Great Ken Wilber Interview on Salon.com
Julian
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.
Access: Public
buddhism
July 2008
Nice one Julian,
I have often worried (of course only afer I understood most of what he was saying!) that his message would get past so many people because it is so dense. There is a certain level of maturity of conversation (in this article) that he is developing that grounds his speech - you know, how difficult is it to spin 10 plates at once in discussing interior, exterior, holons, i , we, it, its. Never mind ego, shadow, states, stages and lines. phew.
I think this will be his lifes work now. Clarifying, making accesible, education (which i learned today means 'to draw out'…).
It takes patience to read Ken and to just sit with it. Just like reality. :)
nicely said sanjuro!
Hey, Julian. It's a cool interview, huh? It's interesting to see how he answers questions for a mainstream magazine.
“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.””
I just wanted to point out here that there are really two types of trans-rational. In the interview he is only talking about horizontal trans-transrational, probably because that's enough to start with, because the whole horizontal/vertical idea is not simple and because the idea of trans-rational verticality is harder still.
At any rate, the type of trans-rational he is talking about in the interview is like “cessation,” the cessation of all thinking and activity. Beyond all perspectives. But trans-rational in action we might call the “psychic,” though we may not be able to reduce it to that ultimately and there are, of course, other names we might use (“intuition” can be misleading because people often elevate conditioned behavior or even instincts to “intuition”). The word “psychic” is actually good as long as people don't immediately reject the idea as too far out because while people can get away with calling themselves “spiritual” or “authentic” or “intuitive” they have a harder time calling themselves psychic if it's not the case.
The psychic includes the rational, has access to it, and uses it when necessary but does not work along “rational” lines itself or necessarily let the strictly rational carry the day. It is not pre-rational either, though of course we will all be tempted to act in a pre-rational manner (give in to narcisistic anger, for example) in emotional, stressful moments. It is just a sense of right or wrong—the right or wrong way to move forward that is beyond but including the rational. For example, we often have more than one rational choice–should we add up the rational reasons for each, weight each reason somehow, assigning each reason a value, and then go with the one that has the greatest value or weight at the end of the analysis? That would be the strictly rational way to do it—let's do a cost/benefit anaylsis and let that decide the matter. Ford or GM did one of those in the 70s—they decided that it would cost less not to put airbags in their cars; they would simply pay out the damages when people got killed or maimed and thereby make more money.
At any rate, I don't mean psychic as in, you know, something really dramatic necessarily, like forecasting who will win the election or something, but also as an application of the capacity to-day-to-day things, using rationality but not necessarily letting a rational analysis decide the question. Aurobindo described the psychic as simply something with an inherent sense of right and wrong, rather than the pedantic sense of right and wrong of the moralist, though the rational moral arguments are definitely very important and considered by the psychic.
I really agree also that the word “God” is more misleading than it is accurate as well, though not obsolete.
David
i always love your contributions, use of language and intense sincerity brother david.
do please elaborate more!
here is what your comment brought up for me:
sounds like you are equating the stage called psychic with the common usage of the term a la ESP - i am not sure that is correct david.
this suggests that people who claim ESP of some kind are at a higher stage of development, and i am afraid to say everyone i have come across who calls themselves psychic in the ESP sense may well have had intuitive gifts but their worldview has been through-and-through new age prerational.
also i think the stage/state called psychic is different than the intuitive developmental line - which can be well developed at any stage of development but will still be reliant on the person's general center of gravity for how it gets translated…
plus - though we may rely on higher order intuitive “truth-at-a-glance” intuitive cognition at higher stages - this will still have to be in touch with healthy rationality to qualify as trans-rational and be subject to rational verification after the fact. precisely because trans-rational includes rational (rational+) it will not go against rational - but prerational will.
for example it is prerational to believe that jesus or the buddha literally visited you in your meditation and have passed on the mantle of avatar to you personally and given you psychic powers to ascertain what everyone in the world needs as we approach 2012. but it would be transrational to be able to interpret one's experience of a vision of jesus or the buddha in meditation as carrying a kind of psychospiritual symbolism, or better yet - as a narcissistic fantasy that was blocking the way to an authentic satori!
another example - i may be in a deep healing session with someone - in a shared altered state of intuitive open-ness. in these moments many of my choices in terms of where i go energetically, what i say, how i interact with them, music choices, touch techniques etc are coming out of a purely intuitive/empathic flow - this usually yields startlingly powerful results in terms of pain relief, emotional openings and psychospiritually potent insights and corrective moments… however i am also (to the best of my ability) maintaining a “still small voice of reason” - one of rational self-assessment awareness to keep it real - and what's more, i will check in during and/or after from time to time to make sure i am in a meaningful place viz the clients experience and not just off to the races on my own inflated/projected trip…
i know many healers who claim psychic abilities and convince themselves and their clients of some pretty nutty (and untrue) stuff that does more harm than good - in the mistaken claim of their psychic abilities/”information” being beyond rational scrutiny - when in fact it is unfiltered inflated prerational garbage.
anyway i prefer the later wilber stage names and have always found the psychic, subtle, causal labels to be more confusing than useful - for the simple reason that what those terms refer to has to do with discrete states of consciousness 99% of the time only available via long-term deep contemplative practice of the kind most people getting excited about integral by reading have not done - and when these folks then throw the terminology around in an abstract way it is usually the beginning of a lot of fanciful pre/trans hoo-ha in which they try to “prove” various new age-isms by citing the great wilber - and claim that anyone who doesn't agree is just not second tier!
Hey thanks, Julian, and right back at you! :)
Surely most of the people claiming ESP are not at some psychic stage but just have something else going on with them that's probably not trans-rational. But then there could be some other line of development that they are for some reason gifted in. Basically, though, I think it's pretty uncommon to have the psychic realized as a stage. I think you make an interesting point about how things are translated. You could get some geniune psychic action going on but for various reasons have it distorted, probably in any number of different ways.
And, yes, I agree with you completely that anything like this will have to be in touch with healthy rationality. That's a really interesting point because I think a person could have the psychic even as a stage but still be “weighted” in various ways. For example, some Vedanta master could be psychic but translating it with mythic, Amber dogma. Somehow people could probably get there but not be too clear on rational, postmodern, integral, or evolutionary, post-metaphysical thought, especially if the cultural COG is less than that, which is in nearly all cases. Ramana Maharshi is perhaps a good example of this, but of course anything more would be a lot to expect out of someone living in his time and place. I think it's probably fairly common for it to get translated primarily into a Green worldview these days.
“But it would be transrational to be able to interpret one's experience of a vision of jesus or the buddha in meditation as carrying a kind of psychospiritual symbolism, or better yet - as a narcissistic fantasy that was blocking the way to an authentic satori!”
That's an interesting point, and a nice phrasing. It would be really interesting to see a study of visions from an integral psychospiritual perspective.
Your description of your deep healing sessions sounds like a great example of the psychic at work. Yes, and keeping an eye on the rational to keep it real. But what's really interesting is when we see that the psychic is coming from a different part of us than our personal self, that it's on a different line. It's more like it's coming from Being than a refinement of the personal line, though a personal line with a certain degree of development is necessary for its emergence. So the idea is to differentiate it from the personal line and personal agendas and stick with it. At first people might try to use the psychic for the personal agenda, but coming from a different line it has its own agenda. The best translation of this is probably evolution or Love and Freedom. But the personal self all the way up to Turquoise is still pretty self-concerned.
Yes, I'm sure a lot of people are claiming psychic abilities for financial reasons. And I also agree that the psychic, subtle, causal labels were confusing, partly because he was mixing states and stages. I think you also make a good point about the difference between integral reading and long-term deep contemplative practice. I think that's one of the reasons some people have a negative reaction to KW—because he emphasizes this kind of practice (with an ulterior motive of pushing people into third tier if possible), and such a committment is so threatening to their personal status quo. And if they already reject the notion of heirarchy, the idea that there are stages way higher than they are is quite galling to the narcisistic self.
David
funny dave chappelle link!