Two brief notes that I wanted to add on to my last post.  (Still short on time, but I wanted to put these thoughts out there).

One:  Related to my suggestion that, at least in terms of a 1p perspective, there is no "state- or experience-in-itself," but rather states and stages are co-implicated and co-enactive, it may make more sense to replace the horizontal bar of the W-C Lattice with neutral place- or depth-markers (whether waking, dreaming, deep sleep, etc.; or gross, subtle, super-subtle, etc; or 3, 2, 1, 0), than to actually suggest that people at all stages may have causal or nondual states.  I'm not sure if this is a wise move -- it would appear to relativize and "contextualize" the nondual state, for instance -- but it appears to be consistent with a postmetaphysical orientation.  If you study something like Madhyamika philosophy, for instance, there is a cognitive component involved in the realization of nonduality, as one takes perspectives on one's thought processes and deconstructs them, dissolving them into radical non-abiding.  It isn't simply the stabilization of a state-in-itself; "understanding" is involved.  So, if nondual realization requires attainment of a particular level of perspective-taking capacity (which can be exercised and spurred on by state experiences), then it may make more sense to locate "nondual experience" at the locus of transrational cognition and 0-level state realization (e.g., the outer-most point on the horizontal scale), rather than implying interpretation-free nondual experience is available to everyone.  What do you think?

Two:  This has been raised elsewhere, but how do you think the Integral state-and-structure/stage model accommodates the extraordinary capacities of idiot-savants, who appear to operate at very high levels of a certain line (without appearing to have gone through prior developmental stages to "get" there)?  Perhaps there's no conflict, because we're mostly looking at "skills" rather than at stages of cognitive/interpretive capacity.  But I think it's important to consider, particularly since some of these extraordinary capacities appear to involve very complex modes of information processing (more sophisticated than people at a normal rational level of development can replicate).

---

May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

Balder/Schalk:

The questions and comments that have been raised are spot on, revealing your sincere and in-depth interest in examining this fascinating topic from every angle (AQAL).  Please consider the following post as something that ties in with this topic, but does not directly address the most recent questions that you've posed.  It is something that helped me to get a better perspective on what we are dealing with here and will hopefully give you some perspective on where I am coming from.  At the very least, maybe it will help to move this topic in the productive direction that it is already heading.  Thanks for your kind consideration.

Sometime around the late 1970s, early 1980s, Ken Wilber came into public awareness.  Even before his public debut, there had been some pioneering work in the field of transpersonal/transrational psychology that never really received much attention.  The first accredited university that i'm aware of, and that offered courses and credentials in this field, was Naropa Institute in the Boulder area. 

Upon graduating from a Jesuit college in 1976, i drove out West to work for a year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corp up in the Northwest.  On the way, i took a side-track to look into what at that time was considered 'cutting edge' and experimental in this new ground-breaking area of human potential.  This was a time before any of the more critical studies involving transpersonal psych were developed.  It was indeed a time when even the teachers were cutting their teeth on some very heavy material.  It was also a time when if you received a degree from Naropa, you probably wouldn't find a job in the field unless you were hired to work as an associate there.  So much of what was offered was what many today disparagingly refer to as 'new age'.

The reason for sharing this background review is related to questions that have continued to haunt me when it comes to just how far we've progressed as a country and as a world since the beginning of these new developments in the fascinating fields of transpersonal and transrational psychology. Looking back over the years and coming up-to-date to the present, i find myself asking if what has transpired since the quasi-formal beginning of this pioneering venture has really made any qualitative difference in the world-at-large.

You know, we talk about having larger perspectives and gaining the high ground when it comes to structural stages and state management, but in the grand scheme of things, and as i look around and see where we are as a nation and as a world today - from my limited perspective - it really doesn't seem to have made much difference.  Perhaps the Atman Project never really was all about bringing the world-at-large into this new 'enlightenment'; or, maybe originally it was, and it just morphed into so many new versions, one after the other that we forgot what the original plan really was all about.  Frankly, i don't know.  Most of what i see appears to be certain organized groups of people who are doing the work within their own organizations and recycling their own energy right back into the organization within which they are members. Now, of course, if we believe that there is such a thing as what Rupert Sheldrake claims (along with Dr. David Hawkins, "Power vs Force"), as a dynamic Morphogenetic Field of potential that, when intensified and magnified by the power of X, can affect non-local changes throughout the global village, then perhaps these organizations are making more than just a qualitative difference within their own communities but also anywhere on the planet where the ground is prepared (so to speak) to receive such energetic potential ... Again, i don't know.

Someone once said, "At times, things just seem to get bigger and bigger but never any better."  And this reminded me of something Ken said in that interview he had back in the mid-1990s, which became what we know as "A Brief History of Everything."

(from "World Transformation and the Culture Gap, pp. 493)

Q: Do you think there is a major world transformation now in progress?

K: Haltingly, jerkily, in fits and starts.  We are seeing, and have been seeing since approximately WWII, the slow shift from rational-industrial society to vision-logic information society.  This is not a spiritual New Age transformation, but it is quite profound nonetheless.

If for the moment we use the L-R Quadrant as an indicator, there have been six or seven major transformations in human evolution - from foraging to horticultural to early agrarian to advanced agrarian to industrial to late industrial to early informational.  So we are right on the edge of one of the half-dozen or so major, profound, worldwide transformations in the formation of the human species. These are often simplified to three major transformations--farming, industry, information--so that today is the beginning of the third wave. 

But remember, we must, in my opinion, analyze this transformation in terms of all four quadrants (at least), or we'll miss the factors actually responsible for it. The transformation is being driven by a new techno-economic base (informational), but it also brings with it a new worldview, with a new mode of self and new intentional and behavioral patterns, set in a new cultural worldspace with new social institutions as anchors...

Q: So go around the quadrants.

KW: A new center of gravity is slowly emerging--the vision-logic information society, with an existential, aperspectival worldview (LL), set in a techno-economic base of digital information transfer (LR), and a centauric self (UL), that must integrate its matter and body and mind--integrate the physiosphere and biosphere and noosphere--if its behavior (UR), is to functionally fit in the new worldspace.

And this is a very tall order.  Because the really crucial point is that a new transformation places a new and horrible burden on the world. It is hardly cause for undiluted celebration! Every new emergent and transformative development brings a new demand and a new responsibility: the higher must be integrated with the lower.  Transcend and include.  And the greater the degree development, the greater the burden of inclusion.

Q: That's a problem.

KW: That's a big problem. And the real nightmare is this:
Everybody, without exception, starts its own development at square 1.  Everybody, there are no exceptions, starts at fulcrum-1, and has to grow and evolve through all the lower stages in order to reach the new and higher stage available...

And the more vertical levels of growth there are in a culture, the more things there are that can go horribly wrong...The greater the depth of a society, the greater the burden placed on the education and transformation of its citizens. The greater the depth, the more things that can go massively, wretchedly, horribly wrong. The more levels, the more chances of lying (pathology). Our society can be sick in ways the early foragers literally could not even imagine.

Q: So societies with greater depth face increasingly greater problems.

KW: Yes, in all four quadrants!  So when many people talk of the coming transformation and get all ecstatic and giddy over the thought, I tend to see another chance for a huge nightmare coming right at us.

Ken goes on to describe the "Culture Gap" and what happens when more and more people are in need of being integrated into society whose depth is getting deeper and deeper, causing problems in its ability to meet the needs and demands of so many.

So have things really gotten bigger and bigger but not any better?

As the gap between the rich and poor widens, likewise, is the culture gap becoming that much more wider, resulting in what Ken describes in this section of "A Brief History.."?  Will there be those who, however few, make it through this new evolutionary development--a vanguard of vision-logic demigods who virtually run circles all around everyone else; or, will those 21st century demigods become the benevolent philosopher kings who establish the kind of infrastructure that offers all of us the opportunity to hop aboard this new peace train that will usher the entire world into a new dawn for all of humanity?

If only time will tell, how much time do we have?

 If Spirit's Gestalt is working on this development in both the foreground and the background, then presumably we will have the time that it will take for enough people to advance into this newly emerging stage as bodhisatvas prepare the way for the mass exodus from the current advanced industrial stage into the next phase of this "third wave."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

The yoga of light and sound is really only one event. It's the frequency of their vibrations that is different.

JD:

You said: "Looking back over the years and coming up-to-date to the present, i find myself asking if what has transpired since the quasi-formal beginning of this pioneering venture has really made any qualitative difference in the world-at-large."

I am not even going to purport to offer an "answer" or even anything that is "true" or "accurate." But it is a really interesting topic, and I'll just offer my very subjective observations (as if there could be objective ones, right?)

First, I look at my kids and their friends in middle and high school and compare them to what I remember my group being like.

Kids today seem so much more open and flexible and unidentified with conventional and static self definitions. They seem more aware of the internalities of others. They seem more capable of assessing hierarchies and how things fit together and how to prioritize based on hierarchical structures.

They are definitely leagues ahead of my generation in terms of world-centric outlooks, whether that means recognizing the legitimacy of other cultures, getting along inter-racially, or just not being hung up on ethno-supremacy.

And, they just seem to be much smarter in terms of the database of information they have available. My 12 year is functioning at about the level of cognition I had at around 16.

To put it another way, my generation of the 70s was a bunch of localized "morons" (in the friendly sense) with major hangups in terms of limited identities.

I definitely feel that the post-modern spirit has seeped into the youth of today. They seem to instinctively be ready to accept that reality is a matter of interpretation.

I guess, from my perspective, the youth today as a collective are just plain more developed than my generation. They deal with more complexity and are more prepared to not be "devasted" by one thing that doesn't fit their world view.

When we point out the increasing manifestation of what seem to be low altitude behaviors, I come back to one point: the parents of those who are exhibiting these behaviors were every bit as, shall we say, ignorant (in the clinical sense), as those who are making the news today. In fact, the parents were likely even more ignorant. The difference, as Wilber points out, is that the red crowd today has technologies available to them that their parents did not have.

I don't think we properly appreciate just how, shall we see "idiotic", most people were 100 years ago, viewed from our perspective today. (I am not making a value judgment about their worth as humans, but simply stating what I believe would be an accurate visceral response if we could time travel back to 1908 and meet people in the same station of life we have now. We would be stunned at what "rubes" they are in the sense of being ethnocentric, pig-headed, inflexible, ignorant of science, ignorant of history, ignorant of anything but how they put food on the table and how they entertain themselves when they are done eating.)

To put in bluntly, knowing the youth of today, from what I have seen, I just cannot see them getting sucked up into any kind of mass insanity that would lead to another Verdun or Nanjing or Stalingrad scenario. I really think that there has been inexorable gains in altitude over the last 100 years that are unprecedented.

I think that Al Q and the Talib. are probably just a little surprised at how hard it is too recruit in numbers. They have given it all they have, and if it were 100 years ago, given the same basic cause, they would have had no problem filling the ranks. As it is, they have to scrape to get guys on board.  

As for the gains in the New Age movement, I think back to the 70s and 80s. I can still recall some of the really well-meaning but just plain insipid and mixed up and essentially narcissistic talk of those days. I was reading Alan Watts (Nature, Man and Woman) the other day, a book I loved back in 1979. Reading it now, it just seems like so much well-meaning slogan-talk. Just a big crock pot of odds and ends.

I think that the amount of actual, bona fide "practice" that is done on a daily basis today among the Integral crowd and similar groups, is exponentially greater than what was done during the heady New Age days.

I have contact with older persons who essentially have been untouched by developments of the last 30 years. They don't use computers or the Internet, and they don't read, and they have no clue what the mindset is of a 15 year old today. I get a really strong sense that it is like dealing with someone who has been hiding in the jungle for a quarter of a century. Their interpretations of events seem so .... clogged up in old sluggish notions of status and class and station. With older folks, if they get pissed off at someone, this is such a monumental event, so utterly wrong, that they will hold the grudge for 20 years. Today, young people will resolve it immediately and not miss a beat. And the old people today, though they may seem pig-headed and will hold a grudge for life, they themselves are leagues ahead of their grandparents who would be ready to duel to the death to honor their name. This is self line development all along the way.

I guess, in summary, that for ever person who appears in the news today and seems to be a regressive, pathological psycho, I am not willing to grant that their parents and grandparents were more developmentally advanced than they are now. It is just that their elders were off in some corner of the world with no tools that allowed them to be heard.

The one reality that cannot be dismissed is that the world no longer tolerates non-development. It is just really hard to sit on your butt and expect to be OK. It used to be that you could get by with not learning or developing too much. Now, you just have to do it. And if you don't, you get run over.

 

 

 

Balder:

Thanks for pointing out the oddity of saying that all states are available to all.

It almost seems like two possibilities are in order:

a. an entirely separate lattice is in order representing the verticalities available within the given states; or

b. the W-C Lattice needs to be amended, with stages built into the various state nodes representing vertical differences between, say, a causal experience of a child and a causal experience of an experienced meditator who enters an intense, peak experience of causal mysticism-identity. (The latter would seem to simply be inaccessible to the child.)

If we go with b. we could create sub-sets within each state and indicate which is available at each level of stage development.

As for the co-enactment of states and stages, I really wonder if this is warranted. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the essential point being that the state experience is a zone-1 direct experiencing (immediate, prior to interpretation) and then the interpretation of the experience comes from a subsequent (even a nanosecond later) objectification of what was a direct experience (zone 2)?

Do you remember the time David Bohn told Krishnamurti about how, if he wants to cross a creek by jumping from rock to rock, he can do it without thinking about it (zone 1) but the minute he is aware of himself doing it he is likely to break his leg (zone 2)? Zone 2 can happen in a split second but it really does seem to be of a very different perspective/order of event.

I agree, Schalk, that we need to add more diagrams.

I think all that Wilber is trying to show with the WC Lattice is that a person at first- or second-tier stages can have an experience of these deeper states or that they can even have a "state plateau," have somewhat constant access to them, but not as a permanent adaptation. I don't think we should make much more of it than that. It doesn't tell us about the relationship between states and stages as we go up; in fact, it says there is no relationship between states and stages as we go up.

Wilber has said that these deeper states "come with the territory" of third-tier stages, but if that is true, it would only makes sense that second tier dwells at a deeper state than first tier. And I think we can see this--there is simply less awareness and less "being" in first tier, more doing. At any rate, Wilber tells us that there is a relationship between states and stages (at least at first tier), but the WC Lattice does not.

So we need another diagram to show to that as we go up the spiral we also go deeper statewise. This, at any rate, is consistent with what Wilber is saying. There's actually a way to modify the WC Lattice as well: simply indicate somehow, with colors perhaps, that as we go up stage wise we also go deeper statewise.

 

mm

The other possibility, I think, is simply to make state training a seperate line of development and leave it at that: One can be at a certain cognitive or worldview stage and a certain state-training stage. It seems to me that that accomplishes the same thing as the lattice but without the confusion. One can have a first-tier worldview and at the same time have a nondual state-training "attainment," but one cannot have, say, an Indigo stage without also subtle-level state training. You can have the deeper state without the third-tier stage, but you can't have the third-tier stage without the deeper state. That's at least consisent with what KW has been saying.

 

mm

Schalk,

 

You said: As for the co-enactment of states and stages, I really wonder if this is warranted. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the essential point being that the state experience is a zone-1 direct experiencing (immediate, prior to interpretation) and then the interpretation of the experience comes from a subsequent (even a nanosecond later) objectification of what was a direct experience (zone 2)?

 

This is a very important question, Schalk.  I believe that Wilber is using states somewhat as universal constants, in contrast with the relative line(s) of individual maturation or evolutionary development.  The W-C Lattice seems to imply that there is the “same” subtle or causal state available to everyone, at all stages of development.  From a 3p perspective, I expect there is some support for this; I expect the signatures on an EEG are similar for anyone entering one of these states.

 

But on the other hand, postmodern theory, Varela’s enactive/autopoietic paradigm, and Integral/AQAL postmetaphysics would all seem to call into question whether there are any immediate, unmediated experiences equally available to all people.  This would seem to be a serious challenge to mystical traditions, which posit an unchanging ground or pure state of experience.  On the other hand, it may only be a challenge to the rather modern stream of “experientialism” that has arisen as Eastern traditions have met with Western empirical sensibilities in recent decades.

 

Just thinking aloud here: the notion of tetra-enactment implies that all holons, and in particular all experiential gestalts, involve not only Zones 1 and 2, but Zones 3 and 4 and 5-8 (all of which are co-emergent, co-determining, co-constructive).  The enactive implies that experience itself is “empty,” interdependently arisen.  If this is the case, then this would call into question (it seems to me) the convention of using “causal” or whatever as a self-existing constant which is then interpreted later.

 

What do you think?

 

Best wishes,

 

B.

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

Monkmonk,

You wrote:  The other possibility, I think, is simply to make state training a seperate line of development and leave it at that: One can be at a certain cognitive or worldview stage and a certain state-training stage. It seems to me that that accomplishes the same thing as the lattice but without the confusion. One can have a first-tier worldview and at the same time have a nondual state-training "attainment," but one cannot have, say, an Indigo stage without also subtle-level state training. You can have the deeper state without the third-tier stage, but you can't have the third-tier stage without the deeper state. That's at least consisent with what KW has been saying.

I am not quite following this.  It seems to me that if you treat states simply as another vertical line that can be trained, then you could conceivably have a third-tier stage with a very low (untrained, undeveloped) state line, simply because you have made the latter independent.  Also, in what way would a state "develop" that is comparable to other lines, such as cognitive, moral, or interpersonal?  Would you need separate lines for gross, subtle, causal, or would you have a single line that moves from gross to subtle to causal?  In either case, you would have to be able to explain why it is possible to "peak experience" this line of development but not others.

Concerning the relationship between states and stages, I think if you keep the enactive paradigm in mind -- where cognition is understood as embodied and enactively emergent (as well as generatively enactive and ontologically complex) -- then it makes sense that a program of accessing various states would influence the overall development of cognition, since cognition is already unfolding and developing via complex enactive relationships.  This just adds extra dimensionality (and intentionality) to this process.  And concerning why states seem to come with the territory at third tier, I touched on this on my blog.  In my understanding, as our perspective-taking capacity increases and we are able to take our rational thought processes and our ego structure as object, our identification with structures loosens and we begin to open to the psyche in a fuller way.  This would be facilitated, also -- as Washburn suggests -- by passing through a dark night, doing shadow work and dissolving primal repression.

Best wishes,

B.

---

May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

I am hanging on the edge of a cliff, grasping a small rock, losing my grip slowly, the falling scree is getting louder, and I see a single wild strawberry. Right in front of my nose. It's a lovely berry, and it smells so good, and I am slipping out of control, into the void...

OK, maybe a little bit of hyperbole. But, my sense is that we are talking about apples and oranges and strawberries and .... Or at least my understanding of what is being said is lacking.

I am wondering if an analogy is in order. This may be totally off the mark ...

A painter is painting a masterpiece. The work is done. The whole of it is before my eyes. I see it in one gestalt moment, the painting hanging on the wall.  

I captured the painting process on video. I am now describing each discrete brushstroke. None of the strokes themselves created the whole painting.

But, to understand how the painting came about, the sum total of each brushstroke led to the whole painting.

It is useful to describe the individual strokes and colors used. But the whole painting as a gestalt is more than that.

Is the W-C Lattice a description of the brushstrokes that we make? Realizing that nothing on the Lattice in fact adheres to the reality of the finished painting which is reality?

This will allow for discussion of states and separate interpretations and stage assignments, as a mere tool of description that may help us re-create the painting, while knowing that the tetra-enactment pointing where holons are experienced as co-emerging in all zones is a much better description of the painting itself. Is this an accurate distinction?

I am tending to think that MM's point about the need for a structure that teases out the full dimensions of states is required. Balder's points I think are valid (concerning why separate lines will not be useful for states), but what we are lacking is a really detailed "drop-down window" that makes more sense of the various states and shows that they are not simply fully available to everyone everywhere at every stage.  

Hi, Schalk, I think I have done what you are asking for, if you consider the structures and states enactively.  This is why I suggested "neutral" markers (or colors) for the "state" axis on the W-C Lattice.  What do you think of that proposal?

Best wishes,

B.

---

May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

"Kids today seem so much more open and flexible and unidentified with conventional and static self definitions. They seem more aware of the internalities of others. They seem more capable of assessing hierarchies and how things fit together and how to prioritize based on hierarchical structures."

And what is really so fascinating about their ability to do what you've identified, Shalk,  is that they haven't even formally studied Integral Theory to get there!  The essential point of my post is not that children are coming along in ways we never dreamed of; e.g., Indigo Kids,(Carrol & Tober).  In short, they do appear to have some endogenous character traits that were perhaps passed on by their forebears through the genetic pool and surfaced in that generation of kids born after the late 1970s.

Indeed, if this is true, it is a major development that almost appears to be a kind of 'quantum leap' in human evolution, proving(?) in no uncertain terms(?) that evolution is alive and well on planet earth. This would also confirm one of Wilber's most critical tenets that you cannot destroy a lower v.Meme without destroying those that are nested above it.

Yes, Schalk, your point is well-taken.  One of the more essential issues of my post is about how organizations today who presume to be working on behalf of human potential and spiritual evolution, appear to be working within their own sub-cultural organizations.  Insofar as the membership is concerned for many, the initiation fee alone is often cost prohibitive, what to speak of what happens when once they are absorbed into the membership. 

No doubt, the 'we' space is crucial for any 'human potential' organization to grow and evolve, it's the price one sometimes pays to find out that the rules of game are not what one thought they were before one passed the point of no return.  Still and all, the recycling of members' energy right back into the 'nested holoarchy' of  the organization - on the surface anyway - seems to implicitly entertain the notion of an 'Us vs Them' one-upmanship mentality rationalized as 'spiritual competition'.  It's what I call, The Star Wars of Celestial One-Upmanship.  Is this what you meant when you said that the world will no longer let you just sit on your butt, for if you do, it will just run you over? (lol)

What the world looks like today (and methinks it's getting to more of this), are groups that set themselves up as postmodern fiefdoms and Camelot is just on the horizon.  What many don't seem to get are the challenges that we face in order to  service and maintain the depth of a society that must integrate more and more of its members into that greater depth using fewer and fewer resources. 

ciao

JD

 

 

---

The yoga of light and sound is really only one event. It's the frequency of their vibrations that is different.

OK, let me see if I understand this:

markers or colors are assigned to each of the states along the horizontal axis of the W-C Lattice.

The markers/colors indicate the structures that would properly be able to access the various states?

What about the complex dimensions (altitudes) within the various states? How, for example, are nature and deity and formless mysticism fleshed out and how do we see the intensity of the abiding that truly distinguishes a flash view from a "resting in" view? And how do we see which structures tend to be able to "visit" these various altitudes within the states.

As an analogy: a child and I can both have a sip of whiskey. We will both be tipsy at a point. But there comes a point where the child will either be drunk or unconscious, while I can be drunk, shit-faced, wiped out, blotto, and then totally pissed. It's not enough to just say we are both under the influence.

Hi, Schalk,

Essentially what I was suggesting was to change the designations along the horizontal bar to something more neutral -- in particular, to avoid the use of "nondual" at all levels, since it is a fairly sophisticated realization, at least as it is presented in Madhyamika.  But I'm now backing off of that suggestion, because I believe Wilber is using it to refer to what Vajrayana traditions call the natural state -- which, by definition, is ever-present.

In some of what I wrote above, I believe I was conflating "state" and "experience" -- when the state markers do not refer to any particular experiences, but to an aspect of the consciousness-contexts "in" which experiences manifest.  Wilber sometimes describes the "nondual" as an experience, which I believe is what was tripping me up, thinking he was intending the "nondual" marker on the lattice to refer to a particular experience.  But, as I said, now I'm backing off of the suggestion to change anything.

I agree with you that it would be helpful to be able to differentiate among various grades of state experience.  The W-C Lattice can indeed provide a lot of granularity, as Wilber points out:  it allows us to differentiate among 28 different types of experiences of oneness, for instance, based on the level of cognition and the state in which it occurs.  Other charts or illustrations may be helpful, though, to make some of the further distinctions you describe.

I apologize for the delay in writing, by the way.  I've been really busy and haven't had much time to write -- or to reflect on these questions!  Regarding the original topic of this thread, I feel satisfied that we have at least come to a general agreement that some of the ways these things are discussed in Integral circles -- say, talking about transrationality or vision logic as particular non-ordinary experiences -- is problematic, and is likely traceable to the older "stage" model, which was using states for its highest levels.

Best wishes,

B.

---

May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

Monkmonk of old in purple; B. in Navy; the all-new monkmonk in blue.

The other possibility, I think, is simply to make state training a seperate line of development and leave it at that: One can be at a certain cognitive or worldview stage and a certain state-training stage. It seems to me that that accomplishes the same thing as the lattice but without the confusion. One can have a first-tier worldview and at the same time have a nondual state-training "attainment," but one cannot have, say, an Indigo stage without also subtle-level state training. You can have the deeper state without the third-tier stage, but you can't have the third-tier stage without the deeper state. That's at least consisent with what KW has been saying.

I am not quite following this.  It seems to me that if you treat states simply as another vertical line that can be trained, then you could conceivably have a third-tier stage with a very low (untrained, undeveloped) state line, simply because you have made the latter independent.  Also, in what way would a state "develop" that is comparable to other lines, such as cognitive, moral, or interpersonal?  Would you need separate lines for gross, subtle, causal, or would you have a single line that moves from gross to subtle to causal?  In either case, you would have to be able to explain why it is possible to "peak experience" this line of development but not others.

Well, I think you're right that it's not the best solution. I did say that one could have a first-tier worldview and a nondual "attainment" but that one could not have a third-tier stage realization without the correlating deeper state. We might call state training and perhaps others "nonevolutionary" lines that a person could access at any point, but I don't think it's necessary or would illustrate it particularly well.

What kind of make sense to me and what I have mentioned before is that we differentiate more a little more decisively between states and "downloaded awareness" or construct awareness. I think you mention a very important, if not the most important, aspect of the relationship between states and stages when you talk about objectifing ego and cognitive structures and such. At any rate, it may be that--and this may be what Ken is actually saying--that one can have this downloaded construct awareness and then drift through the different states, gross to nondual. He has said, for instance, that constant awareness through the sleep cycle may or not come with a particular third-tier state--this leads me to believe that constant awareness is an aspect of state training, a state-plateau kind of thing rather than an aspect of higher structure.

So perhaps one could even have nondual, Clear Light construct awareness but drift from gross to subtle to causal to nondual in a similar way that we pass through waking, dreaming, and deep-sleep states, only this other kind of drifting is dependant on other things that the sleep process, environment, for example. When Ken suggests that nondual comes with Clear Light, is he really saying that Brahmin comes with Clear Light? But Brahmin has already been defined in a very different way, a way that doesn't involve perspective taking, for example, or any sort of action. So I think there may just be a subtle distinction between the states that "come with the territory" of third tier--which might better described with a word other than "state," "awareness," for example--and the horizontal states reflected by the EEG machine, though the likelihood of deeper states would likely increase with the higher-construct-awareness stages.

If this isn't the case, then it doesn't make sense that the WC Lattice is a rectangle. If the states truly come with the territory of the higher stages then it should be shaped more like a triangle or something, indicating that once you're Clear Light you're also in the nondual state. Of course that could be the case, but it makes sense to me that we can have a degree of construct awareness and then with that construct awareness drift from state to state, and then certain other lines such as creativity, affect, joy, etc. would tend to be affected when as drift from state to state, though not all lines would be affected. Yes?  :)

 

monk monk

PS. I really liked your blog and appreciate how you pulled things together. I haven't had as much time recently and so I haven't quite been able to stretch throughout all these forums and blogs and such. You actually made one point just recently that I was about to make, that the ptf doesn't apply to states but to stages. Maybe I'll get in there yet one way or another. :)

Hi, David,

Thank you for your thoughts.  In Wilber's current model, as I understand it, the “transrational” is a label applied to a region of cognitive structural development (starting around expanded 4p or 5p perspective-taking capacity) – a structure which transcends and includes the previous 3p rational structure.

The causal state is not such a developmental structure; it is not a structure-stage which transcends and includes rationality the way that the transrational structures in Wilber's or Cook-Greuter's maps do (say, Autonomous or Construct-Aware structure-stages).

I have been wondering if there is another term available to refer to a particular (horizontal) range of states (which perhaps can be seen as representing increasing disengagement of awareness from structures) as a  complement to the term, “transrational,” which now is being used for a movement along the vertical axis and which represents increasing structural complexity and perspective-taking capacity.  One thought is to introduce a term like “trans-structural awareness,” which would be differentiated from transrational cognition.  I have several reservations about the term, trans-structural, but I don't have an alternative yet.  If the W-C Lattice, in some form, is retained, then I think something like this will be necessary, to help counter-act the current tendency to confuse the causal state (for instance) with a vertical structure-stage, or band of structure-stages (transrational).

Does this make sense?  What do you think?

Best wishes,

Balder

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.