Nikolai1

Karl why don't you explain how you understand wu wei - I'm interested! Having studied Chinese philsophy for twenty years, I do understand that there are multiple views on this. What is yours?

Perhaps the most important concept in Chinese thought, and you don't even know what it might mean! Why are you on a Daoist forum again?

Michael This notion of soul evolution is something that I think about quite a lot. I really don't know what to think. Wilber would say that the world-centric, ecologically minded west coast liberal is more evolved than the conformist, Bible preaching Baptist and American patriot. Is one more evolved than the other? Or are they just different? What do you think?

Sounds to me that you've almost got them beaten. If we are conscious of something it can't keep on happening for much longer. In this life I think you're breaking new ground!

How do you define wu wei?

Michael If he driticises what the mainstream scientists criticise then he is more likely to get the respect he needs. I think Wilber has his place. He describes himself as a Pandit. A scholar rather than a sage. Maybe this is fair enough. And to his credit there is a massive gulf between spirituality and mainstream science/humanities so maybe it is too big a gulf to span for one person. He has to fall one way or the other! Because Zen downplays the siddhis then I think some people are led to think that they are an illusion. For me it's not that they are an illusion, its that siddhis do not equate to a full awakening. I also think that siddhis are a natural extension of skills we use everyday of our lives, we just don't realise it. I think Seth has influenced me in this way. Yes, but he would also say that liberal, socialist views are more evolved than nationalism, tribalism and conservatism. This is undubtedly a controversial Wilberian theme. He wants everyone to be accepted and heard and given equal rights; but it is in the same way that we should give children the same human rights as adults. At the end of the day, he views adult society as being comprised of the less evolved (children) and the more evolved (adults). Obama is for adults...and the Republicans have yet to decide which child will be their candidate!

Hi Michael Yes, the reason they sounded the same is because movement from formop to vision logic happens gardually. But in formop we see different perspectives, but we still retain the belief that one of this correct and the other incorrect. And once we have determined which is which we have unearthed a universal truth about the world In vision logic we lose this belief more and more. Perspectives are always, of necessity, provisional. They do not and cannot correspond to a world 'out there' because the existence of that world is itself jist another persective. Truth is something therefore that 'fits' the flow of events. It might fit to today but not tomorrow. Like you correctly stated, there is no thinking - there is only the appropriate thought in that moment. Exactly! Hence the term vision-logic. We are not thinking and we are not thinkers - we are just the emptiness into which thoughts come...like visons. Wilber does emphasise a lot the fact that vision-logic is not possible for those who have not experienced what he calls the 'satori'. Only with this glimpse of awareness will our identifies shift from being a thinker engaging with the world. All the stages previous to vision-logic contain the germ in the form of creativity. In formal operations, in the scientific hypothetico-deductive mindset, creativity is the ability to formulate questions. The question is never an established fact but a hunch about what might be the case. Of course, solutions to scientific questions might also come from the place of creativity. There is a well-known story about James Watson who dreamed of a spiral staircase before proposing the double helis of the DNA molecule.

I have found Wilber's thoughts on the film What the Bleep...?, which is a kind of manifesto for 'you create your own reality' He said: It is definitely conspicuous that he doesn't give any mention of siddhis, either way, in his main books. They certainly present theoretical problems, and politically he would find himself totally dismissed by the intellectual establishment (which he clearly wishes to impress).

Hi Michael Piaget's penultimate stage was concrete operational, which is basically conventional. Truth is taken from the authority whether in the form of the 'expert' (as in a priest) or the words of some infallibly true scripture (like the Bible). Logical argument could ensue and it used authority to provide the axioms, or predicates. To move into formal operations, which was Piaget's final stage, there has to be some ability to think about our thinking (called metacognition). We therefore come open to the fact that the Bible may not be infallibly true, and that it was just the opinion of the everyday person who wrote it. Formal operations requires the skill to think about, assess and compare alternative intellectual notions in order to settle on the truest one or best. The stage beyond this is called vision-logic where more and more we are capable of seeing alternative viewpoints. At first we see alternatives in those things that are least essential, for example we might see that English table manners are not superior to the Indian's - its just a matter of culture. Post-modern culture is dominated by vision-logic thinking at this level. To approach higher levels of vision-logic we start to see that fundamental ontological categories as being only provisonally true. For example, we can see quite clearly that time and timelessness (eternity) are one and the same thing. As we lose the ability to assume that our cognitions are able to infallibly reflect 'out there' reality, our suppostion of said reality reduces. We no longer imagine ourselves as a thinker, thinking. Our thoughts present themselves as finished products - intuitions. As is always the case, intuition always had its roots in former levels - for example, it is by intuition that we are able to formulate the questions that we then emprically 'test'. Vision-logic only becomes conspicuous in advanced spiritual wisdom tradtions. Zen teachings enunciate it very clearly. Piaget seemed not to suspect it, perhaps because it is extremely rare. For Piaget, his final stage (formal operations) was not met by the majority of the population and it is perhaps reasonable to assume it to be the end point of human cognition.

Michael Wow that's interesting! Yes, Piaget is a massive influence on Wilber, one of the major influences. He does of course go beyond Piaget, who saw the final state of cognitive development to be Formal Operations. Yes, quite early on in The Nature of Personal Reality Seth warns not to mistake the self he talks about with our usual ego. The self that creates is a much broader self, and must be realised through practice. if we don't realise this higher self we have only the smaller self to work with. This basic point runs throughout Wilber's writings. The level higher to where we are at is 'invisible', 'inconceivable'. It is as if shrouded in total darkness. Seth considers modern doctors to serve this function in our society. They are not fully conscious, however, because they reject their own suggestive or hypnotic role in the healing and attribute it all to the medicine, which they belive in as ardently as the patient. Likewise the shaman must practice some kind of ecstasis in order to channel their higher functions of Self - they can't seem to do it with their ordinary, day-to-day persona. I would say that Jane Roberts was the same in this regard.

Does anybody on this thread have any idea of Wilber's views on clairvoyance, divination and other siddhis or occult arts?

Obviously he has written so much that he might have addressed this elsewhere, so I'd be interested if there is anyone here who thinks we misrepresent him. Wilber does include 'thought creates reality' in his system. He just considers it to be an archaic viewpoint, which is basically erroneous. He sees it in children at the phase when they imagine that the 'moon follows them when they go out walking at night'. Magical thinking, he says, is what happens when we are strongly egocentric - that is, we can't distinguish the world 'out there' from the self. As the self becomes a stronger, more distinct entity we are able to be less egocentric...all this comes from Piaget. My own view is that our sense of self starts to become cosmic. We start to experience feelings of agency in matters that make no sense to normal individual existence. But these feelings of agency can't be assumed to be the indiviual's (as in solipsism) but are rather seen as the Divine's also. Our own self is also not self. Pre-rational magical thinking doesn't have this double-view. The world is one's own and centred on one's self purely. I think another thing about the post-rational phase is that we experience it both ways. Yes, we have moments where our thought creates reality, but we also have moments where our will is entirely in abeyance and we feel utterly surrendered to a higher power. Both of these states happen, and because of that, we can't identify with either as being a fixed world-view. Those who are pre-rational magical are convinced, utterly convinced, that reality is dependent on their own individual thinking (or that of their designated creators). In societies that anthroplogists have studied in recent times, this split view is represented by the ordinary person who doesn't have cosmic powers, and the shaman who does. And even the shaman must 'go out of themselves' in order to access these powers of reality creation. In post-rational magic, the Self concept is broad enough to consciously hold all of these together and not get carried away.

Karl That is therefore a two-tier hierarchy. Wilber details many lines of development but gives the most attention to the cognitive line. Aristotelian logic he equates with the blue/orange level of development, and it seems you are at this level. On this site you get a great deal of feedback from those operating at the green or yellow levels, but you are unable to comprehend that level of logic. It is literally invisible to you because of the consraints you place. Wilber gives an example between those operating at the blue level (which is conventional, mythic, based on authority) and the orange (where the notion of fallability comes in) The blue will say that, according to the Bible, the world was created in six days. The orange says 'what about the fossil record?' The blue says - 'yes that was created on the fifth day'. The blue cognitve style is to assume an absolute authority (eg the Bible) as the predicate on which all truth is drived. The orange is more fluid, and allows for new information. Authority becomes hypothesis, but the truth is still out there to be discovered...and we get closer each day. You notice though that the blue is totally incapable of seeing the orange view until it has relaxed its belief on the infallibility of the Bible. This painful, disorientating movement is rare after we have reached a certain age. We have created a whole system around us by this point which keeps us positioned. The move from orange to green comes when we start to doubt the 'out thereness' of a world that our orange hypotheses approximate. Each hypothesis becomes logically equivalent to the next. We see that deduction, this revered process, depends very much on arbitrary unexamined predicates which are hangovers from our blue phase. Yellow thinking is when the orange and green merge. Logically everything is still equivalent, but in any given moment there is an optimum act. Our actions may seem contradictory because they are not based on a cognitively held heuristic. They are based on the unique requirements of the moment. Identifying what this is is post-logical, post-rational. It is often metaphorcially called 'living from the heart'. Because yellow involves a whole different way of an apprasing reality, it is referred to as a leap to a higher 'second tier'.

Karl If a caste system is viewed as rigid and ordained by God, then Wilber is certainly not guilty of this. He does position people at levels of development, but views people as always striving to evolve beyond where they currently are. One of the most common critcisms of him is that he uses hierachies that are quite out of fashion in the post-modern age. To this he counters that hierarchies are inevitable in all thought. There is always the truer the better the stronger in any position, even relativism.

Yes, I just read his magnum opus Sex, Ecology,Spirituality and there is no mention of this stuff really. Another area where he seems to have little to say is in the occult or the paranormal. Magical thinking, so thought creating reality, is a thinking style he attributes to children and early humans. He considers it to be a confusion that we as individuals grow out of, and which the human race has evolved out of. The insights of Jung on this matter he considers to be fallacious. He accuses him of the pre/trans fallacy - where pre-rational states are mistaken for post-rational 'spiritual' states. I think you are quite right that Wilber is basically an advaitin, and takes that common Advaitin position that what happens in the story must abide by the laws of the story (eg science) and that we cannot intervene in ways that are new and creative.

Very inspiring story, thank you Aaron. Too many people just listen to the sentences given out glibly by the doctors and don't have the confidence to challenge them. Well done to you!, and good luck with the rest of your diet plan. There is something very empowering about losing weight, and the skills we learn can be transferred to so many different situations.

Hi Michael Of course he claims to provide a fuller system that anyone else has to date. What do you think gets left out?

Hi Carbonbreath I think you have reached a point where you have 'seen through' the normal programs of activities. This is not something that often happens to people. They don't ever reach the carrot, and so they stay in the state of assuming that the next thing is really worth having. And because some carrots don't ever get reached (like, say, massive wealth) most people stay assuming that massive wealth is a worthwhile goal. Your intellect has played a huge role in this rare discovery, and has been your major tool. But the trouble is, the intellect has become overbearingly powerful. It is able to see, in advance, that everything that can be achieved in this world will not satisfy your particular need. The solution, as boring as it sounds, is to start living like so many people already are. With a certain amount of pain and mortification, we have to come off our high horse and see that all the people aren't just chasing carrots - a great many of them are doing what they love...and they are doing this seemingy pointless stuff for the sheer pleasure of it. It's time therefore to change gear. You need to honour and worship where your intelligence has brought you, and yet learn to live by a faculty that has been quite smothered in the process. It can be quite hard to rediscover what we actually love to do, in that simple purity. We may need to go back to our childhood to remember natural inclincations before our intellect started to dismiss them as stupid or pointless. But don't worry, you will discover your way. It sounds like you have no real choice as this static place is quite unbearable. Like you said, your libido compels you on and must win through over reasonable sounding objections. Another source of mortification comes when we realise that we often used to dismiss as pointless those things that deep down we actually wanted to do, but didn't have the confidence. Again, when we hear the voice of our heart clearly, it gives us the confidence to tackle what we want and what we love to do. Good luck!

I think the basic point, Karl, is that you like the conversation here. There's something that makes you feel at home. You could to all sorts of neo-con forums and discuss Ayn Rand to your heart's content. but you don't because you wouldn't like the people you discuss with. Are you with us all really, with our notions of the Dao that can't be talked about? Are you playing the role of the gadfly, while being a good Athenian at heart?

I'm with you on this Karl. I simply don't trust this stuff. I don't trust the intellectual calibre of those involved. This hinterland between mathematical and material reality can only really be navigated by a special kind of individual, and I'm not this bunch of geeks can do it. When I listen to Stephen Hawking speak, or I read his books, I often catch a whiff of insanity, or some kind of autism.

The main point of this thread was the difficulties that come when move to second tier thinking. Second tier thinking is a very disticntive style, which I see lots of on this forum but never have I seen it in you. I've spent a fair amount of time reading your posts and I've come to the concusion that you are, as yet, incapable of high-level insight. This is why I've been happy to answer your queries on this thread but not bothered to solicit your advice on the matter at hand. Brian quited your first contribution just now, so forgive me if I haven't taken notice of you since. You openly subscribe to a philsophy whose central tenets, according to wikipedia, are that 'reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception,' Anybody who has had a spiritual experience starts to doubt precisely this. Precisely this. If you are a spiritual seeker than this is precise worldview that suddenly comes into doubt. We experience with utmost vividity the fundamental non-duality between reality and ourselves, and the world-chaging thought arises that sense perception is an illusion. Why oh why oh why are you on this forum espousing Objectivism and expecting to be heard? Why are you even here? How can you get sniffy when people don't listen to you? Your presence is an absurdity really. One feels the absurdity of trying to talk to you. One hardly knows where to start setting you right. In my life there is a deep feeling that you belong to the old, the unawake, the deluded.

Marty is we the voter

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

The reason I won't be put into a box, is because the box itself is just another instance of the...what is it? Even consciousness is a box, and this box is also another instance of the....what? The box, or the concept, or the symbol is also not a box but the container...not the symbol but the symbolised. Who is that knows this? Who is it that sees consciousness and matter as the same thing? All I can possibly talk about is the somewhat of the questioning. But you don't grasp that. You've already put me into a box.

Karl Likewise, the spiritual world must be explained to the spiritually blind in terms of the senses they already possess. Awakening is exactly like acquiring a new faculty of perception - a new sense. Yes, it is that which is aware of the dreaming. While I sleep I also spend periods of time, when the body is asleep but the mind is lucid. I'm not dreaming, but I am simply aware and the body is still as if dead.