Open Integral

Interesting 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. 

Now, I do find this classification intriguing, although I would put Falk in a seperate category, the Sceptics. 

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!   

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. 

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. 

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 forgotten 

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!

 

I’ve just read Edward’s entry – Thompson was an early influence on me. I’m kicking myself that I got rid of ‘The Time Bodies Fall to Light’ and is following book (title forgotten). I appreciate his approach very much.

Edward:

William Thompson is one of those mentioned in the wikipedia entry on integral thought. I did some preliminary research on him and came upon his essay “The Cultural Phenomenology of Literature” in Light Onwords / Light Onwards, LIVING LITERACIES TEXT OF THE NOVEMBER 14-16, 2002 CONFERENCE AT YORK UNIVERSITY, pp 89-105. He talks about Gebser’s integral culture emerging our of the previous perspectival worldview “where several cognitive domains cross and interpenetrate, as in the Dalai Lama’s Mind Life Conferences in which Tibetan meditation masters and neuroscientists come together to explore the nature of consciousness” (p. 99).

Thompson thought that with the emergence of the integral era and its electronic media expressions that a new mode of discourse was required. He sought “to turn non-fiction into a work of art on its own terms. Rather than trying to be a scholar or a journalist writing on the political and cultural news of the day, I worked to become a poetic reporter on the evolutionary news of the epoch” (p. 89). He was presponding to Ray’s notion that one must express an integral approach not just in content but in the very means of expressing it. Thompson did this in the way he approached teaching: “The traditional academic lecture also became for me an occasion to transform the genre, to present not an academic reading of a paper, but a form of Bardic performance–not stories of battles but of the new ideas that were emerging around the world….The course was meant to be a performance of the very reality it sought to describe” (pp. 89-90).

For more on this fascinating integral philosopher see the entire essay at http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/ltonword/complete.pdf

You can find more info on Thompson at http://www.williamirwinthompson.org/
(picture courtesy of williamirwinthompson.org)

One of the topics that I think should be central on this blog, is the referencing of integral thinkers and schools, and stimulating dialogue between them.

So I will start by proposing a few candidates that explicitely attempt at a subjective-objective approach to reality.

Today’s candidate is well-known, Giddens, but I have seen him mentioned as integral.

However, according to Natalie Pang’s description of Structuration Theory, that would definitely be the case. I suggest you read the entry.

Here just a quick citation to show the gist of the argument:

“The study of technologies typically involves two broad traditions of assumptions: social reality as subjective or objective (Orlikowoski and Robey, 1991). This opposition in theory is reflected in the assumption of social systems (of which information technologies are part) as the result of ‘meaningful human behaviour’, representing social realities as subjective; while the other focuses on the organisational aspects of social systems, independent of and constraining human actions, representing social realities as being objective (Bhaskar, c.f. Orlikowoski and Robey, 1991).

Research assuming the subjectivity of social systems focuses on subjective human experiences, interpretation of them, and elements of human behaviour modifying the world. The contrasting view of objectivism focuses on the properties of institutional elements shaping social systems, providing explanations for their influences on human actions and relationships.

This seemingly dichotomous view of social systems is seen by Giddens as problematic. Giddens (1979), who asserted that the grounds of mutual exclusiveness between subjectivism and objectivism is flawed, developed the theory of structuration to accommodate the two traditions. Structuration theory views the subjectivity and objectivity of social realities as equally important. According to structuration theory, cultural context is generated and regenerated through the interplay of action and structure. It recognises that ‘man actively shapes the world he lives in at the same time as it shapes him’ (Giddens, 1986).
(picture courtesy of Wikipedia)