This is an interesting video from a long series by a youtube blogger called Thunderf00t. You can view the entire series  here. .

Especially worth watching for the last three minutes, in which he addresses the "teach the controversy" position that creationists have tried to assert, and that many relativist spiritual folks are confused by with regard to the difference between faith-based assertions and scientific method.

AMAZING NEW ART AND SPRING CLEANING/ORANIZATION...

I just created a completely new updated homepage here at Gaia - and i know many of my readers probably just have this blog-page bookmarked so:

Go and see my new Homepage here!

(and then come back and let me know what you think in  the comments section below!)


Photo Art: Robert Sturman


I am excited to put this professional message out into the Gaiosphere...

Please direct anyone to this page who might be interested in, inspired by, or in need of my approach!

Oh - and please leave any feedback here in the comments section..


Namaste
~Julian

Above is a video that is geting a lot of play in the spiritual community.

It's inspiring, it's exciting, it's deeply personal, poignant, intelligent and funny - but ultimately I think the message and it's underlying assumptions are hugely problematic.

I am going to save my comments until this has been up for a little while, and let any readers make their own observations.

My suggestion: watch it once and take the emotional/altered state ride - its great! Then watch it again and pay more attention to the details...

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INTRODUCTION

OK - now that we've got a juicy conversation going on below, I will flesh out my analysis begun in the comments section.

* Let me say first of all, this is not intended in any way to be hostile toward Ms. Taylor. She is obviously a bright and sincere woman, who has recovered from and struggled to make sense of a very intense experience of brain injury. She is clearly in touch with a feeling of wanting to share a message that is positive with the world. Her talk is engaging, intelligent, self-revealing and impactful.

At the same time, she is unwittingly enacting a set of fallacies that a basic knowledge of transpersonal psychology, integral theory, philosophical reasoning and recent studies on meditation and neuroscience can enable us to see.

Why does this matter?

Well, the subjects she is touching on regarding the brain, altered states of consciousness, stagewise development and the future of humanity are important and meaningful ones - and they not only deserve to be addressed with more clarity, but when misrepresented as she is doing perpetuate misconceptions that do none of us any good, let alone the ideal of world peace and unity.

Now before you get all bent out of shape, let me acknowledge that yes, of course this is opening a door for many who might otherwise not link these subjects or be exposed to certain possibilities. At the same time I maintain, as I have done with The Secret, What The Bleep, Steve Pavlina's blog and other purveyors of these kinds of fallacies - that it is sometimes better to not be exposed to important ideas than to be exposed to distorted, poorly-reasoned, incorrect manglings of important ideas, dressed up as the next big thing...

For those who will say - ah but this is stage appropriate, don't be so mean to people who think this way, I have one statement: fallacious arguments are not the domain of any healthy stage, especially once one has developed the capacity to reason. There is a healthy version of the interaction between Ms. Taylor's experience and an interpretation that weaves together spirituality, science and philosophy that would represent what integral calls healthy Green - this however is not it.

Here's why:

ALTERED STATES & THEIR INTERPRETATION

1) The talk falls into the trap of conflating an altered state experience with an uncritical interpretation of that experience, without differentiating the two and creating a three strands of science set of well described links and hypotheses. Now, I know its a short talk, but this could be done in a more exciting, though grounded/conservative way, that would map out some very fertile territory for future inquiry, instead of jumping right into a very grandiose narrative about saving the world by choosing to be in your right brain as much as possible.

What i think is going on here is that Ms. Taylor has yet to integrate the experience of this radical  altered state with her scientific/cognitive abilities. Understandable - it was a radically different state of mind than she had ever experienced. Furthermore, as the talk progresses it becomes apparent that Ms. Taylor is in a bit of an altered state on stage, this is captivating at first, but read as a little hysterical and manic on second viewing. again - no judgment or mean-ness here, this is just a subjective observation of her mental state. I mean the words "hysterical" and "manic" in their technical usage - not as some kind of ad hominem.

I have written at length here about the importance of recognizing the distance between altered state experiences and the conditioned interpretations that we are all prone to filter them through based on three factors:

1) The universal (with varying degrees of intensity) human proclivity toward not only experiencing altered states but also towards finding those altered states to some extent meaningful and significant.

2) The personal stage of development from which one
a) Interacts with or “co-creates “ the experience and
b) Interprets the experience – both based on one’s psychological profile.

3) The socio-cultural context within which the experience both
a) occurs in the first place and
b) Is then interpreted

You'll notice that Ms.Taylor does something that a lot of badly structured attempts at integrating science and mysticism do - she starts off with simple but good scientific information and then dives right into spiritual assertions without carrying over a similar kind of rigor or analysis. Notice the cadaverous human brain, the qualifications, the scientific background that make us take her seriously - but then as soon as she goes into the emotive, exciting, compelling and humorous discussion of her stroke experience, she starts using certain words without defining them via, unpacking them with, or linking them to, the brain science she is using as their support.

Unfortunately, the listener may get the impression that Ms Taylor's empirical objectivity carries over into her subjective and socially conditioned statements of interpretation and conclusion - lending them more than their deserved objective weight.

This means that even though she gives a very faithful and balanced account of her experience in the body of her talk - the inability to use her muscles, the inability to think, understand language, the presence of extreme pain and chaos etc - as well as the novelty, beauty, wonder, freedom of being in an expansive state, she still somehow manages to arrive at a conclusion in her talk that is unsatisfying.

That conclusion, that begins at around 15:30 is that  we could "choose" to step to the right of the left hemispheres and live in peace and beauty. Observe how emotionally charged this idea is for her and how it becomes the central driving force toward her recovery.

Then, at around 16:50:

"So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. "

Nirvana. Spirit. Energy. Surrender. Not the choreographer of my life. One with all that is. My moment of transition. Planes of reality. Life force power of the universe.

All of these are words that carry emotive power - and that's fine, they are descriptors of a experience, and they also exist within a context of meaning - but what would do her cause a better service and make the talk more than a cool story that seems to bolster somewhat superficial spiritual ideas, would be if she did more of a step-by-step linking of what integral theory labels the Upper Left (UL) and Upper Right (UR) quadrants. it would also help to step back a little and look at  the socially constructed (LL) phrases used above and bear in mind that these are non-empirical observations - which is fine - but they should be identified as such! Instead it all kinda blurs together in an undifferentiated way that could be mistaken for integration or holism, but alas is more of a fun mess..

In other words, how about: I was experiencing something that felt to me like what I had heard called Nirvana. How interesting that a stroke that limited the function of certain aspects of brain function would induce  a state of spaciousness, freedom from fears and pre-occupations, wonder at my connection to the universe. Perhaps this has to do with such and such structure in the brain that I know from my background deals with such and such processing, which makes me wonder what a healthy version of this pathological side-effect might be and what would make that possible.... This would ground her interpretation instead of sling-shotting it into speculative metaphysics and emotive argument that stumbles into several naive pitfalls.

This leads to my second point:


CHOICE AND BRAIN STATES

2) Again somehow Ms. Taylor comes to the conclusion that we can "choose" to be in the right brain, and that being in the right brain is the answer to our problems and the prescription for peaceful Nirvana.

Really, this is laden with two fallacies. One is that the left brain is 'the problem," the other has to do with an overstating of the possibility of choice regarding states of consciousness. (Stages too - but I'll get into that in a moment..) Bear in mind she was thrust into this expereince by a stroke - no choice there...

This plays too easily into the approach to spirituality that, rather than encouraging an integration of cognition, emotions, creativity, embodied experience - a real embrace of all that we are, pushes what  I call the "self-attacking" position that something, whether it is sex, or 'the ego," or as in this case, the left brain, or materialism, or emotional attachments, something about what and who we are is in the way of being free and enlightened, and if we could just get rid of that, overcome it, choose something else that would be the key!

This is a dualistic oversimplification of any serious process of self-transformation and it does us two forms of dis-service. First:  it feeds the fantasy that there is a simple answer, a utopian prescription that we could all just "choose."

Second: because of the previous heady misconception - it serves to keep people in an unfortunate cycle of failing at the impossible (just choosing to be in the right brain, transcending the ego altogether, not having sexual desires, completely controlling my emotions) but holding onto the idea that its their fault and they aren't trying hard enough, setting strong enough intentions, being disciplined enough, surrendering to the guru enough, choosing deliberately enough to be "in love"  and so on.. This cycle is basically a dead-end, even though we all go dancing merrily down it with a gleaming hopeful eyes and well-intentioned hearts.


BRAIN PATHOLOGY = ENLIGHTENED AWARENESS

3) The third problem here is the most glaringly obvious: the talk conflates brain injury with enlightenment. It conflates disorganized pathology with integrated development and then draws conclusions from one based on the other, again without creating good links a la some kind of quadrant analysis.

This mistake shoots itself in the foot, because the quadrant reductionism and the variation on the Pre/Trans Fallacy being enacted here allow one to easily arrive at additional poor conclusions, thus: maybe spiritual experiences are just brain pathology, or maybe what we call the healthy brain is in the way of being more spiritual. This doesn't do brain science or any kind of viable spirituality any favors whatsoever!

While a reading of contemporary neuroscience and its study of meditative states (a la Newberg) gives a solid set of links between areas of the brain that serve particular functions and the experience one has as those areas are "turned on or off " by meditation, nowhere does one find the kind of conflating that suggests that states of mental illness are identical to states of meditative absorption.

Differentiating the qualitative value of various altered states and what they do and don't mean is a crucial responsibility that this kind of research needs to be engaging.

(It's also unfortunate that she mentions her brother's schizophrenia and then leaves that loose end dangling whilemaking a case for her brain disorder as a doorway into Nirvana - the implications are obvious and unfortunate - again they do neither meditators nor mentally illl people any favors... and leave the rest of us giddily confused on the matter.)

To quote Meister Eckhart " The madman is drowning in the same waters in which the holy man is swimming."

I have gone into some depth and detail about this here.


STATES vs STAGES

4) Altered states of consciousness are one thing, stages of development are another. We learned through the 60's and 70's (and had mapped out by Transpersonal Psychology) that one could experience meditative rapture, psychedelic ego-death, darshan from the great master, and the euphoria of mass demonstration or celebration and still return relatively unchanged to one's existing stage of development.

This niggling reality forced theorists to make a distinction between states and stages and try to make sense of which states were useful glimpses of higher stages and how they could then be translated into a developmental process that would turn the altered state into a permanent trait.

What the research clearly shows, is that one does not develop stagewise by wishing it so, by believing, by choosing, by magical intervention, or by one-off altered state explosions -  one progresses through stages of development at the higher end of the spectrum by hard work, practice, self-inquiry, process, healing, study etc...

As inspiring as an altered state - or someone else's account/interpretation of their altered state may be as fuel for transformation - leaving out a map that actually engages the process of transformation renders the inspiration somewhat empty and lacking in direction.


IN CLOSING

Let me end by saying that I am immensely sympathetic to the message, the emotional tone, the intentions of this talk, and I have immense compassion for Ms. Taylor and her experience. At the same time, i think that identifying the popular fallacies that limit the healthy and differentiated integration of mind-body, brain/spirituality, stages and stages, science  and mysticism, empiricism and idealism - and offering alternative lenses,  is an important, grounding and forward-looking task.

It is the passion I share with Ms. Taylor for the subject that inspires this critique. May it be of service!

Elijah challenged me to put up video of what I consider healthy Green. With the spiritual marketplace so flooded with unhealthy regressive New Age version of Green and a lot of revenue being pumped into and extracted from that growing market it is much, much easier to find examples of unhealthy Green. I noticed that James Turner and Ken Wilber have agreat new dialog up on Integral Naked that starts with a conversation about the massive problems of the Green dominance of the sphere of education in America - check it out.

But, that aside - here's one example of what I think of as a healthy Green/Teal voice. I find that poetry can get closer to the revelatory phenomenology that gets so over-literalized and lost in the magic and mythic fantasy of popular spirituality and religion.



There's not a lot of David Whyte on Youtube, but here's an excellent video of him talking about the path of the artist:

More healthy Green for ya:


More from Kornfield:


Stan Grof:


What makes these two men and David Whyte below examples of healthy - or perhaps healthier Green is their metaphorical language, postmodern integration of East and West, sophistication of ideas, description of an inner-world and emphasis of practice - be it meditation, breathwork or art.

Some more intelligent material about mythology, spirituality, art etc that I think qualifies as healthier Green in contrast to the Secret, What the Bleep, Jill Bolte Taylor, Steve Pavlina, etc - all of which I have been critical of in very specific ways.

One indicator that the Green stage has not gotten corrupted with regressive magic and mythic literalism because of the problems of extreme relativism and escapist denial-based spirituality - is that there is both rational and higher order formal operations/vision logic relationship to symbols, mythology and the inner-life.

This is from The Matrix 10 DVD box set. I have written several pieces on the movie and its interpretation via philosophy , mythology and psychology in contrast to popular ill-conceived new age interpretations of the trilogy - see here to begin reading that series!



So far I have listed David Whyte for his evocative, revelatory poetry, Jack Kornfield for his intelligent and compassionate stance regarding meditation as a healing and awareness developing process, Stan Grof for his powerful Holotropic Breathing practice and its use as an initiatory portal into the depths of the intrapsychic realms, and now a reference to Joseph Campbell for his expansive ability to step back and see the common themes operating in all mythology as a reflection of the universal nature of the human experience and of the psyche seeking to understand and reconcile itself with the world around and within..

I would also add my own work in the world as a version of healthy Green. I have just returned from my Big Sky Retreat to Ojai that guides people through:

5 different meditation techniques
deep stretch and flow yoga
ecstatic dance
and community process  - all against a background of mystic poetry and soul-evoking, heart-opening  music.

I think my next post will be a description of that process and why i think it qualifies as healthy Green.


PS: for those wondering what this odd color-coded  labeling is all about - see here for a brief overview of Spiral Dynamics influenced Integral concept of "altitude."  In a thread on the Jill Bolte Tailor post below, Elijah challenged/invited me to blog about some healthy Green pieces of media or teaching because I am so critical of the ubiquitous and highly problematic unhealthy Green perspective.

SOUTH PARK & SCIENTOLOGY

This is a fairly straightforward animated dramatization of the formerly secret inner-circle doctrine of Scientology. This is the core myth that was only given on-board the Scientology cruise ship to members who had graduated to the highest levels of the church and spent around $300 K over many years to take all the stages of training. In recent years defectors have leaked the story at great personal risk  - resulting, naturally, in a couple very funny and informative Southpark episodes...




As we laugh and shake our heads the question might arise - how much more improbable is this than many new age and religious beliefs?

This also may clearly illustrate the burden of proof principle which is often hard to see clearly when discussing beliefs that are deeply ingrained by social conditioning as being exempted from critical thinking..... Can we prove that this story is NOT true? Well no of course not,  but we don't have to - Scientologists have the burden of proof in this case... as does anyone who makes remarkable claims about the existence of aliens, angels, ghosts, a literal god, life after death or a history of the cosmos that is based in a literalized mythology.

Scientology is an extreme example of how the demand that people forgo critical thinking in the name of spiritual growth is a fallacious and destructive one. You'll also notice of course that "churches" like this do not have inquiry-based practices, nor do they have healthy shadow-work protocols either personally or organizationally. These are some of the conditions that make cults possible.

Should we hold this cosmology as a "partial truth" that is congruent with the worldspace/stage of development of the Scientology cult-members? If not, why not?

Am I being an intolerant rational fundamentalist when I point out the nuttiness of these beliefs? If not, then where does one draw the line? God-men who rise from the dead? Gurus with magical powers? Reincarnated tulkus? Messiahs in waiting? Spaceships behind comets? Sai Baba or Amachi's "manifested" ash? The serious question is - where do we draw the line and why? Because we like certain stories more than others? Because we are enamored of certain cultures more than others? Or because we are using critical thinking to attempt some clarity and intellectual honesty?

Does it make more sense to look at the Scientology cosmology above as a pathological expression of that aspect of the psyche that is concerned with mythos and meaning - and that has been exploited and twisted, used as a way to trick people out of their mental and spiritual gifts and emotional well being in the name of power and money?

If we can suspend the doctrine of extreme relativism  for long enough to acknowledge the existence of pathology, then the question becomes how do we define the pathology? How do we differentiate healthy spirituality from unhealthy spirituality - and are these principles in some ways transcendent of developmental stage maps?

For more on this subject see my Gurus, Cults and Aliens post here.

Today is the one year anniversary of the VA Tech Massacre. I send my best wishes to the families of those slain in this senseless violent drama. Their loss is incalculable.

In a very interesting way, events like these create a watershed for how we think about reality, suffering, evil, mental illness, etc..

In response to this tragedy and the discussions that happened online about it, I created this post that features a video from integral artist Stuart Davis.

Steve Pavlina, a blogger and personal growth coach who Integral Institute's e-newsletter Holons had (it turns out , mistakenly) ranked with the high honor of "turquoise" responded to the massacre with some almost psychotic new age babble - and what's more many in the Integral blogosphere rushed to his defense when myself, Davis and Ken Wilber pointed out how appalling, delusional, and riddled with PTF errors his statements were...

This sparked a heated debate that I think makes some very good distinctions between forms of spirituality that can and cannot effectively address the reality of tragedy. Of course in order to be able to effectively and compassionately address tragedy one's spiritual worldview has to not be in denial about it, or be a form of rationalization and dissociation. Turns out this is fairly rare..

It's a very interesting and informative piece - see the link right below and -
Check it out!

(CHICAGO)—Calling it the next logical step in her celebrated career, and a groundbreaking achievement in applied quantum field theory, media giant Oprah Winfrey unveiled her latest project Monday: a completely separate realm of existence, known as >OpraH, which she will control on the subatomic level.

Click here to read more..

Here is a rare (sort of) mainstream interview of Ken Wilber just up on Salon.com this week!

He talks about spirituality, science, pre/trans problems, new age confusion and his recent brush with death.

I am so glad to hear him expressing several points of view that I think are key to understanding and applying Integral Theory and yet are much misunderstood in the online integral community.





Some favorite excerpts: (italics and bold mine!)

Science and Religion

"There are at least two main types of religion. One is dependent upon a belief in a mythic or magic dogma. That is certainly what most people mean by religion. Science has pretty thoroughly dismantled the mythic religions. But virtually all the great religions themselves recognize the difference between "exoteric" or outer religion, and "esoteric" or inner religion. Inner religion tends to be more contemplative and mystical and experiential, and less cognitive and conceptual. Science is actually sympathetic with the contemplative traditions in terms of its methodology."

"Conventional science has correctly dismantled the pre-rational myths but it goes too far in dismantling the trans-rational. The mythic and magic approaches tend to be pre-rational and pre-verbal, but the meditative or contemplative practices tend to be trans-rational. They completely accept rationality and science. But they point out that there are deeper modes of awareness, which are scientific in their own way."


"The word "God" is much more misleading than it is accurate."


Pre/Trans Distinctions

"The mystical state is often beyond words. It is trans-rational because you have access to rationality but it's temporarily suspended. A 6-month-old infant, for instance, is in a pre-rational state, whereas the mystic is in a trans-rational state. Unfortunately, "pre" and "trans" get confused. So some theorists say the infant is in a mystical state."

"The rational scientist looks at all the pre-rational stuff as nonsense -- fairies and ghosts and goblins -- and lumps it together with the trans-rational stuff and says, "That's nonrational. I don't want anything to do with it."



Phenomenology and Consciousness

"In Zen, you have the practice of zazen. You have to sit and count your breath for up to an hour and concentrate on an object for at least five minutes without losing track. The average American adult can do it for 18 seconds. Then you have the data, what's called satori. Once you train your mind and look into your interior, you investigate the actual nature and structure of your interior consciousness. If you do this intensely enough, you'll get a profound aha experience, a profound awakening. And that satori is then checked with others who've done this practice."

"..if you take a phenomenology of our interior states, then you look at them as being real in themselves. And that's where values lie and meaning lies. If you try to reduce those to matter, you not only lose all those distinctions, but you can't even make the claim that some are right and some are wrong."

"We're not talking about ghosts and goblins and souls and all that kind of stuff. Just: Is there interiority? Is there an inside to the universe? And if there is interiority, then that is where consciousness resides. You can't see it, but it's real. This is the claim that phenomenology makes. "

(This actually goes nicely with Wilber's attempt at schooling Rupert Sheldrake on to what extent we can - and more importantly can't  talk about there being collective consciousness in the universe at large... it's  from about 22 minutes to 35 minutes in the dialog.)

Popular Quantum Physics Misinterpretations

Salon: What do you think of the New Age writers who see a link between mysticism and the weirdness of quantum physics? There have been popular books, like "The Tao of Physics" and "The Dancing Wu Li Masters," as well as the hit film "What the Bleep Do We Know." They point out that reality at the quantum level is inherently probabilistic. And they say that the act of observing a quantum phenomenon plays a critical role in actually creating that phenomenon. The lesson they draw is that consciousness itself can shape physical reality.

"They are confused. Even people like Deepak Chopra say this. These are good people; I know them. But when they say consciousness can act to create matter, whose consciousness? Yours or mine? They never get to that. It's a very narcissistic view.

But the real problem is what's called "the measurement problem." And 95 percent of scientists do not think the measurement problem involves consciousness. It simply involves the fact that you can't tell where an electron is until you measure it. It's very different from saying it doesn't exist until you measure it. That's entirely different from saying human consciousness causes matter to come into existence. We have abundant evidence that the entire material universe existed before human beings evolved. So the whole notion that human consciousness is required -- it retroactively creates the universe -- is a much harder myth to believe than myths about God being a white-haired gentleman pulling strings up in the sky."

"I collected the writings of the 13 major founders of quantum mechanics. They were saying physics has been used since time immemorial to both prove and disprove God. Both views are fundamentally misguided. These physicists became deep mystics not because of physics, but because of the limitations of physics."

Check out the whole Ken Wilber interview "You are the River" on Salon.com here.