Integral Esotericism - Part Four

Integral Theory: Integral Esotericism - Part Four Alan Kazlev INTEGRAL WORLD

An "integral aperspective" framework that integrates all fields of human inquiry, expression, creativity, and spirituality without bias or exclusiveness. The idea itself goes back to Gebser, and was then taken up by Wilber. Of course, the Buddha taught the same thing long ago, with his parable of the blind men and the elephant, which was later adopted by and very popular among Sufis[1]. Basically then, all phenomena and all perspectives have some validity; a true "theory of everything" includes all of them without bias or depreciation.

We should also distinguish between Gebser's "integral aperspectivism" and Wilber's "orientating generalisations", even if the two are merged in Wilber's own work. I have already shown[2] that Wilber doesn't follow his own advice that all perspectives should be honoured, and everyone has something valid to say (he often says "nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time"[3]), because he downplays those paradigms - e.g. Ecospirituality[4] - that he doesn't like, and totally ignores others, such as occultism. So a truer starting point would be to take Wilber's idea and apply it properly, assuming of course that Wilber's methodology is even valid at all. Not only does Meyerhoff argue that it isn't, but even Wilber himself now seems to have taken this criticism on board, while continuing of course to denigrate Meyerhoff[5] .

Transcending, including, and synthesising of opposites - At a broader level, what all this means is that what is required is a "Big Picture" approach that includes the insights of, but also transcends or goes beyond the limitations of, traditional one-sided perspectives, such as materialism and mysticism, science and religion, East and West. This is nothing new, and certainly not limited to the Integral movement sensu stricto. One finds examples of this methodology in the teachings of Blavatsky (Theosophy), Teilhard de Chardin, and Oliver Reiser (Cosmic Humanism), all of whom I would define as "integral" theorists in the broad (non-Wilberian) sense.

Another, but much less satisfactory, example of the union of contrary understandings in a larger "big picture", is represented by a common theme in current, Wilberian-influenced, integral thought - the unifying of premodern, modern, and postmodern. This interprets knowledge and understanding in terms of the trilogy of premodern, modern, and postmodern, which are then it is claimed unified in an Integral synthesis. And while one can indeed divide up the development of modern Western society in this way, one can also equally divide it in other ways too. See for example my historical review in sect.2 of this essay. Moreover, Wilber's most recent attempts at resolving the problem of the incompatibility of "premodern" (traditional) spiritualities with modern physicalism have unfortunately involved denying both the ontological insights and the occult and esoteric practices described by the former, so as to uphold a modified (holistic) version of materialism (see TLDI 2a) that it is hoped would be acceptable to the latter. Such an exclusivist approach is very far from the true spirit of integral.

A "Theory of Everything" in which all phenomena and areas of specialised knowledge are explained in a self-consistent, intellectual, systematic manner. In the West we can go back to Platonism (especially the later Neoplatonism of Proclus) and Aristotle, or a little later to the Renaissance; in the East as well as some forms of Mahayana Buddhism (especially the Hua Yen school), Tantra, and Neo-Confucianism. More recently emerging in, or as a reaction to, the secular West to Hegel, Blavatsky, Steiner (Anthroposophy), Edward Haskell (Unified Science), Arthur M Young (Theory of Process), and of course Spiral Dynamics (Clare Graves, Chris Cowan, and Don Beck) and Wilber's Integral theory. For these and other examples see fig.1 and sect. 3-iii. Among the 19th and 20th century evolutionary versions of this theme, we often find specific stages or gradations. The problem with these "big picture" explanations is that, while quite useful as general guidelines, they tend towards excessive intellectual rigidity and pigeon-holing. So instead of seeing the thing in itself, it is easy to fall into the trap of seeing one's own explanation of how the thing should be. Hence, while theorising and creating mental maps is an important and often necessary aspect of the Integral movement, there is also the individual danger of becoming overly caught up in abstractions and a subjective mental bubble or mental fortress, and individually and collectively of literalism and fundamentalism, which is exacerbated when teachers start claiming infallibility for their own intellectual pronouncements. Thus one should only consider theoretical teachings as somewhat arbitrary guidelines and pointers, and never as absolutes or alternatives for authentic experiences or yogic work of self-transformation...

In Western religious and philosophical thought, beginning with the platonic tradition and continuing through to Gnosticism and Hellenised Christianity, Medieval Christianity, Cartesian dualism, and contemporary Empiricism, the soul or spirit or mind, or in empiricism the conscious observer, is distinguished from the body or matter or nature. The former is good, the latter is ontologically inferior (Platonism), a prison for the soul (Gnosticism), a source of sin or shame (Catholicism, Puritanism, etc), or something to be experimented (empiricism) on exploited (consumerism). Such dualism is by no means limited to the western tradition, one finds it in Hindu and Buddhist spiritual teachings for example, in which the world-process is considered to be maya, samsara, a misconception through avidya, and so on. However, psychologically and ontologically, the Eastern and Platonic perspectives are still superior in insight to Cartesian ontological or Empiricist physicalist forms of dualism.

Instead of a mind-body (e.g. AQAL's upper left and upper rught quadrants) or spirit-matter dichotomy, Aurobindonian integral psychology contrasts the Inner Divine Soul or center with the Outer Being. By "outer being" I mean the surface consciousness and its reality; using the term in the Aurobindonian context[13]...This Aurobindonian, Neo-theosophical, and Gurdjieffian inspired ontological understanding is very different from Wilber's evolutionary holarchic levels. In the former the mental center or faculty does not include and transcend the physical, the way it does in Wilberian theory. In esoteric ontology, Mind, Emotion/Vital, and Body are all each distinct, and in Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga all three have to be equally transformed...

Significantly, both The Mother and Sri Aurobindo present a more personalistic and theistic approach, not in the sense of a deity apart from the rest of the universe, but as an all-embracing Absolute that also has a theistic element. This represents a very different position, but one that reconciles the theistic/personal with the impersonal, seeing both as just partial modes of a larger reality, rather than one as merely a subset of the other (TLDI 3-vi)...

Not all esoteric schools are necessarily integral. The intensely anti-modernist Traditionalist movement (the Perennial tradition) of Rene Gernon, Frithjof Schuon, Martin Lings, and others, despite its universal synthesis of spiritual and religious teachings and metaphysical realities, completely rejects the possibility that the empirical insights of modernity may have anything authentic to contribute ...

The fact that the term "Integral Psychology" is already used to designate at least three distinct interpretations - Aurobindonian, Chaudhurian, and Wilberian - shows that the term has already acquired some permanence[42]. The following therefore represents just a very small selection and representative examples of the varieties of "Integral psychology":

Vedantic and Yoga psychology, Buddhist psychology, Neoplatonic psychology, Kabbalistic psychology, aspects and applications of the teachings of Max Theon, Rudolf Steiner, and other esotericists, psychological elements in the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, including the commentaries and accounts by Indra Sen, A.S. Dalal, V. Madhusudan Reddy, and others (all of which represent the original definition of Integral Psychology), C. G. Jung and his students and followers (Analytical or Jungian or Depth Psychology, more recently reinterpreted as Archetypal psychology by James Hillman), Roberto Assagioli (and were not Psychosynthesis already classified under its own name, it would without doubt be considered "Integral Psychology"), Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Fourth Way) and A. H. Almaas (Diamond Way); Abraham Maslow (Humanistic Psychology), Stan Grof, Charles T. Tart, Michael Washburn, Claudio Naranjo, John Welwood, Christian de Quincey, and others in the Transpersonal psychology movement that developed in the 1970s , Haridas Chauduri (Integral Psychology, but different from the Aurobindonian), Brant Cortright and others (Integral Psychotherapy, based on Sri Aurobindo and The Mother's teachings), the spiral dynamics system of Clare Graves, Chris Cowan, and Don Beck (Beck and Cowan have since fallen out over the issue of Wilber), and finally and perhaps the least applicable here, Wilber's Integral Psychology, which despite the name of the book dedicated to that subject, seems to be little different from Wilber-IV (or according to Brad Reynolds, Wilber-V), and of little relevance because of its abstract perspective.