“Integralism” is a misnomer without substance

Imre von Soos Says: August 26th, 2007 at 6:43 am Open Integral

“Integralism” is not a movement, not a theory and not a fashion. “Integralism” is a misnomer without substance. Movements, ism-s, collective organisations are there for the uniformisation of thoughts and behaviours, for the prevention of individual thinking and the promotion of dependence and of belonging; for the replacement of rational thinking with irrational believes.

The word “integral” is an adjective referring, in this context, to a general, fundamental worldview and a related way of integrated – as against differentiated, fractional, specialised – thinking. It involves the summa Being and Becoming integrated from alpha to omega.The process needs a subject: an integral thinker; an object(ive): the research of the integral reality, or, more precisely expressed, reality in its integrality; and a verb defining the action and methodology: the intellectual processing and integrating the largest spectrum of knowledge – processed and understood sensational and intuitional input – as only possible.Pragmatism, in this context and very simply expressed means that one should be reason-seeking, system-seeking, technology-seeking and rational, and that if one wants to produce a baby, one doesn’t try to do it by masturbating.

Sensation, intellect and intuition are the three basic complementary components forming the contents of consciousness.

Sensation covers the physical or somatic, the plasmic, the vital and the emotional content of consciousness. Sensory consciousness helps us to discover and know our physical universe at the three-dimensional level of existence, but is a hindrance in our efforts to know about what lays outside of it, and to know what is within ourselves. By considering the material of the sensory perception to be the only reflection of Reality, and limiting himself thus to sensory consciousness, to bodily awareness – to sensory and emotional reality – man has built a merely conceptual and totally abstract universe for himself.

Intuition, the spiritual and monadic content of consciousness, is the highest achievement of the mind. It is an expanded state reaching out of the consciousness time-zone of the physical dimension into superior levels of being through concentrated, inward turned reflective thinking: meditation. The transcendental experience, going beyond the sense-perception and concept, accessible to intuition, is an experience of a higher dimension. The higher the awareness, the clearer is the understanding of one’s universality and the unity in diversity nature of the All. It is a mystical state, a higher apprehension of Reality; “a flight of the alone to the Alone” – as defined by Plotinus citing the closing lines of the Ennead. It is a contact with the spiritual heights in order to bring them to expression through creative activity, and to enrich the properties of the lower dimensions. The spectrum of the intuitive perception includes from the super-sensory perception of by the physical sensors not perceptible phenomena, to immediate apprehension, inspiration, insight and creative enlightenment, all forming the contents of spiritual reality.

The material of both the sensation and the intuition enters through diverse mental channels onto the apperception plane and thus into consciousness, suffering, through preconceived ideas, various distortions on the way. As none of the entries can be accepted as absolute knowledge on relative face-value, all must be analysed, processed, understood and assimilated through logical argument – discursive reasoning. All outside information should be considered as proposal to be developed through logic into a sound, by the individual currently incontestable dynamic fact, to be tested, strengthened, sustained, modified or rejected at subsequent occasions. Intellect, mind in its reasoning aspect, is the mental tool for the logical inter-connection of new entries and related, processed and understood – but dynamic and never dogmatic – memory-material, that produces in the process a new subjective, intellectual reality of reflective consciousness.

Evidently, the sensory perceptive material of the physical universe can only serve as a base for factual knowledge related to the physical plane, while intuitive material, coming from higher planes, is the base of all creative endeavour and all-involving wisdom. “Knowledge – so Heraclitus – consist in comprehending the all-pervading harmony as embodied in the manifold of perception.” Manifold refers here to both sensory and intuitive – super-sensory – perception material as comprehended through logical mental processes. The simultaneous apperception of the intuitive material and the logic behind it – the concurrent reception of an information and its understanding – is illumination.

While faith is a dynamic state of open mind in ignorance, in movement towards knowledge, founded on trust towards the fount, reason is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. All ultimate knowledge is rational – and so is the Infinite I. In my definition, spirituality is the rational, understanding recognition of the existence of a primordial, differentiated eternal mind – spiritual foundation – underlying all temporal material manifestation, and the thinking and acting according to the such constructed psycho-physical reality. My support of this reality is expressed in my essay Natural Order – Universal Relativity, to be found on the website of Integral World, and it is open for debate on the same website.