a point it seems where the causal witness doesn’t “go all the way down,” as it were, into the very lowest levels. So something is amiss here.

    So, one can be conscious of a great deal in the gross realm but not in the subtle or causal. And one can be aware of a great deal in the subtle and causal realm, but not the gross realm. I guess that’s why Ken described “enlightenment” as a sliding scale wherein one is at the highest, stable stage of cognition and state-stage of meditative awareness. But there’s still something fishy about the relation of states and stages here.

    • Posted in Integral Metatheory | 20 Comments »

    VOTER ALERT!!!

    Wednesday, October 18th, 2006

    Please pass this along now to prevent another stolen election. From the Daily Kos: http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/18/85915/109

    ACTION ALERT: Blackwell purged Ohio Voter Rolls Oct 1st.- Vote Early.

    by KStreetProjector

    Wed Oct 18, 2006 at 05:59:14 AM PDT

    A friend, in a position to be present at lunches of GOP insiders here in DC called me on Thursday, they know of my ongoing efforts to make hackable voting end.

    My friend was present as a group of Moderate GOP members with Ohio ties lamented how far the party had strayed.   There was consensus at the table there was no way they should retain control.   The table conversation began with the assumption they party would lose control in this election. The moderates started planning how to take back control of the GOP from the extremists.

    Then, one insider, probably an extremist, but certainly very close to Mr. Ken Mehlman abruptly stopped the conversation.  He told table that it was impossible they would lose either house.    He also predicts an Ohio GOP sweep.

    He informed the group that over the last year, in four critical states the GOP needs to hold huge purges of the voter rolls have just been finished.

    The insider did not say which four states, but did say Ohio was among them.

    His claim was a new Diebold voter registry system had been installed over the last year.   The last week of July and the first week of August a “test run” was made of the systems ability to purge  ineligable voters.   The purge generated names and test letters sent out to 1.2 million Ohio addresses with a focus on University’s, Apartment addresses with high turnover.   He claims they made the letters seem just functionary, but they have an action component to avoid being purged from the rolls.

    The Insider warmed and said that Blackwell was brilliant in how he did this.  The letter went on for a long time about changes in Ohio voting and security and suggested people who might have any concerns about their voting status could come by county offices and confirm their continued voting eligability before election day.    

    He further added, that since it was conducted as a “test” they only sent letters to a limited number of suspect addresses and “I suspect Blackwell chose criteria very very favorable for us.”

    Further the insider stated that Blackwell had only purged the lists after a full 60 days was given for people to respond.  Which means even if a voter was on the “termination” list, they would still have been eligable to vote in the primary.

    He told they table they believe the purge has probably caught up “hundreds of thousands of students, activists and wanderers with no real job” would show up at the polls and have to vote provisionally.

    He predicted to the table that tens of thousands of voters will show up on election day, and once the provisionals are used up will simply not be able to at all.  

    He also said that this “operation” (The Insiders word, my friend was specific about this” had turned up a lot of additional fascinating information including a number of Democrats in elected office who are registered to vote in several places, and they may explore how to use this information against them.

    I am going to assume, Mr. Blackwell’s “test” purge went to no-one registered GOP.   His criteria is something I am trying to get a copy of now.

    Friday I called friends in Lorain County and Wayne County Ohio.    I told them this DC tale.   Neither of them had voted yet and I asked them if they could go on Monday to either early vote, or apply for an absentee ballot.  And if possible sit for in the Elections Office for an hour and determine if anyone was expressiing surprise they were no longer registered.

    If the sample of 11AM-1PM in Lorain County Ohio and 10AM-11AM in Wayne County Ohio are true.  Then Ohio Democratic Voters had better go and Vote Early if they plan to vote at all.

    At Lorain County, my friend arrived to find a line of over 15 people, many of whom had come back for a second time, all of them Democrats who had arrived to vote and been told that Drivers Liscence Information, or in one case Home Ownership Information had not matched the address provided for Voter Registration.  

    In one case a college student had been purged because he had changed dorms on campus.

    In another case a local blue-collar worker had been purged because his voter registration had only his building address, but his drivers liscense included an apartment number.   This tiny difference in information had led to his purging.

    While everyone present seemed to have enough information to allow the records to be updated, my friend told me it was being done by one and only one clerk and was taking a very long time, about 5 minutes per person to resolve.   Everyone in line confirmed that several voters had given up in frustration and left.

    In Wayne County the sample is smaller, but during the one hour he stated 18 people arrived for absentee ballots or to vote early.   Wayne County had 3 Diebold TSX Touch Screens set up for early voters.   Of those who arrived two of them had been provisionally purged.  The first was again a student from a local college, she was sent away and told she had to bring some ID beyond her student ID to prove she was resident at the College.  She was wearing a Sherrod Brown button.   The second was a local guy who owns two houses on the same block.    His drivers liscence is to the one house where he keeps his cars, but his voter roll is in his house where he actually sleeps four houses away.  This got resolved with a series of steps that included filling out two forms, and a clerk having to enter the corrected information into two seperate computers.    

    As an added bonus, My friend listened in and witnessed 8 retired ladies getting instructions on how to be poll workers on the new TSX machines.  The instructor was a local elections board member.   She was asked many questions by one of the retirees and her answer to almost all of them was “I don’t know how it works, I just know how we are supposed to use it”

    Get ready Ohio.

    This story also may explain Mr. Blackwell’s sudden discovery of the “two homes and is he really a qualifed Voter” now facing Strickland.

    This Blackwell discovery of Mr. Strickland is actually “by-catch” of the much larger net thrown to eliminate hundred of thousands of democrats from the voting rolls.

    ACTION:  Get to your election boards, bring all the documentation you can.   Demand a paper absentee ballot.     Alert a everyone you know in Ohio.

    Good luck out there.   This doesn’t eliminate the fact your Diebold System is utterly hackable, but it certainly explains how Rove plans to drag all your races into the margin of error so hitting the Diebold Button to steal the election doesn’t look so obvious.  

    He has taken away your right to vote based on any piece of mismatched information in your state records.

    I would expect that would be nearly everyone if the test was applied across the board.  But I suspect it was not done that way by Mr. Blackwell.

    It might be worth other states starting to look at this issue as well.

    They are very much in love with the power they have my friends.   I am increasing afraid this one one ends as another of my friends now says very often:  ”By Feeding the Tree of Liberty.”

    Posted in Politics | 9 Comments »

    Lecture on Spiritual Computing by Craig Warren

    Wednesday, October 18th, 2006

    ” Google Tech Talks September 28, 2006

    Craig Warren Smith, a Seattle native, is a former Harvard (Kennedy School) professor, a founder of … all » the global movement to close the Digital Divide, and for 30 years a Buddhist teacher. In the mid-1990s as a consultant to Bill Gates, he led a strategic planning process that helped Microsoft and its founder find the distinct role of philanthropy in its corporate culture.

    ABSTRACT Can the next generation of technologies advance the spiritual development of individuals and communities? The speaker, director of the Spiritual Computing Research Group (www.spiritualcomputing.com), will argue that several trends – Web 2.0 innovations, neuroscience’s interactions with the Dalai Lama, and West’s new embrace of premodern wisdom traditions – all combine to bring spiritual principles at the doorstep of the world’s technological laboratories. The upshot: today’s system architects may be able to measure fuzzy notions like user empowerment. “Tech researchers will get algorithms that show if they are empowering users, addicting them or just delivering ease of use,” he says.

    Spiritual technologies, he says, could release enormous pent up demand for web services in advanced markets (where 83% of users are “spiritual”) and in emerging markets such as India where spirituality is fundamental for survival. Examples: versions of Wikipedia in which wisdom, not mere knowledge, rises to the surface; gaming as spiritual quest; online enhancement of Islamic rituals; locative technologies that use feng shui to create sacred spaces, biofeedback interfaces that bring mindfulness into cancerous organs; technological support for 12 step programs that transform addiction into empowerment.”

    Posted in video | 3 Comments »

    Response to the Pope

    Monday, October 16th, 2006

    Thanks to Edward for the article about the Pope’s speech. Interesting stuff but ultimately just flawed apologetics and Christian triumphalism. I follow the argument about cultures of reason and I accept the contribution of the Greeks, but man, I nearly threw up when I read how Ratzinger then tries to insert the idea of a designer god as being a necessary condition to the development of science. Yikes.

    The first objection is that there is a glaring contradiction in acknowledging that the Greeks developed reason. How did they develop reason without a monotheistic creator? We know that the ‘pagan’ Greeks made significant advances in mathematics, medicine, science, engineering, music, poetics, theatre, etc, etc – all without the concept of a monotheistic creator god. What the Greeks allowed was a spirit of enquiry and from this they developed the rules of logic. It is the development of logic which is the sole source of the scientific method. Yes, the sole source.

    Christianity and Abrahamic monotheism has always had a conflicted and contradictory relationship with logic and reason. Far from creating an harmonious synthesis of faith and reason the Church actually held reason and scientific progress back. It is also true that some Abrahamic scholars (including Muslims) studied the classics, thus preserving the Greco-Roman tradition, but other scholars (and fanatics) also distorted and corrupted the GR tradition. Many important GR works were lost or intentionally destroyed. And even then the more fanatical followers of each of the traditions struggled against reason and science.

    But the Pope is being disengenuous to suggest that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment was somehow fostered by the Church. Far from it. The sources of the Renaissance actually come from the influence of high Muslim culture. The Church may very well have had monks and scholars who could read Greek and Latin and therefore read the classics, but this knowledge was largely kept within the Church with the fist of blasphemy always hanging over proceedings. Contact with Muslim scholars undermined Church control and allowed the beginnings of the secular study of the classics.

    It has always amused me that the very Church that suppressed the findings of Galileo and Da Vinci (particularly his studies of anatomy – stopped because some fuckwit thought he was practicing the witch’craft’ of necromancy) tries to make the claim that Christianity was a necessary component to the development of science.

    But what of India? Was there no science in India? Anyone who has studied Indian philosophy knows that it developed reason and logic. In fact Indian culture has always had a genius for mathematics and science, a natural extension of Indian logic.

    And what of China?

    I just don’t buy it – Christianity contributed nothing, nix, nada. It was only ever (and still is) an impediment to reason.

    The ‘theological’ development of a god of reason was the result of the power of logic and reason. Early Christian thinkers who understood reason and logic very quickly realized there were enormous problems with early Christian theology, enormous contradictions and inconsistencies. So what they did was change the nature of God and turn him from a capricious tyrant into a rational designer. The tail did not wag the dog – that is, Christianity did not modify reason, reason modified God.

    I would add finally that by the time of Joshua the Nazorean the Greeks had understood that the gods were metaphors for the human condition. An early Greek criticism of Christianity attacks it for its ‘primitive’ literalism and its extraordinary irrationality (pointing out the glaring logical errors). Unfortunately the literalists eventually gained power and suppressed the more nuanced Greek view. So when ‘pscychology’ was first developed who did they turn to to explain the human condition? Why, the Greeks. ‘Psychology’ – psyche and logos, the ‘word of the psyche’. Christianity has offered fuck all insight into the psyche.

    And why does science invariably turn to Greek and Latin to name theories, states, types and conditions? ie Homo Sapiens, homosexuality, the Oedipus complex, anima and animus? Even the name Jesus Christ is a bastardized Latin and Greek concoction (in English he should be called Joshua, the Messiah).

    What Christianity has been very good at is inserting itself into the story and appropriating classical ideas. And this is exactly what Ratzinger is trying to do, make out that Christianity has something to do with the growth of reason. No, it happened despite the Church.

    Incidentally, the whole story of Joshua wandering the land with a group of disciples is a Greek idea. Rabbis did not collect ‘disciples’. Joshua, in dressing simply and taking a vow of poverty, was copying Greek mystery and philosophical schools such as the Pythagoreans and Cynics.

    Posted in Ray's Integral Blog | 2 Comments »

    Islamic imperialism

    Saturday, October 14th, 2006

    I’ve written quite a bit on the issue of Islam. I am highly critical of it, after writing on the subject of enlightened secular humanism I think it is fair to say I am highly critical of all ‘religion’.

    I have also argued that the west is not the cause of the clash with Islam. I agree that some policy decisions have exacerbated the situation but overall I think the west has dealt with Muslim countries in the way that it deals with any other country, including other ‘western’ countries, with a kind of moderated, pragmatic self-interest – the way all countries treat other countries. The west has not singled out Islam for any special mistreatment. This is in the imagination of Islam which has always defined itself as the victim of conspiracies and in ‘opposition’ to Judaism and Christianity (well, to all other religions). Mohammed believed (or cynically spread the idea) that there was a conspiracy by the Meccans and then the Medinite Jews against the ‘truth’. His acts of aggression against the pagan Meccans and Medinite Jews are justified as a legitimate defence against conspiratorial aggression. This pattern is repeated today. Islamic aggression is justified as the legitimate defence against a ‘perceived’ conspiratorial agression by infidels. There is no such conspiratorial aggression – it is a figment of their imagination, the consequence of a flawed narrative.

    I came across an interesting book yesterday, ‘Islamic Imperialism’ by Efraim Karsh. Okay, let’s be perfectly clear about this. Efraim Karsh is a Jew, even a Zionist. He is Professor and Head of the Mediterranean Studies Programme at King’s College, U of London. The book is published by Yale. Karsh has an impressive CV – but he is biased.

    Biased? Well, he takes a strong position and would be aligned with the conservative side of politics, or at least favoured by them. He is also noted for his critique of the group known as the ‘New Historians’, a group of left leaning Israeli academics who have published highly critical histories of Israel. Karsh accuses them a bad history and of deliberately misreading the primary sources. His critique returns to the primary sources to prove the misrepresentation. The thing about this is that both the left and right distort history to fit their ideological inclinations. What we ought to be concerned about is the truth and I would suggest that both sides have bits of the truth. The question is really about the integrity of the historian and their ability and desire to seek the truth even when it is uncomfortable.

    Karsh seems to make some very valuable points and so, knowing his position, I’m prepared to pay attention.

    ‘Islamic Imperialism’ doesn’t pull any punches. As far as Karsh is concerned Islam has always had, and still has, aggressive imperialist ambitions. The root cause of resentment in the ME is a frustrated imperialist ambition. Islam believes it is and must be superior and it is humiliated that it is not.

    The book is a history of the Islamic imperialist project, from Mohammed to bin Laden. He starts the book with a series of quotes – a thematic repitition from Mohammed to bin Laden.

    “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘there is no god but Allah” Mohammed’s final address, 632.
    “I shall cross this sea to their islands and pursue them until there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah.” Saladin, 1189
    “We will export our revolution throughout the world…until the calls ‘there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger’ are echoed all over the world.” Khomeini, 1979
    “I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Mohammed.” Osama bin Laden, 2001.

    The original is a well known hadith, it is not found in the Koran. As hadith it is not followed by every Muslim, but it is clear that many understand what this hadith commands – endless jihad until all of humanity converts to Islam. This is the essence of Islamic imperialism, the drive to conquer the globe. Not all Muslims are involved in this project but enough have always been inspired by this ideal for it to be a persistent problem.

    The book is an examination of the nature of this imperialist ambition and it contains some surprises.

    I did not know that the early caliphs did not want conquered people to convert. If they converted they had to be treated equally and could not be taxed. The argument was put forward that to ensure the future flow of wealth back to the Muslim Arab tribes conversion should be resisted. If this isn’t imperialism then what is? Furthermore, there was a special category of non-Arab converts who were treated differently to Muslim Arabs, the ‘Mawali’. Mawali could not marry Muslims and had to pay special taxes. In short, they were discriminated against.

    The positive Muslim spin is that all subject people freely converted to Islam. The reality seems to somewhat different. Many groups did not begin converting for at least two centuries and then slowly, as a way to avoid the discrimination against non-Muslims. The Mawali system was eventually reformed but it’s existance contradicts the positive spin put on the early Muslim conquests. Yes, they really did it for gain.

    The other interesting point Karsh makes (I haven’t read it all yet) is that the British originally supported a pan-Arab state as the best outcome of the collapse of the Ottoman empire. He argues that the breaking up of the region into smaller states, the main cause of resentment today, was actually the result of Arab duplicity. The common story is that the British and French betrayed the Arabs. Karsh says that it was not a ‘betrayal’ but a necessary response to the failure of the Arabs to meet their part of the bargain. In fact Karsh says that the Arabs betrayed the British, dealing with the Turks behind their backs.

    Again we see the ‘persecution’ narrative raise its ugly head. Just as the Meccans and Jews ‘betrayed’ Mohammed the British and French ‘betrayed’ the Arabs. Looked at in another way the Meccans and Jews were protecting their interests against an madman and aggressor and the British and French were protecting their interests against a duplicitous ally. The problem was that Sharif Hussein al Hashemi, the Arab leader, had imperialist ambitions of his own. As it turned out the British ended up handing Jordan and Iraq to Hussein’s two sons. Jordan is still in the hands the Hashemites but the other son was overthrown in Iraq (and then Syria). What would have happened if the British had given the Hashemites the whole of the Arabian penninsula? Peace and prosperity?

    Karsh argues that the real reason for the situation in the ME is the internal rivalries. Dictators exist because only strong leaders can keep a lid on the tribal and sectarian differences, which have always erupted when the leadership is weakened. The violence we see in Iraq now was not ’caused’ by the invasion, it was latent, what the invasion did was simply lift the lid off the pressure cooker.

    I’ll share one last quote from Dr Yusuf Qaradawi regarded as a leading Islamic scholar. He is talking about the hadith where Mohammed is asked which city will be conquered first, Hirqil (Constantinople) or Romiyya (Rome). History shows that Constantinople was conquered by Islam and Qaradawi says:

    “The other city, Romiyya, remains and we hope and believe that it too will be conquered. This means that Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice – once from the South, from Andalusia (Spain), and a second time from the East, when it knocked several times on the door of Athens”.

    Karsh argues that whilst Christianity had its own (obvious) imperialist ambitions it has finally surrendered them. Islam has not. (Although I think Karsh neglects to mention that Christian imperialism has been revived amongst American evangelicals). Islamic imperialist ambitions are a fundamental aspect of the Islamic narrative. Al Qaeda is simply the latest manifestation of the eternal jihad.

    Posted in Politics, Ray's Integral Blog, Terrorism | 2 Comments »

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