The Wilber-Combs Lattice and the Pre/Trans Fallacy

In the latest phase of Wilber's work, a significant shift has taken place with the development of the Wilber-Combs Lattice.  Although not much has been written about this that I've seen, one would expect that the introduction of a model which significantly impacts how we conceive of enlightenment, might also impact other key aspects of Integral theory, such as the conceptualization of the pre/trans fallacy or the relationship between translation and transformation.  In this entry, I would like to take a look at the former.

The W-C Lattice emerged after the terms transpersonal and pre/trans fallacy had already been in use for a number of years.  I believe C.G. Jung was one of the first to use the term, transpersonal, or something like it: he referred to the archetypal realm of the collective unconscious as uberpersonliche.  Maslow and other humanistic psychologists later picked up on the term as they began to look beyond the horizons of humanism to the mystical regions mapped by the Eastern traditions that were then making inroads into Western counter culture. Wilber's introduction of the concept of the pre/trans fallacy emerged within this context, as the transpersonal movement was gaining momentum in the ‘70s and ‘80s and seeking to establish itself as the first scientific discipline that mapped the farther reaches of human nature.  One of Wilber's many contributions to this effort was to posit a spectrum of consciousness, running from prepersonal to personal to transpersonal bands, with the mystical state-realizations (subtle, causal, nondual) being placed directly on top of the cognitive and egoic developmental stages that had been mapped by Western theorists.  These higher, transpersonal stages, being modeled on ineffable and nonverbal mystical states and conceived as emerging developmentally on the far side of rational, egoic consciousness, were (according to this model) clearly to be differentiated from Freud's pre-personal, infantile, oceanic awareness.  They were higher-stage realizations of oneness, not ground floor stages of non-differentiated (or poorly differentiated) awareness.

Because a number of these higher "stages" did not appear to rely on or involve rational thought (they are ineffable, inexpressible), and because they were placed on the top of the developmental ladder, it made sense to describe them as transrational.  But now that Wilber and Combs have shifted subtle, causal, and nondual "stages" off of the vertical developmental ladder, treating them instead as universally available states (which are subject to various developmentally dependent interpretations), how are the notions of transrational stages and the pre/trans fallacy affected?  They may not be rendered obsolete - I don't think they are - but I believe their meanings do undergo an important shift that is not always clearly acknowledged in discussions of Integral Theory.   

For instance, in discussions of transrationality on various Integral forums and in the blogosphere, I have noticed that it is fairly common to refer to particular altered state experiences when discussing the transrational domain.  While genuine transrational stages likely do involve relative ease of access to, and greater reliance on, non-rational states, as I will discuss below, this tendency to talk about transrationality in terms of particular states strikes me as problematic because these states are often treated as if they were inherently transrational.  I believe this tendency is traceable to Wilber's previous identification of the transrational with the subtle, causal, and nondual (as developmental stages rather than states).   In his latest work, Wilber clearly differentiates states and stages, emphasizing the role of interpretation in relation to state experience, but some of his recent comments may nevertheless contribute to this confusion, which I see as a perpetuation of the myth of the given in relation to states.  In a recent Salon.com interview, for instance, Wilber says,

The mystical state is often beyond words. It is transrational 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.

How are we to interpret this statement, particularly in light of Wilber-5 and the W-C Lattice?  In Integral Spirituality, Wilber points out that the pre- and trans- distinctions apply to stages, not states.  In the statement above, the mystical state is discussed in relation to the availability of rationality; but does the state itself transcend rationality, or is there a cognitive component which pervades and informs the state experience? 

According to the W-C Lattice, one may have subtle, causal, and nondual experiences at any level of development, but at each stage they will be interpreted (and presumably experienced) differently.  If you are at a prerational level of development and you access causal awareness, for instance, you will interpret the experience according to the capacities of that level.  If you have developed a rational cognitive capacity and you access causal or nondual awareness, you will interpret the experience according to your level as well.  If we follow the implications of the W-C Lattice, however, this suggests that the individual will have an experience which is shaped and constrained by his level of cognitive development; it won't be a transrational mystical experience, but a rationally interpreted altered state experience.  For an experience to be genuinely mystical and transrational, must one have developed beyond conventional-level rationality or formal operational thinking?  The W-C Lattice suggests this - and Wilber's concern about Buddhism being "translated down" into the terms of Green postmodernism reinforces this - but if this is the case, then it appears to me to be insufficient to describe or define transrationality in terms of a particular state experience in which rationality is available but currently suspended.  Authentic, transrational mystical experiences, rather, would entail not only state development and access, but a sufficient level of post-formal cognitive development as well.

According to Susanne Cook-Greuter's model of ego development, genuine transrational cognitive capacities begin to emerge only during the post-conventional phases of development, in particular during the Autonomous stage when the individual has access to an expanded 4th person perspective; and it doesn't become firmly established until the individual reaches the Construct-Aware and Unitive stages, at which she is able to take basic and expanded 5th-person perspectives, respectively.  At these higher stages, a number of capacities develop which have commonly been associated with mystical state experience:  increased awareness of the constructedness of the "object world" experience and the limitations of rationality and language; the ability to witness the arising of thoughts without being caught up in them, at least for short periods of time; temporary dissolution of subject-object divisions, and the experience/understanding of the world as a seamless "phenomenological continuum."

When contemplatives report such insights and experiences, are they reporting the "world as it appears" from a particular altered state (an experience which would be available to anyone who accesses that state); or has their training also impacted their level of cognitive development?  This strikes me as a rather complex question, and I am not entirely clear on the answer yet (though I will attempt one).  Individuals apparently at different cognitive stages of development have reported spontaneous or drug-induced experiences of oneness, boundary dissolution, immersion in the boundless "field" of being, temporary dissociation or detachment from thought, and so on.  There is at least a surface similarity between some of these experiences and certain transrational perspectives.  This similarity has led various researchers and commentators to commit what Wilber describes as the pre/trans fallacy. 

What I am interested in looking at in this entry, however, is the hold-over tendency to conceive of transrationality in terms of causal and nondual state experience, without giving adequate attention to the apparently necessary, concurrent development of sophisticated levels of cognitive, perspective-taking capacities.  The W-C Lattice suggests that causal and nondual state experiences are universally available; but transrationality, as a stage of development, is quite rare.  For example, transrational mystical experience would not be available to an individual performing a practice such as Holotropic breathing, which induces sometimes profound altered state experiences, if that individual did not also have access to expanded 4p or 5p perspectives. 

In her discussion of the Construct-Aware stage, Cook-Greuter comments that the regular practice of observing one's own mental processes (which tends to emerge naturally at this stage) leads sometimes to spontaneous experiences in which the knower and known merge and the sense of self disappears.  To the extent that certain contemplative vehicles encourage mindfulness of internal thought processes, therefore, one could argue that these vehicles aim not only at state training and access (a common way these traditions are described in Integral circles), but at the development of an expanded perspective-taking capacity as well.  In other words, in a tradition such as Madhyamika, for instance, cognitive development to transrational (5p or higher) levels could be said to be as important a part of "realization" as state training, if not more so.  As both Wilber and Cook-Greuter suggest, once one gets to these higher stages of cognitive development, regular (if not always stable) access to deeper state experience appears to come with the territory.  In my understanding, this is because, with increasing insight into one's mental processes and identifications, one begins to hold less tightly to one's constructs and open to a fuller range of available human experiences and modes of knowing, which might include heightened synthetic, intuitive faculties, archetypal or subtle visionary experiences, or causal or nondual levels of awareness. 

As a stage of cognitive development or epistemology, the transrational involves the establishment of an abiding mode of interacting with the world, ordering experience, and acquiring or generating knowledge.  As such, it should not be confused with discrete altered state experiences which, in themselves, are questionable in terms of their capacity to deliver propositional knowledge.  Rather, it represents the evolution and integration of sophisticated human capacities for meaning-making, perspective-taking, and broad state access, with relevance to human well being functioning far beyond having access to transitory "mystical experiences."