"integral postmetaphysical nonduality"

[Edward theurj Berge]

Out of curiosity I did a Google search on the above three words in parentheses as a phrase. In the entire internet there was only one hit and it was to this forum in my discussion of ladder, climber, view. It is a unique phrase and even more, a valid contender for what this forum purports. It might even be a misnomer to call something postmetaphysical "spirituality" given what I said in the thread:

[Referencing "to see a world," see link] "As for turquoise, it reinjects 'Spirit' back into the equation. And therein lies the question for an IPS, how to have a nondual spirituality that doesn’t separate spirituality from the mundane, that doesn’t 'include' the metaphysical interpretations from prior WVs. It might even be an expression of a metaphysical WV holdover to call something 'spirituality,' since the very term indicates the metaphysical notion of an absolute world apart from a relative WV. Granted we can re-define it any way we like but nevertheless its etymology is one of a split, dualistic origin. Another term that can be more easily separated from its metaphysical baggage is 'nondual.' Integral Postmetaphysical nonduality? I’ve already made a strong case that the intersection of American Pragmatism with second generation cognitive science is precisely this WV based on postformal cognitive functioning. And AQAL to boot, though they don’t use those terms."

[Edward theurj Berge]

In what ways Jana would you consider the topics of your last 2 posts to be "post"metaphysical? Or perhaps do you not subscribe to postmetaphysics?

[Jana Dixon]

The only way you can perceive post-metaphysics is through meditation...non thought.
As soon as a thought (concept) arises, you have dropped down into metaphysics. Even if a word points to a thing, it is still a symbol of representation.
You are discussing a circular subject which leads nowhere.
However the journey of discussing the impossible...is the Thing in Itself.

[Balder]

Hi, Jana, could you say more about that? I'm interested in your remark because, while it goes against my own understanding (both of postmetaphysics and of Wilber's particular definition of postmetaphysics), it does echo something Wilber is reported to have remarked once: that you can't be postmetaphysical unless you are enlightened. Have you heard Wilber say something like this, or is this your own view?

If Wilber did say something like this, I'd be a little surprised (though, now that I think about it, not terribly surprised!).

[Edward theurj Berge]

You are certainly entitled to your view Jana, and expressing it in this forum. But that is also neither my understanding nor experience as defined in previous posts in this thread. To the contrary I'd define what you're saying as quite metaphysical. But of course it depends on definitions and we seem to not agree on those either.

As for Wilber saying that most metaphysical of statements, I'd be not the least surprised.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Perhaps I should copy-and-paste this over from the Dennett thread, as it is applicable here, from L&J's Philosophy in the Flesh:

"The phenomenological person, who through introspection alone can discover everything there is to know about the nature of mind and experience, is a fiction. Although we can have a theory of a vast, rapidly and automatically operating cognitive unconscious, we have no direct conscious access to its operation and therefore to most of our thought" (5).

"Categorization is thus not a purely intellectual matter, occurring after the fact of experience. Rather the formation and use of categories are the stuff on experience.... We cannot, as some meditative traditions suggest, 'get beyond' our categories and have a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience. Neural beings cannot do that" (18).

[Jana Dixon]

Hi Balder, No not Ken, I learnt that from Garwin and Arik in the 90s. Will post some of that original material tomorrow, but for now here is what Garwin just said:

" Emerson pointed out, that the minute we narrate to ourselves, we have departed from the whole of the thing into our preferential narrative view. Participation is wholistic in every regard, the minute we judge, we measure, and because it enters the meta-sphers to do so, we are again only working with parts and no longer the whole. We make catagoric distinctions of essences and attributes in the attempt for them to allude back to the whole from which we have parted from. Like building a fire, the more logs the brighter and warmer."
"Anytime interpretive values or narration are necessary for assimilation of "spiritual truth", we have parted from being it, to informing narrative thought clusters of meta-mest. Its quaint to say that the records of ideas are not the ideas they record, narration is not done with just words, or just pictures, or just memories of words and pictures, or just a "feel" for the nervous system to acknowledge a meta- concept/construct.... and on and on. We can know a thing mentally, catagorically, metaphorically, anecdotally, and as a combination, but as Source, we are the whole thing. The universal (so-called "outer" world of appearances/experiences, and the infinite-universal, (the so-called "inner" spiritual world of being. To come away "vibrationally" from being Divine Truth, into analogues and narratives, is not to add to the experience, but to do value reflection--what it means to you. The amazing aspect of it is that the more we attempt to talk about it, that is relate judgment and measurement, the further from it we become."

[Edward theurj Berge]

Wilber is certainly metaphysical in this way as well. To reiterate something I've posted numerous times before, from Integral Spirituality, Chapter 5, section "emptiness and view are not two":

"When one is in deep meditation or contemplation, touching even that which is formless and unmanifest—the purest emptiness of cessation—there are of course no conceptual forms arising. This pure 'nonconceptual' mind—a causal state of formlessness—is an essential part of our liberation, realization, and enlightenment.... When it comes to the nature of enlightenment or realization, this means that a complete, full, or nondual realization has two components, absolute (emptiness) and relative (form). The 'nonconceptual mind' gives us the former, and the 'conceptual mind' gives us the latter."

[Balder]

Hmm, I don't know. I agree that Wilber seems to retain certain metaphysical ideas in his theory, but I don't think discussion of a state in which discursive thought has momentarily subsided -- in which there is no experience of the movement of thought, no perception, no non-perception, nothing you can say about it -- is necessarily "metaphysical," not if you are reporting the after-the-fact apprehension of the cessation of phenomenal experience (a sort of blanking out). If you hold "pure formless emptiness" as the actual foundation of the entire world (as I expect Wilber does), then I believe you do cross over into metaphysics. But to use the term "formless emptiness" and to associate it with an enactable experience (or experience-gap) which involves the apparent cessation of discursive thought and phenomenal distinctions is not, in itself, "metaphysical," any more than it is metaphysical to make reference to other humanly available apprehensions (like "bliss" or "the zone"). What do you think?

[Edward theurj Berge]

Wilber's definition of "postmetaphysical" in IS is described in Appendix II, section "what is the address of an object in the kosmos?" where he notes that there is no fundamental, pregiven world apart from all perception of it. There are only perspectives in relation to each other. Thus we need to establish this relation via a kosmic address, which includes the altitude and perspective (aka quadrant or quadrivium) of both the subject and the object. Although he does slip up in this section and admit this only refers to the "manifest world." Which goes with what he said above about the radically different realms of emptiness and form.

And how do we determine altitude? He makes this clear in Chapter 2, section "the relation of the different lines to each other," discussing consciousness per se:

"This happens to fit nicely with the Madhyamaka-Yogachara* Buddhist view of consciousness as emptiness or openness. Consciousness is not anything itself, just the degree of openness or emptiness, the clearing in which the phenomena of the various lines appear (but consciousness is not itself a phenomena—it is the space in which phenomena arise)."

So the formless unmanifest consciousness experienced in nirvikalpa samadhi is the measure of the relative altitude in any kosmic address. Hello! This is "post" metaphysical?

* Here he slips again in admitting this as a Yogacara doctrine, and as I've said numerous times before, it is this type of "Vajrayana" Buddhism he equates with Vendanta, and rightly so.

[Edward theurj Berge]

I posted the above not in direct response to you Balder, as I read your response after posting it. Yes, as I've said before, having myself had such experiences of apparent (good descriptor) "void," that of course we can interpret it postmetaphysically and I have. The question is, does Wilber?

[Jana Dixon]

A.R. Bordon
“There will come a time in our life on Earth in which physical, spiritual and all other words that indicate reference status of materiality, making the realist materialism a centerpiece of what is real, and effortlessly shift our frontal lobes into a 5-dimensional thinking/grasp (present day: information processing) that allows us to topologically think by using that enfolded dimension. We keep forgetting that science is nothing but believable fiction expressed through favorite metaphors that maintain the thought structure within an acceptable paradigm.
You can also add that "God" is a thought boundary that we can also cross because we are the thought boundary looking back at itself. And yes, the wonder is amplified a quadrillion-fold and much more because as information, we are the nodes of what is remothering everything everywhere everywhen.”

[Jana Dixon]

I will just post this piece from Arik...from the 1990's...I saved a lot of the Redman Bros posts because they exhibited so much energy.
This will be my last post, cause I realize you can't talk about postmetaphysical stuff with metaphysical words...hahaha

"All systems and formats and formulation, are only half of the whole that points to no-thing. If you want to convey a complete understanding in an idenic system, you also need to paint the anti-system just as meticulously. Here Mr. Wilber fails, because of having to defend a system that is not just half of a whole, but the half he valiantly works with is not concluded with the synchronous occillated anti-system in mind. He seeks a coherent hiegharchy of values in which the mere understanding of it will remove contradiction. That's just fucking impossible with his current shard of a preferential viewpoint. Instead of offering fractual considerations, used I might add as conclusions, the first step is to realize no singularity is possible even if the total picture were laid bare. It's a living dynamic we can only allude to with this metaphor based visual word pictures. These conceptual word pictures are not the idea(s) they represent." Arik

SITH: "Ahhh, the minute one side is revealed,..the other raises it's counter-balanced referents. Yeah, I've got what you are doing here.... Much like the differences that exist between self and being, and with being awake, and being aware. No ascenders bias here. Yet any attempt at the use of arbitrary-open to interpretation, secquential concept formation is itself secular and fails due to this bugaboo. Semantic loops INDEED. Mind or self can only work with parts and never the whole because of it's singularity issues? Yet if one is cognizant of this wholiarchy, how are we to communicate it with verbal referents freed from idenic contradictions? Also, no conclusion is possible because of an absence of absolutes. To encompass the radiant field-of-consciousness, one can make no didactic inference. Or am I being unkind?" Sean Hart

Awaken and become aware, such semantics become unnecessary.

"Where does this mirror come from? It comes through the cultivation of concepts: "I am the soul. Eternal, immortal. Beyond death, beyond birth." To conceive of oneself as the soul without knowing it is to create a mirror. Then you will not know yourself as you are, but as you are mirrored through your concepts. The only difference will be this: if the knowledge is coming through a mirror, then it is a dream and if it is direct, immediate, without any mirror, then it is real. This is the only difference, but it is a great one--not in relation to the bodies that you have crossed, but in relation to the bodies that are still to be penetrated." Osho

Jana:Spiritual evolution necessitates that we jump off the cliff without consolation and throw away our maps in order to Grok. By passing through this point of utter desolation in having to give up our foothold...only then can we live in the Grace beyond the fear driven separate self sense. Maps serve as a framework in which we can poke holes into until the framework exists entirely of holes and then we are enlightened...pure light.

Arik said that he only gains wisdom through outsmarting himself. This is the Tao, mind in its extreme becomes nomind. Maps are the mirror which Osho talks about...our concepts of the way things are. In our map-mind we are like sleeping beauty...awaiting for the kiss of the prince (Buddha) to awaken to our soul...in ultimate surrender. The difference between thinking that we are dreaming the universe and the reality that in fact it is the universe that is dreaming us. When we know that we are being lived or dreamt then the maps/concepts fall away....via the alchemy of the solar heart.

Arik:"Well for me Jana a certain pain in having my heart broken time and again by slowly acknowledging my illusions of reality, and hence my comfort zones.......need to be let go of......this is tough, tough, tough.
Also, when I step outside of delusional pretext of making choices based upon a need to control anything by my will......it is an utter foolishness of believing I know anything at all in absolute terms, on the basis of artificial constructs of mind.
To know without belief, to will without engaging, to be still and accomplish all knowing is such an extremely subtle surrender of self to the beingness that is the true root of all of us, here, now.......just breathe.
We truly are not many beings........we are One. That has been my experience. We are all knowing now, and eternally so.......some of us are able to demonstrate it at any moment of occurrance, in context of the desire of delight, and the delight of desire without result.
This is to me total and absolute freedom, freedom from secondary causes, freedom from the mistaken belief that there are causes outside of our own interpretations and experience of Soul.
Simplicity is difficult, to convey about deeper things.......this has ever been the limit of semantics and somantics."