Any Ken Wilber Bums?

[Nikolai1]

Karl

 

I don't doubt this is what Nickolai feels, but it's not a concrete reality for anyone beyond Nickolai. 

I don't want to stop you from answering Brian's simple question, but I just want to clarify the problem with the term concrete.

 

What we come to feel in our everyday lives is that there is a part of us that is more solid and enduring than any of the things in this world, and all the ideas about them.

 

Even though this part of us not materially concrete, it fulfuls all the conditions that we associate with that word: stable, permanent, dependable.  This part of us, this peace, is a rock to us.  It is always there, or nearby, when everything else comes and goes.

 

So clearly our notion of the term concrete completely changes, indeed, reverses.  Therefore when you say it isn't concrete I respectfully disagree!

[Karl]

So show us, Karl. Show us how you would explain the distinction between, for instance, pink and red to someone born blind.

 

Are you still stuck on this hopeless analogy ?

Firstly it isn't necessary for a blind person to know colours, they sense the world in terms of textures and sounds. They are as vivid to a blind person as sight is to the sighted. If they were trying to get an idea then I would probably explain it in terms of hot, warm, softer rougher smoother. That would be in keeping with their perception of the world as a nuanced place.

[Brian]

You make the point for me, Karl. Thank you.

[Karl]

Karl

 

 

I don't want to stop you from answering Brian's simple question, but I just want to clarify the problem with the term concrete.

 

What we come to feel in our everyday lives is that there is a part of us that is more solid and enduring than any of the things in this world, and all the ideas about them.

 

Even though this part of us not materially concrete, it fulfuls all the conditions that we associate with that word: stable, permanent, dependable.  This part of us, this peace, is a rock to us.  It is always there, or nearby, when everything else comes and goes.

 

So clearly our notion of the term concrete completely changes, indeed, reverses.  Therefore when you say it isn't concrete I respectfully disagree!

 

Is it there when you are totally unconscious and not dreaming ?

I'm always me as a stable, permanent, existing, perceiving, conceptualising consciously aware being whilst I'm conscious.

[Karl]

You make the point for me, Karl. Thank you.

 

Well at least you got it in the end.

[Brian]

Ah, but you still don't, sadly. My purpose here wasn't to convince you of anything but to allow you to demonstrate your awareness or lack thereof.

[Karl]

Ah, but you still don't, sadly. My purpose here wasn't to convince you of anything but to allow you to demonstrate your awareness or lack thereof.

Well If that's what's most important to you. They say everyone should have a hobby.

Edited February 10, 2016 by Karl

[Brian]

Curious reading comprehension you have, Karl. Or is that just one of the tactics you learned in an NLP seminar? You seem to employ it often.

[Karl]

 

Curious reading comprehension you have, Karl. Or is that just one of the tactics you learned in an NLP seminar? You seem to employ it often.

 

Does that question relate in any way to the subject ?

[Sahaj Nath]

Hi Sahaj

 

hi!

 

sorry it took me a while to get back to you. had stuff to do. 

 

When we enter 2nd tier, we start to understand AQAL and the equality of all the perspectives that AQAL contains.  Prior to this we are incapable of seeing the equality, we prioritise one of the quadrants and try to understand everything with reference to the one quadrant (Wilber calls this 'flatlanding' and it the hallmark of first tier thinking)

 

hm... no matter how many times i read your first post or this one, i don't see a description of what 2nd tier thinking actually is. that's why i was hoping you'd be able to point me to a source that supports your interpretation. also, i don't think you understand what flatland is, either. i think you are posing an interesting question, but i can't access it because the terms you're using to express it don't fit. i believe that YOU understand what you're talking about, but i can't seem to get there. so...

 

allow me to offer some descriptions of 2nd tier cognition and flatlining. 

 

2nd tier cognition marks a departure from the focus on needs based on deficiency, i.e., "i'm missing/lacking something; i need to acquire it," to a focus on the need to express, give, teach, serve, etc., based on one's fullness or completeness, i.e., "i am whole and at peace within myself; i can't wait to share whatever i can with the world." the 2nd tier cognizer has little-to-no fear, and doesn't compete or feel threatened by the other value systems. the 2nd tier appreciates the beauty in each of them.

 

you mentioned people wrongly convincing themselves that they've attained that integral stage of consciousness. that would most likely happen among the postmodern/pluralistic cognizers. they can appreciate that all value systems are relative and would be quick to defend those on the lower end, BUT, they tend to have a hard time accepting & dealing with the modern/materialist cognizers, who are closer to them than all the others below! the moderns see those beneath as inferior, weak, broken, whatever. and they see the postmodern as a bunch of pc hippies with irrational idealism. the postmoderns see the moderns as opportunistic, materialistic, heartless, and closed minded. the tension and disdain is evidence that the integral stage hasn't yet been realized. 

 

you tried to describe it in terms of quadrants and lines which just muddied everything up for me. and the equality of all perspectives is not something Wilber believes or supports in the slightest. he lambasts that attitude all the time because most folks who express that attitude think that they are being enlightened. just watch the video i linked in my last post. he and Surya Das touch on it and how it has this leveling effect where mediocrity rules and there is no space left for excellence, and other stuff. he gets into it deeper in other places, tho. 

 

now, onto flatlanding. 

 

rather than write an unnecessarily long explanation, i'm just going to copy/paste from A Brief History of Everything. it's a tiny clip and it's freely available online, so it should be an issue to share it here:

 

 

Ken Wilber: We all know the downsides of the merely Ascending path: it can be very puritanical and oppressive. It tends to deny and devalue and even repress the body, the senses, life, Earth, sexuality, and so forth. 

The Descending path, on the other hand, reminds us that Spirit can be joyously found in body, sex, Earth, life, vitality, and diversity. But the Descending path, in and by itself, has its own limitations. If there is no transcendence at all, then there is no way to rise above the merely sensory; no way to find a deeper, wider, higher connection between us and all sentient beings. We are merely confined to the sensory surfaces, the superficial facades, which separate us much more than join and unite us. Without some sort of transcendence or Ascent, we have only the Descended world, which can be shallow, alienated, and fragmented.

 

Q: You call the merely Descended world “flatland.”

 

KW: Flatland, yes. We moderns and postmoderns live almost entirely within this purely Descended grid, this flat and faded world of endless sensory forms, this superficial world of drab and dreary surfaces. Whether with capitalism or Marxism, industrialism or ecopsychology, patriarchal science or ecofeminism—in most cases, our God, our Goddess, is one we can register with our senses, see with our eyes, wrap with feelings, worship with sensations, a God we can sink our teeth into, and that exhausts its form. 

Whether or not we consider ourselves spiritual, we flatlanders worship at the altar of the merely Descended God, the sensory Goddess, the sensational world, the monochrome world of simple location, the world you can put your finger on. Nothing higher or deeper for us than the God that is clunking around in our visual field.

 

so what he's describing is not about being stuck in one quadrant. i don't even know how that would be possible, given what quadrants are. he's talking very specifically about being stuck in materiality, where the only thing we recognize as real is what we can access with our five senses. 

 

"Flatland, the idea that the sensory and empirical and material world is the only world there is."

--Ken Wilber

 

It is a revelation because all the words you have heard spoken or read have had to 'assume' one of the quadrants in order to be a coherant, sensible statement.  Then, out of nowhere, we suddenly see that all the words are provisional only and cannto capture the actual truth.

 

We must have apprehended some sort of higher truth if we are to realise that words cannot describe it.  Until this point we work on the assumption that words can and do capture the truth and so therefore argue passionately for w´hatever position we believe in.

 

this doesn't make any sense at all to me. what are the quadrants? 1st, 2nd, & 3rd person perspective. you get the 4 by splitting the 3rd person into sigular and plural. 1=subjective, 2=intersubjective, 3=objective, 4=interobjective.  the subjectives deal with our interior whereas the objectives deal with the exterior, so maybe there's something in THAT that you were going for.  but reading is ALWAYS a 2nd or 3rd person event. a letter to you might be considered 2nd person as an intersubjective dialog. a general story or informative literature is 3rd person. you may experience their impact on you as very personal (1st person), and you might consider implications for society (4th quadrant), but those types of things have NOTHING to do with cognitive development in the way that we're addressing it. 

 

again, i think you know what you're trying to talk about; i just think you're using the wrong words and concepts to do it. and until you can clarify what you mean without all the confusing jargon, i can't grasp it. 

 

i hope that was fair and not too critical. 

Edited February 11, 2016 by Sahaj Nath

[Karl]

Found this which I thought might help clarify.

[Nikolai1]

Hi Sahaj

 

no matter how many times i read your first post or this one, i don't see a description of what 2nd tier thinking actually is.

Yes, for me if it can be talked about then it must be first tier.  Second tier is the state of being that unites and recognises the equality of all the quadrants, and recognises the role that all the different colour levels play.

 

and the equality of all perspectives is not something Wilber believes or supports in the slightest. he lambasts that attitude all the time 

The way I see it, the perspectives are all equal at the intellectual level, but in any given moment we must adopt and adhere to one of them because that is what reality demands of us.  So practically I pick up the mug with my right-hand, but at the intellectual level I know that the mug would be picked up by the left-hand of the person sat opposite me.  The ability to recongise and endorse all the quadrants gives us the creative flexibility that first tier thinkers don't have.

 

The second tier accepts the relativism of the green meme, but does not allow it to intefere with their functional existence. For example we can simultaneosuly accept the spiritual worth of all beings, but this doesn't mean that we need to reject hierarchies based an natural expertise at the top.

 

also, i don't think you understand what flatland is, either.

 

I think in integral circles there are different versions about the meaning of the term.  For some, it relates specifically to scientific reductionism, as you said.  For others, and I think this is the most powerful interpretation, its about ignoring 1-3 of the quadrants and focussing on the remainder.  In the Glossary on Wilber's website flatland is defined thus:

 

flatland: 1. When the interior quadrants (the Left-Hand path) are reduced to the exterior quadrants (the Right-Hand path). For example, scientific materialism. The dissociation of the value spheres Art, Morals, and Science, followed by the colonization of Art and Morals by Science. The “bad news” of Modernity. See gross reductionism and subtle reductionism. 2. Using any one level as the only level in existence.

You're definitely right that the first definition is the one you come across most frequently.  For me, there are two explanations for this.  First, scientific reductionism is still very much of the zeitgeist and the most famous and prestigious thinkers tend to commit this style of flatlanding.  The use of the term gets associated with these people.  Secondly, as you pointed out, there are a lot of Wilberians who are basically stuck in the Green Meme.  They see the scientific reductionists at the orange level as the main enemy and so this pejorative term 'flatlander' is saves especially for them.

 

But yes, you can see the second definition is very much how I think the term is best used.  I should say that when I was a young student I independently came up with an identical diagnosis of many of what Wilber calls 'academic foodfights'.  Namely, that people focus on one quadrant and ignore the validity of the others, and this is not just something that scientific reductionists are guilty of.  So this is why I favour the second defintion.  Or at least there needs to be a separate term for this general tendency rather than flatlanding/wonderlanding/Boomeritis.

 

Good talking to you!

[Karl]

Flat landers are Mystics of muscle by your description. Logical positivism, empiricists of the Lockian persuasion.

[Nikolai1]

Karl

 

Are you still stuck on this hopeless analogy ? 
Firstly it isn't necessary for a blind person to know colours, they sense the world in terms of textures and sounds. They are as vivid to a blind person as sight is to the sighted. If they were trying to get an idea then I would probably explain it in terms of hot, warm, softer rougher smoother. That would be in keeping with their perception of the world as a nuanced place. 

Likewise, the spiritual world must be explained to the spiritually blind in terms of the senses they already possess.  Awakening is exactly like acquiring a new faculty of perception - a new sense.  

 

 

Is it there when you are totally unconscious and not dreaming ? 

Yes, it is that which is aware of the dreaming.  While I sleep I also spend periods of time, when the body is asleep but the mind is lucid.  I'm not dreaming, but I am simply aware and the body is still as if dead.

[Karl]

Karl

 

 

Likewise, the spiritual world must be explained to the spiritually blind in terms of the senses they already possess.  Awakening is exactly like acquiring a new faculty of perception - a new sense.  

 

 

 

Yes, it is that which is aware of the dreaming.  While I sleep I also spend periods of time, when the body is asleep but the mind is lucid.  I'm not dreaming, but I am simply aware and the body is still as if dead.

 

I asked you that before and you either did not grasp where you were positioned, or didn't want to debate it.

 

You are a spiritual mysticist. Which is to say one who believes in the primacy of consciousness and for whom knowledge is intrinsic in the sense of a kind of divine knowledge. You follow a Neo platonic philosophy which Plotinus would have recognised. He would also have said that it wasn't possible to know the divine, it could have no identity for it would then be limited, therefore you either know it or you don't. This is the ineffable one, to some that would be Dao, to others it is God. Whatever it is, man does not have the faculty to comprehend it.

 

I understand that you won't be put into a box, because It contradicts your sense that any such box exists which could contain this sense of spiritual divinity. A box is an argument used by the Mystics of muscle, the logical positivists, materialists and empiricists.

 

Anyway, as I said before, I wish you well with it. Wilber is a mystic of muscle which is why you see some similarities. He clicked on to the new age fascination with Buddhism which, if you go back to B.C Greece, has its roots in the invasion of India by the Greeks and first skepticist who brought back that philosophy who was Pyrrho. Wilder is teally remaking that connection to push a Neitzchian philosophy.

 

 

[Nikolai1]

I understand that you won't be put into a box, because It contradicts your sense that any such box exists which could contain this sense of spiritual divinity.

The reason I won't be put into a box, is because the box itself is just another instance of the...what is it?  Even consciousness is a box, and this box is also another instance of the....what?

 

The box, or the concept, or the symbol is also not a box but the container...not the symbol but the symbolised.  Who is that knows this?  Who is it that sees consciousness and matter as the same thing?

 

All I can possibly talk about is the somewhat of the questioning.  But you don't grasp that.  You've already put me into a box.

[Karl]

The reason I won't be put into a box, is because the box itself is just another instance of the...what is it? Even consciousness is a box, and this box is also another instance of the....what?

 

The box, or the concept, or the symbol is also not a box but the container...not the symbol but the symbolised. Who is that knows this? Who is it that sees consciousness and matter as the same thing?

 

All I can possibly talk about is the somewhat of the questioning. But you don't grasp that. You've already put me into a box.

Exactly, I understand that to be the case, which is why I can only say I wish you all the best. Plotinus wrote 9 volumes on the ineffable one that could not be described, known, understood, or even thought about. This is what you are doing also. You are talking about something that you say cannot be talked about. There was another philosopher around the same time who recognised the conflict and stopped talking for the rest of his life.

 

You have made Wilber a subject of discussion because he somewhat appears to support your views, but then you notice that there are some discrepancies. This, for what it's worth, looks to me like an attempt to seek confirmation of your beliefs. I get sucked in to posting because it appears you want an open discussion-which you clearly dont/then the sceptics jump in the reinforce your position and I see pretty quickly that my input is unwelcome. Stupid me eh ? Another doh! Moment for Homer.

 

It isn't me that has put you in a box, it's your claim that your spirituality is impossible to talk about, then you proceed to talk about it. If you were so sure then you would have no need to post on this forum would you ? but then you would doubtless claim that you aren't actually doing so.

Edited February 11, 2016 by Karl

[Brian]

 

New Age fruit loop. NWO, Nietzsche superman stuff and nonsense. Get thee behind me Clinton and Gore. Humanist, Darwinism that should have been stamped out with the ending of the Nazis. He combined it with the Eastern Dharma to bring it to a new group of potential converts. Grab a bit of the old, blend it with the popular new and hey ho, the same old crap marketed under a new brand name. That's just my reading of it of course.

Quoted for posterity

[Nikolai1]

Karl you haven't written one word about Wilber. All you've done is trolled the thread with Locke, Nietzsche, Plotinus. Stop feeling sorry for yourself!

[Karl]

Karl you haven't written one word about Wilber. All you've done is trolled the thread with Locke, Nietzsche, Plotinus. Stop feeling sorry for yourself!

 

I have told you what I believe Wilbers aims and philosophy are, but you don't discuss that aspect. Should we delve into the philosophies that underpin it, the historical context ? No, of course not, how could I have been so stupid to think that was the aim. What you really wanted to discover is how far up you were on Wilbers little chart.

[Nikolai1]

I have told you what I believe Wilbers aims and philosophy are, but you don't discuss that aspect. Should we delve into the philosophies that underpin it, the historical context ? No, of course not, how could I have been so stupid to think that was the aim. What you really wanted to discover is how far up you were on Wilbers little chart.

The main point of this thread was the difficulties that come when move to second tier thinking.  Second tier thinking is a very disticntive style, which I see lots of on this forum but never have I seen it in you.  I've spent a fair amount of time reading your posts and I've come to the concusion that you are, as yet, incapable of high-level insight.  This is why I've been happy to answer your queries on this thread but not bothered to solicit your advice on the matter at hand.  Brian quited your first contribution just now, so forgive me if I haven't taken notice of you since.

 

You openly subscribe to a philsophy whose central tenets, according to wikipedia, are that 'reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception,'

 

Anybody who has had a spiritual experience starts to doubt precisely this.  Precisely this.  If you are a spiritual seeker than this is precise worldview that suddenly comes into doubt.  We experience with utmost vividity the fundamental non-duality between reality and ourselves, and the world-chaging thought arises that sense perception is an illusion.

 

Why oh why oh why are you on this forum espousing Objectivism and expecting to be heard? Why are you even here? How can you get sniffy when people don't listen to you?  Your presence is an absurdity really.  One feels the absurdity of trying to talk to you.  One hardly knows where to start setting you right.  In my life there is a deep feeling that you belong to the old, the unawake, the deluded.

[Karl]

The main point of this thread was the difficulties that come when move to second tier thinking. Second tier thinking is a very disticntive style, which I see lots of on this forum but never have I seen it in you. I've spent a fair amount of time reading your posts and I've come to the concusion that you are, as yet, incapable of high-level insight. This is why I've been happy to answer your queries on this thread but not bothered to solicit your advice on the matter at hand. Brian quited your first contribution just now, so forgive me if I haven't taken notice of you since.

 

You openly subscribe to a philsophy whose central tenets, according to wikipedia, are that 'reality exists independently of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness]consciousness[/url], that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception,'

 

Anybody who has had a spiritual experience starts to doubt precisely this. Precisely this. If you are a spiritual seeker than this is precise worldview that suddenly comes into doubt. We experience with utmost vividity the fundamental non-duality between reality and ourselves, and the world-chaging thought arises that sense perception is an illusion.

 

Why oh why oh why are you on this forum espousing Objectivism and expecting to be heard? Why are you even here? How can you get sniffy when people don't listen to you? Your presence is an absurdity really. One feels the absurdity of trying to talk to you. One hardly knows where to start setting you right. In my life there is a deep feeling that you belong to the old, the unawake, the deluded.

Its not new Nikolai. Where do you think Wilber got it from? It's just plagiarised philosophy tweaked with a bit of the old esoteric Indian scepticism which is popular today. If you want to sell a book it's a good way of latching on to the present populist fad for eastern esotericism. You seem to have taken it as some kind of gospel of St Wilber and are approximating his thought scale.

 

I don't know why you cannot see that you are reading a book, by a bloke who borrowed from other philosophers then created a scale which you are now clinging to as a truth in which you are a 'second tier thinker'. Does it not occur to you that this guy is not some spiritual divinity, but a guy selling a book which you appear to come to regard as having some terrific importance. Now you think second tier thinking is a real because some bloke writing a book told you it's real ?

 

First you say you cannot be put into a box, but that you are a second tier thinker, then others are also in a second tier box and I'm in a no tier box ? A touch hypocritical I think.

 

Then you bait me with your description of objectivism and complain if I reply by saying its trolling.

 

If the Dao is the Dao then it is all things including objectivism. If the US election can be discussed then I'm sure it cannot exclude a philosophy !

Edited February 11, 2016 by Karl

[Nikolai1]

I think the basic point, Karl, is that you like the conversation here.  There's something that makes you feel at home.  You could to all sorts of neo-con forums and discuss Ayn Rand to your heart's content. but you don't because you wouldn't like the people you discuss with.

 

Are you with us all really, with our notions of the Dao that can't be talked about? Are you playing the role of the gadfly, while being a good Athenian at heart?

[Karl]

I think the basic point, Karl, is that you like the conversation here.  There's something that makes you feel at home.  You could to all sorts of neo-con forums and discuss Ayn Rand to your heart's content. but you don't because you wouldn't like the people you discuss with.

 

Are you with us all really, with our notions of the Dao that can't be talked about? Are you playing the role of the gadfly, while being a good Athenian at heart?

 

Answer my question first.

 

 

[Michael Sternbach]

As I said, my knowledge of Wilber's philosophy is rather incomplete. But I think he (like some other advaita philosophers) is cutting a lot of corners regarding spiritual development. Its aim is NOT a blending with the undifferentiated sea of consciousness. That would be regressive. Rather, an entity reunites with original divinity by manifesting this divinity itself - by becoming a divine creator itself, eventually. "The drop may sometimes understand that it is in the ocean, but rarely does it realize that the ocean is also in itself."