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Keep suffering with papers from ITC :(

Posted August 16th, 2010 by Federico Parra

EDIT: As Stefano pointed out (see below) I didn't notice that according to ITC site rules I should be not quoting from the papers that were published online. Therefore, I'm removing the quotes, and strongly suggest that people interested in this post read at the very least the Abstract of the paper for understanding what I am critizicing here. Thanks!

http://integraltheoryconference.org/talks - paper by Bonnitta Roy.

I'm kind of sad by some of the papers presented in the ITC.

What I (sadly) have experienced when reading many of the papers is what looks to me as a missundestanding of very basic concepts, some of them about AQAL, others about Spirituality.

I have just read the paper by Bonnitta Roy. I will only free comment on the abstract, and ask others to go trough the text also and tell me if I got it right (hope not!).

Everything in italics is from the abstract:

--Quote removed--- Please read the abstract of the text

I continuously ask myself: Why scholars continue to quote Gebser as some kind of authority when his work is outdated? For example, we know that Gebser confused (as Wilber I) States and Stages and mixed both into one. So all descriptions of Gebser of what an Integral consciousness could be are a mix (not an integration but a mix) of a stage and a state. Integral as we understand it now (as a stage) can, but also cannot have anything spiritual in it. It can be (and is more often than not the case) of an Integral person that doesn't have much interest in spirituality, for example.

Then she quote Wilber I to make her case, when we know that Wilber I is also outdated:

She writes:

--Quote removed--- Please read the abstract of the text

(This little following quote I will leave it here. Please if someone have problems with this tell me
and I will remove it inmediatly)

"...When Wilber writes that AQAL is a map of the prison, the integral community should immediately understand that there is no prison except for the map."

And there you can see what's wrong with her implications.

Apparently she is not aware of the Mahayana-kind of philosofical division between Absolute and Relative.

Wilber has himself qualified Wilber I as romantical, and critiziced his previous views (in Wilber I) in many ways.

I would say that Wilber would not agree now that "there is no prison except from the map".
On the contrary, I think he would agree with me that everything in the world of form is a prison,
that one map or another is ALWAYS in use, and that getting out of the prison is not about being in the relative
world without a map (which is impossible), but to be free from the relative world all together.

For me, what Roy is implying is that the world of form is limitless and boundless, and that is a plain confusing of the world of form with the absolute ground of it all. It is the classic, Theravadin mistake of absolute and relative that Mahayana then critiziced and changed, and that Ken explained in so detail in one long footnote of SES (http://integrallife.com/member/federico-parra/blog/final-word-no-self-confusion)

The world of form have limits. The world of form is full of limits and, in the relative domain, the Unique Self cannot escape perspectives. There is not such a thing as an Aperspectival way of being in the relative domain. You will be always confined to a limited perspective, and that are the rules of the world of form.

The idea that with spiritual attainment (or with development) somehow the world of form would become limitedless in our experience is a missunderstanding of the relation between the relative and the absolute; relation that can be fairly partially grasped by philosophy (like Mahayanic aproach) and fully grasped by non-dual experience.

But to argue a future a-perspectival attainment of consciousness, and to argue that the Maps are prisions while the world in itself is not, is plain wrong. Being in the world of form, all the way up, implies a relative component (ie: Unique Self); and in the very way of operating in it there is always a kind of map being used. We can only hope of making it as inclusive as possible, but never to live (in the relative domain - the world of form) without any map.

Nor we can expect that the world of form could stop from being a prison. As developed as the consciousness may become, the relative domain will always be a world of division and limits; of me and others; Samsara will always be different (not 2 but not 1) from Nirvana or absolute freedom. And no development or "Aperspectival consciousness" will change this. The world of form is a prison, and will be a prison, for a non-liberated mind, in 2010 and in 2300, for someone that didn't actualized the absolute that's inmanent in and trough it.

Living as an individual in this world of form comprises living trough a set of limited perspectives that can be strenched, complexified, but never fully overcomed into a-perspectival being.

That can, on the other hand, happen regarding the transpersonal domain, the relationship with the absolute in it inmanent form. In One Taste or non-dual consciousness one is identified with all the Kosmos (including the ground of all being which gives birth to it in every moment).

But still, "half of who we are", ie, the Unique Self you are, is going to be limited trough perspective, and that's one of post-modern insights that Ken so skillfuly applied in his critic to pre-modern spirituality, which committed many of this relative-absolute confussions (therefore wrongly concluding that for example an enlightened being could overcome all limitations and though "speak all tongues" for example; something that is confusing Absolute Freedom with Relative Freedom; the former real, the later an impossible).

Any thoughts?

Fede

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First Post

Posted August 16th, 2010 by bonnittaroy

Federico,

Thanks for the invitation to this discussion. I will try to clarify my own understanding, but I don't think it is important to quibble with each individual's understanding -- which I hope my paper will encourage people to go beyond into new explorations of their own thinking. Afterall, there is no "dictatum" on philosophical exploration -- its usefulness is in the very discoveries each of us makes on our own.

To get started, here is a rather lengthy response that we can use to quote from, so as not to worry about the quotation police.

I would agree that Gebser’s work needs to be up-dated, but in the same way we might read Mahayana and attempt to updated the way the core insights are languaged and understood, or how we can make more distinctions from our more modern experiences. Wilber points out that Buddhist psychology lacks much of the stage distinctions – but that does not mean we can’t quote from Buddhist scholastics or find deep meaning or new insights there.

Secondly, I would caution against reading Gebser “with AQAL eyes” to understand Gebser’s work. So, for example, Gebser is not talking about personal or developmental stages or states, but trying to identify “structures” of consciousness that emerge in different eras. This makes his narrative more like a “world history” and in this respect he is more akin to Hegel (Marx, Nietzsche) than any post- postmodern thinker. He is thinking in terms of Weltgeist, not individuals. The closest Wilber comes to this is in his book Up From Eden.

So all descriptions of Gebser of what an Integral consciousness could be are a mix (not an integration but a mix) of a stage and a state. Integral as we understand it now (as a stage) can, but also cannot have anything spiritual in it. It can be (and is more often than not the case) of an Integral person that doesn't have much interest in spirituality, for example.

What is you definition then of spirituality? I would caution against identifying spirituality with state experiences, since there is a ton of Buddhist literature making this specific distinction – that all state experiences are phenomenological arisings and as such can be witnessed (sometimes requiring rigorous training). My ITC presentation offers this definition: that state experiences are examples of the dropping of one or more perspectival constraints. To this extent, there are relative degrees of freedom from perspectivity (and so, toward a-perspectivity). Here is Wilber writing about an experience where the subject-object boundary (a constraint of conventional cognition) drops out:

You don’t look at the sky, you are the sky… Awareness is no longer split into a seeing subject in here and a seen object out there.

These kind of experiences – which I remind you are phenomenological arisings – are typically labeled as “spiritual”. An OOBE (out of body experience) where for example, I can see my body-mind driving along a country road from a vanishing point taken by a disembodied witness, where all of time and space appear to be “in me” … that is an experience where the perspectival boundary constraints of external world (time-space)/internal subject drop away. This kind of experience is typically labeled as pathological (hallucination, dissociative) – but my paper makes the suggestion that this is an experience with more degrees of freedom from perpsectival realm, in other words, toward the a-perspectival.

"...When Wilber writes that AQAL is a map of the prison, the integral community should immediately understand that there is no prison except for the map."

And there you can see what's wrong with her implications.

Apparently she is not aware of the Mahayana-kind of philosofical division between Absolute and Relative.

Wilber has himself qualified Wilber I as romantical, and critiziced his previous views (in Wilber I) in many ways.

Recently, here at Integral Life, Wilber comments that nothing in his books seems to be a mistake. Curiously, he re-visits his one major re-visiting of placing the states on top of the cognitive lines. Wilber I put the states (which are thought of as spiritual) on top of the cognitive lines; this was revised into the Wilber-Coombs lattice, where the states were loosely correlated with the stages. Now Wilber comments that he was right all along (or wrong to think we was wrong) and likes to see the states at the highest end of the cognitive lines. But he updates by saying (paraphrasing): The states are at the highest levels of the cognitive lines, but the cognitive lines only go so far up at different periods in time. So the states maybe are like launching into 2nd tier, on top whatever cognitive stages have emerged so far. This is, in my opinion, something that still needs to be developed.

I am well aware of the conventional dualistic splitting of the Absolute and the Relative. That itself is a conceptual map, afterall, and does not represent the further, more difficult Dzogchen understanding of authentic open awareness – which is the basis for my own work/belief/understanding. In fact, I stmbled upon Wilber just for this reason – I had been working on a philosophical system called “Telos” in which I was trying to reconcile the transcendent (absolute) with the immanent (relative). I was searching for a view that could go beyond this perspectival boundary – and I found it in Dzogchen process philosophy which describes the process in which this apparent duality can be prescribed. Read my work, and you will this underscores all of my writing – to point to this process view of open awareness (which I call view).

Why do I call it view and not a-perspectival? Well here is where I think Gebser needs updating. It makes no sense to create a conceptual duality and put “perspectival” in one box, and “a-perspectival” in the other. At the end of my ITC presentation, I make some bold predictions, one of which is that the perspectival constraints defined by AQAL will drop away into new kinds of thinking… (we won’t get into that in this reply).. but also, that means the entire conceptualized notion of “a-perspectival) will also have dropped – because you can’t have one side of a duality without the other. So even this notion of a-perspectival is constrained by the very boundaries that prescribe the perspectival realm, in much the same manner that (as Nargajuna taught) form and emptiness are one, not two – but their mutual arising is a result of boundary-creating. What is the faculty that creates boundaries? I’ll leave this up to you to work out in your own way.

I would say that Wilber would not agree now that "there is no prison except from the map".
On the contrary, I think he would agree with me that everything in the world of form is a prison,
that one map or another is ALWAYS in use, and that getting out of the prison is not about being in the relative world without a map (which is impossible), but to be free from the relative world all together.

Well, yes of course, by definition, any experience with perspectival elements has perspectives. The point I am making, is to be aware of the process, or faculty, through which perspectival elements arise, how they are fluid and flexible, not fixed and absolute. It makes no sense to create “absolute” fixtures in the “relative” realm! When you understand that, then you understand how not to map out those two realms as it they really existed “Absolute” and “Relative”. As long as you’re seated inside that boundary condition of relative/absolute – well then, yes, you are constrained to se only that one cannot be free from the relative world. You’ve caught yourself into a prison and locked the door with your fundamental conceptual apparatus. Living there – you can spend lifetimes exploring and creating there, adding lines, levels, streams, dialogue, 10,000 books. It’s just that, I don’t live there. And it would be nice to invite a few people over.

Well, there you see. You are inside the map where there is relative form and absolute ground. I am trying to describe the process by which these kinds of conceptual constraints arise. They are useful concepts, for dialogue, and to make distinctions. But they are conditional arisings, constrained by out ability (or inability) to think in entirely new ways, outside of these prison bars. In my presentation, I describe 3 different strategies that are emerging in new writing.

The world of form have limits. The world of form is full of limits and, in the relative domain, the Unique Self cannot escape perspectives.

Something from my presentation to consider. Maxwell concocted a thought experiment about an imaginary demon inside a container of gas at equilibrium. Now, according to physics, a gas at equilibrium has maximum entropy, and so you cannot get work out of it. But of course, a gas at equilibrium is only statistically at equilibrium, and so Maxwell imagined a demon at the scale of the gas molecules, who could measure the immeasurable differences in temperature of each molecule. This demon then could move the hotter molecules to one end, and the cooler molecules to another, and produce a gradient which could be put to work. Now Maxwell articulated this scenario to make his point – that the concept of entropy was in the way of the kind of understanding that would reveal how to make work from gas molecules at equilibrium. Except that we do not yet have the conceptual apparatus, or capacity to think beyond these terms. Maxwell, as most scientists, know that conceptual systems (maps) have utility, but they can constrain novelty when they are thought of as being “indicators” of the “way things are.”

Your language in the following sentences are good examples of the reification of human map-making.

I suggest listening to Jeff Salzman’s interview of Suzanne Cook-Greuter to get a sense of how we can witness the process of map-making and our tendencies to get distracted/attached to them… here on Integral Life

http://integrallife.com/node/77617

There is not such a thing as an Aperspectival way of being in the relative domain. You will be always confined to a limited perspective, and that are the rules of the world of form.

Living as an individual in this world of form comprises living trough a set of limited perspectives that can be strenched, complexified, but never fully overcomed into a-perspectival being.

Any thoughts?

I would like to suggest, if you are interested in pursuing some of the Dzogchen scholastics on the kinds of distinctions you are making in the Mahyana tradition to read Carylyn Klein and Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche’s book Unbounded Wholeness

http://www.amazon.com/Unbounded-Wholeness-Dzogchen-Logic-Nonconceptual/dp/0195178505

Here is an excerpt of a review of the book from

http://www.janushead.org/11-1/KleinandRinpoche.pdf

In the text translated by Klein open awareness is explored as authentic, reflexive primordial mindnature. This experience, much like what is talked about in certain Zen traditions, cannot be accessed by thought. Yet it avoids being anti-intellectual and proceeds based on detailed philosophical analysis. The text conflates epistemology with poetic myth. It is a considerable stretch for the contemporary mind to enter this ancient chthonic mindscape. The text in Unbounded Wholeness incorporates its highly sophisticated and detailed logical analysis of the most esoteric potentialities of the mind with this mythopoetic literary framework. The text defines pure perception as the dynamic display of phenomenon when it appears without clinging or attachment. The perspective of unbounded wholeness is not constituted by reason or even expressed in concepts, rather it is spontaneously arisen and presents itself as straight forward immediate direct perception. This is epistemology as myth in a poetic presentation that works with symbol and metaphor. Nonconceptual logic consists of a set of basic premises such as; direct perception, primordial wisdom, non-recognition, uncontrived seeing and, most importantly, open awareness and unbounded wholeness. In this logic appearances are the nature of mind itself in a self-dawning play of primordial wisdom.

In this logic unimpeded open awareness is the heart-essence of the mind, it is the unthing of ceaseless appearance, the primordial just-is-ness of the great continuum of all that is and is not. The point of view of wholeness subsumes all distinctions. In this logic things are judged or measured by their relation to wholeness. Wholeness accommodates multiplicity and accepts diversity. Authority is not based on a comparison of a pre existing standard of judgment with a presentation of a particular instance but rather on the degree of openness in its perception. Authenticity is not the truthfulness of an individual but the shift of perspective that places the individual within the wholeness perceived with open awareness. This logic does not proceed by cause and effect but poetically by analogy and allusion. The discipline of logic as taught in Tibetan Buddhism rests on the principle of two truths; the one ultimate, the other conventional. But the Dzog Chen logic explicated in Unbounded Wholeness takes one single principle as its defining characteristic. This is, of course, the principle of wholeness. The greatest of the traditional Buddhist logicians, primarily Dignaga and Dharmakirti, take logic as a form of measure whereby a subject examines an object and constitutes a valid cognition regarding that object. Conceptual reasoning is grounded in the subject-object relationship. Open awareness is direct perception from the point of view of the subjectless object and the objectless subject. Here the subject and object are both reflexively perceived as dynamic displays of unbounded wholeness. In non-conceptual logic a subject focused on an object, even if that object is its own perception, is not experiencing open awareness. With open awareness the object is perceived in a continuum which is dynamic, paradoxical and synthetic.

In the above the reviewer warns

It is a considerable stretch for the contemporary mind to enter this ancient chthonic mindscape.

My hope is that my work can help make this process view of mindnature more modern and accessible.

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Thank you!!!!!!!!!

Posted August 16th, 2010 by Federico Parra in response to First Post

Hey! thank you for coming and for illuminating all this.

I will be reading your detailed and generous response and responding soon.

As for now, in a first pass, the only thing that appears strange to me is the paragraph

about last Wilber re-visiting (in Core Integral site) of his previous work.

I hear it also, but I think we got it very different. I will hear it again, though, and come

back to you.

Thank you so much, and you give me hope that maybe we (users of I-Life) can do

this also with other papers authors? Like doing an ideas-exchange and inviting them

to participate in our discussions.

Thank you Bonnitta, and also, welcome to Integral Life forums!

Federico

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making perspectives

Posted August 17th, 2010 by stefano in response to First Post

One evening I was thinking obsessively about a problem, and each time I revisited the issue, I took a different opinion about it. I carried on and on and it was driving me a little nuts, as there were so many ways to re-interpret the problem. Eventually I got exasperated and then "realised" that I could go on taking perspectives forever, and became conscious that the problem wasn't "out there" awaiting "adequate" understanding, rather, there was just "me" here writing perspectives.

It felt like there was no firm leg to stand on anymore, that the problem wasn't "real" in that sense, it wasn't set in concrete. Somehow, becoming aware of my perspective authoring, dissolved the density of the problem. (And gave me a pleasant feeling of space.)

Does this sound a little like what you are describing?

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One fast insight

Posted August 16th, 2010 by Federico Parra

Some minutes after reading the generous and detailed response from Bonnitta for the first time (and after my first responses simply giving thanks for the participation here) something pop up:

One thing I got from her response (again, first pass, we will see latter) is that there is in Buddhism a kind of understanding that comes "after" so to speak of the Mahayana (and Tibetan) split of Absolute and Relative; she says we can find it in Dzog Chen and in pre-Buddhist Bon.

My very simple insight or questioning is this: Ken IS a Dzogchen realizer. He speaks of One Taste (a Mahamudra term) instead of using Dzogchen terms, but his teachers (and the practices he made to actualize the result) were mostly from Dzogchen.

As early as 1999 he was giving detailed accounts of living in that "state" in everyday life and during deep sleep, dream and waking. Now, 11 years later (and after his account of how he "surfed" his 10 or more seizures and his 3 days in comma in a One Taste state) we can imagine that this has been stabilized even more.

Then, why he who has realized this View in a permanent way, still says that there is a division between True Self and Unique Self, and that the world, and even enlightenment, is continuously co-shaped trough individual perspectives?

Personally, I too had at least one strong inmersion into that type of reality; and even when I was everything that was arising, and even when Unique Self was kind of floating into the infinite universe of being; there still were contraints; as Wilber puts it: Even if around a table there are 10 persons, 100% enlighten; still none of them can see the world trough the other person eyes, and though, each would be looking at the room from a different angle; that last contraint (at least, about physical position into the manifest universe) cannot be jumped.

Even before the realization of One Taste, with a strong causal type of Witnessing, I can indeed "watch perspectives arising". But still when operating in the world of form you still have to go trough them.

In simple terms: I'm not Federico. I'm watching Federico arise. But still, I (the trueself) cannot act in the world. Only Federico can. And only trough him I can be in the world.

Perspectives, then, are illusory; but to act in the world (which is the illusion of perspectives) you have to incarnate trough a perspective.

What I see as incompatible, is the idea of a world of perspectives and you operating in it without having to take one of them.

I will be depurating more my vision before responding in full lenght; but for the record I only wanted to comment that Ken IS a Dzog Chen realizer (probably as much as Tenzin Wamgyal Rinpoche is) and still apparently believes in the imposibility of escaping perspective taking in the art of living.

Love!

Federico

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Dzogchen

Posted August 18th, 2010 by bonnittaroy in response to One fast insight

A few thoughts. I should have clarified that my work comes from Bon Tibetan Dzogchen. Here is a link to an introduction that I am posting merely to show that I am not the only person who interprets Bon Dzogchen this way. From this link it says:

Sometimes we live in the relative world and practice for the world of the absolute. We live on this earth, and pray for heaven. The practice of Dzogchen helps us not to fall into the extremes of both the relative world and the absolute world, of both heaven and earth. To the Dzogpachenpo two are not separate. They are one. Dzogchen practice is to realize the absolute nature within the relative, so that we do not wander in search of the absolute truth riding the board of the relative.

http://www.olmoling.org/contents/dzogchen

Also, there are hundreds of thousands of pages of Buddhist scholastics debating such things as the Two Truths Doctrine -- so it is probably safe to say that you and I (nor Wilber et al) are going to be able to claim the final answer. Indeed, a case can be made that these kind of inquiries are soteriological ones -- pointing-out questions and answers, not dialogic ones.

That being said, I would like to ask a question

If we cannot escape perspectives, then the notion of "relative and Absolute truths" must also be a perspective.

And so, like all persepctives, it must be true, AND partial. So in what context is it merely a partial truth?

Bonnie

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Perspectives

Posted August 18th, 2010 by Federico Parra in response to Dzogchen

Hi Bonnie. Have you read my response here: http://integrallife.com/member/federico-parra/blog/parad-ox-lost-response-bonnitta-roy ?

I imagine you did but asking just in case.

Some short responses:

At least for that quote, it sounds to me exactly identical as the Mahamudra view.

For example it says "Sometimes we live in the relative world and practice for the world of the absolute. We live on this earth, and pray for heaven. The practice of Dzogchen helps us not to fall into the extremes of both the relative world and the absolute world, of both heaven and earth. To the Dzogpachenpo two are not separate. They are one. ".

Thas is akin to Mahamudra. The Great Union. There is not such a thing as separated absolute and relative anymore.

And even then (and this is my point) the Mahamudra realizer dies at an especific point in time; have certain opinions among others; his body is subject to the laws of phisics; his psycological configuration allow and disallow him to interpret things in certain ways; his altitude allow or disallow him to be aware of certain realities; and so on.

This that I am saying, as Clint point out in his paper, is something new. Something that the traditions didn't completely understood or grasp. Which is that even when you are liberated from perspectives (and relative and absolute become one) even then you are still communicating trough perspectives; the world of form (that is not separated from the absolute) is made of perspectives and perspectives only; you, the One and only that see perspectives arising, still understand everything and explain and express everything only trough perspectives.

I asked you a practial question: Name one person (apart from you) that have this realization you are speaking about. You named Tenzin Wangyal. He doesn't have that realization (he lives trough perspectives, in the perspectivcal world, and use maps all the time). So, is there any person that have this realization you think is possible? Is this only your abstract interpretation of an ancient tradition? Because, for that matter, Kagyu teachers think that it is indeed possible to fly because the traditional texts account for that; but when you ask them about one person that can do it now, you hear all kind of very funny excuses as why it is not possible to see it in present times.

About your question:

"If we cannot escape perspectives, then the notion of "relative and Absolute truths" must also be a perspective.

And so, like all persepctives, it must be true, AND partial. So in what context is it merely a partial truth?"

"Relative and Absolute truth" as a notion is a perspective. But the non dual realization or the ultimate natural state is not a notion but something of another nature. Relative and absolute truth as a notion is one thing; the realization of the paradox of nonduality is another.

There are NO context in which that paradox is partial.

Why? because that paradox is the Ultimate truth. There is no other, nor any context in which it is not already, always happening.

Peace,

Federico

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process and perspectives

Posted August 19th, 2010 by bonnittaroy in response to Perspectives

Hi Frederico, I am interested in this "To the Dzogpachenpo [the two - relative and absolute ] are not separate. They are one." The Bon people had/have a fundamentally process-view of reality. They have no nouns, only verbs, for example. So when they speak about the relative and absolute being one, they tned not to see them as separate structures, but as a continuum or flux. I use the term view to indicate this fundamenal property of being -- that the perspectival arrangemenet is in continual arising (coming-into-being) from an unconditioned place. "we" cannot live in that unconditioned place becase "we" is already a perspective. Eugene Gendlin says frist person process is not a perspective. From there he derives the perspectives in his process philosophy. Jason Brown has a scientific theory of Cognitive Microgenesis in which the perspectival structures are generated in a wave-like fashion, from core to maturity (correspondig with the odler to younger parts of the brain, evolutionarily). Gendlin is a psychologist, Brown a neruphysiologist. Both are process thinkers, and I suspect that makes all the difference. bonnie

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Bonjour

Posted August 19th, 2010 by Federico Parra in response to process and perspectives

Hi Bonnitta.

The comment about Bon people don't having nouns but only verbs is interesting...but you know, Mapuche indigenous people in Argentina, don't have any straight way of negation in their language (I studied it for some years).
So many romantic scholars concluded that Mapuches were radically different than us; they never negated things.

That was not only false, but nuts. In my "inmersion" into Mapuche culture, I could verify that they indeed have ways of negating, even if their language (god knows why!) doesn't have a direct form of expressing that.

(as another example, in French there is not a distinction between Mind and Spirit -both are Esprit- but that doesn't mean French people don't have a way to discern between those!)

I'm arguing that there is not, and there was not on this earth such a paradise of people that "never negated things"; nor there was any community that lived without a way to call or communicate an equivalent of "nouns"!

I'm not an expert in Bon culture, so I will leave this assertion of mine as a question mark for further study.
But I suggest that cultures around the world, however different, never escaped perspectives, nor negation, nor the most common features of human life.

By the way, you still didn't gave us any example of a person that is, nowadays, living in an aperspectival (or "view" as you call it) way!

I don't know Gendlin nor Brown personally nor their work. Still, I would bet 500 U$S that they both cannot escape perspectives nor can live without conceptual maps in their everyday life.

Just kidding (I don't have 500U$S)! :-)

But let's make it of 100U$S!! That at least I could pay for real! :-)

The only example of what you are describing that both of us know (Tenzin Wangyal) I already refuted; he lives trough perspectives and use maps (in fact, he use very traditional maps, sometimes in a dogmatic way).

I believe he could enter states (or even live permanently in states) in which him is not ONLY perspectives, but the ground in which perspectives arise, and so is free of them; but at the same time -again, paradox- when he enters the world of form (every morning when he get up) he hit perspectives -as Ken use to say- and then he is at a certain altitude, with different line configurations, he is more of a certain type than others, and so on. He doesn't escape that.

So could you please give concrete examples of persons living in the way you describe? People that experience reality in the way you describe your "view"?

If it is only an abstract imaginery (yours, Gendlin's or Brown's) then is one thing and I respect it as such; but if you claim that is indeed a realizable state of being or that some people actually live like that, then I would like to know who is living like that!

à bientôt.

Federico

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Traditional thinking

Posted August 18th, 2010 by Federico Parra in response to Dzogchen

One more thing:

Tenzin Wangyal says for example that "Buddhas don't have thoughts".

Why? because that is how tradition describes them.

If that were true, then he is not a Buddha. Because he still think. And a lot.

This is one of the examples of the contradictory nature of a mind that goes into higher

kinds of cognition (like hims) while other many lines (like the Spiritual interpretation one)

still is arrested at a traditional level.

They fail to discern what is really possible, really realizable (which is what they have realized),
from that which is a traditional account not to be taking as literal.

Buddhas are said to be able to fly; to walk trough walls; and now...to be free from the prison of perspectives.

But the Buddhas we know; from Tenzin to Ken to Nagarjuna to Gautama to Traleg to Trungpa to Khandro to Tengpa to Dilgo Khyentse...all of them don't fly; nor go trought walls...nor escape perspectives.

All of them use maps. All of them have a Unique self that is as unavoidable as obvious (and, by the way, all of them have a big Ego, which is fantastic and beautiful to see).

Many times there are pedagogical teachings. I came back some weeeks ago from a Mahamudra retreat in which the Lama, for some days, put a lot (for me, too) emphasis in the attainment of non-division. To a point in which his teachings started to sound pretty as the Dzogzachempo description you quoted.

But still, those teachers, and their teachers, and their teachers; all lived trough and only trough perspectives; with and only with maps.

An unavoidable truth...

peace,

Fede

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a stutter

Posted August 19th, 2010 by Annie in response to Traditional thinking

I must confess that I was not able to write the word “primordial”, having read that part I wondered how is it that we know things (I like the word unknowing better) in a sense before knowing what it is; calling it a direct perception as outside of that scope. You said: "Relative and Absolute truth" as a notion is a perspective. But the non dual realization or the ultimate natural state is not a notion but something of another nature.

I thought I understood the distinction the two papers both made by claiming that non-dual realization is not held as a perspective (but something of another nature).

We need to bring in the Christian tradition because here we begin to understand what it means to be fully human and fully divine. We have two natures that have become one, neither one can be reduced to the other but both are in balance and harmony. It seems to me that these two natures intersect as the Heart and here we understand and respond according to our Human Nature but ordered through the Divine. This “ordering” is intuited so we must constantly be applying a perspective that in a sense justifies this way of being in the world.

This is indeed like a blank slate, we are making it up as we go along and we are bound and restricted by what can be enacted. What’s more is that this binding has complete freedom in the Divine which is felt as a stutter; you have something to say but have yet to invent the words.

I am looking at Ken because I know he lives here, it seems what I intuit he finds words for. Yet, he is right because I am unique in my own intuition, my expression adds something that he has not written and could not possibly write …but that is obvious.

annie

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UPDATE: Posted response

Posted August 17th, 2010 by Federico Parra

Hi! I just posted my response to Bonnitta's first response in a separate thread,

http://integrallife.com/member/federico-parra/blog/parad-ox-lost-response-bonnitta-roy

I posted there links to the original paper by Bonnitta; to this original critique of mine; and to
the PDF with Bonnitta's first response.

I will contact her to update her about this response.

Hope that this conversation continues for further insight in all of us!

Blessings to all.

Federico

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Invitation

Posted August 16th, 2010 by Federico Parra

I went further to invite Bonnitta sending to her email (listed in the paper) the link to this post so that she can watch my thoughts and everyone else's on this post about her work.

Hope she comes by!

I would love to know what she thinks about my (very basic) points.

Love,

Federico

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aperspectival?

Posted August 16th, 2010 by stefano

I got stuck at how to interpret this statement:

A-perspectivity is the unconditioned situation of living/being without the map.

See, if the most fundamental thing is perspectives (not subject, not object, not platonic ideals, etc.) then what does "aperspectival" mean when we always have a set of perspectives?

Like, we are each of us a Unique Self. Whatever I am or do, see or be, I will be taking a perspective, so what if I choose the AQAL perspective?

I'm not sure I can go any further with that paper, or your comments, without first unpacking what they mean by "aperspectival".

PS. are we ok discussing this here, given the notice:

THE FOLLOWING PAPERS ARE FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY TO SUPPORT CONFERENCE ATTENDEES AND ARE NOT TO BE CIRCULATED, QUOTED, OR POSTED WITHOUT AUTHOR PERMISSION.

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Sheldrake's work

Posted August 16th, 2010 by Kamm

Hi Fede,

I won't comment, for my language may not be as informed as I would like to think, but I do wonder, rather simplistically, about 'morphic fields' and their bearing on the frothy edge.

If anyone has any additional references on the Sheldrake-Wilber conversations other than the audio from Integral Naked, I would be interested in it.

I am exploring my own maps, to be sure; how that would add to the understanding might not be of use.

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Hi Kamm!

Posted August 16th, 2010 by Federico Parra in response to Sheldrake's work

Hi! I heard with delight those audios with Ken and Rupert. In fact, another paper from ITC that I would like to contest (at least in part) is the one by Visser; I don't get why people that see error in Wilber's use of evolutionary concepts insist that it have no connections with "what real scientists think", without acknowledging that Rupert shares almost all Ken points of view and is a great acknowledged scientist (biologist indeed); and also, without acknowledging that Ken himself IS a scientist with his degree obtained in evolutionary biology!

Anyway, no Kamm, I don't know of other audio/text material from both apart from that you pointed out.

If you find something please let me know!

Also, if you find some connection between morphic fields theory and the points I tried to make about Roy's work, please clarify cause I didn't get it clearly from your previous comment.

Take much care and thank you!

Fede

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She is coming!

Posted August 16th, 2010 by Federico Parra

I will never stop from feeling impressed as how beautiful, good and well intentioned communication can be!

Bonnitta answered my mail with a warm message and she will be probably passing by:

"This kind of invitation to participate in receiving criticism of one's work is really novel and I applaud it.

I will certainly participate"

So if you didn't read her work, it's a good opportunity to do it (it is very interesting) and to share your opinions, and if you did read it, and have some critiques, post them! so she would be able to read about them and maybe get back to you!

I humbly applaud also her willing to discuss her ideas with non-scholars like myself.

This is, in my view, so beautiful.

Hope something meaningful come out of this!

Sincerely (and happy),

Federico

PD: I use this opportunity to get her to know what most of you already know: My english is not that good, so sorry for that

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i'm a dreamer

Posted August 16th, 2010 by Annie

She said some things that i intuit as well. This diagram has been something i like to ponder - for me a picture is worth a thousand words and i especially like the view of AS (impulse, posses, obsess and reverse) and AT (wave, facet, mirror, echo). Do these not fall out of the range of perspectival thinking, and yet we can't really define this as thinking at all. Rather they are influences to thought that causes us to pick and choose terminology according to an entire system of experience. The beauty in this depiction is that they can arise together without drowning out the unique qualities. No perspective can do that since the mind travels in a linear fashion.

The way i see it, she has overcomplicated the domains...probably because i did not understand most of her terminology but in my opinion the essence of each quadrant and zone has a trancendence built in. Trying to add another zone each time it is transcended seems rather silly, label it initially with the characteristics of what we now see, you can always add more descriptions as consciousness evolves - but making it a new zone implies a complete shift (doesn't it??) when in fact they seem more like parts of the sentence.

p.s. Bonnitta, my comments are intended in a most respectful manner, what a wonderful mind you have!

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[Comment Deleted]

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Hi again

Posted August 16th, 2010 by Federico Parra in response to [Comment Deleted]

Hi Bonnitta. I was wondering as what do you thought about Clint's presentation:

http://integraltheoryconference.org/sites/default/files/itc-2010-papers/Fuhs_ITC%202010.pdf

about the "Tentative proof that perspectives are primordial".

I was studying that one today.

Thanks,

Federico

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the receptor

Posted August 17th, 2010 by Annie in response to Hi again

Hi Fede,

I really don’t see Clint and Bonnita as disagreeing, Bonnita is talking about the source of input and Clint is talking about what we do with it once we get it. I love the image of a kind of “swish” or all at once kind of knowing, seeing the whole of something which is similar to Clint’s explanation of Information Theory as the difference that makes a difference (packets of information coming from a source and being received by a receptor). We do in fact pull it apart and we see it according to something that is different. But what is it before we see a difference, that is a good example of the “WORD” unspoken, before utterance it seems to fall into the category of feeling and can only be realized through a perspective. In actual fact it also precedes a feeling but the body is the first detection and sometime the trigger that begins the quest for a point of reference.

I guess we could say that information is only as good as the receptor, so a “swish” of information may make me smile but can I bring joy to someone else by articulating it. Is that a perspective that I receive, I think it resembles the unspoken, but when I open my mouth to speak I agree…what else can it be, it is a perspective.

Maybe we just need to rephrase things a bit with a-perspectival, it is not the download that affects the view but the upload. In other words; the output will always be linear but the thoughts that formed the sentence has a systems view, the nuances may go undetected but if one is faithful to the process it will be inclusive.

annie

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I don't think so

Posted August 17th, 2010 by Federico Parra in response to the receptor

Hi Annie! I indeed think they are disagreeing and in huge forms (I would like to see what Bonnitta thinks though).

from Cint's abstract:

"It is through perspectives and perspectives alone that we come to understand anything

about our world. A sight, a sound, the shape and color of an object, the meaning of a word, and

our own, other’s and shared feelings; all of this is enacted through a type of micro-paradigms or

injunction better known as a perspective. Put as simply as possible: perspectives are primordial,

which is to say they are the most fundamental or primeval elements of reality, existing at or from

the beginning of time."

Bonnitta is suggesting that we indeed can escape perspectives. What Clint and Ken are suggesting is that that is never possible. Perspectives (according to this vision of them as being primordial) is not something spoken or not spoken; it is prior to all that! It is imbedded in perception.

Putting it simple: for Bonnitta, "direct perception" is possible. For Ken and Clint (and all post-moderns for that matter) that's impossible.

Maybe (my take) you are not quite getting the radicality of Bonnitta's stance. Nor you are quite (in my view) still aware of how, if that were truth (which I think is not) Integral Theory as we know it would be pretty flawed.

Just a last resume of my points:

Clint says there is nothing prior to Perspectives in the formal world. And so, he says that you cannot escape them.

In the other hand, Bonnitta posses the idea that maybe a kind of aperspectival thinking (and being) could be attained.

I tried to demonstrate in my response that her vision is wrong.

I am quite open, however, that the wrong here could be myself :)

Love to you Annie!

Fede

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another example

Posted August 17th, 2010 by Federico Parra in response to the receptor

I will add bold and italics:

". . .there are no perceptions anywhere in the real world; there are only perspectives. A

subject perceiving an object is always already in a relationship of first-person, second-person, and thirdperson

when it comes to the perceived occasions. If the manifest world is indeed panpsychic—or built of

sentient beings (all the way up, all the way down)—then the manifest world is built of perspectives, not

perceptions. Moving from perceptions to perspectives is the first radical step in the move from metaphysics

to post-metaphysics. Subjects don’t prehend objects anywhere in the universe; rather, first persons prehend

second persons or third persons: perceptions are always within actual perspectives....Even if we say, with

the materialist, that the world is composed of nothing but physical atoms, nonetheless “atom” is already a

third-person symbol being perceived by a first-person sentient being. And if we try to picture an actual

atom, that too is a third-person entity prehended by a first person. In other words, even “atom” is not an

entity, or even a perception, but a perspective, within which a perception occurs. But surely, the critic

would say, we can still imagine a time that there were only atoms, not humans, and therefore atoms existed

without arising in a human perspective. (That again is still a third-person image held by a first-person

awareness; but let’s imagine that we can imagine a time without human perspectives.) It is true there was a

time before humans emerged. But if the world is actually panpsychic, then each atom had a rudimentary

awareness or proto-experience of other atoms, and hence a first atom aware of a second atom is already and

actually a first person in touch with a second person. In other words, these perspectives are indigenous to

all sentient beings; if sentient beings go all the way down, so do perspectives. Thus, sentient beings and

perspectives, not consciousness and phenomena, are the “stuff” of the Kosmos. (Wilber, 2003c, p. 5)"

I have to confess, I love this guy :-)

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Clint's Paper

Posted August 18th, 2010 by bonnittaroy in response to Hi again

I think it is excellent example of what I call "emergent methodologies" in my paper. I also think it is reasoned from late-stage dialectical thinking. Since in my paper I predict the emergence of an "onto-logics" that is a paradigmatic shift from late-stage dialectics, I was toying with his paper, trying to re-invent it in terms of onto-logics. Here is a table of the differences:

Perhaps I will write an exegesis on his paper after it is published and quotable.

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Thanks again!

Posted August 18th, 2010 by Federico Parra in response to Clint's Paper

Thanks Bonnitta!

I sent a short message to Clint to invite him also to this discussion.

Hope he have time to pass by and to drop a line.

Also hope you find my last response useful.

blessings,

Federico

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Thanks for the Invite

Posted August 20th, 2010 by Clint Fuhs in response to Thanks again!

Hi Federico,

Thanks for the invitation! I don't think I can add much to the larger discussion here -- mostly because I have yet to read Bonnitta's paper. Bonnitta, can you send me the most up to date copy or a link to clint@coreintegral.com. Thanks!

As for your brief assessment of my paper, and based on what I can gleam from this chart, I wouldn't disagree at all. Late-stage dialectical reasoning operating on very succinct and cherry-picked dialectical segments from the theorists I considered. My aim for this work was a very functionalist, LR focused examination of how it might be that perspectives operate primordially. I feel like I attempted to use the style or level of reasoning appropriate to the formulation of what I was envisioning.

As you saw, the paper ended quite abruptly after I presented the perspectival semiosis...I cut out quite a bit to meet the ITC page requirements. I will be adding more to the end in prep for the next conference book...so, I can provide that draft once I have it finished. At that point, Bonnitta, I would love to hear your thoughts, as you suggest.

I am also looking forward to seeing your discussion of the onto-logics. I certainly can't claim that I understand the complexities of your work by just looking at the chart...but, with that said, I think the idea of perspectival semiosis, along with the unpacking yet to be done, might very well exhibit some of what I see you capturing in the chart. The steps I took to get there seem appropriately placed and assessed at late-stage dialectical.

Anyhow, I look forward to sharing the next draft.

Best to you all,

Clint

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