It is "causal experience" of turiya (though turiya isn't a state per se, it isn't form, it's emptiness beyond form), and then this perspective transforms into turiyatita (the ultimate marriage of form and emptiness), and I think I understand this.

But what I meant was that contemporary consciousness studies and neuroscience of consciousness usually tries to find consciousness in UR, LR, or LL and then speculate how all of this cause UL experience, whereas, in my opinion, these are only theoretical and logical speculations. I have nothing against those, if we don't forget that the basic evidence, the basic data we as human beings have is awareness, it is the basic fact of the existence of consciousness that we cannot doubt (because the doubt itself is a sign of consciousness), that is cogito ergo sum. I think, today the field of consciousness studies has come to this conclusion, too: consciousness is a fundamental property of the Kosmos.

So, I think, any paper on consciousness should start with the UL awareness argument (exploring the Cartesian cogito ergo sum argument, why not), no matter what is the main area of that paper, and then proceed to whichever arguments are needed. So, if I never forget that consciousness exists in me [that my I exists in consciousness] (UL), then I can freely argue that consciousness doesn't exist in UR, and this would be different from saying that consciousness doesn't exist at all [sic!] (as some UR and LR jerks have decided).

As for differentiating states and structures in AQAL, I have nothing against it (we should definitely stick to that). What I was wondering about was the idea that UL states seem to be not strictly a horizontal affair, those can go vertically, and perhaps touch the higher structures of the Kosmic awareness (not as a horizontal causal experience of Zen at War, but as a vertical  experience, a glimpse of a consciousness that will exist in, say, 25th or 35th century [a vision of the future, clairvoyance]). The higher structures that haven't been laid down yet through a morphic field (I hope I use this term correctly) but that surely exist to be encountered in the space beyond any time and in the time beyond any space.

As for Vygotsky, the simple notion of a zone of proximal development (ZPD) fascinates me. I know there was that discussion with Mark Edwards, but it somehow didn't satisfy me. I am not talking about Vygotskian model per se but about something that the ZPD concept points to (when Ken speaks about Sangha (LL), he talks about the same thing). I shall re-read all the works on integral psychology by Wilber soon (including Integral Psychology), so I hope I'll get a better understanding of the details of his integral psychology.

And yes, I am eager to read Overview and Superview as well! Do you know when it will be published?

hi bububu,

wow! you're quickly going beyond what i can comfortably talk about. a simple way to put it: for me, 1st tier is distal, 2nd is proximal, and 3rd is mystery. i'm sure i have very little experience of the last. incidentally, i completely forgot about supermind in my previous post, and wrote about overmind as if it were supermind

so, maybe, i should be asking you the questions. you talk about where consciousness exists, but can we really say it exists here, but not there? of course, we associate it with the LQs, and i guess we describe the RQs as mere objects of consciousness, but can we really say they are without consciousness?

even without experience of 3rd tier, i can see from how its various levels are described that they incorporate the various states of consciousness as traits, which is very fascinating to me--very evolutionary. still, it sounds to me like states are only a necessary condition for structures, and not a sufficient condition, i.e. you cannot achieve overmind without making the causal state a trait, but you can make it a trait and still be a long ways, even amber, say, from overmind. so the metaphorical distinction between vertical and horizontal is very important, i believe.

wilber has said he intends to begin making Overview available, chapter by chapter, i believe, to i-i members sometime soon. that could easily take the rest of this year, so i don't imagine it will get published until at least next year. i think Superview is also pretty much already written, but still needs to be gone over and edited, so it may be a good while before we'll get a chance to see it, but it probably wouldn't make that much sense to us, anyway, without a prior understanding of Overview.

there are others, i'm sure, who could tell you alot more, and i imagine they will, when you're ready.

---

Well, there's a lot of 3rd-person literature that points to the fact that consciousness is not needed to explain what is going on in the Right-Hand quadrants. As Max Velmans, according to B. Mangan, points out:

"...consciousness occupies no discernible place in third-person science. If the brain is examined from an external perspective, all neural processing, from input to output, can be accounted for by known biophysical principles without reference to consciousness. There are no "gaps" in processing for consciousness to fill."

[Quoted from: Velmans M., Schneider S. (ed.) (2007). Blackwell Company Guide to Consciousness. Ch. 52, "Cognition, fringe consciousness, and the legacy of William James" by Bruce Mangan, p. 683. (This is quite a recent book with a few exceptionally interesting chapters and quite a few boring ones. Serves well as an eclectic overview of contemporary 3rd-person & 1st person accounts. Mostly the former, of course. By the way, in the Chapters 11 & 12 David Fontana cites a few Wilber's books, and it was quite a good surprise to encounter in such a book.)]

I don't know whether the idea that there are no "gaps" in RH-quadrants for consciousness to fill is true or not. But it seems relevant, although there may be some things that do need consciousness (Kosmic evolution, for instance?). Or may not. But at this moment it might serve our purpose to acknowledge that 3rd-person domains do not need consciousness for their "mechanisms" and systems to exist. Some jerks (I call them jerks, but of course they're respectable and smart people; they're just lost in 3rd-person orange methodologies) think that if it "doesn't exist" in 3rd-person domains, then science doesn't need to study consciousness at all. But they forget that we have 1st-person domains, whose data suggests that consciousness does exist, and if 3rd-person domains cannot account for that, then we've found limits for their methodologies. Because at any rate consciousness exists! Moreover, it is affected by RH-quadrants (as well as it affects them). It's just too hard for an orange consciousness to grasp that synchronous and causal interdependence of 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-person domains. Yeah, it definitely takes dialectic thinking to start groking that.

As for our states/structure dialogue and Supermind and Overmind stuff, it is not in my comfort zone either. I shall be thinking about that states/structure issue, and maybe there's really nothing at all in that.  It's just my intuition (and my experience) that tells me that different states of consciousness (Abe Maslow's peak experiences) open, for instance, different higher cognitive capacities, or a higher capacity to play a musical instrument -- not as a permanent structure but as a transient state (as though one can rollercoast a line of development, even though it hasn't yet been stabilized). I can't say I got some good evidence to support that claim at this moment (although I can imagine it is somewhere there). So, yes, the states... they come, they torture you a bit, they go. Structures do it for longer periods. :)

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, it is very useful and beautiful and good.

bububu:

It's just too hard for an orange consciousness to grasp that synchronous and causal interdependence of 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-person domains. Yeah, it definitely takes dialectic thinking to start groking that.

that's great! i fully agree. there just isn't enough room in orange consciousness to simultaneously include all four quadrants. it's like they're being asked to juggle five balls (take a fifth perspective) when they can't even handle four.

i probably shouldn't take anymore of your time. best wishes on the paper,

ralph

---