Peter,

 

I am agreeing (I think) with you (and Hokai as well) that social holons are not literally sentient, that meaning that they are sentient only because they have members that are sentient.

 

I found Ken talking about this at http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/interviews/interview1220_2.cfm/

 “…in the most general sense, you can refer to all four entities--individual holons, social holons, artifacts, and heaps--as "holons," since they are all whole/parts.

“But there is such a huge different between the first two and the last two, I often technically reserve "holon" for the first two, although the context will indicate what is actually meant. Sometimes, for simple introductory statements, I refer to everything that exists as a "holon," since that is true in the loose sense. Or sometimes I refer to the first two as “sentient holons” and the last two as “insentient holons.” But in any event these important differences should be kept in mind--after all, do you want to be treated like an artifact?”

 

Mike

Hello everyone....

I have a few comments that obviously "bleed" over from chapter to chapter, of 1-3.... And "bleed" they do, since I have found the study and digestion of these first 3 chapters to be very "interesting" and very "taxing" to say the least! And I am still suffering from a bit of "indigestion" as will become apparent....

However, please don't interpret these remarks in any negative sense - since I love a challenge and find this material "stimulating" in the best sense of the word.... But the point, for me at least, is: I want to understand not just what Ken is saying - I want to understand the implications of it.... And that seems to be the essense of what I am wrestling with...

It's not so much that the material or "perspectives" cannot be understood from the context of their relationship with one another, but I am struggling to understand how these "perspectives" actually jettison the prior "metaphysical baggage" and simultaneously usher in this new post-metaphysics?

I know that the great body of Ken's work, as described by himself, has and remains essentially directed at academia, but for me his work has always had an intensely "personal" flavor due to the nature of my own experience of both states and stages of development. But I am having some difficulty seeing how this "post-metaphysics" will prove anymore convincing to a "blind" man than directing him to stand in the light of a full moon or the sun at high-noon....although he will definitely sense an increase in temperature, the light, whether reflected or direct will remain indistinguishable....

So...I would appreciate some comments/feedback from some of you... And frankly, I can't wait to get my hands on the book itself, since I am hoping once I have the "whole" in my hands the "parts" will become more evident....

Best Regards,

Justin    

---

"Life is like stepping onto a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink".

SHUNRYU SUZUKI

Hi Mike,

Thanks a lot for pointing me to that text, I think it contains the clearest elaboration on holons I've seen so far.

For me, the key to understanding the relationship between the quadrants and social holons is the following line from that interview:

Actually, individual and social holons are not different entities, but different aspects of all holons, since all holons have an interior and an exterior in singular and plural forms (the four quadrants), but they are indeed different aspects that cannot be merely equated.

This explains for me how social holons can have an interior, without that statement being in conflict with the overall AQAL framework. I have no problems seeing social holons as sentient when defined that way.

Peter

---

"All nations should be like Amsterdam" -- Ken Wilber

Justin,

 

My sensemaking of the implications, at this point in time…

 

Boomeritis looks more at the individual aspect of humanity’s development. In recognizing a noble pluralism infected by the low emotional development of narcissism (my own and others’) I can see that what is missing is fully accepting my own true equality and mortality, and working on my emotional line of development (even though it doesn’t seem to underpin survival in the same urgent way that the cognitive line does). I can develop more consciousness through practice.

 

Integral Spirituality looks more at the collective aspect of humanity’s development. In recognizing (in a historical context) the absolutist claims and attitudes in the ways-of-knowing and practices of contemplative traditions, modern science, and postmodernism-structuralism I can see that what is missing is to “integrate the best elements of premodern, modern, and postmodern currents of humanity’s and spirit’s self-understanding” (IS, p. 66). I can look at the conversations (spoken and written) I am in (speaking or listening) to see how we are ignoring, dismissing, or privileging any of these truths, and find ways to forward a fuller expression.

 

While Integral Spirituality is likely addressed in large part to academics and to those philosophers of spirit that have gained a sizable audience, I believe that Ken is also writing for the rest of us. We can and do engage in both of these aspects of spirit in our daily lives, and it can’t hurt to be more informed as we make these small but important alignments with the flow of our evolutionary movement.

 

Mike

Peter, Mike & Hokai,

 

After considering your responses I’m writing back about what I learned from your posts discussing perception and perspective.  I also want to reference a few of the very-clear statements you made that help clarify the difference between perception and perspective.

 

Hokai:

...metaphysical systems, it's increasingly clear, describe the content of the moment in their relative mode (perception), and the nature of the moment in their absolute mode (emptiness), but not the deeper structure of the moment itself (perspective). they tell us what is in the moment, but not what is the moment.

Mike:

…I can relate to you as a perception or abstraction or object (which is there to “relate to” but this relating will be at the level of a manipulation); and I can also relate (be related) to you though a perspective of intersubjective understanding that is itself not simply another abstraction or object.

Peter:

This means that any entity, as it arises in an awareness, is some type of perspective as far as the perceiving holon is concerned, and nothing else.”  And “By shifting to different perspectives, sentient holons can have different perceptions of themselves or others, and learn more.

 

Distinguishing perceptions from perspectives is significant because a perception is, as Hokai points out, “an old and loaded notion... [that] usually refers to dualistic awareness.”  This old notion of perception limits a broader/deeper understanding of the moment itself, thereby limiting ones ability to transcend/include/value/communicate between a greater number of truths.

 

I now understand perceptions to be a view of awareness one has from a particular perspective. Leading Peter to say, “perception can be described in terms of the [available] perspectives.”

 

Similar to Mike's comments, I’ve long considered my perceptions to be accurate experiences of life around me...  While I understood that my view was only my view, it’s new and cumbersome for me (right now) to contemplate that it’s not my view at all, but rather the arising awareness I experience from the perspective I’ve assumed (right now) at each moment…. An awareness ultimately, that has nothing to do with me (what I see or think), but rather where I’m looking from. 

 

Later on Balder offers valuable input highlighting the importance of perspective and its distinct difference from perception:

 

Balder:

I think one of the primary strengths of a shift of focus to perspectives is that it highlights the enactively emergent nature of perceptions, the recognition of which opens a kind of clearing or space in our experience and loosens identification with particular objects of perspectives.  And it's integrative potential is, of course, obvious from the fruit of Wilber's recent investigations.

 

This reflection reminds me of an answer Ken gave during a Q&A session in the current issue of What is Enlightenment?

 

WEI, June-August 2024, page 110::

WEI: What aspect of ourselves is most instrumental in initiating a driving higher development and higher integration?

 

KW: The capacity of the self to take other perspectives.  The capacity to take the role of others, to see perspectives different from our own, to put ourselves in others’ shoes – theses are all the ways that consciousness stretches and grows.

 

….Part of the problem is that the capacity to put oneself in another’s shoes and see the world through another’s eyes is a mental or cognitive operation.  You can’t see the other’s view by using your feelings or your sensations.  Rather, putting yourself in another’s shoes is a mental operation.  Once you have cognitively taken another’s view, then your can empathize with that view and expand your feelings to include it, love it, care for it and so on.

 

I've really appreciated the discussion. Thanks everyone. While I'm certainly not done with Ch1, I'm looking forward to begining Ch2 later today.

 

Cheers,

Michael

Mike,

I appreciate your response and comments....

I will elaborabe a bit further on the specific issue I am attempting to point to, unless upon futher reflection it appears that I have complicated something that is really quite simple....

And....chapter 4 may be available now for futher discussion/questions....

Justin

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"Life is like stepping onto a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink".

SHUNRYU SUZUKI

BABIES IN THE OCEAN OF THE REAL*

*reposted from the old forum...

 We are in the grand and magnificent adventure of consciousness becoming conscious of consciousness.   Somebody wrote something like:  the brain is in the body, but the body is in the soul--- the ability to KNOW the soul is in the brain. Said in other words, the instrument of our perception is embedded in that which is trying to be perceived. (Actually, this has been said by a few people and better than this.)  This is about the mechanism of how the universe becomes conscious of itself, ‘becomes known’.  The ‘eye’ that is learning to see the see that sees it.  Becoming the witness, the I am, the single ‘dot’ of being-- in other words a light traveler divested of all baggage including, emotions, thoughts, physical  body, (let alone any material possessions) is the only traveler that can travel ‘light enough’(travel at the speed of light) to get through the ‘eye’.  The only thing light enough is light.

  “It is more difficult for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven that it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.”  This is an amazing riddle-- it is not just Jesus telling some guys off for not donating enough cash to some cause or another. This is about the spiritualization of matter, the materialization of spirit.  This is the alpha and the omega.  This is what T.S. Elliott meant when he said: “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”- TS Elliot ...

So to become a soul traveler, I must do rigorous preparation. I must learn everything that I am not and let it go to be what it is, so that I can lighten up and be what I am. This is the perfect practice of linguistic hygiene.  (It really is this important!) I must learn to see through my perceptions into the dimension of the Soul, while at the same time realizing that the whole, intoxicating display of the dancing universe is a holographic reflection of my ability to see it.  I have to learn to use words to see the process of using words.  I have to learn to articulate articulation.  (I love that: “WE are all articulating stardust.” Articulating is both an adjective and a verb.) So for this journey, I have to pare myself down to the ‘dot’, the particle-wave, the paradox that is both on and off at the same time.  This dot is, indeed, my unique resonance of the Soul.

So why is ‘linguistic hygiene’ so important?  Before I can let anything go, I have to know it is mine to let go of.  I cannot give my neighbour’s money as my offering at the temple.  My neighbour’s money is not mine to give away.  I can only give away my own money. Otherwise it is stealing, and then there is the ensuing drama, court fight and so on….I would never even get to the temple at all, so busy would I be at the police station.

When I look at my own life history, I have spent enough time trying to give away other people’s stuff at the temple, enough time to sink a ship.  I have taken ‘everybody else’s’ bad, insensitive, crappy behaviour as an offering to the temple….only to be meet at the temple gate by some high priestess laughing at me, gleam in her eyes, “bring me more, my pretty!”  Wheel barrows, vanloads, tourist buses…..’forgive them for they know not what they do.’…whole communities……determined to overturn every stone, I have ridden my  steed like Joan of Arc.…..  (Though it did cross my mind on more than one occasion: “if only these guys would do their own work, get with the program, my life would be so much easier.” )

Now at this juncture, you might think I was not glaring directly at my own crappy behaviour and offering it too.  This ‘oblivion’ would make a good ‘Paul on the way to Damascus’ type story…..’I was blind but now I see sorta-thing’  Truth is, I also did what I could to own my own stuff, offering it up when ever I became clear about it….Like a garbage collector with her truck of garbage, I would arrive at the temple gate with my offerings: “this bag is mine, and all the rest I picked up in the neighbourhood.”   “Bring me more my pretty!” cackle, cackle.  And off I would go….. “This quite small bag is mine and the rest I picked up in the neighbourhood”…”More, more”.  “This very, very small bag is mine, dammit, and I am getting pretty friggin’ sick of everyone else’s crap around here….” “More, my pretty, more…”  “Damn, I am getting pretty sick of this job.  It never ends, all these bastards making all this crap, and me, I’m stuck hauling it over to the frigging temple. And who the hell is that lady in there that keeps sending me off for more.  Who gave her the right to work me like a dog, a dog, I tell ya…., and for god’s sake, I have reduced my own pile of garbage down to a few recyclables, the stuff in the compost bin, and every fuel efficient appliance on the market…..what the hell else does she expect me to do, Stop breathing!?  Who the hell is that lady?  I am going to tell her off!  I am sick of this ***.” Yada, yada…..

So, by and by, I decided I would go there empty-handed, to the temple gate, to tell the lady there that ‘I quit’.  I had a plan. I would explain  that I had ignored the proverbial straw that broke that camel’s back more times and taken on more crap than could be reasonably expected in her service, that my back was broken a hundred time, and so was my heart, my heart--- to smithereens even. And dammit, I was not doing it anymore….. I rehearsed my argument over a few times.  It was solid, I would speak clearly and eloquently, I would look her in the eye.

So all ready for action at the temple, when I got there empty-handed, she was not at the gate like she usually was to take my offerings and send me off with my new task.  I sat there for a while outside the gates, wondering if she would show up, practicing my speech over and over in my head.  And eventually she did arrive, sort of at least, on and off, like an apparition.  It kind of pissed me off:  she was not even polite enough to listen to what I was prepared to say.  “Stay still, dammit.  I at least deserve an audience after all I have done for you.”  I cried and bleated whenever she appeared, trying to speak fast enough before she disappeared again….”you can’t make me do this anymore.’  As if she did not hear a word I said she would repeat “more, my pretty, more!”  before vanishing.  “You don’t understand.  In fact, you are a bit of a ***, and you are not hearing me.  Who is in charge around here?  Who do you work for?  I want the senior management?”  She would flit off, and return, “more, they say, bring more.”   “You don’t understand.  My back is broken, I am pissed off, I am exhausted.  I am not doing this anymore.  Tell them to *** off!” Again, oblivious to me, she would disappear, only to return, “more, more, bring me more!”   I don’t know how long this went on for, let’s say for consistency’s sake, it was 40 days and 40 nights.  I sat at the gate of the temple.  That lady would flit in and out, appear, disappear, vanish, materialize…... But, but, but finally, finally, finally, FINALLY!  by and by I stopped being compelled by her.  Like a light being turned on very slowly, and becoming brighter, I realized that I did not have to do her bidding, I did not have to be the garbage collector for the world, I did not even have to be angry at her for insisting that ‘I get out there and do my part for humanity.’ I did not have to argue with her. I also did not have to ignore her.   I could just watch her, come and go, I could predict what she would say, and sometimes I was right and sometimes I wasn’t.  And one day she just went through the door and left me sitting there in the sun outside the temple, and I was not sure I would ever see her again.

So I sat there by the temple gate, and sun shone down, and I watched the market gather outside, and children playing, and dogs sniffing each other.  Sitting, and breathing, in and out….and after a while I wondered what it was like on the other side of the gate, inside the temple.  I became curious. I realized that all of this time, I had been coming here, offering up the sadness of the world, of myself, and I had never really known what happened to the bags of garbage once they disappeared through the gate. I wondered how I had never even thought of such an obvious question in all the time I had been slaving away.  “What happens on the other side?”  I was getting curiouser and curiouser.

 So I got up from sitting, a little stiffly perhaps, doing a few of Rodney Yee’s A.M. yoga stretches to loosen up and I walked over to the gate and reached for the handle.  I might have hesitated, but then some passerby said, “if you can’t trust yourself, then how can you trust that you can’t trust yourself”.  “Indeed,” I thought, “in deed!”

This took some courage.  As I reached for the handle, I wondered if I would be struck dead, if I would disappear down the rabbit hole, or into the Jumanji board.  I wondered if that mean lady was going to come back cackling and jeering, and I wondered if I would forget what I had spent so long learning—that lesson, so obvious in retrospect, so hard in the learning…the lesson that, I had a right to be here, not because I had a “right” so to speak, but simply because ‘I am here’.  I am.

And, this is what happened, (and I don’t know if it took a second or a billion years): I opened the gate to the temple and I walked through.  There was nothing to it, no big keyhole, no funny exotic combination lock, no three-headed guard dog, no resistance what-so-ever……I guess I had imagined a fire, an alter of some sort, on the other side, some holy hosts of heavenly angels, some harps or something, ominous priests and priestesses, this sort of thing….But this is what I found: on the other side was the market place that I had just been sitting in watching.  The  children were playing, and dogs sniffing each other, cats were going behind the sofa,  and everywhere-beautiful brocades of cloth, and fresh, delicious fruits and spices from all over the world, and bowls of nuts and cherries, and lovers, and milk and honey, music playing in the streets, jugglers and dancers, poets. And then, there she was, there was the lady.  The lady, the bane of my existence, the cackler at the gate.  There she was selling jewelry in a stall, like never-you-mind.  And I went up to her and I said, “you mean to say, this is who you are, a jeweler?”  She smiled, she laughed, she winked, she gave me a ring for free, and bid me on my way, waving me off, before I let on to anyone else that I knew who she was.  So I walked into the carnival, the kaleidoscope of lights, this amazing mysterious beautiful place where compassion blows through this room like perfume, and I was with all of these people, all of  us, you and me, “all of us babies in the ocean of the real.”

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The fabric of my life is the cloth with which it is my responsibility to polish the lens of my own perception

hi JaneMc!

i'm not sure i have any rings to give you, but in the spirit of my simple minded interpretation i'd like to unofficially welcome you to the carnival of isc forums.

ralph

---

I have spent the morning with integral math, looking at the diagrams, and then re-reading the posts here.....and this is what I think......the objective experience of these diagrams and 1p's and 3p's is on an extreme end of boring, (ie...nothingness, void) while the subjective experience of 1p's and 3p's is on the other extreme of mystery and miraculous and everything and fullness.....

On the old, old forum, I tried to have a discussion about the math of the universe, with some limited success.(I was very appreciative of everyone who participated, but I had never tried it before, and was feeling like a little kid with a exotic mechano-set)  It is funny, these attempts to try to put into words and equations all sorts of riddles and koans that float around and around seeking answers. (the riddles of the premodern religions)  How is everything nothing?  How do we get outside of the inside of a closed system?  This is what I think: the answer is en-lightenment. How do we become conscious of the consciousness that makes us conscious?  In other words:  Where the heck did we come from and how  the heck did we get here?  We are a riddle trying to solve ourselves? I am the solution to my own life.

In premodern mysticism, the meditative practices concentrated on the right upper quadrant, disidentifying with the ego....but mediative model from the right lower quadrant is not removed from the world, and neither for the most part, are any of us in our meditation practive. (life IS one long meditation practice)....we have a meditative practice(albeit, mine can be very messy) that involves the intersubjective realm, a cultural context--as Ken writes: patriarchal, sexist, ethnocentric, androcentric etc... and we must also break through this cultural ego, the very  developmental task  of the green meme.....to move through the metabolic, digestive crucible of awakening.

IMHO, these 1p's and 3's are boring, if perhaps essential for the objective math of enlightenment, but as concepts go,they are like eating rocks, or reading the phone book!  Still, they are describing mathematically how the uroborus eats its own tail, forever becoming itself, manifesting itself out of the unmanifest. in every deepening levels of complexity......the spiritualization of matter, the materialization of spirit....they are describing how uroboric digestion works.....the eight perspectives, are like eight stomachs and in each stomach, a new perspective(or objectification is possible) and can thereby be given up.  'that which I can name, is NOT what I AM)  "Physical reality is a condition of Reality, just as ice is a condition of water."  What I AM is the 'off' phase of light...which can only be described in relation to the 'on' phase by what it is NOT, NOT by what it is.  In other words, it is the opening  that is revealed by the dancing perspectives when I AM, is pared down to the smallest of small and I become truly subject to my subjectivity....  with this lightness of being, I can begin soul travel.  as Leonard sang: "(they) became the light, they formlessly entwine."

With the uroboric math, the challenge was to add up EVERYTHING in all the quadrants and all the levels to NOTHING.  How does everything become nothing and nothing become everthing?  This is the magic of the 'gate', the 'eye of the needle' and it depends merely on the direction one is travelling as to whether it is everything or nothing..... 

E=mc2,  energy can neither be created or destroyed

spirit + matter= everything=nothing

This is also depicted by a dot with a circle around it (which is also what the tip of the uroborus tail looks like head on surround by the digestive processes.

spirit = -matter    (matter/antimatter)

matter=E/c2, spirit= -E/c2

and it also seems a corollary that 'intension' (the quality of choice that make us FREE) in the realm of spirit equals the speed of light squared.   In other words, it gives us the ability to affect, indeed, co-create our world.

Actionless actions.....communication between subjects is by resonance, just as that experiment that shows how affecting one electron of a pair two electron spinning in one direction will change the direction of the pair. 

'our reach must exceed our grasp or what is a meta-for'

The math of enlightenment is the math of perspectives....and the truth of  'i' resonates with the whole of creation in a kaleidoscopic, holographic dance. 

I am now going to try to read chapter 2....

By the way, thank you for anyone who reads this, and even more if you can follow it.  I sometimes wonder if I am about to do a tour of duty at the Loonie Bin for having such and abiding fascination for this sort of thing....and I tell ya, there are not many people I talk to about it out here....as I would surely be carted off.

 

 

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The fabric of my life is the cloth with which it is my responsibility to polish the lens of my own perception

Hi JaneMc,

After reading your post, I thought you might find this interesing, regarding "rich men and eyes of needles"...

What is interesting about this is the context of the "cultural embedment" relating to these words of Jesus... The "eye of a needle" refers to a "gate within a gate"....

During this time period towns/cities were usually protected by walls, and after the city was closed up for the night the gates were actually closed. When a traveler arrived "after hours" and the gates were closed, the smaller gate within the larger gate could be opened to allow access, however, if the traveler'(s) had a camel(s) with them, the animals would have to be stripped of their entire loads and then be required to get on their knees and crawl through the smaller opening....

Thus - "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven"...

Best Regards,

Justin

---

"Life is like stepping onto a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink".

SHUNRYU SUZUKI

---

The fabric of my life is the cloth with which it is my responsibility to polish the lens of my own perception

Allow me to try this out:

Looking at figure 1.1, and fully acknowledging problems associated with over-simplifying/over-generalizing, is it fair to say the following:

1) That the rational learning processes that generates the distinctions in quadrant 3 cited together as an example of a quadrant 3 hierarchy are (and this where the oversimplification comes in) deductive in character?

2) That the rational learning processes that generate the distinctions in quadrant 4 (that is, the specific example of a hierarchy given in figure 1.1) are inductive in character?

3) That growth along the hierarchical line described in quadrant 1 is (generally) occurs through self-discovery while growth along the hierarchical line described in quadrant 2 occurs primarily through transmission/acquisition?

4) That AQAL as a system (but not as a practice) resides predominantly in the 4th quadrant?

Would be interested to know how close or far away I am on any or all of the above.

Hello Everybody, our very cool ISC Members,

On August 19th, we had a great kick off to our series of conference calls.  We sure hope you can join us for the second call scheduled for Sep. 2nd.

Send us questions from this thread/chapter on Integral Methodological Pluralism (Chapter One of Integral Spirituality) before Wed. 30th 5 PM to isquestions@integralspiritualcenter.org

If your question is selected, you will hear from us soon!

Have a great weekend!

 

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Nomali


~Save the Earth- it's the only planet with Chocolate.

i've been confused about the integral math of perspectives since i first read about it in the excerpts. when i looked at it again in the paper ken prepared for ISC's inauguration, i felt certain there were mistakes in its presentation, but i lacked the necessary understanding of a calculus of perspectives to be able to clearly point them out. since publication is now imminent, and what i believe must be mistakes still remain, i'll do my best to point them out.

the primordial perspectives are described in the excerpts, i believe, as being composed of perspectives of perspectives of perspectives. what does that mean?

on p.11 meditation is described as 'the inside view of an interior view of an individual view', hermeneutics as 'the inside view of the interior view of the collective view', but varela's biological phenomenology as 'the outside view of the inside view of the exterior view'. it looks like ken has not looked very closely at this, because even the articles don't agree, and the description of varela's methodology fails to indicate that it's 'of an individual view'.

each of the 8 primordial perspectives brings forth a distinct zone and all that it entails. the 8 zones are depicted in fig. 1.4 on p. 10. zone 1, for example, is described as the inside of the interior of the individual. does this mean that the primordial perspective bringing forth zone 1 is, by definition, an inside perspective of an interior perspective of an individual perspective, as meditation is described above?

in integral math this would simply be 1-p x 1p(s), or what is termed introspection (p. 11). but on the same page introspection and meditation are denoted as 1-p x 1-p x 1p(s).

it seems to me that the notation 1-p x 1p(s) already captures what is essential to introspection, and any additional 1-p's would be to indicate introspection of introspection. this would be necessary, for example, if someone were going to study introspection, as in meditation? and that would be a methodology that goes beyond simple introspection.

in the same way, hermeneutics goes beyond simply introspecting a miracle of 'we'. it is 1-p x 1-p x 1p(pl), rather than just 1-p x 1p(pl).

what about varela's methodology? i can take a zone 5 perspective of my cat, say, which would be denoted as
1-p x 3p(s). but the corresponding methodology would be denoted as 3-p x 1-p x 3p(s). i don't understand the need for a fourth perspective, as indicated in the footnote on p.13. what am i missing here?

ralph

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That which we focus on becomes a Kosmo-Holographic perspective...

All about Light being One?