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This Week on Integral Spiritual Center....
Beyond the Fourth - Ken Wilber
Freedom in the Present - Patrick Sweeney
Beyond the Fourth
Beauty is eternity, gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity. And you are the mirror.
Kahlil Gibran
Last week we began a beautiful pointing out instruction led by Ken Wilber on the “Myth of the Given” call, as Ken pointed out the Witness of all that arises. But the Witness is not the endpoint of the journey; as Katigiri Roshi instructed Ken—touching off his own initial satori—“the Witness is the last stand of the ego.”
In this week’s featured audio, Ken points out turiyatita (literally, “beyond the fourth”). Noting that thoughts and feelings come and go, Ken asks: what is it that doesn’t come, and doesn’t go? What is the non experiential, the unborn, the uncreate? What never enters the stream of time?
As practice is sustained and deepened, says Ken, you begin to get a tongue taste of your True Self, of IAMness. But rather than having an experience, all you’ll sense is a vast sense of freedom. Freedom from objects, freedom from experiences, freedom from time. Whatever it is that you experience, that is precisely what you are not.
And in this freedom, you push, but without pushing; you rest, but without resting; you cleave, but without cleaving. There is the sense of consciousness, but without an object, of emptiness—though empty of that, too. The way is neti, neti: not this, not that. You will never reach a moment of time that is it. For it is something that is always already there.
Eventually, says Ken, the sheer physics of the subtle realm are such that objects cease to arise, and you find yourself in a place of unmanifest absorption. And then, you come back, and begin again to witness those arisings--but you witness with complete disinterest. Your mind becomes a mirror that reflects all that arises. You are aware even of the self as it arises, and you reflect that, too. A mirror and its objects, all arising in One Taste....
Freedom in the Present (video)
Patrick Sweeney discusses the quality of his teachers that attracted him the most: their radical freedom to be spontaneous in the present moment. He shares how profoundly he has been influenced by the work of Ken Wilber, in particular.
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This week on Integral Spiritual Center.... After Enlightenment, What's the Point? - Gabriel Nossovitch/Ken Wilber What Integral Brings to Buddhism - Patrick Sweeney After Enlightenment, What's the Point? (audio)
In this week’s featured
audio, Gabriel Nossovitch asks: if who we are is empty, formless
ground, why should we do anything about the world of form? Why should
we care about the evolution of consciousness or awareness? Why should
we pay attention to the impulse to awaken others? After enlightenment,
what’s the point?
Ken Wilber points out
that this is actually a very old paradox, a sort of koan through the
ages, which usually goes something like this: “There are no others to
save; therefore I vow to save them all.” Gabriel’s question comes
after ten years of deep practice; most people who’ve had a taste of
satori eventually come to the same question.
Taking an Integral
view of the evolution of enlightenment can be very helpful here. As
has been often noted, spiritual practice seems to have the universal
purpose of fostering states of consciousness. While the
practices vary by tradition, the states themselves are remarkably
similar, East and West. Both Vedanta and Vajrayana, for instance,
posit five distinct states. The first three states are gross, subtle,
and causal, all associated with the world of form. The fourth state, turiya
(literally, Sanskrit for “fourth”) is the Witness of all form. Whereas
the first three states (all experienced in the Upper-Left quadrant) all
have corresponding energetic bodies (in the Upper-Right quadrant), the
fourth state is associated with the space in which everything arises.
The traditions birthed during the great Axial age (800-200 BCE) tended
to have this state as their endpoint. Their practices usually involved
witnessing all objects until attachment itself was exhausted, and
grasping and identification dehydrated. And at that endpoint, radical,
infinite, intelligent darkness, subtle bliss, Nirvana….
Of course,
consciousness—and with it, enlightenment—continued to evolve. Led by
Plotinus in the West and Nagarjuna in the East, the growing tip of
consciousness pushed through turiya to a fifth state, turiyatita
(literally, “beyond fourth”). This is the classic nondual state, in
which the Witness merges with everything witnessed. The Heart Sutra
says it beautifully:
Or, from Vedanta:
In these paths, what
arises is seen not as a distraction, but rather, as an ornament, and
not as deficiency, but as abundance. As Gabriel puts it, “let form be
forming.” And that is precisely the reason to come back. If
enlightenment is indeed the nondual union of the Absolute and the
relative, then of course, in an Absolute sense, nothing needs to be
done. But in a relative sense (and the nondual transcends and includes
the relative!), there are countless sentient beings living in a
nightmare. We are given this precious human birth, and there is more
to be done than we possibly can do in this precious human lifetime.
Or, as Jack Kornfield memorably put it, “after the ecstasy, the
laundry….”
What Integral Brings to Buddhism (video)
Patrick
Sweeney answers a question regarding the resistance in some Buddhist
circles to Integral thought. Patrick answers that, with concepts such
as the pre/trans fallacy, Ken brilliantly highlights what a healthy
spiritual realization is, and what can go wrong along the way.
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Theosophy (literally, “god-wisdom”) is a surprisingly little known but nonetheless influential movement of the past several centuries in Europe and the United States. In this week’s featured audio, Ken Wilber traces the development of theosophy and its descendents . Viewed through an AQAL lens, theosophy was a sophisticated system, complete with states, levels and lines, but one that fell prey to what Ken calls “the myth of the given”—assumptions about the universe that, in the retrospective light of postmodernity, are simply naïve.
Theosophy is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “any system of speculation which bases the knowledge of nature upon that of the divine nature.” The influence of Christianity in 19th century Europe and the United States was significant but by no means singular. To many of the “unchurched” but nonetheless non-secular, theosophy—with its blend of modern thought and both Eastern and Western esotericism—held a great deal of appeal.
As Ken points out, there have been three great waves of this sort of thought to impact the United States, punctuated by wars in between them. The original wave started around 1830, fueled by Enlightenment theologian Emanuel Swedenbourg and the German Idealists Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. Among its most influenced and influential proponents: Ralph Waldo Emerson and the New England Transcendentalists, part of the popular “New Thought” school. The first wave ended with the beginning of the Civil War in 1861.
The second wave began around the turn of the 20th century, and included the great writers, researchers, and psychologists of that time, including William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience), James Mark Baldwin, the first great developmentalist, and Sigmund Freud,. Unfortunately, this wave was subject to ferocious pressure from the emerging behaviorist and materialist schools of that time, and many of its proponents, though respected, were never widely accepted. The third wave began after World War II, and came to fruition in the 60’s and 70’s, characterized by the humanistic, transpersonal, and New Age movements.
What might the next wave of “unchurched, non-secular” thought look like? If developmental theory holds, the population of Europe and North America is slowly but surely moving toward the teal/integral altitude, which certainly displays an openness to this sort of thought when properly contextualized. As Ken notes, a “tipping point” can be historically observed when ten percent of the population reaches a certain level of development (e.g. green/pluralistic and the Civil Rights Movement). Could an integral tipping point be around the corner?
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This Week on Integral Spiritual Center....
Reverse-Engineering the Kosmos - Ken Wilber The Psychology of Prayer - Father Thomas Keating Reverse-Engineering the Kosmos (audio)
At
the second gathering of the teachers of Integral Spiritual Center,
Patrick Sweeney famously asked Ken Wilber, “what can we do to stay out of Appendix III of Integral Spirituality?”
In “The Myth of the Given,” Ken surveys some major modern approaches to
spirituality, and demonstrates via AQAL their partiality—and how that
partiality might be remedied.
It’s sobering to
consider that so many of today’s most eminent teachers are partial!
But as Ken points out, Appendix III (and the Integral approach in
general) is meant not so much to point out that partiality as to
highlight expertise in a highly specialized area. AQAL is an
incredible tool for both situating various approaches and for
understanding how they are related to each other. To the extent that
the conclusions of these approaches fall within their area of
expertise, they are most assuredly true. But to the extent that their
conclusions overstep their area of expertise, a broader context such as
AQAL can be enormously helpful.
The potency of AQAL to
situate various approaches derives from its own formulation. Take, for
example, the field of psychology. Ken points out that there are six
major schools of psychology, each advanced by brilliant researchers who
pioneered a particular approach to the field. Ken’s approach was to
ask “what must be the characteristics of the human mind, such that the
major conclusions of each of these schools could hold true?” His goal,
rather than to work within one of the major schools to further its
particular conclusions, was to reverse-engineer the human
psyche—indeed, the entire Kosmos—altogether. The result of that
inquiry was AQAL, perhaps the most complete map yet of the Kosmos we
inhabit and the awareness in which it arises.
“The Myth of the Given”
highlights a number of otherwise brilliant modern approaches to
spirituality that fail to take into account the insights of
postmodernity, thus unwittingly perpetuating the myth. Postmodernity,
Ken demonstrates, deconstructed not only the mythical formulations of
premodernity; with the same ferocity, it deconstructed the rational
formulations of modernity! Postmodernism shows—rightly so—that nothing
is apart from its context. But in doing so, and especially in its more
recent turns, it throws out both the premodern and modern babies with
the bathwater. Context, contends the integral approach, is not
everything—but it is something! The integral approach is the first to
take the truths of premodernity and modernity, consider their context
as postmodernism necessitates, and locate them in a larger map. Once
this blind spot is acknowledged, says Ken, it is easily remedied,
leaving us with enduring truths, properly contextualized, and situated
in a greater whole. And that changes just about everything….
The Psychological Experience of Prayer (video)
Father
Thomas Keating has spent a lifetime researching and practicing within
the Christian tradition of contemplative prayer, and expressing it in
the light of modern psychology. Here he speaks about the psychology of
prayer, sharing insights that early contemplatives couldn't possibly
have known about, affording us an entirely new view of the practice and
how it can most effectively be undertaken.
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This Week on Integral Spiritual Center.... An Unaware Fight - Ken Wilber The Communion of Saints - Fr. Thomas Keating An Unaware Fight (audio)
The past year has seen
some very public debates between proponents of Darwinian evolution and
Intelligent Design. An Integral perspective of this argument reveals
that these two camps—the “New Atheists” on one side, (Christopher
Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris), and a variety of fundamentalist
Christian apologists on the other, are not even speaking the same
language, though they mistakenly assume that they are.
In this week’s featured
audio, Ken Wilber discusses how, by applying an Integral perspective,
particularly by including an awareness of levels of development, one
can better understand the disconnect in this debate, and embrace both sides, and discover the more inclusive truth, the one that transcends and includes them both.
Here’s how: levels of
development determine, though not definitively, the way we interpret
our experience. Developmental research shows us that instead of
assuming that there is a “given” world (created by God or created by
the laws of nature) that we can make factual statements about, we
should more accurately assume that a worldspace arises when we
look from a given altitude through a given perspective, and that some
worldviews are more inclusive (and thus more true) than others.
In this debate the
Integral model highlights how these two sides inhabit entirely
different levels of development, and thus see entirely different
worldspaces. As a result, they are not sharing meaning. Though the
words they use to debate this issue may be identical, the meaning each
party constructs out of those words is likely to be completely
different. Essentially, these two groups are not talking to each
other. It’s a disconnect, one that only an Integral model can
highlight.
For example, Christopher
Hitchens seems to acknowledge that development occurs, and that people
make meaning of their world from their level of development. Why then,
he asks, don’t people simply make meaning by trying to understand how
the universe works? Which is precisely how people at an orange
altitude/rational worldview make meaning….
Sam Harris, himself a
meditator, also seems to lack an awareness of levels of development in
his expressed respect for Buddhism (as opposed to the other major
religious traditions) as much more than a mythic worldview. This
assertion discounts that fact that Buddhism is held mythically by
millions of people worldwide. There are mythic Buddhists, rational
Buddhists, pluralistic Buddhists, and integral Buddhists. Each is a
Buddhist, each has an entirely different interpretation of Buddhism.
Integral therefore concludes that the problem is not any particular
religion, it is the level of development of the adherent that can
become problematic, particularly when people at different levels of
development try to communicate.
So listen in, and view this debate in a whole new light.
The Communion of Saints (video)
Ancient
beliefs do not necessarily need to be abandoned as one develops into
higher altitudes. Father Thomas Keating discusses how a devotion to
the "Communion of Saints" can be held lightly, and thus deepen in
meaning, at the Autumn 2006 Integral Contemplative Christianity seminar.
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This week on Integral Spiritual Center....
Critiquing the AQAL Approach - Vidyuddeva/Ken Wilber
Roadblocks - Fr. Thomas Keating
Critiquing the AQAL Approach (audio)
Ken Wilber has his share of critics. But how substantial are their critiques? In this week’s featured audio, Ken addresses one of them, which maintains: the AQAL integral approach is a belief system, rooted in his own longtime practice of Buddhism.
This critique is based on the postmodern insight that assertions can never be taken apart from their context. The context of the AQAL assertion, so goes the critique, is inescapably that of a longtime Western Buddhist practitioner. The Quadrants component, for example, bear a similarity to—and are therefore derived from—the Three Jewels of Buddhism (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha), and states (gross/subtle/causal) are a direct descendent of the states that Buddhist practice has mapped out for millennia.
Ken acknowledges an appreciation for what this argument is getting at, but he feels that it doesn’t hold, for a number of reasons. First among them: the methodology through which AQAL theory was formulated in the first place. For over three decades, says Ken, he has looked carefully for the deep structures that underlie the surface features of manifestation. Rather than attempt to unify, for example, Buddhism and Christianity—let alone science and religion—he has attempted to observe as much of manifestation as possible, then answer the question: what kind of Kosmos must this be, to support the arising of all these forms of manifestation? His task—albeit ambitious—has essentially been to reverse-engineer the Kosmos.
There’s no doubt, in this example, that the four quadrants resemble the Three Jewels of Buddhism. But the four quadrants show up in all sorts of places in the Kosmos—for example, the Big Three (Truth/Beauty/Goodness), the pronouns “I,” “We,” “it,” the Holy Trinity of Christianity, etc. Ken’s contention is that the deep structure underlying these surface features or manifestations is indeed the interior and exterior of the individual and collective. Similarly, the states of consciousness experienced in Buddhist practice bear a remarkable similarity (or deep structure) to those experienced in other traditions (as pointed out by William James and Evelyn Underhill over a century ago). Despite the various ways they are phenomenologically experienced, their exteriors appear to be practically identical.
With respect to the general question of answering his critics, Ken points to legitimate criticism as an essential element to the five major iterations of his thought. These sorts of criticisms—and the effort to accommodate them in successive models—have been precisely the driving force of his thought for three decades. Ken even goes so far as to joke that he’ll steal truth from anybody! He is attached, he says, to the truth—not to what he has written about the truth. And while he can’t necessary respond to his critics in real time, the substantial criticisms are normally addressed, and credit given where credit is due, in his next book.
AQAL, says Ken, is explicitly a map. Some critics take it as the territory itself, then criticize it as a belief system—an obvious inaccuracy. Some critics dispute the map itself, though it’s difficult to find anything in manifestation that the map fails to hold. In the end, manifestation happens, and AQAL—with its five irreducible elements—is perhaps one of the most helpful ways of looking at it….
Roadblocks (video)
Inevitably on the spiritual journey, we'll encounter roadblocks. Father Thomas Keating discusses some of these—and how to approach them—at the Autumn 2006 Integral Contemplative Christianity seminar.
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This week on Integral Spiritual Center....
Universal Catechism - Vidyuddeva/Ken Wilber
Thoughts on Thoughts - Fr. Thomas Keating
Universal Catechism (audio)
One of the seminal insights of Integral spirituality is the distinction between structure-stages and state-stages. Human beings develop through a set of structure-stages, making available an increasingly wider and higher set of perspectives, and through a set of state-stages, embodying a progressively deepening sense of unity with the Divine. The insight is breathtaking, and it leads to a breathtaking injunction: the creation of a Universal Catechism.
In this week’s featured audio, ISC Teachers Vidyuddeva and Ken Wilber discuss the emerging need for such a catechism. Because the developmental approach is an insight of the modern West, not much more than a century old, the great religious traditions can’t be expected to have incorporated its contributions. But what we’re left with is a set of stories, written from a certain level of consciousness, and conversely effective at a similar level of consciousness. The further away the perspective (or “Kosmic Address”) of the perceiver is from the Kosmic Address of the perceived—whether above or below—the more likely that something will get lost in translation.
Take Christianity, for instance. The Vatican recently published the Catechism of the Catholic Church, one of the most comprehensive statements to date of the Christian faith. But because development is not explicitly taken into account, readers can get implicitly lost in one part or another. Parts of the Catechism would make sense to an elementary school child, and parts of it would be beyond all but a serious theologian. One could almost take a set of colored highlighters to the document—amber, orange, green, teal, turquoise—and come out with five separate versions, each eminently more applicable to its intended readers than the document is as a whole.
A truly Universal Catechism would tell the stories of the world’s great traditions, but would tell them from a series of developmental altitudes. A magenta version of a given tradition’s story could be told to someone coming from a magical worldview, an amber version to someone from a mythic worldvie, an orange version to someone from a rational view, etc. Such an approach would be deeply respectful of the context of its audience—both developmentally and culturally—thus providing, with the most skilful of means, what is appropriate for each station of life. The Universal Catechism could be the very engine of the conveyor belt that leads human beings from the childhood productions of Spirit, to the adolescent productions of Spirit, to the adult productions of Spirit, and beyond….
Thoughts on Thoughts (video)
Our experience of prayer or meditation can be very like sitting beside a river, watching our thoughts like rafts on the water, coming and going. Once in awhile (or perhaps every few moments!) we might get fascinated by one in particular, hop aboard, and find ourselves way downstream. Father Thomas Keating talks about thoughts during prayer and how to approach them such that we are neither disturbed by them, nor consumed by them.
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This Week on Integral Spiritual Center.... A Goldmine of Suffering - Diane Hamilton/Ken Wilber
The Trinity: Love Loving Love - Fr. Thomas Keating A Goldmine of Suffering (audio)
Perhaps
one of the most powerful meditative practices of all is the Buddhist
practice of Tonglen. In fact, when, near the end of his life, the
noted Tibetan Buddhist and “crazy wisdom” teacher Chogyam Trungpa
Rinpoche was asked what sort of meditation he practiced, he is said to
have answered, “Tonglen, baby!” In an exquisite interchange in this
week’s featured audio, ISC Teachers Ken Wilber and Diane Hamilton share
the practice with I-I Member Richard Munn.
It is said that the
whole of the spiritual life is breathing in and breathing out. In
Tonglen practice, one breathes in the suffering of sentient beings, and
breathes out compassion. Self and other are exchanged, thus bridging
the subject-object dualism that many other techniques implicitly
reinforce. In Tonglen, those boundaries drop, resulting in
extraordinary depth. The nearly limitless suffering of all sentient
beings can be taken into the infinite Heart, and from its deep wells,
compassion is abundantly given in return.
While from a rational
point of view, such practices might be frowned upon as being
ineffective—or even counterproductive—there is much evidence to
indicate that something very real, if inexplicable, is in fact going
on. Indeed, Alfred North Whitehead warned against “simple location,”
the notion that phenomena can be easily located in space and time.
Practices such as Tonglen and devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (in
which one visualizes Jesus’ Heart pouring out compassion on oneself and
the world) have long maintained that reality in the subtle realm can
manifest in the gross realm. What seems miraculous in the latter is a
simple, natural movement of the former. To put it integral terms: one
person's practice can help to create Kosmic habits that benefits
countless others in that person's footsteps.
The experience of one’s
own suffering can provide an exquisite opportunity to practice
Tonglen. Perhaps no one better understands suffering than those in its
midst. In this sort of meditation, one accepts both one’s own
suffering and that of those who likewise suffer, eventually including
the suffering of all beings. “Life is suffering,” holds the First
Noble Truth. But nonetheless, the intention of the Bodhisattva is held
as deeply: “may all beings be free from suffering….” The Trinity: Love Loving Love Fr.
Thomas Keating unpacks one of the most profound doctrines of
Christianity, in this excerpt from the autumn 2006 Integral
Contemplative Christianity seminar.
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This Week on Integral Spiritual Center....
Why Practice? - Diane Hamilton/Ken Wilber
Why Wait? - Fr. Thomas Keating
Why Practice? (audio)
Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self. You are the way and the wayfarers. And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.
Kahlil Gibran
“As a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,” says the Lebanese poet Gibran, so too do we share in the development of our brothers and sisters (and we are all brothers and sisters!). Their journey is our journey. In this week’s featured audio, ISC Teachers Ken Wilber and Diane Hamilton discuss the remarkable ways in which our own development affects the development of those who follow in our footsteps.
Ken points out that developmental altitudes constitute a sort of history of consciousness. The magenta and red altitudes, with their corresponding magical worldviews, began as rivulets tens of thousands of years ago and are now something akin to the Grand Canyon, cut a mile deep. At this point, their features are largely defined, for better or for worse. What seems “given” to us was in fact laid down by the first humans who blazed those trails. The universe has picked up these “Kosmic habits” or “Kosmic grooves,” and those who journey through them now experience them in a fairly predictable way. Each subsequent altitude (amber/mythic beginning about 3000 years ago, orange/rational beginning about 300 years ago, green/pluralistic beginning about 30 years ago) is less well defined, and in fact, is being defined by those who journey there now.
From the integral altitude, our responsibility becomes clear. To the extent that we identify with some form of the Bodhisattva vow (to become awakened as soon as possible, for the benefit of all beings), our practice becomes incredibly important. We must not delay (acting, as Martin Luther King put it, with the “fierce urgency of now”). And we must walk softly, for the ground on which we tread is sacred ground, for the countless others who will follow in our footsteps.
Diane points to an intuition that sometimes, during her practice, she is mysteriously working through some knot (or karma) of another person from another place and time. Indeed, says Ken, Alfred North Whitehead warned against the danger of “simple location”—that is, that a given phenomenon can be definitively located in a particular time and place. Where is the red altitude? We can’t really say—but in the light of AQAL, we know that it arises in four quadrants. And in four quadrants, our own actions influence it, for better or for worse.
Why practice? For the good of all beings, who will benefit from the perspectives we will be able to take—and the “right action” that we can take from those perspectives. And for the good of the path itself, so that, laid down with deep intention and great care, those who follow may have safe passage into greater freedom and greater fullness.
Why Wait? (video)
As we
deepen in practice, we deepen also in our realization of how important
it actually is. This excerpt is taken from the autumn 2006 Integral
Contemplative Christianity seminar.
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This Week on Integral Spiritual Center....
Kant, Hegel, Fichte - Ken Wilber
God as God IS - Fr. Thomas Keating
Kant, Hegel, Fichte (audio)
The Lineage of Developmentalism
In many ways, the German Idealists were able to reach incredible heights of philosophical realization, rarely since matched. Even the term “idealistic” connotes to us a lofty—if ungrounded—approach to reality. But, lacking solid injunctions for reproducing its insights, the movement quickly came unraveled in the wake of later postmodern thought. They were brilliant indeed, says Ken Wilber in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, “and yet….”
Which aspects, if any, of the Idealists’ legacy are still with us? Just as any spiritual lineage can be traced back to its founder, so, too, can the lineage of any particular current of thought. It is fascinating to see how some of the most valuable insights of our time have their roots in Idealism. In this week’s featured audio, Ken discusses structure-stages, prefigured in the chakras and sheaths of the ancient East, but given enormous clarity in the light of the modern West.
The modern concept of development, which received its best early formulation in the work of American philosopher James Mark Baldwin, begins with the groundbreaking work of Immanuel Kant. His elucidation of a priori structures (knowledge which is based not on experience but on the form of all possible experiences) was pivotal. Kant devised a brilliant synthesis of the two major schools of thought of his time: the rationalists, who suggested that our understanding is derived primarily from reason, and the empiricists, who held that it is based mostly on experience. Hegel built on the Kantian notion of structures, reasoning that “they can only be conceived as ones that have developed.” Fichte added brilliantly that genealogy was the key to an authentic hermeneutic of the Kosmos. What is required, Fichte tells us, is a “reconstruction of the pragmatic history of consciousness.”
The “pragmatic history of consciousness” is precisely what James Mark Baldwin endeavored to reconstruct. His early work on development coincided with the births of his own daughters, Helen and Elisabeth. In 1894 he published Mental Development in the Child and the Race. Methods and Processes, a book that was highly influential for Jean Piaget (his student in Paris) and Lawrence Kohlberg, who subsequently set the stage for the approaches of today. Thus, the lineage of developmentalism can be traced from Kant’s early breakthrough, down to the brilliant contemporary work of theorists such as Susann Cook-Greuter and Robert Kegan.
The contributions of the Idealists—their integration of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and their attempts to bridge the Cartesian dualism—are enduring, though in the end, their soaring thought collapsed under its own weight. But we have Kant, Hegel, and Fichte to thank for “all levels”—the “AL” in AQAL—the cornerstone, or perhaps the very bedrock, of the Integral model.
God as God IS (video)
Father Thomas Keating explains how centering prayer, as it deepens into contemplation, helps us to approach God as God IS. This excerpt is taken from the autumn 2006 Integral Contemplative Christianity seminar.
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This Week on Integral Spiritual Center....
Four Paths, Four Destinations - Ken Wilber
Twelve Step Spirituality - Fr. Thomas Keating
Four Paths, Four Destinations (video)
Ken Wilber on the Unity of the World’s Religions
From a green altitude, the notion of a transcendent unity of the world’s religious traditions is most compelling. It’s a happy ending—a fitting conclusion to what has been at times a somewhat tragic story. Given all the violence that has been done in the name of God, it’s somehow comforting to believe that, in the end, the scriptures are really saying the same thing.
Except that they aren’t. When taken literally (as is often done from the amber altitude) the scriptures contradict one another to no end—and often contradict themselves! Wars have been fought between Christian denominations over one word (!) in the Nicene Creed. When we take a more nuanced position, we can tease apart the exterior, exoteric aspects from the interior, esoteric aspects. And while we find some commonality in the esoteric aspects, even there, unity is elusive.
In fact, suggests Ken Wilber in this week’s featured audio, there is no transcendent unity of the world’s religious traditions. There is no one fixed point at which they all meet. But in a sense, there are four. The world’s religious practices are architected after the great journey that each of us embarks upon every night: from a gross state of consciousness to a subtle dream state, to a causal deep sleep state (with the addition of a fourth, nondual state which unites them all). Evelyn Underhill pointed this out in her classic Mysticism, which describes four stages of mysticism: purgation (gross), illumination (subtle), dark night (causal), and unification (nondual). In The Paradox of Instruction, Adi Da speaks of the path of yogis (gross), saints (subtle), sages (causal), and siddhas (nondual). And Daniel P. Brown, in Transformations of Consciousness, finds precisely the same deep structures beneath the myriad mystical traditions. Thus, four broad mystical paths, and four distinct mystical destinations. The first leads to a oneness with all gross phenomena, the second, a oneness with all subtle phenomena, the third, a oneness with all causal phenomena, and the fourth, a oneness with Emptiness and all that arises therein.
Of course, spiritual state experiences are always experienced and interpreted from the developmental stage we find ourselves at. Our altitude is literally the context in which our state experiences arise; it is the theatrical stage upon which life’s play unfolds. Our context is necessarily somewhat hidden to ourselves. But to be aware that we are wearing, in a very real sense, a pair of colored glasses which colors everything we perceive—amber, orange, green, teal, turquoise—is a startling insight from integral. To take up that great human journey, pushing wakefulness from gross to subtle to causal to nondual, viewing our experiences from the highest possible altitude, and being aware of all that can go wrong along the way, is the goal of integral spirituality.
Twelve Step Spirituality (video)
Fr. Thomas Keating discusses Twelve Step spirituality, a beautiful approach which helps us to understand the extend of our dependence on the Divine....
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This Week on Integral Spiritual Center....
The Mind of Christ - Jim Marion/Ken Wilber
The Fast that I Desire - Father Thomas Keating
The Mind of Christ (audio)
Jim Marion and Ken Wilber on Integral Christianity
In the decades following the death of Jesus, St. Paul wrote, in the Letter to the Ephesians, what is probably the central injunction of Christianity: “You must therefore put on the mind of Christ Jesus.” This verse—frequently quoted and diversely interpreted—is incredibly enlightening when viewed from an integral altitude.
In this week’s featured audio, ISC Teachers Ken Wilber and Jim Marion discuss the arising of Christianity in the integral worldspace. As Ken writes in Integral Spirituality, the meaning of a statement is the means of its enactment. In other words, to truly understand the meaning of a statement, it is imperative to determine the Kosmic Address (altitude + perspective) of both the subject and the object, or the person who is speaking and the thing they are speaking about. This allows you to take up the appropriate injunction so that you can inhabit that address and see for yourself!
To understand St. Paul’s statement, then, one can take up the injunction of the Church, which for fifteen centuries passed down a rich collection of contemplative practices that lead precisely to “putting on the mind of Christ.” Unfortunately—and for reasons that become clear from an integral altitude—these practices were, for the most part, discarded in the wake of the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation, which threw out the mystical baby with the mythical bathwater. It is only in our time, and through the heroic work of teachers such as Father Thomas Keating, Brother David Steindl-Rast, and Jim, that the mystical tradition is being rediscovered on a large scale.
Jim points to two recent books that, taken together, demonstrate where the Christian tradition finds itself. Both books seek to answer the question: who is Jesus? The first, Bishop John Shelby Spong’s Jesus for the Non-Religious, relentlessly demythologizes Jesus to the point that he ends up looking, quite simply, like a really great guy. But this approach, which strips Jesus of any sense of divinity, likewise strips his followers of the means by which to “put on the Mind of Christ.”
In contrast, Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth makes use of considerable biblical scholarship to try to answer the same question. But the divinity of his Jesus is emphasized to the point that it’s hard to find anything human in him, as though God assumed human nature like putting on a suit of clothes. And thus the dichotomy: if Jesus is God and we are not, how can we possibly put on His Mind?
The ancient Christian tradition stresses that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. He was not simply a really great guy; nor was he simply God walking around on earth for a time. Father Thomas speaks of Jesus on the Cross, stretched out between Heaven and Earth, as a profound symbol of the wedding together, in one Person, of all of evolution—matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit—leading the way for us all to do the same. This process of divinization, as Eastern Christian traditions put it, is beautifully worded in the liturgical prayer: “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled Himself to share in our humanity.” Integral spirituality likewise exhorts us to be fully human (developing our abilities to take the widest and highest possible perspectives) and fully divine (moving into states of an ever-deepening oneness with Spirit). Perhaps we too will die to the egoic self-contraction we somehow believe ourselves to be. And perhaps we too will awaken and leave behind “the empty tomb….”
The Fast that I Desire (video)
Father Thomas Keating discusses the ancient practice of fasting. How does abstaining from food at certain times relate to silence—or the refraining from words—during centering prayer? This question is taken from the autumn 2006 Integral Contemplative Christianity seminar.
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This Week on Integral Spiritual Center....
A Turn to the Right - Roger Walsh
God's Thoughts and Our Thoughts - Fr. Thomas Keating
A Turn to the Right (audio)
Roger Walsh in Profile
The “dual center of gravity” model of development, which Ken Wilber writes about in his yet-to-be-published books, Overview and Superview, provides a remarkable view of the human journey, from birth to enlightenment. It outlines how individuals move through a clearly defined vertical spectrum of structure-stages of development, allowing them to take increasingly deeper and wider perspectives, and how they move through a horizontal spectrum of state-stages, progressively deepening their ability to witness the arising of all gross, subtle, and causal phenomena. At any point along their path of vertical structure-stage unfolding, an individual can take a “right turn,” changing their trajectory so that their growth begins to explicitly include development through the spectrum of state-stages. In some cases, this right turn comes early in life, perhaps as the result of a host of potential factors: upbringing, socio-cultural conditions, early mystical experiences, or experiences with entheogens (psychoactive substances used in a religious context). And, in other cases, the turn is taken later, after the individual has already made significant progress through structure-stages.
For ISC Teacher Roger Walsh, the emergence of the “right turn” on his journey was, as he describes it, the “biggest shock of my life.” When, in the course of his studies in psychiatry, he began to practice psychotherapy with clients, he figured he had a moral obligation to undergo the process himself. He was initially skeptical and not expecting much to come of it. Fortuitously, his therapist was Jim Bugental, one of the founders of existentialist-humanistic psychotherapy. Jim revealed to him an inner universe that was as vast and mysterious as the outer one. Looking within for the first time, Roger described having lived his entire life “on the top six inches of a wave, atop an ocean that I hadn’t even known existed.”
In the wake of this discovery, Roger began investigating a wide variety of psychological techniques for exploring it. He considered himself a hard-core scientist—or rather, scientismist—who was quite certain that physics could explain the whole of manifestation quite adequately. But, to his great surprise, he began to take considerable interest in spiritual techniques that he had previously written off as obsolete artifacts from an archaic consciousness. As his practice deepened, he came to an astounding conclusion: the great religions, at their contemplative core, contained technologies that induced the states of consciousness that their founders had realized. After many years of practice, across many traditions, he began to see the deep structure underlying the diverse surface features of the world’s religions. He describes the core of the traditions beautifully in his masterpiece, Essential Spirituality.
Roger tells of one of his first dates with Frances Vaughan, the love of his life, and how she brought over a book that was cryptically entitled The Spectrum of Consciousness. In what turned out to be quite a deviation from their original plan, Roger and Frances spent the entire evening sitting on the couch, reading Spectrum to one another. Roger soon made contact with Ken, the enigmatic author, and the two began a lifelong friendship. To this day, with characteristic humor, Ken considers Roger to be his “oldest friend.”
Regardless of whether the “right turn” is taken early on, or after many years of dis-belief, it is an incredibly important step in the human journey. The maps are enchanting, compelling, and endlessly fascinating. But you must begin the journey! Ken wrote in One Taste that five years—the average amount of time a student spends in Zen meditation before experiencing kensho, or “little enlightenment”—goes by in the blink of an eye. Having read those words five years ago myself, I know the truth of which I speak….
God's Thoughts and Our Thoughts (video)
"My thoughts," says Yahweh in the Book of Isaiah, "are not your thoughts." Which thoughts are God's, which are ours, and how do we tell the difference? Father Thomas Keating responds to this question at the Autumn 2006 Integral Contemplative Christianity seminar.
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In his latest works, the yet-to-be published Overview and Superview, Ken Wilber makes a critically important distinction between structure-stages and state-stages of consciousness. The ancient East has given us extraordinary 1st-person accounts of the spiritual path; the modern West has provided a unique 3rd-person view on how human beings develop through a spectrum of increasingly wider and higher perspectives. This insight offers a groundbreaking look at what it might be to live a life of freedom (state-stages) and fullness (structure-stages) and perhaps, in Jesus’ footsteps, to become both fully human (structure-stages) and fully divine (state-stages).
Ironically, as Ken and ISC Teacher, Roger Walsh, discuss in this week’s featured audio, few people—and fewer collectives of people—have realized this insight, let alone embodied it. Roger speaks of his considerable experience in polyphasic cultures—that is, cultures that have an openness to experience across all natural states of consciousness: gross, subtle, causal, and nondual. But, with the emergence of the orange altitude or rational structure-stage, there is a not-so-subtle temptation to discard the idea of states of consciousness, and with it, the magnificent spiritual cartographies of centuries of practitioners. Of course, this is precisely one version of the pre-trans fallacy whereby, due to the perceived supremacy of reason, anything non-rational is assumed to be pre-rational. Such a move renders these cultures monophasic, privileging experience in the gross, waking state to such an extent that any other experience is simply ignored.
An integral approach, of course, values the contributions of premodernity, modernity, and postmodernity, and integrates them into a coherent position that honors their essential truths and jettisons their partialities. To monophasic cultures, the integral approach recommends an openness to the vast, documented experience of millions of practitioners throughout history, considered in their proper context. To the polyphasic cultures, the integral approach suggests both an awareness of the modern West’s insight that human beings move through stages of development and of the integral insight that any state of consciousness is necessarily experienced, unpacked, and interpreted from this stage. The result: the higher that stage, the greater the fidelity to the original message….
Indeed, this union is precisely what Ken wrote about in The Marriage of Sense of Soul: Integrating Science and Religion. The possibility is compelling: with an understanding of states, stages, and shadow, the spiritual journey—which, throughout history, has been more or less hit-and-miss—can be navigated in a much more conscious and deliberate manner, with an awareness of both where the path ahead lies and what sorts of obstacles to watch for along the way. Perhaps the sun has not yet risen on our journey, but in the day’s first light, we can see things as never before. As Ken writes in the introduction to Integral Spirituality, "It’s a new day, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new man, it’s a new woman. The new human is integral, and so is the spirituality."
Mouth to Mouth (video)
Father Thomas describes the relationship that we enter into with God in prayer, which is described, in the Old Testament, as "face to face" or "mouth to mouth." This clip is taken from the Autumn 2006 Integral Contemplative Christianity seminar.
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This week on Integral Spiritual Center....
You Have to Say Something - John Kesler/Ken Wilber
In Secret - Fr. Thomas Keating
You Have to Say Something (audio)
According to Ken Wilber, one of the two or three most important concepts of spirituality in the 21st century is the idea of evolutionary enlightenment. Given the definition of enlightenment as being one with form and one with Emptiness, and given that the world of form evolves, so too must our definition of “enlightenment.”
The idea that enlightenment has evolved is clear from a quick glimpse of the history of the Buddhist tradition, with its three (and possibly four!) turnings. The ten “ox herding pictures” of Zen were originally eight; the final two (“reaching the source” and “return to the marketplace”) were added in light of the Mahayana revolution, which emphasized a return from nirvana to samsara. This injunction to ascent and descent, to practice deeply and then to return, is summed up nicely by the titles of the first two books of Dainin Katagiri, one of the key figures in the transmission of Buddhism to the West: Returning to Silence and You Have to Say Something.
ISC Teacher John Kesler is a remarkable embodiment of this dynamic. In this week's featured audio, John discusses his journey with Ken. Though virtually his entire extended family practiced Mormonism, his father rejected the tradition; thus, John grew up on the outside. But a series of mystical experiences in his twenties inspired him to return, “beyond the objections of his mind,” to the tradition. His purpose was twofold: he longed to return to his roots and the deep richness he intuited within Mormonism, and his experiences outside the tradition (with, for example, the thought of Ken Wilber, and later, with the Big Mind Process) provided him with a spacious context with which to return.
And his return has been profound. From his developmental altitude, and blessed with considerable new insight, John was able to spot and follow the mystical path to which the tradition invited its adherents. He found in Mormonism a progression through stages (physical/emotional/mental/spiritual) and a call to state experiences. He envisioned, in Mormonism, a rich environment for spiritual exploration and a remarkable opportunity to share his insights with his fellow believers.
John is the first to admit that the center of gravity he encountered among his Mormon brothers and sisters was “not necessarily pushing turquoise.” But his message has nonetheless been well received. With considerable skilful means, he has chosen language, approaches, and venues to deliver an integrally informed interpretation of the Gospel message. Though higher and higher authorities have attended what amounts to an “unusual teaching,” he remains within the tradition, a true Bodhisattva. His humble hope is that some of the seeds he has planted may flourish after his lifetime.
John has been deeply appreciative of Ken’s establishment of Integral Spiritual Center. In addition to being steeped in AQAL, the ISC Teachers are lineage holders in their various traditions; as such, they are well placed to be the architects of the “conveyor belt,” the startling new role of religion that Ken first envisioned in Integral Spirituality….
In Secret (video)
Why does Jesus urge us to "pray in secret" in the Gospel of Matthew? Father Thomas Keating explains the instruction--of crucial importance throughout the history of Christian contemplation--during the Autumn 2006 Integral Contemplative Christianity seminar.
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