Wilber, for all his faults, had a charisma, a contagious enthusiastic spark

ray harris Says: December 10th, 2006 at 3:22 pm To be honest I find ARINA to be a bit dry, earnest and technical. It’s a style thing. I also have a unarticulated feeling that they have a narrow definition of integral.

alan kazlev Says: December 10th, 2006 at 4:34 pm I glanced at their site, and it does seem worthy and sincere, but i agree with Ray on it being a bit dry. For me, Integral has to mean Spiritual (Esoteric, the Divine Center, whatever) first and foremost. The spiritual transformation has to be at the core of any Integral movement. If not, all you have is intellectualism and dry theorising. Too much mental, not enough doing, and not enough heart-centered feeling.

But for this to work there has to be a spiritual charisma, a spiritual energy, a Presence, and then everything revolves around that. This presence doesn’t have to come from a single guru or teacher, it can (and in an integrally spirituality ideally should) come from many gurus, provided they are indeed genuinely enlightened (that requirement is most important of all!).

Wilber, for all his faults, had a charisma, a contagious enthusiastic spark, that is wonderful. Unfortunately he also has only a very partial (what I call, following Sri Aurobindo, “Intermediate zone”) realisation, and is totally lacking in genuine enlightenment. I say this because in my understanding true self-realisation and narcissism are mutually exclusive. The Integral movement was and still is powered by Wilber’s Intermediate zone energy. I would like to see it go beyond, to be based on authentic teachers like Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Sri Ramana, and others.

An organisation like ARINA certain fits in the Integral umbrella, and can play an important role. But at the center there has to be a transcendent integral spirituality. Or it won’t work, it won’t be integral in the truest sense.

The implosion of I-I is due to the fact that there is no spiritual guidance; it’s just (sorry to be so blunt) Ken blundering around in the Intermediate Zone, with his close followers trailing along, caught up in the delusion, worshipping him and his distorted energy rather than trying to realise the true Divine in themselves. In this progressive shipwreck of what 2 years ago seemed like a very worthy organisation, those with real integrity (the true integral people) get out (as with Steve and others), the ones who are passive followers, the non-integral personalities, stuck in an emotionally and psychically unhealthy co-dependency relationship with their “guru” Ken, stay.

Having said that I do agree with Edward in including Wilber’s teachings as part of the Integral umbrella. He’s an important theorist, and also historically important. But imho no more and no less then others like Edward Haskell and Erich Jantsch. But KW himself is too unstable to be the basis of an authentic integralism.

Edward Berge Says: December 11th, 2006 at 7:13 am I don’t find ARINA or Integral Review to have a limited intepretation of integral in the least. There are various and diverse views with some points in common and many not. In the current issue of the Review, for example, there are articles by Bonnitta Roy and Daniel Gustav Anderson, who emphasize quite diverse views on integral.

As to them not being “esoteric” I intepret that as them not being “spiritual” in th way that Alan sees it. But given the diversity I’ve seen there I don’t know that there aren’t those that participate who hold similar views to Alan’s, perhaps even from an Aurobindian perspective? I don’t think they’d be disallowed for it. Why don’t you find out Alan and ask? Perhaps submit an article for the next Review? ?