What’s the difference between a nymphomaniac, a prostitute and a wife?
During the act a nymphomaniac says: “Don’t stop!”
A prostitute says: “Are you done yet?”
A wife says: “I think I’ll paint the ceiling beige.”
Archive for November, 2006
A matter of perspective
Thursday, November 30th, 2006An Integral Approach to Enlightenment and beyond.
Saturday, November 25th, 2006
I’ve recently become very interested in Sri Ramana Majarshi, whom I contacted via Gangaji. See my Integral Transformations blog for more. As a result I find myself feeling the non-contradiction between the respective revelations of Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo.
On the mental level, it is hard to find two “vedantic” teachers more dissimilar. One teaches transcendence, the other affirms the reality of the world. One is the culmination of the ancient heritage of Advaita, the other a completely new revelation that equally incorporates insights of modernity and of Vedic tradition. The irony of it is that these two spiritual giants were contemporaries, and lived practically next door to each other (only 100 km or so apart), yet never met. The following comments are by Charles Ismael Flores (see Darshan at the Dharma Crossroads - Exploring the Connection of the Sages Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo, a highly recommendable introduction to the contrast between these two modern-day avatars and sadgrurus (world teachers)
“The case of Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo is one that is unique in modern times. Two of the greatest saints of modern India lived in the same era, what would today be a mere three- and-a-half-hour drive from each other in southern India, the state of Tamil Nadu. Side by side lived the highest modern representative of an ancient yoga, and the lauded progenitor of what has been claimed to be an entirely new yoga…
Ramana Maharshi came to the holy mountain Arunachala in Tiruvannamalai in 1896 when he was 16 years old, and he reportedly never left the mountain for 54 years.
Sri Aurobindo fled from Bengal to the French colony of Pondicherry in 1910 due to his revolutionary activities to overthrow British rule. Once there he never left, since at one level, it would have been dangerous- but far more importantly to Sri Aurobindo, he had to focus on his sadhana, or spiritual practice.
They both died within a few months of each other- Bhagavan Maharshi on 14 April and Sri Aurobindo on 5 December 1950.
So although Tiruvannamalai and Pondicherry are only 65 miles apart, the political realities of the period and the sages’ own practices prevented a physical encounter.
What are left are the remembrances of visitors and disciples between the two ashrams. Though it is known that thousands of seekers traversed through both ashrams while both sages were alive, only a few have written about their experiences…
It perhaps would not be fruitful to compare these two great yogic realizations by the use of hermeneutics, or textual interpretation for meaning. Both yogas are logically compelling for the scholar. Seekers (and also scholars) are ultimately drawn to the aim of the yoga using their own minds and their spiritual experiences. Some may be compelled to choose the yoga that states that life and the world is an illusion, and many others today will be drawn to the yoga that dares to affirm life and the world by transforming it to something that explicitly expresses the full range of divine potentialities in matter. In the personalities of Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo, we have seen in modern times just a couple of the great choices at the crossroads we must make for ourselves in our rapidly changing world.”
Charles then provides imaginary (but still instructive) interviews are based upon actual recorded talks and letters with Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo, and the seekers who came to them. There is of course no recorded talk between the two sages.
While Charles approaches this subject from the path of mental enquiry (albeit a spiritually inspired mental enquiry), I have come at it from the perspective of the spiritual gnostic. As I have already mentioned in my essay Towards a Larger Definition of the Integral, it is not possible to understand a sage like Sri Aurobindo by limiting one’s approach to an intellectual study of his writings, immensely illuminating as they may be. Similarly, the same can be said for Ramana. If one reads Ramana’s talks and books on a literal level, one is left with a literalist Adviatism. An Advaitism expressed through a profound and subtle intellect, and a consciousness of one who talks through direct experience, not just book learning. Of that there is no doubt. But it is still literalism. Thus those students who follow Sri Aurobindo literally, and those who follow Ramana literally, will each be guided safely and surely to the Supreme through the infallible source of the particular revelation they have chosen to follow. This is the way it has always been., But it is not the Integral way. The Integral Path is about the integration of all teachings and revelations; this is something completely new.
Here I would like to offer a few preliminary thoughts on this subject; although really this deserves to be elaborated upon in an essay.
Firstly, as I take care to point out on my blog, there is no contradiction between the spiritual revelations of Ramana and Sri Aurobindo. That is the my starting point here. Both are authentic emanations of the Supreme, true gurus, not fakes or half lights stuck in the Intermediate Zone.
But what about the contradiction on the external level of the dualistic intellect? Here one is faced with the sort of contradiction Charles discusses in his very informative essay.
The standard answer in Integral theory would be to resort to the True Truths.  At the level of the Absolute, the revelations are the same. In the dualistic world they are different.
Unfortunately this “exoteric” perspective does not match with my experience, nor, I believe , with Reality. In my experience, the revelations, the Light, of Sri Aurobindo and Ramana are not the same. They are different. They are not contradictory, but they are distinct. With a too facile reliance on a Two Truths monism, diversity is lost and everything is swallowed up in a well-meaning but misguided ecumenicalism, in which the infinite multi-faceted attributes of the Supreme are flattened to some banal uniformity that the tiny human mind can comprehend.
So no, they are not the same. But they do not contradict each other either. And therein lies the paradox. Which is only a paradox to those limited to either/or Aristotelean logic.
I would suggest here a number of distinct “realities” or divisions of consciousness, by way of explanation.
o First there is the world of duality. This is the outer truth, the exoteric reality, the gross realm, the mental, affective, and physical world. Also theories such as AQAL fit here
o Then there are the various subtle and causal realms (to use the Vedantic and Wilberian terminology) of intuition, in which the limitations of the gross realm are transcended, but duality (whether explicate or latent) and polarity remain. This can be considered the outermost aspect of the Intermediate zone, and the beginning of the esoteric.
o Beyond the subtle and causal realities is the transcendent, nondual, state or states of enlightenment, the revelations of the various true teachers, and the filtered down and distorted transmissions of the partially enlightened that constitute the bulk of spiritual teachers, but who still do have genuine realisations. In terms of the Two Truths, this is the Absolute Reality, or at least where the Absolute “begins”, and it is as far as most gurus and seekers go (and many of them do not even get this far). This level, again the Intermediate Zone, is the region in which there is no contradiction between Ramana and Sri Aurobindo. Both are valid, both complement, both fit into the larger integral picture, and yet each is still totally sufficient for those of purity and faith who wish to follow only a single Path.
o Beyond the Intermediate Zone are even greater insights. I get the smallest hints of these through reading Sri Aurobindo’s opus Synthesis of Yoga, where he speaks of different states of realisation, and their integral convergence. But that is still as yet, for me, a spiritual-mental state, based on following through the light of the Aurobindonian teachings. Direct experience of the Source – such as Sri Aurobindo himself had and which he conveyed only partially through the limited medium of words – is something else, infallible, beyond words, beyond the limited understanding of even the spiritual and gnostic outer being.
And what does this mean for an Integral Spirituality?
It means that an Integral Spirituality honours all authentic revelations, neither letting itself be mentally limited to the outer form of any one, nor collapsing the infinite diversity of the Supreme into a single simplistic equation like shunya or atman. Which is not to depreciate Openness or Self, but only to point out that again, these are non-integral revelations and soteriologies. Which does not make them any less worthy. But an integral spirituality can experience both, and all, without loss of their uniqueness (e.fg. in this case Buddhist non-essentialism and Vedantic essentialism), without being limited to one, and without forcing them all into the same mould. It is necessary for experience to embrace all revelations and all possibilities, simultaneously, without contradiction.ÂÂ
And doing so, to be transformed. So that consciousness may attune to, embody, and realise a greater Divinity. And that again a greater one still.
Only then will we have a true Integral Spirituality.
The Diversity of the Integral movement
Tuesday, November 14th, 2006Interesting blog post here
http://indistinctunion.blogspot.com/2006/10/integralisms.html
The author has reviewed various Wilber critics, and proposes five categories:
1. Metaphysicians: Frank Visser and Alan Kazlev.
2. Deconstructionists: Jeff Meyerhoff (and Geoffrey Falk?)
3. We-Space, Intersubjectivity: Mark Edwards, Edward Berge.
4. Holonic Theory: Andrew Smith.
5. Humanities/Canon. Matthew Dallman.ÂÂ
Now, I do find this classification intriguing, although I would put Falk in a seperate category, the Sceptics.ÂÂ
Yet it is not enough to merely criticise. Criticism alone is boring. Let’s look instead at the positive diversity that teh Integral movement represents.
But to do this, we need to move once and for all beyond Wilberian limitations.  It doesnt mean throwing Wilber’s books in the rubbish bin. It does means seeing him as only one Integral teacher, and imho quite a minor one (in terms of profoundness and originality of ideas) at that.
As I have often argued (and continue to do so), Integral is very much bigger than Wilber (and even much bigger than all the Wilberians and post-Wilberians and the netire Wilberian tradition). There’s the Aurobindonian tradition, there’s Teilhard de Chardin, William Irwin Thompson, A. H. Almaas, Ervin Laszlo, Richard Tarnas, … One could go on and on.
I do find it dissapointing that a lot of the discussion on this forum has been Wilberocentric and/or postmodernist and/or Mahayanist. I don’t mean to denegarte these fine tradtions, but the whole thing is awfully limited for a paradigm that is supposed to literally include everything. Rather than Integral, it comes across as “Ex”-tegral! 
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Tusar has asked why there has been no discussion of Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine here. An excellent question. I might also add of course Synthesis of Yoga, where the word “integral” almost on every second page.ÂÂ
And I might add, why no discussion here of Teilhard de Chardin, one of the most influential “integral” thinkers of the 20th century?
What about Rudolf Steiner; the greatest integral teacher of the Western theosophical-occult tradition?
And what about Edward Haskell who’s “co-action compass” serves as an alternative to AQAL, and I believe a superior alternative, as I argue in my current essay appearing on  Integral World.
Perhaps the answer here lies in the fact that the Integral movement at present is still in its infancy. Much of the movement is still limited to Wilberanity, and hence to things that Wilber is interested in, like postmodernism and Buddhism.ÂÂ
Fair enough, one has to start somewhere. And Wilber’s charisma and eloquence did help popularise the theme of the Integral, a theme that was first taught under that name by Sri Aurobindo. But it seems like everyone has forgotten the Master, and prefers to focus on the much more limited ideas of the student (a student who does not even understand the teacher, as Rod Hemsell and I have both shown).
I believe that unless the integral movement can transcend its Wilberian limitaions, it will just be another footnote in the history of the New Age movement.
So let’s look at all the different integralisms. Not just the Wilberian and post-Wilberian ones.
Just for the fun of it, here is my classification of just a few of the many possible forms of “Integralism”:
o Aurobindonian. The original Integral tradition, represented by Integral Yoga, which has as its goal the Supramental Transformation of the Earth. In sheer “include and transcend” value, nothing else comes close to this. Nothing. (ok so I’m biased! 
  Sri Aurobindo, Mirra Alfassa (The Mother) and their disciples and those who try to carry on the Yoga. Also includes Indra Sen (Aurobindo disciple, the original Integral psychologist and Integral theorist, now little known, I wrote his bio for Wikipedia), Haridas Chaudhuri, and Michael Murphy.
o Theosophical-Anthroposophical – the occult/esoteric version of integral. Blavatsky, Steiner, the early David Spangler, much of the New Age movement.  (Spangler later rejected the New Age movement for its crass commercialism, but he could still be considered, like Wilber, New Age sensu lato. Probably deserves his own category now)
o Humanistic A vision of integral culture, integral art, integral commentary on life…  I would include here Gebser, Thompson, and Dallman
o Teleologists – Teilhard de Chardin established a new way of looking at evolution, and the synthesis of science and religion. Some fascinating parallels with Sri Aurobindo, but the two never knew of each other’s work. There is a tradition of Teilhardism among scientists in the West, including palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris.
o “Unified Science” – Edward Haskell and coworkers; craeted a theory of everything as universal as AQAL. Now almost totally forgottenÂÂ
o Scientific includes a range of universalising synthesisers; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky, Oliver Reiser, David Bohm, Arthur M. Young, Erich Jantsch and Ervin Laszlo are just a few luminaries here. This should be a meta-categoiry actually.
o Inventors. Buckminster Fuller and other interdisciplinary proponents of appropriate technology
o Wilberian – based on Wilberian and post-wilberian thought. Emphasis on AQAL, Holons, Buddhism, Postmodernism, etc. Andrew Cohen would also go here. Also virtual communities like Zaadz (mostly) and Integrativce Spirituality (a fascinating new project with a gigantic website)
o Participatory – Participitary epistemology, spirituality, etc. Rejects the old Wilberian authoritarianism. John Heron, Richard Tarnas, Jorge Ferrer, and Michel Bauwens (p2p) are representative.
The above is a very incomplete list. I haven’t mentioned Max Theon, Whitehead, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Koestler, Maslow, Grof, A. H. Almaas, etc. Nicolai Hartmann is another important person, now mostly forgotten. Look him up on Wikipedia
Let us take the Integral beyond Wilber, and beyond those things he is interested in! The Integral Movement is far too vast and multifaceted to be limited to one man! And remember even Wilber himself does not claim a monopoly on the term, as he fully and admirably admits! So let’s make this forum truly Open Integral, not just Open Wilberian!
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