In Integral Spirituality (IS) Ken talks about evolutionary enlightenment. He defines enlightenment as the highest level and state at a given historical period. When the originators of the perennial tradition formulated its paradigm it was pre-modern, or possibly mythical-rational. But it had yet to achieve modernity and certain not postmodernity. And it would appear that the higher stages of cognitive development only arrived on the scene in the latter periods. Yes, rationality “started” a long time ago, in India, Greece etc. But it wasn’t the more developed egoic-rationality of today.
Ken takes account of this is IS with the Wilber-Combs lattice. The states are no longer stacked on top of the stages as future stages awaiting stable development. And states are interpreted by the stage that apprehends them, as states can be experienced at any stage. Even full, stable non-dual realization can be experienced by a meditation “master,” yet said master can very well be, and often is, coming from an ethnocentric level.
There are, however, stages above those on the W-C lattice that sound similar to the states, hence Ken’s prior association of them with stable, higher stages. But it seems that those stages lie in our collective future, not past. So I’m wondering, given the following quotes from IS, if the originators of meditative states were somehow in their micro-communities really also advanced to the turquoise or indigo level as well? It’s difficult to know from the quotes because Ken first says “systemic Global View” is a recent emergent, unless 2000 years ago is “recent.” But later he says that such writings on states indeed arose in tuquoise or indigo cognition?
So assuming that Nagarjuna and Padmasambhava and even the current Dalai Lama are not indigo level, then we must take their interpretations of their state experiences as the interpretations of a lower level. And given that indigo level is just now forming in our kosmic groove, how does it interpret such as nonduality? It would seem vision-logical to assume that interpretation would not just be regurgitation of the traditional way, no? And those who interpret such states in that same traditional way must surely not be indigo, no? Unless the traditional interpretations really did time-warp to the future in indigo? Help me out here please.
Note the following exerpted quotes are from the draft, not the book. Having perused the book I can tell you that much of the draft survives verbatim in the book, just at different page numbers. From IS draft:
A second problem quickly compounded that one. If “enlightenment†(or any sort of unio mystica) really meant going through all of those 8 stages, then how could somebody 2000 years ago be enlightened, since some of the stages, like systemic GlobalView, are recent emergents? (107)
It allowed us to see how individuals at even some of the lower stages of developmentâ€â€such as magic or mythicâ€â€could still have profound religious, spiritual, and meditative state experiences. Thus, gross/psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual were no longer stages stacked on top of the Western conventional stages, but were states (including altered states and peak experiences) that can and did occur alongside any of those stages. (110)
(What was so doubly confusing to us is the fact that, as indicated on fig. 6, there are also 3 or 4 higher structures beyond the centaur, and they have similar-sounding characteristics as these 3 or 4 higher states, which made it almost impossible to spot the differences. (110)
Anybody familiar with the monastic traditions, East and West, from Zen to Benedictine, will recognize those souls who might be quite spiritually advanced in Underhill’s sense (very advanced in contemplative illumination and unification) and yet might still have a very conformist and conventional mentalityâ€â€sometimes shockingly xenophobic and ethnocentricâ€â€and this goes, unfortunately, for many Tibetan and Japanese meditation masters. Although they are very advanced in meditative states training, their structures are amber-to-orange, and thus their available interpretive repertoire is loaded by the Lower-Left quadrant with very ethnocentric and parochial ideas that pass for timeless Buddhadharma. (E.g., according to his secretary, the Dalai Lama believes homosexuality is a sin, anal sex is a sin, oral sex is bad karma, etc.â€â€when everybody knows that oral sex is not bad karma, only bad oral sex is bad karma…. But these sadly are typical mythic-amber beliefs.) (117-18)
In the meantime, Asian meditation teachers, with a LL-quadrant that is heavily amber, or mythic-membership, and hence “non-egoic†in the sense of PREinvidualistic, and therefore used to having students simply obey them unhesitatingly and in a conformist-stage fashion, don’t quite know what to do with individualistic-stage Westerners, whose LL-quadrant is loaded orange-to-green. (118)
…many of the great contemplative texts, sutras, and tantras were written in the cognitive line from at least the turquoise and often indigo or violet levels. (127)
Edward,
Thanks for the post.
On one level I think eventually all rational mental level systems reach their carrying capacity and I think this conundrum you articulated points to one for Wilber’s integral.
On the other hand, there are a couple of lines of possible harmony.
In the last line Wilber writes that many of the ancient great contemplative texts in the cognitive line come from turquoise, indigo, etc.
That would seem to imply the texts are not necessarily coming from such a level in other lines, particularly say the worldviews or values.
If we indeed imagine any mystic charting ahead in some very small way into the higher levels, it would make sense (I think) to assume they only needed to cover the basics of any level to keep moving.
And as these higher levels would have been so infinitesimally formed, I suppose there would be very little in the way of actual content to have to come to terms with.
The cognitive line is a measure of how many perspectives one can take. In that way you can see an ancient text having room for 4th or 5th perspective but without all the content to those stages from later development. Like with green, say the intersubjective.
Just like people today might be moving into indigo-violet and yet those are so lightly engaged that in the future when they are more prominent people at those actual levels will look back on our contemporary “forerunners” and wonder how much sense it would make to say they were evolved to that stage.
What is the actual content of say violet at this juncture?
I myself am very agnostic (even skeptical) of meditation through states (state-stages) moving people vertically. I think we may discover it is something like a necessary but not sufficient condition.
Peace.
Chris
Chris makes some good points.
Not everyone will turn out to be manifesting a new stable state or cognitive line, but they may be promoting the holonic elements necessary for that stable state in the future. (This, I would assume, is the whole reason for tradition.) BOTH the tradition and the individuals involved define and create the “cognitive” perspective… And lets not even get into post-death editing by followers…
Chris,
Yes, I can see that the incipient indigo wave of cognition might’ve been involved in the formation of said meditative traditions. Like the rational wave has been around at least since the Greeks (and probably before), but it has developed in both content and context since then. But in both cases, it’s not the same wave; it has been transformed by both time and development. So again I think it’s vison-logical to posit that it’s not going to be the “same” interpretation as the originators. Granted we’re just laying down the kosmic groove and not sure what it is yet, as we’re in the process of creating it.
So three things: 1) It certainly ain’t what it was originally so to regurgiate what was is a sign of error. 2) We need to guard against closing down this incipient wave with our dogmatic insistence that it already is well defined and our preferred definition is the one, true interpretation. I’d even go so far as to say that “openness” of interpretation, short of so-called pluralistic “anything goes,” is one of the hallmarks of this wave.
3) Also my sense is that our ITPs (or ILPs [TM]) are not just taking up various practices “as they are” within their original context (like meditation) and then just adding an AQAL framework around them. It seems to me that the practices themselves have to evolve and be transformed by our “integral” enactive paradigm. So it’s not enough to just take up the “ususal” Buddhist meditation program if it is in fact embedded in lower memes. We have to create new practices, including meditative, that fit our developmental context. Otherwise we’re the same old embeddeness but with new AQAL clothes.
Hi, Edward,
I think you’re making some excellent points. It relates to earlier discussions we’ve had where we considered whether “enlightenment†is still a useful term, for instance; or at least, whether we need to (possibly radically) reformulate what it means. In those discussions, I resisted the suggestion that it needs to be discarded altogether, but I do agree that we cannot assume that the meaning of the term is “timeless†and unchanging.
I am not entirely sold on the WC Lattice (I think some things still need to be worked out, or at least fleshed out in ways that have not been articulated yet), but in general, I understand the suggestion to be that there are states which are relatively stable (in evolutionary history) and which are always present and/or accessible; but that there are also stages of cognitive development which are much more dynamic, and which have been unfolding throughout human evolution. What is not clear, from what Wilber has written, is if he regards these states as universal (Kosmic) givens, which are available to all sentient holons at all times; or whether they are also evolutionarily emergent and are really only available to fairly advanced biological organisms. If the latter, that certainly changes the “meaning†of enlightenment. A question is, what is the relationship of “states†to what we might call the Whole – to the undivided (but also indeterminate) field of appearances that we call the universe, or the Kosmos? Even more fundamentally, in the Kosmic scheme of things, what IS a state? Is nonduality really a particular (discrete) state of consciousness? (I know of some nondual teachings which would certainly dispute this). If so, is it some sort of “window†on, or does it provide access to (or enact), a different level of order in the Kosmos?
Wilber has defined enlightenment as state-stabilization in the “deepest†state available to us (which discloses an experience of “oneness†with the Kosmos as a whole, at whatever stage it is in evolution at that point in time). In his scheme, states appear to be an expression of a (relatively) timeless dimension of being…constants which may infuse and inform any relative level of development. But I do not believe he has really spelled these things out very clearly – at least, not that I’ve seen. Or else I haven’t fully grasped what he’s saying…since I have the sorts of questions that I mentioned above. (E.g., the relationship of “states†to Kosmos and/or Spirit as a whole, whether they are evolutionarily emergent or involutionarily “given,†etc).
When Wilber “stacked†subtle, causal, and nondual on top of the developmental stages, that had a certain elegance, but it also involved certain problems; but it seems to me that the WC Lattice is (at this point) in the same boat: elegant, but still partly problematic.
A question that arose for me when I first learned of this model, which may seem frivolously speculative but which I do think has bearing on the meaning of the lattice (since it appears to unearth certain presuppositions or biases in it), is this: Can we say, universally, what “stage†Kosmic evolution has really reached? We can testify to the stages available on earth, but who can say what has arisen on other planetary systems, assuming there is other life in the universe? When we speak of the leading edge of Kosmic evolution, but define it in terms of what has appeared in human history, then either we are assuming that we are the most advanced species in the universe, or else we are ignoring whatever else might be out there and taking a questionable anthropocentric perspective (perhaps simply because we can’t say one way or the other what has emerged elsewhere). If you define enlightenment as “oneness†with the entire Kosmos at its leading edge of evolution, then what does this mean if there are other beings who are more advanced than we are? Are those stages also available to human beings, if the “Kosmic grooves” have been laid down elsewhere? If there is no way for us to tap in to whatever level other sentient beings may have reached (for whatever reason), then aren’t we being irresponsible or at least hyperbolic to define enlightenment as “oneness with the leading edge of evolutionâ€Â? Shouldn’t we qualify that somehow?
There are a number of presuppositions here. One, that time is linear, and that state-stabilization and experiences of oneness put us in touch only with what has unfolded, so far, in linear history. But linear history itself may be a fiction (at least a “field†enacted by certain limited perspectives, as Einstein’s “block time†suggests). Two, that humans are either the leading edge of the Kosmic flowering of intelligence; or else that “oneness†is spatially as well as temporally bounded, and very likely a species-specific and biologically determined phenomenon.
Etc.
I may be off here, or just missing some vital clues. But it seems to me there is a lot yet to work out here.
Best wishes,
Balder
I have criticized the W-C lattice extensively in articles at Frank’s site. I won’t try to regurgitate all that here, but just note one major difference between my model and Wilber’s. Wilber thinks there are nothing but levels, levels, levels, each one transcending and including the previous one (though he has hedged his bets recently with tiers). This view means that one reaches enlightenment by ascending level after level, and that the relationship of enlightenment to a lower level is much like the relationship between a lower level and some still lower level. Hence one has to postulate all these multi-colored vMemes, of which enlightenment is just the highest or a very high one, and gets into all sorts of problems wondering how earlier people could have realized those levels.
My model distinguishes stages and levels, based on enormous amounts of scientific, evolutionary and developmental evidence that Wilber blithely ignores or misrepresents. All the historical/developmental stages of humanity are on a single level, which is below that of enlightenment. So a) one can in principle realize enlightenment from many different stages, without passing through all the others; and b) the relationship of enlightenment to any of these stages is very different from their relationships among themselves. This view avoids many other problems associated with the W-C lattice and the AQAL model in general.
Andy,
Still plowing through your book btw.
In terms of Wilber’s use of levels, he does discuss the biosphere, noosphere, as well as the tiers. He mentions that the stages are variations on the states. Not entirely sure what that means except that around say indigo you are moving from the noosphere to the beginning theosphere. Something like as a stage the move from mind to soul in the great chain model.
This seems to me, though not identical to, a point of rapprochement with your distinction between stages and levels.
You may not agree with the W-C Lattice but by the logic of that system no person needs to ascend to the highest levels for enlightenment. At least not what he now calls horizontal enlightenment or state-stages. Vertical enlightenment (stages) yes but with the qualification that one needs to reach the highest available at that time. So I don’t think it’s correct to say “enlightenment is just the highest or a very high one…”
“In terms of Wilber’s use of levels, he does discuss the biosphere, noosphere, as well as the tiers. He mentions that the stages are variations on the states. Not entirely sure what that means except that around say indigo you are moving from the noosphere to the beginning theosphere. Something like as a stage the move from mind to soul in the great chain model.”
If these distinctions (like those between tiers) are different from those between stages, then are stages no longer believed to transcend and include one another, or do these higher distinctions involve something more than transcend and include? Silence from Wilber on this.
“You may not agree with the W-C Lattice but by the logic of that system no person needs to ascend to the highest levels for enlightenment. At least not what he now calls horizontal enlightenment or state-stages. Vertical enlightenment (stages) yes but with the qualification that one needs to reach the highest available at that time. So I don’t think it’s correct to say “enlightenment is just the highest or a very high one…â€Â
By the logic of that system, one can temporarily realize a higher stage through a state, but can only permanently do so by moving to that higher stage. But what exactly is the difference between temporary and permanent realization of a stage? How can two individuals at the same stage, one of them temporarilyr realizing a higher state and the other not, have the same exterior or brain structure? And if they can’t, how can they be at the same stage? Wilber’s conception of stages as distinct from structures is inconistent with his own principle that every interior is correlated with a particular exterior. Two people at different states must have different interiors, so how can they have the same exteriors?