I criticise the exoteric worldview

Integral Esotericism: A new Integral paradigm in theory and practice Part One: Introduction Alan Kazlev

The distinction between esoteric and exoteric can also be defined as a pair of opposites - "inner" and "outer" - as follows: One the one hand, there the "inner", esoteric, spiritual, occult (in the context of hidden from ordinary perception and mundane consciousness), supra-physical, unlimited, causal (emanation, involutionary) reality. We can think of this as the reality known to mystics, representing by the "perennial philosophy", and so on. It could be called "metaphysics" in the pop-colloquial (not the philosophical) sense of the word.

On the other there is the "outer", exoteric, mundane, physicalistic, limited, dualistic, world of effects, or of linear causality (evolutionary), and ordinary physical consciousness. This is the reality known to Western secular knowledge, to science and scepticism (these two are not synonymous, despite the claims of the latter to appropriate the former), and to modernity and much of academia.

"Inner" and "outer" is here used in an Aurobindonian, rather than a Cartesian, Teilhardian or a Wilberian context. Each of these opposites is both metaphysical and phenomenological. "Metaphysical" in that each pertains to ontological, causal, and cosmological realities. And phenomenological in that each is associated with specific types of consciousness and experience. It may be objected that what is being proposed here with the esoteric-exoteric distinction is just another form of elitism, like Wilber's special insider club for those 2% of Turquoise Meme / 2nd Tier people who accept his teachings[12].

Nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, "esoteric" doesn't belong to any one individual; indeed the very claiming of unique privilege or ownership here is a sign of exoteric fundamentalism. For another, "exoteric" is not better than "esoteric", but simply pertains to a different aspect of reality, a different form of understanding, and and a different psychological polarity (sect 4-iii). Both are necessary for a complete - as oppose dto a partial - integral approach. Finally, many of the greatest spiritual teachers taught and functioned on the exoteric every day level, not the esoteric level; for example St Francis of Asissi, Martin Buber, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.

Many of the greatest integral teachers, such as Teilhard de Chardin, were the same. And the entire body of science, academia, and scholarship and all its amazing contributions, and all the vast technological and social achievements of humanity, pertains to the esoteric. So in no way should the exoteric be considered inferior. It only becomes inferior when it seeks to deny the esoteric dimension, as in scientism, scepticism, reductionism, literalism, fundamentalism, and so on. So when I criticise the exoteric worldview, it is only that exclusivist exoteric worldview that is being criticised. Just as an exclusivist esotericism, which replaces real science with pseudoscience (as do some forms of the New Age movement) or rejects and attacks modernity and for example replaces science with creationism (as does the Guenon-Schuon school of Neo-Sufi-inspired Traditionalism) is equally one-sided.