NON-DUALITY
Integral Super Map.
Don't want to confuse map with territory.
But you need a GOOD map.
This super map will point you to your greatest possibilities and potentials. If you don't have a good theory, you won't even know where to look!
If you don't have a good map of the territory, you won't be able to get around in that territory at all (territory being YOU).
What would it even look it?
TO show you directly all the different aspects and dimensions to your OWN SELF.
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Meta Theory
Integral = whole, complete, unified, comprehensive and all inclusive to our own being and existence - SUPER MAP for SUPER TERRITORY that you really are.
Different perspectives...
Observation depends on theory, hypothesis and maps.
Where and how to look in the first place.
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Be the best person possible to help the world the most.
1) Psychoanalysis {Persona-Shadow Duality} strengthen ego and zen get rid of the ego.
Unite persona and shadow that were split to give a strong ego.
2) Humanistic {Body-Mind Duality} - People split mind from their body.
Cure for this is to unit mind and body into a unified organism.
Thinking and feeling, integrated self.
3) Biosocial {Ego-Society Cultural Duality} - feel total organism depends on social orientations, sex, race, etc. Find your social identity. It starts with family, but we don't get to choose our family. Finding a group/tribe/religion/political party you can feel One with.
4) Mystical Tradition {Primal Subject-Object Duality} - No, even if you find your social identity and accomplish mind body union and shadow persona healing, the real problem is you split your entire organism from the rest of the world (illusion of separateness). Your real identity is actually one with the entire universe. Need to rediscover this prior and true identity by finding the Ultimate Ground or Oneness that unites your Organism with all of the Universe. Suffer because you split your true identity... Split self vs other, subject vs object. Real and Supreme Identity One with the All. Ultimate Unity Consciousness.
Important truths to all approaches!
Realize everybody is right and you can make room for everything.
Central Principle of Integral Meta-theory - Everybody is right!
If You Want A Comprehensive Perspective of View of Everything!
Integral Framework - iOS
Five major elements
1) 3 Perspectives
2) Levels/Stages
3) Lines/Various Intelligences
4) States of Consciousness
5) Types
Many of the worlds great metaphysical thinkers, said that a universe comes into being when a subject is differentiated from an object.
These are two very broad domains, an interior subject reality and an exterior or objective reality.
In every language that exists there are pronouns that apply to
Each of these quadrants. 1st person , 2nd person and 3rd person perspectives.
1st person) - is person speaking, I space in each of us. I, me, mine. Solipsism/Idealism
1st (Subjective): Beautiful - beauty in the I of the beholder. Truthfulness (lie to yourself - shadow)
2nd person) - you.. person being spoken to. You + I = We space.
Group of individuals. Intersubjective reality. (Otherwise you is an object). We space, we call culture. Very real and important dimension.
2nd (Intersubjective/Interobjective): Good - how we should act to treat other person that is ethical and moral.
3rd (Objective): Objective Fact or Truth
3rd person) - looked at from outside. Person or thing being spoken ABOUT.
That spoken about indicates a kind of distancing, detached and objective view. Not I or You but those things or people over there. Realism / Scientific Materialism
3 main dimensions to reality. Most disciplines only take one of them and pronounce THAT to be the real one.
Nonduality is realizing all three are non-dual
Consciousness Studies, the study of what our awareness is made of...
1) About half the studies say only 3rd person objective realities are important. So we have to look at the brain and its neurophysiology if we want any real answers to consciousness.
2) The other half of the approaches say, NO, what is most real here, is a persons actual 1st person experience, right now and that's what we have to look at.
3) A handful say you are both wrong. Awareness is governed by a 2nd person culture and social constructions that determine all of that.
Few say, hey wait a minute, all three of those approaches are true but partial.
You want the good, the true and the beautiful to be a major part of every area of your life.
Note1;These perspectives show interior states not somewhere "up there" in the sky or some metaphysical heaven, but interior. Interior to nature, not above but within.
**Evolution has resulted in a complexification of matter whose gross exteriors become more and more complex and whose interiors become more and more conscious. Teilhard de chardin's Law of "Complexity and Consciousness", the more of one, the more of the other.
2) **LEVEL Stages**
Originally produced by the fundamental dynamic of evolution itself, which is transcend and include. Each time there is an emergence of a new level of development or evolution, then some sort of new or novel reality came into being... atoms, cells, organisms, etc.
That is the emergent or transcend part. Because it is new and novel, it means it goes beyond or transcends the previous level. But it is not totally and absolutely new so that its completely disconnected from anything that already exists. Rather it embraces or enfolds the previous stage while also going beyond it. Transcends and includes. Development by envelopment. The whole of one stage becomes a part of the whole of the next stage. Holons all the way up and all the way down.
And this entire movement of continual transcend and include produces a complete series of levels or stages of evolution. Moving from simpler and earlier forms to more complex and more unified forms which indeed why the universe is indeed winding UP (inflation energy at Big Bang). This is true for human growth and development as well. All the human beings major systems, capacities and traits undergo a developmental unfolding. They don't just burst on the scene already fully formed and totally functioning.
Rather they move through a series of stages or levels of development. From very immature to mature to very mature.
This is a process of growth, development, evolution (emergence, winding up). Each stage transcends and includes the previous which means the whole of one stage becomes a part of the whole of the next stage.
These stages incredibly important. The way you see and interpret and experience your world. (How phenomena (what arises) are interpreted and experience).
You will see the entire world across a very broad spectrum of development.
Values you hold, skills you possess, the goals that you aim for, even political orientation and religious beliefs. Also can be seen as the level of consciousness you have.
How the world looks from each level = Worldview / Paradigm.
But you cannot see these rules or patterns from looking within or introspection.
Morphogenetic fields collective memory. 100th monkey effect something new and emergent.
You are at a particular level of development you will interpret and experience your world according to the rules and patterns at that level, but you will have no idea you are doing so. Only way is to study the research that has been done on them (done on large groups of people, not an n=1 study).
Pre-Modern Traditional, conventional , and often religious values
VS
Modern, Rational and often scientific values
VS
PostModern, multicultural and diversity values
VS
Intergral/Nondual - Not Yet present.
Developing yourself makes you more inclusive and things get much roomier for many views and perspectives. More conscious, more caring, more loving, more confident and happier with life. More expansive, more transparent as you increasingly make room for everything.
3) **LINES** Multiple Intelligences
Actual things evolution is moving through are called lines of development.
Different lines or streams move through these levels or waves.
All sorts of different lines, skills, qualities, traits.
And ALL of them undergo growth and development.
You probably know you have various multiple intelligences. (Howard Gardner)
Cognitive, Emotional, Moral, Spiritual Intelligences and so on.
Often develop at different rates or levels.
Can be a genius in some lines and stupid in others.
But all these lines of development move through the same LEVELS of development.
Integral psychograph is putting all the lines together on one graph. Shows level of development reached in each line. Gives an integral snapshot in your overall growth and development and evolution. You could be a genius in ways you might not even know.
4) **STATES**
States as they appear in a human being is short for states of consciousness.
A state of consciousness is simply a present, 1st person, immediate experience.
Happy, sad, excited, anxious, etc... small states of consciousness.
Big States would be waking, dreaming, deep sleep, witnessing and other meditative higher states. Peak Experiences. Some of the most important states of all are states of religious or spiritual experience. A spiritual experience is not a myth or a story or a magic tale, its a direct and immediate experience. A real experience like an ultimate unity or cosmic consciousness AND it can give you an enormous amount of insight into reality.
***William James book about just that "The Variety of Religious Experience".
Meditative Traditions around the world consist of not a bunch of magic mythic stories, but rather a set of practices (psycho technology) of consciousness transformation (not merely translation). Translation vs Transformation.
A series of practices or paradigms that will give you a whole sequence of spiritual experiences. Meditative BIG States. And those often summate with what is variously known as enlightenment, awakening, satori, moksha, metamorphosis, the Great Liberation.
This whole process you can call waking up...
Which is different from growing up, because with growing up you are moving through a series of structures of consciousness that you cannot see by introspecting (views - how you experience and interpret the world). So you have no idea it is happening to you, the growing up process.
But waking up consists of 1st person states of consciousness, and states are fully conscious, direct experiences and you immediately know them when they are happening.
When you have an experience of being one with the universe and love and bliss, believe me, you know it.
But when you are at a particular level or stage of growing up and you are interpreting the world through its particular lens, you have no idea you're doing it. New emergent Structures of consciousness akin to new emergent structures in biological evolution (you cannot see the structures through which you are seeing the world)?
==>States-Realms-VantagePoints (what arises).
5) Personality Types?
Most things that exist have various types, there are types of cars, types of cars, trees and airplanes, economic systems, political parties, plants and animals. Types of human personalities that are spelled out in say Big 5 Factor, Meyer-Briggs, Enneagram psychology.
Personality type.
What makes it a type is that it does not change much as you grow and develop.
Typologies can give us an enormous amount of secondary information of anything we are examining, including our own personalities.
Conclusion...
Those are the 5 main elements in the Integral Framework, Map, or Meta-Theory.
May not have been aware of some of these. Comprehensive and inclusive approach to any issue we want to address. And this includes your own life. Using integral supermap of all of the territories that are actually in you, you will most certainly discover some territories that you didn't even know were there. And in some cases these are truly life changing discoveries!
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Most Important State.
Saints, sages and mystics were really practicing sophisticated forms of meditation, contemplation or yoga or centering prayer and were aiming at those states of ultimate unity consciousness, divine oneness or absolute consciousness/awareness. It is very real.
Known all over the world as
1) Enlightenment
2) Awakening
3) Moksha
4) Metaphorphosis
5) Satori
6) The Great Liberation
(Peaks,
Ground of all being or Ultimate reality is not some anthropomorphic figure or old man in the sky with a grey beard sitting on a throne.
It is simply the condition of all conditions, the nature of all natures.
It is the Isness, Suchness or Thusness of everything that Arises.
And you are ultimately one with that... Or that is to say, you and the ultimate ground are NOT - TWO (non-dual).
**A common metaphor is it is like the ocean and its waves.**
Waves are produced by the ocean, but the ocean and its waves are ultimately Not- two.
There is something they both share. There is a common thusness or suchness.
And that is wetness.
One wave might be larger than another wave, but it is not wetter than another wave.
All of the waves are equally wet. If you discover wetness at the wave you are on, you've discovered it everywhere! You have woken up, you have awakened.
You have become enlightened about the ever present wetness of the ocean and everything in it. You have simply discovered the thusness, the suchness, the isles of all reality.
Which means your own immediate awareness, right here and right now, is itself directly one with, its totally saturated with, this ultimate ground of all being which is non-dual. You do not have to seek this witness or practice to be wet or jump from one wave to another. Any place you are at, you're wet.
But as a common saying has it, "A fish doesn't know it's wet". Because it's constant in that wetness, so it never experiences anything but that.
To really become aware that it is wet, the fish has to have a genuine waking up to that.
It actually has to become enlightened about its ever present condition. Its always already thusness or wetness, the fact that it is drenched with this all encompassing ground of being.
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And the very fact that it is utterly all-inclusive, that means among other things, that it is not confined to any particular opposite.
You really cannot say it is good vs evil, or infinite vs finite or spiritual vs material.
Because it includes all of those, they are ALL equally wet.
** Most of our words and concepts have meaning only in terms of their opposite:
good vs evil, or infinite vs finite, spiritual vs material, pleasure vs pain, smart vs stupid, up vs down, left vs right and on and on.
But Reality itself has no opposites, it embraces all of them.
We can indeed experience it, we just cannot put into words or symbols very well.
It is radically unqualifiable. This manifest world is dualistic, again almost everything we know exists in pairs of opposites. If something exists, it will generally have an opposite. And so the waking up experience itself is said to be a waking up into a world that is free of being torn into conflicting opposites.
The Upanishads say that enlightenment is "being freed from the pairs", the pairs of opposites. The Christian Mystics call the Ultimate reality the coincidentia oppositorum.
The coincidence of opposites, the unity of opposites, the non-duality of opposites.
Another way of saying this is that all of the opposites are included in UR, all of them, true and false, good and evil, love and hate. All equally included.
Good waves, bad evils, short waves, tall waves, all equally wet.
The Ultimate Ground of All Being IS ALL BEING.
"I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." Isaiah 45:7 {KJE}
And when you have anything like that waking up or unity experience, you will directly feel the utter profound, all inclusive oneness.
Now what do we call that wetness? Similar to the conundrum of Science with light traveling in a vaccuum. It was known all waves need a medium to travel, like water (waves), air/Water/solid (sound), strings, etc. Light has no medium, as Mich/Morely showed. It travels in a vacuum, but the vacuum is not nothing, it has near infinite energy. This seems to be the best way to look at Ulimate Reality. It is nothing that is everything. It is not that everything comes out of nothing, but rather, everything is nothing and nothing is everything. Emptiness is form and form is emptiness.
Water metaphor can be taken further with states of ice, water and vapor (3 realms) but ultimately all are make of H2O (Turiya), which is ultimately made of nothing and energy/everything (Turiyatita).
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Levels and Evolution
From the very beginning of the manifest universe, apparently starting with the Big Bang, the universe was evolving. And what the evolutionary process contained from the very start, was a creative drive to self organization, more and more inclusiveness, increasing complexity and unity and wholeness. "A Creative advance into Novelty" or called order out of Chaos. The process is transcend and include. Any new emergence reality is indeed a creative advance into novelty. And as it emerges into the already existing world, it certainly is new or novel. It goes beyond or transcends what is already there, but it Cannot be 100% novel or would not fit in with anything. It has to have continuity with whatever exists, so it includes it as well, it transcends and includes.
And thus we see over billions of years, this evolutionary process unfold, and it does indeed have an inherent drive to more and more complexity, more unity and wholeness and more consciousness.
So from quarks to more holistic atoms, to more holistic molecules, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organism... and through the entire tree of life.
Whatever the cause of all this, the increasing unity is undeniable, the universe is NOT winding down, the universe is winding up.
[Choice / True Free Will is creativity]
Whitehead also characterizes creativity as the principle of novelty. The events of the past are ceaselessly synthesized into a new and unique event, which becomes data for future events. “The many become one, and are increased by one,” (Whitehead, Process and Reality, 20). This focus on oscillation between one and many forms the foundation of the process metaphysic.
And then as human beings began their own evolution, they continued this process of transcend and include, especially in their own interiors, humans began creating values and worldviews and morals that were ever more inclusive and embracing whole.
But what is not usually understood is that from birth, humans undergo a process of development and 'growing up', consisting of well researched, well documented stages or levels of interior development. This is incredibly important for understanding your own life.
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Growing Up = Levels of Consciousness Part 1
Over 100 different developmental models from around the world.
Each is covering same general ground, namely the growth and development of overall human capacities. All come at it from a different angle with slightly different assumptions. But what is interesting is that most of them agree that there are 6-8 major levels or stages of an overall growth and development of a human being.
General overview of the most common features that each stage has according to the survey of all of them. Actually moving through these levels is the processing of growing up, because that's what humans do. Virtually from the moment of conception, human beings grow and develop and evolve.
Waking up is a direct experience of an ultimate ground of being and all of that ground, 100% of that groundless ground, is fully present in every single point of space and time in the manifest universe. Even in our own development, each stage is equally "Wet". Because of that every person at each stage of growing up, can experience this waking up precisely because it is full present everywhere.
Waking up and growing up are relatively independent.
Every level is an increase in consciousness. In what we can think of as the altitude of development, like various paths or (lines of development) moving up a mountain to higher and higher altitudes. And each of those paths up the mountain has a different view of the world, but all of the paths move through the same altitudes. The altitudes are the levels of consciousness.
These altitudes are talked about somewhat differently depending on which path/line you are talking about.
The different levels are part of humanities evolution as well as individual.
1. Archaic Stage (Crimson) - Major transitions from the great apes to the first humans a few million years ago. Represents basic needs from food, water, air, warmth, shelter, rest.
In todays world, it represents the infant's awareness in the first few months of life.
Most developmentalists call it a fusion state, or a pure state of non-differentiation.
The basic idea is that awareness cannot differentiate between itself and the environment. It is basically just matter and basic physiological needs (material fusion, not spiritual unity).
2. Magic or Impulsive Stage ( Magenta) - Subject and object are just beginning to be differentiated but still confusion giving rise to animism. With animism, all objects in the world, from rocks to rivers to trees to humans are given human characteristics. Cannot take role of other. (Green and blue ball). Kid with head under pillow thinks that because it cannot see others, others cannot see it.
Everything that arises as an extension of its own self. This stage shares the body's sheer impulsiveness. Shows difficulty in delaying immediate gratification. Child around ages one to three. Manipulate symbol of a thing and you believe you actually changed the real thing.
Does not grasp wholeness. There is a name for every bend in the river, but not for the river. Because self just differentiated from surroundings, it remains close to environment, so ecological wisdom here to transcend and include.
Rarely found in adults because we have evolved.
Voodoo... Magic not psychic.
3. Magic Mythic Stage / PowerGods (Red) - self just learning to differentiate itself 10,000 years ago. Safety , security and power.
Where is the source of capacity to perform miracles. Rain rain, voodoo, I DO THE MIRACLES. Mythic Age.. Reality magic capacity starting to be doubted. Magic capacity switched from humans, to supernatural beings or Gods. What ritual , practice, prayer, will make God happy. Magic transferred to Gods.
Opportunistic stage - dog eat dog... Egocentric , Mafia, NWO, Corrupt Gov. Graves call it Ego-centric ... This stage pinnacle of egocentric or narcisstic.
They think they and they alone are a power god.
4. Mythic Literal (amber) - Conventional - Ethnocentric -Conformist - Conop
The world does contain many other egos, many other selfs, not just mine and sooner or later we start to figure this out. Ethnocentric, group focused... Not just 1st person person, but We space. My subject and your subject together is intersubjective or **Culture**. Now some sort of we space, which in general is lower left quadrant.
Group becomes focal point of identity and your ROLE in this organization. Need to conform to what this group wants [Rule/Role]. No more of that egocentric or narcissism. You do not want to stand out, you want to FIT IN. If you break the law or go against the dogma, you'll be shamed or much worse. In the Middle Ages for example, if you didn't fit in with the communities religious beliefs, than the Spanish Inquisition would like to have a little chat with you. Hanged, stoned, or burned at the stake.
Ethnocentric means you fit in with the accepted ethnic reality, whatever that might be.
Race, gender or religious or political dogma. But your group identity matters. This ethnocentric conformist stage.
Law and order, good boy and nice girl, my country right or wrong, my religion,
Conventional or conformist
You think your belief is the one and only belief that has any merit in any field.
Culture Wars both far right and far left.
Traditional and conservative values.
5. Rational (orange) - Reason - Formop - Merit Stage - Profit - Progress - Excellence - Can now take a 3rd Person Perspective ... Freedom for all race , creed, caste color.
Individuality arise from conformity and an individuality arises that wishes to achieve and succeed on its on. Can now identify with all groups.
Moves from ethnocentric to world centric
Modernity and modern values
No longer rely on a magic rain dance or a mythic god to get what you want,
Mythic god announced dead by Nietzche
Modern chemistry, physics, biological
Rational Religion - Aquinas, Buddhism, Zen, Advaita [begins rational but goes transrational]
6. Pluralistic - Postmodern - (Green) - Multicultural plurality, diversity, Inclusion and relativism ... All sorts of cultures and all viewpoints ... Hierarchies rejected.
All values claimed to be equal - egalitarianism
So not only does everybody start the race at the same time, everybody finishes the race at the same time.
Equal opportunity and outcome
All truth is relative, no universe truth. Truth is socially constructed. All knowledge is a social construction. Performative contradiction. Needs more integral understanding.
First Tier Stages driven by deficiency needs, where the person tries to get something it is missing.
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Second Tier Stages are drive by Being needs, driven by a fullness that just keeps overflowing.
A capacity for true integration comes only at second tier.
Systemic, holistic, synthesizing and integrated consciousness emerges. Integral
Integral aperspective - Genuinely inclusive stages. First emergence of a genuine nature. All 1st tier stages simply fragmented approximations. Just beginning to emerge.
Only about 5%... 4% teal, 1% turquoise. Genuine human solidarity. We need an accurate map to get there. Leading edge of evolution at this time.
7. Holistic - Teal
8. Integral - Turquoise
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The 3 faces of God
If there is any single most important, most confused, most loved, and most hated item anywhere in the world today, its God.
Start with the simple undeniable fact that we humans beings are here. And in our own, typical everyday awareness we have absolutely no idea why this is happening, or how it is happening, or where we really came from or where we are really going. Its one big bloody undeniable fact, we are here and we have no idea what this means. It is sheer mystery. Why is this happening, when did it start, where did it come from, where is it going?
First words from first human: "What the hell is going on!"
It is said that wonder is the start of all philosophy. Goethe said "all understanding begins in wonder".
But that is true of religion and science too.
We are faced with this massive mystery of our existence, and driven by genuine wonder, humans have approached that abyss.
Humans have approached that abyss from every conceivable angle and with any and every tool we might possess. This approaches include religion and spirituality. The very notion of God or UR or a ground of all being is probably the most confused area in all of human reality.
Spiritual Intelligence
Spirit is anything that is taken to be ultimately real, or finally true or ultimate concern.
If you think the material universe is the only thing that is ultimately true, that's fine. That's your version of ultimate reality.
When anyone thinks about what is ultimately real or any sort of infinite reality they are using their spiritual intelligence (one of about a dozen types of intelligence). As humans beings evolve, and in the face of this unrelenting mystery, they were faced with questions about what is it that they can actually know. Then a cognitive intelligence developed. As they were faced with questions of what they should do ethically, a moral intelligence developed. As they looked at what they thought was beautiful, an aesthetic intelligence developed. And when they were faced with questions about what is really and truly and ultimately real, a spiritual intelligence developed (not the same as spiritual experience). Spiritual intelligence is ideas about...
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Third person views of spirit have gone back hundreds of thousands of years to the earliest shamans. Helps to use stages of development to see the progressions of 3rd person views of spirit. Magic and early mythic views are outmoded for today but their waking up states are as true and important as ever.
We can start 3rd persons views with a modern modern view. It is common to say that the enlightenment produced a massive reductionism to a narrow atomistic materialism.
But the most common idea in the enlightenment was the great unified, interwoven system of all of Nature. John Locke called it the great interlocking order. It was a massive systems theory view. Every single thing and event in the Universe was said to be part of a great networked whole. And you could only understand the whole by understanding the parts and only understand the parts by understanding the whole.
***The Measurement Problem***
Great Chain of being also prevalent as part of great interwoven order.
One problem as Whitehead pointed out, the scientific method Galileo and Kepler which that said the laws of Nature that can best be understood are the ones that can be measured. Measurement was the key and Good lord that changed everything. Newton unified both ideas of Galileo and Kepler in his universal Laws of gravity and motion. Universal because this a great interlocking order.
BUT, the glitch is, the realm that can be most easily and readily measured is the material realm. Now you can measure various bodily feelings and mind states and soulful illuminations but it is much much trickier and took a couple centuries to even begin to understand the soulful interiors.
In the meantime the enlightenment pioneers were measuring EVERYTHING.. material. And then within a century or two we saw the emergence of all the major sciences because of that. Physics, chemistry biology and they would almost exclusively look at only the 3rd person objective, exterior, material aspects of their respective holons because those were the ones that could be measured. Even though early pioneers had in mind the interlocking order and great chain of being, what happened was in a century or two of that materialistic MEASUREMENT, the world was indeed stuck with was in effect a massive scientific materialism.
All of the interiors, the left hand dimensions of
Feeling Bodies
Conceptual Minds
And Illumined Souls
All of them had almost inadvertently had been scrubbed from reality entirely.
The world was still a great interlocking order, but an interlocking order of nothing but the objective material dimensions of everything.
Something was real if it could at least theoretically be videotaped, seen as an object.
If you cannot see it as an objective 3rd person thing, than it is not there.
Mind is a black box, QM a black box, other interior dimensions, a black box.
Material brain is real. It is inside the organism, but you can still cut open and see it, videotape it. But when you look at that objective brain, do you see anything called a mind or consciousness? Nope... not there, not real. So much for 1st person and 2nd person realities.
Neurological processes.. yup, small enough camera you can videotape those.
So 1st person consciousness is nothing but 3rd person neuronal processes.
But still all connected in a great interlocking order including ecological systems in a great web of life. Reality reduced to lower 3rd quadrant. Dynamic system of its. No I or We or Us.
Scientific materialism had become the default official philosophy of the modern world and remains so in academia to this day.
But the problem is as beautiful as the idea is, you CANNOT think your way into waking up, into enlightenment. You cannot think yourself into enlightenment, satori, etc. You can learn everything you want to know about a great web of life, memorize all of it, but it won't wake you up. Or you think say Quantum Mechanics shows you this mystical unity, then go learn all about quantum mechanics, become a professional physicist (Which is why I changed my major to physics), but that will do NOTHING to give you a real satori a real awakening or a real enlightenment experience.
In fact one of the primary practices in virtually ALL waking up disciplines, is to learn to suspend all thinking entirely in a pure awareness. Not in the content of awareness, but AWARENESS ITSELF! Latching on to any sort of thinking process, including thinking about the great web, is exactly what prevents you from waking up. Thinking is just more content of awareness, it will show you the shadows in the cave but it absolutely will not get you OUTSIDE of the cave to pure awareness itself.
Now this 3rd person view is TRUE, but it is very very partial.
And it is definitely the case, that if you latch onto something partial, you are by definition, cutting yourself out of a larger whole.
Not even the best holistic paradigms with all their science, beauty and poetically articulated view can wake you up, because this is STILL MINDSTUFF! Sure you soul might be stirred for a brief moment, but mental maps are not going to wake you up!
Part 2
A lot of talk of uniting Science and Spirituality by recognizing the Oneness in Nature and that reality is a holistic and interconnected systems within systems and the totality of all this interwoven systems is indeed a type of Great Web of Life or New Paradigm.
And this great web is exactly the grand unity it is said that the world's mystics have always told us about. Science and Religion, finally one But knowing that is not going to give you enlightenment or a real satori. You have have to directly experience that reality in its present immediacy (knowledge by acquaintance).
Shankara brief summary of UR
1) The world is illusory (Realize)
2) Brahman alone is real
3) Brahman is the world (great web of life)
1) You start by seeing the web of life is illusory, its a dream (Maya, samsara).
2) Direct and immediate realization. Fully present in all 3 major states of consciousness.
Can also lucid deep dream. Pure tacit awareness with no contents. Constant consciousness.
Waking up is not about the contents of awareness, but awareness itself. Stunning and life changing waking up.
3) Only after 1 and 2, now you can say Brahman is the world.
But if you just tell yourself Brahman is the world, that is not going to wake you up.
Just putting on gold chains, instead of iron chains.
Waking up is not just about understanding what can be seen in reality, but understanding the SEER itself. Pure Witness in you right now. Not content.
Atman - a direct ray of ultimate spirit itself.
==> It's not that science, philosophy or quantum mechanics proves the mystical spirit, it's a matter of who is it right now that is aware of that idea.
The knower IS the Knowledge
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**2nd person** views start to realize that this world isn't composed of just an awareness looking at all of those objective 3rd person interwoven systems of things (solipsism). Some of those things are looking back at you. Deeply relational view of things. The world comes alive. Not just objects interacting with objects forming a huge inter-objective system. It is also a network of subjects coming together into intersubjective fields that directly resonate with your subject, your awareness. You can feel this world, not just think it. And this world is feeling you.
Took 2nd person as actual embodied person. Great Thou... Gigantic 2nd Person.
Person defined as any being with intelligence.
Does this universe have being ... YES
Does it have intelligence ... YES
So you and Spirit however you conceive it, are in a living and breathing relationship.
We space.
Beyond mythic stages, it really doesn't matter how you picture or imagine God or spirit or Ultimate reality, you can simply sit down and write a dialogue between you and whatever you think might be some sort of ultimate ground of all of this.
Christian, Jesus, Hindu Krishna, Buddha, Anandamayi Ma.
The point of doing dialogue is not to picture spirit in the correct way whatever it might be it is to realize whatever this ultimate reality IS, it includes consciousness and intelligence and awareness. In this exercise it is ok if you personalize it or anthropomorphize it.
The point is you are opening yourself up to the highest dimension of reality and allowing an awareness of whatever that might be to enter into your existence. You are touching it and it is actually touching you.
2nd person acknowledges that there are some aspects of an ultimate reality that are quite beyond anything you might be yourself (humility, devotion). There is a great other, a great beyond, a mysterious thou that is other than you, other than you. Your own higher self even.
Opens up to a vast WE space that you are a full and complete member.
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1st person view speaks as God. Mystical tradition. Paths of the Great Liberation, the paths of the waking up. Waking up Schools. Path of actual practice that will lead you out of the cave and into the light. Realization is radically all inclusive. Embraces light and shadows in an
Supreme Identity. Ultimate Reality looked at directly in your own 1st person.
People all have a view of ultimate reality OR ultimate concern that shows up in one or more of the elements or cosmic addresses.
When people say they are spiritual, but not religious, this is exactly what many of them mean. They are interested in direct, immediate, personal experience and meaning, not institutionalized stories and ancient mythic fables. In other worlds a Spirit or UR disclosed in states of consciousness is one of the most important and ultimately most valid of all approaches to UR or Spirit.
It is first person. States in 1st person. Peak experiences of altered states, or plateau.
These direct spiritual experiences are utterly beyond any sort of talk, beyond any words, labels, concepts, or ideas.
There are only 3 ways that they can legitimately be talked about, which means only three ways that they can be discussed.
In order to know spirit (a knowledge by acquaintance), you have to have a direct experience itself. You cannot just talk about it.
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pg 36 James
1) If you are talking about it, you can say what it is not. This is called Apophatic as with the "Cloud of Unknowing" ... Silencing.
Apophatic - knowledge of God obtained through negation. (neti neti) - mystics
God is not love, God is not light, God is not goodness... God is not any of those because those are all just words. The mystics say God or Spirit is Neti Neti, not this, not that.
Nirguna Brahman (Nondual Godhead - Nameless and Formless) - without qualities or attributes.. Buddha, no God, because God is a concept and ultimate truth is beyond concepts.
2) Or you can say what it is like, this is called:
Cataphatic - knowledge of God obtained through affirmations or positive statements (iti iti)
God is like Love, God is like a Great Universal Mind, Like absolute Freedom. God is like those, but God is not directly any of those. Because again, those are just words and concepts. And will give you at most knowledge by description, not knowledge by acquaintance. Until you have that acquaintance, all those words will distract and actually prevent the discovery.
Saguna Brahman (Dual God - Name and Form) - with qualities or attributes. God conceptualized and anthropomorphized
As long as we take ourselves to be separate, Saguna Brahman is real for all practical purposes
**a. Knowledge by description - not direct knowing about something like having a photograph of a tree or a mountain or reading a book about it. Thinking about something. MAP w/ Pictures (GROWING UP) THINK ABOUT IT.
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3) The final way you can talk about spirit is to describe the steps, or practices or injunctions that you have to follow if you do indeed what to have a real experience, a real acquaintance of this ultimate reality. That is an injunctive or exemplary form of language which is giving the actual paradigms that will help to bring forth genuine spiritual data or immediate experience which will directly introduce you to that ultimate reality as an immediate first person state of consciousness.
**b. Knowledge by acquaintance - direct and immediate knowledge of the thing in its direct and immediate reality. Like directly looking at a tree or a mountain. Immediately aware. TERRITORY (WAKING UP) BE IT
Don't want to confuse map with territory.
But you need a GOOD map.
This super map will point you to your greatest possibilities and potentials. If you don't have a good theory, you won't even know where to look!
If you don't have a good map of the territory, you won't be able to get around in that territory at all (territory being YOU).
What would it even look it?
TO show you directly all the different aspects and dimensions to your OWN SELF.
==============
Meta Theory
Integral = whole, complete, unified, comprehensive and all inclusive to our own being and existence - SUPER MAP for SUPER TERRITORY that you really are.
Different perspectives...
Observation depends on theory, hypothesis and maps.
Where and how to look in the first place.
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Be the best person possible to help the world the most.
1) Psychoanalysis {Persona-Shadow Duality} strengthen ego and zen get rid of the ego.
Unite persona and shadow that were split to give a strong ego.
2) Humanistic {Body-Mind Duality} - People split mind from their body.
Cure for this is to unit mind and body into a unified organism.
Thinking and feeling, integrated self.
3) Biosocial {Ego-Society Cultural Duality} - feel total organism depends on social orientations, sex, race, etc. Find your social identity. It starts with family, but we don't get to choose our family. Finding a group/tribe/religion/political party you can feel One with.
4) Mystical Tradition {Primal Subject-Object Duality} - No, even if you find your social identity and accomplish mind body union and shadow persona healing, the real problem is you split your entire organism from the rest of the world (illusion of separateness). Your real identity is actually one with the entire universe. Need to rediscover this prior and true identity by finding the Ultimate Ground or Oneness that unites your Organism with all of the Universe. Suffer because you split your true identity... Split self vs other, subject vs object. Real and Supreme Identity One with the All. Ultimate Unity Consciousness.
Important truths to all approaches!
Realize everybody is right and you can make room for everything.
Central Principle of Integral Meta-theory - Everybody is right!
If You Want A Comprehensive Perspective of View of Everything!
Integral Framework - iOS
Five major elements
1) 3 Perspectives
2) Levels/Stages
3) Lines/Various Intelligences
4) States of Consciousness
5) Types
Many of the worlds great metaphysical thinkers, said that a universe comes into being when a subject is differentiated from an object.
These are two very broad domains, an interior subject reality and an exterior or objective reality.
In every language that exists there are pronouns that apply to
Each of these quadrants. 1st person , 2nd person and 3rd person perspectives.
1st person) - is person speaking, I space in each of us. I, me, mine. Solipsism/Idealism
1st (Subjective): Beautiful - beauty in the I of the beholder. Truthfulness (lie to yourself - shadow)
2nd person) - you.. person being spoken to. You + I = We space.
Group of individuals. Intersubjective reality. (Otherwise you is an object). We space, we call culture. Very real and important dimension.
2nd (Intersubjective/Interobjective): Good - how we should act to treat other person that is ethical and moral.
3rd (Objective): Objective Fact or Truth
3rd person) - looked at from outside. Person or thing being spoken ABOUT.
That spoken about indicates a kind of distancing, detached and objective view. Not I or You but those things or people over there. Realism / Scientific Materialism
3 main dimensions to reality. Most disciplines only take one of them and pronounce THAT to be the real one.
Nonduality is realizing all three are non-dual
Consciousness Studies, the study of what our awareness is made of...
1) About half the studies say only 3rd person objective realities are important. So we have to look at the brain and its neurophysiology if we want any real answers to consciousness.
2) The other half of the approaches say, NO, what is most real here, is a persons actual 1st person experience, right now and that's what we have to look at.
3) A handful say you are both wrong. Awareness is governed by a 2nd person culture and social constructions that determine all of that.
Few say, hey wait a minute, all three of those approaches are true but partial.
You want the good, the true and the beautiful to be a major part of every area of your life.
Note1;These perspectives show interior states not somewhere "up there" in the sky or some metaphysical heaven, but interior. Interior to nature, not above but within.
**Evolution has resulted in a complexification of matter whose gross exteriors become more and more complex and whose interiors become more and more conscious. Teilhard de chardin's Law of "Complexity and Consciousness", the more of one, the more of the other.
2) **LEVEL Stages**
Originally produced by the fundamental dynamic of evolution itself, which is transcend and include. Each time there is an emergence of a new level of development or evolution, then some sort of new or novel reality came into being... atoms, cells, organisms, etc.
That is the emergent or transcend part. Because it is new and novel, it means it goes beyond or transcends the previous level. But it is not totally and absolutely new so that its completely disconnected from anything that already exists. Rather it embraces or enfolds the previous stage while also going beyond it. Transcends and includes. Development by envelopment. The whole of one stage becomes a part of the whole of the next stage. Holons all the way up and all the way down.
And this entire movement of continual transcend and include produces a complete series of levels or stages of evolution. Moving from simpler and earlier forms to more complex and more unified forms which indeed why the universe is indeed winding UP (inflation energy at Big Bang). This is true for human growth and development as well. All the human beings major systems, capacities and traits undergo a developmental unfolding. They don't just burst on the scene already fully formed and totally functioning.
Rather they move through a series of stages or levels of development. From very immature to mature to very mature.
This is a process of growth, development, evolution (emergence, winding up). Each stage transcends and includes the previous which means the whole of one stage becomes a part of the whole of the next stage.
These stages incredibly important. The way you see and interpret and experience your world. (How phenomena (what arises) are interpreted and experience).
You will see the entire world across a very broad spectrum of development.
Values you hold, skills you possess, the goals that you aim for, even political orientation and religious beliefs. Also can be seen as the level of consciousness you have.
How the world looks from each level = Worldview / Paradigm.
But you cannot see these rules or patterns from looking within or introspection.
Morphogenetic fields collective memory. 100th monkey effect something new and emergent.
You are at a particular level of development you will interpret and experience your world according to the rules and patterns at that level, but you will have no idea you are doing so. Only way is to study the research that has been done on them (done on large groups of people, not an n=1 study).
Pre-Modern Traditional, conventional , and often religious values
VS
Modern, Rational and often scientific values
VS
PostModern, multicultural and diversity values
VS
Intergral/Nondual - Not Yet present.
Developing yourself makes you more inclusive and things get much roomier for many views and perspectives. More conscious, more caring, more loving, more confident and happier with life. More expansive, more transparent as you increasingly make room for everything.
3) **LINES** Multiple Intelligences
Actual things evolution is moving through are called lines of development.
Different lines or streams move through these levels or waves.
All sorts of different lines, skills, qualities, traits.
And ALL of them undergo growth and development.
You probably know you have various multiple intelligences. (Howard Gardner)
Cognitive, Emotional, Moral, Spiritual Intelligences and so on.
Often develop at different rates or levels.
Can be a genius in some lines and stupid in others.
But all these lines of development move through the same LEVELS of development.
Integral psychograph is putting all the lines together on one graph. Shows level of development reached in each line. Gives an integral snapshot in your overall growth and development and evolution. You could be a genius in ways you might not even know.
4) **STATES**
States as they appear in a human being is short for states of consciousness.
A state of consciousness is simply a present, 1st person, immediate experience.
Happy, sad, excited, anxious, etc... small states of consciousness.
Big States would be waking, dreaming, deep sleep, witnessing and other meditative higher states. Peak Experiences. Some of the most important states of all are states of religious or spiritual experience. A spiritual experience is not a myth or a story or a magic tale, its a direct and immediate experience. A real experience like an ultimate unity or cosmic consciousness AND it can give you an enormous amount of insight into reality.
***William James book about just that "The Variety of Religious Experience".
Meditative Traditions around the world consist of not a bunch of magic mythic stories, but rather a set of practices (psycho technology) of consciousness transformation (not merely translation). Translation vs Transformation.
A series of practices or paradigms that will give you a whole sequence of spiritual experiences. Meditative BIG States. And those often summate with what is variously known as enlightenment, awakening, satori, moksha, metamorphosis, the Great Liberation.
This whole process you can call waking up...
Which is different from growing up, because with growing up you are moving through a series of structures of consciousness that you cannot see by introspecting (views - how you experience and interpret the world). So you have no idea it is happening to you, the growing up process.
But waking up consists of 1st person states of consciousness, and states are fully conscious, direct experiences and you immediately know them when they are happening.
When you have an experience of being one with the universe and love and bliss, believe me, you know it.
But when you are at a particular level or stage of growing up and you are interpreting the world through its particular lens, you have no idea you're doing it. New emergent Structures of consciousness akin to new emergent structures in biological evolution (you cannot see the structures through which you are seeing the world)?
==>States-Realms-VantagePoints (what arises).
5) Personality Types?
Most things that exist have various types, there are types of cars, types of cars, trees and airplanes, economic systems, political parties, plants and animals. Types of human personalities that are spelled out in say Big 5 Factor, Meyer-Briggs, Enneagram psychology.
Personality type.
What makes it a type is that it does not change much as you grow and develop.
Typologies can give us an enormous amount of secondary information of anything we are examining, including our own personalities.
Conclusion...
Those are the 5 main elements in the Integral Framework, Map, or Meta-Theory.
May not have been aware of some of these. Comprehensive and inclusive approach to any issue we want to address. And this includes your own life. Using integral supermap of all of the territories that are actually in you, you will most certainly discover some territories that you didn't even know were there. And in some cases these are truly life changing discoveries!
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Most Important State.
Saints, sages and mystics were really practicing sophisticated forms of meditation, contemplation or yoga or centering prayer and were aiming at those states of ultimate unity consciousness, divine oneness or absolute consciousness/awareness. It is very real.
Known all over the world as
1) Enlightenment
2) Awakening
3) Moksha
4) Metaphorphosis
5) Satori
6) The Great Liberation
(Peaks,
Ground of all being or Ultimate reality is not some anthropomorphic figure or old man in the sky with a grey beard sitting on a throne.
It is simply the condition of all conditions, the nature of all natures.
It is the Isness, Suchness or Thusness of everything that Arises.
And you are ultimately one with that... Or that is to say, you and the ultimate ground are NOT - TWO (non-dual).
**A common metaphor is it is like the ocean and its waves.**
Waves are produced by the ocean, but the ocean and its waves are ultimately Not- two.
There is something they both share. There is a common thusness or suchness.
And that is wetness.
One wave might be larger than another wave, but it is not wetter than another wave.
All of the waves are equally wet. If you discover wetness at the wave you are on, you've discovered it everywhere! You have woken up, you have awakened.
You have become enlightened about the ever present wetness of the ocean and everything in it. You have simply discovered the thusness, the suchness, the isles of all reality.
Which means your own immediate awareness, right here and right now, is itself directly one with, its totally saturated with, this ultimate ground of all being which is non-dual. You do not have to seek this witness or practice to be wet or jump from one wave to another. Any place you are at, you're wet.
But as a common saying has it, "A fish doesn't know it's wet". Because it's constant in that wetness, so it never experiences anything but that.
To really become aware that it is wet, the fish has to have a genuine waking up to that.
It actually has to become enlightened about its ever present condition. Its always already thusness or wetness, the fact that it is drenched with this all encompassing ground of being.
----
And the very fact that it is utterly all-inclusive, that means among other things, that it is not confined to any particular opposite.
You really cannot say it is good vs evil, or infinite vs finite or spiritual vs material.
Because it includes all of those, they are ALL equally wet.
** Most of our words and concepts have meaning only in terms of their opposite:
good vs evil, or infinite vs finite, spiritual vs material, pleasure vs pain, smart vs stupid, up vs down, left vs right and on and on.
But Reality itself has no opposites, it embraces all of them.
We can indeed experience it, we just cannot put into words or symbols very well.
It is radically unqualifiable. This manifest world is dualistic, again almost everything we know exists in pairs of opposites. If something exists, it will generally have an opposite. And so the waking up experience itself is said to be a waking up into a world that is free of being torn into conflicting opposites.
The Upanishads say that enlightenment is "being freed from the pairs", the pairs of opposites. The Christian Mystics call the Ultimate reality the coincidentia oppositorum.
The coincidence of opposites, the unity of opposites, the non-duality of opposites.
Another way of saying this is that all of the opposites are included in UR, all of them, true and false, good and evil, love and hate. All equally included.
Good waves, bad evils, short waves, tall waves, all equally wet.
The Ultimate Ground of All Being IS ALL BEING.
"I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." Isaiah 45:7 {KJE}
And when you have anything like that waking up or unity experience, you will directly feel the utter profound, all inclusive oneness.
Now what do we call that wetness? Similar to the conundrum of Science with light traveling in a vaccuum. It was known all waves need a medium to travel, like water (waves), air/Water/solid (sound), strings, etc. Light has no medium, as Mich/Morely showed. It travels in a vacuum, but the vacuum is not nothing, it has near infinite energy. This seems to be the best way to look at Ulimate Reality. It is nothing that is everything. It is not that everything comes out of nothing, but rather, everything is nothing and nothing is everything. Emptiness is form and form is emptiness.
Water metaphor can be taken further with states of ice, water and vapor (3 realms) but ultimately all are make of H2O (Turiya), which is ultimately made of nothing and energy/everything (Turiyatita).
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Levels and Evolution
From the very beginning of the manifest universe, apparently starting with the Big Bang, the universe was evolving. And what the evolutionary process contained from the very start, was a creative drive to self organization, more and more inclusiveness, increasing complexity and unity and wholeness. "A Creative advance into Novelty" or called order out of Chaos. The process is transcend and include. Any new emergence reality is indeed a creative advance into novelty. And as it emerges into the already existing world, it certainly is new or novel. It goes beyond or transcends what is already there, but it Cannot be 100% novel or would not fit in with anything. It has to have continuity with whatever exists, so it includes it as well, it transcends and includes.
And thus we see over billions of years, this evolutionary process unfold, and it does indeed have an inherent drive to more and more complexity, more unity and wholeness and more consciousness.
So from quarks to more holistic atoms, to more holistic molecules, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organism... and through the entire tree of life.
Whatever the cause of all this, the increasing unity is undeniable, the universe is NOT winding down, the universe is winding up.
[Choice / True Free Will is creativity]
Whitehead also characterizes creativity as the principle of novelty. The events of the past are ceaselessly synthesized into a new and unique event, which becomes data for future events. “The many become one, and are increased by one,” (Whitehead, Process and Reality, 20). This focus on oscillation between one and many forms the foundation of the process metaphysic.
And then as human beings began their own evolution, they continued this process of transcend and include, especially in their own interiors, humans began creating values and worldviews and morals that were ever more inclusive and embracing whole.
But what is not usually understood is that from birth, humans undergo a process of development and 'growing up', consisting of well researched, well documented stages or levels of interior development. This is incredibly important for understanding your own life.
===============
Growing Up = Levels of Consciousness Part 1
Over 100 different developmental models from around the world.
Each is covering same general ground, namely the growth and development of overall human capacities. All come at it from a different angle with slightly different assumptions. But what is interesting is that most of them agree that there are 6-8 major levels or stages of an overall growth and development of a human being.
General overview of the most common features that each stage has according to the survey of all of them. Actually moving through these levels is the processing of growing up, because that's what humans do. Virtually from the moment of conception, human beings grow and develop and evolve.
Waking up is a direct experience of an ultimate ground of being and all of that ground, 100% of that groundless ground, is fully present in every single point of space and time in the manifest universe. Even in our own development, each stage is equally "Wet". Because of that every person at each stage of growing up, can experience this waking up precisely because it is full present everywhere.
Waking up and growing up are relatively independent.
Every level is an increase in consciousness. In what we can think of as the altitude of development, like various paths or (lines of development) moving up a mountain to higher and higher altitudes. And each of those paths up the mountain has a different view of the world, but all of the paths move through the same altitudes. The altitudes are the levels of consciousness.
These altitudes are talked about somewhat differently depending on which path/line you are talking about.
The different levels are part of humanities evolution as well as individual.
1. Archaic Stage (Crimson) - Major transitions from the great apes to the first humans a few million years ago. Represents basic needs from food, water, air, warmth, shelter, rest.
In todays world, it represents the infant's awareness in the first few months of life.
Most developmentalists call it a fusion state, or a pure state of non-differentiation.
The basic idea is that awareness cannot differentiate between itself and the environment. It is basically just matter and basic physiological needs (material fusion, not spiritual unity).
2. Magic or Impulsive Stage ( Magenta) - Subject and object are just beginning to be differentiated but still confusion giving rise to animism. With animism, all objects in the world, from rocks to rivers to trees to humans are given human characteristics. Cannot take role of other. (Green and blue ball). Kid with head under pillow thinks that because it cannot see others, others cannot see it.
Everything that arises as an extension of its own self. This stage shares the body's sheer impulsiveness. Shows difficulty in delaying immediate gratification. Child around ages one to three. Manipulate symbol of a thing and you believe you actually changed the real thing.
Does not grasp wholeness. There is a name for every bend in the river, but not for the river. Because self just differentiated from surroundings, it remains close to environment, so ecological wisdom here to transcend and include.
Rarely found in adults because we have evolved.
Voodoo... Magic not psychic.
3. Magic Mythic Stage / PowerGods (Red) - self just learning to differentiate itself 10,000 years ago. Safety , security and power.
Where is the source of capacity to perform miracles. Rain rain, voodoo, I DO THE MIRACLES. Mythic Age.. Reality magic capacity starting to be doubted. Magic capacity switched from humans, to supernatural beings or Gods. What ritual , practice, prayer, will make God happy. Magic transferred to Gods.
Opportunistic stage - dog eat dog... Egocentric , Mafia, NWO, Corrupt Gov. Graves call it Ego-centric ... This stage pinnacle of egocentric or narcisstic.
They think they and they alone are a power god.
4. Mythic Literal (amber) - Conventional - Ethnocentric -Conformist - Conop
The world does contain many other egos, many other selfs, not just mine and sooner or later we start to figure this out. Ethnocentric, group focused... Not just 1st person person, but We space. My subject and your subject together is intersubjective or **Culture**. Now some sort of we space, which in general is lower left quadrant.
Group becomes focal point of identity and your ROLE in this organization. Need to conform to what this group wants [Rule/Role]. No more of that egocentric or narcissism. You do not want to stand out, you want to FIT IN. If you break the law or go against the dogma, you'll be shamed or much worse. In the Middle Ages for example, if you didn't fit in with the communities religious beliefs, than the Spanish Inquisition would like to have a little chat with you. Hanged, stoned, or burned at the stake.
Ethnocentric means you fit in with the accepted ethnic reality, whatever that might be.
Race, gender or religious or political dogma. But your group identity matters. This ethnocentric conformist stage.
Law and order, good boy and nice girl, my country right or wrong, my religion,
Conventional or conformist
You think your belief is the one and only belief that has any merit in any field.
Culture Wars both far right and far left.
Traditional and conservative values.
5. Rational (orange) - Reason - Formop - Merit Stage - Profit - Progress - Excellence - Can now take a 3rd Person Perspective ... Freedom for all race , creed, caste color.
Individuality arise from conformity and an individuality arises that wishes to achieve and succeed on its on. Can now identify with all groups.
Moves from ethnocentric to world centric
Modernity and modern values
No longer rely on a magic rain dance or a mythic god to get what you want,
Mythic god announced dead by Nietzche
Modern chemistry, physics, biological
Rational Religion - Aquinas, Buddhism, Zen, Advaita [begins rational but goes transrational]
6. Pluralistic - Postmodern - (Green) - Multicultural plurality, diversity, Inclusion and relativism ... All sorts of cultures and all viewpoints ... Hierarchies rejected.
All values claimed to be equal - egalitarianism
So not only does everybody start the race at the same time, everybody finishes the race at the same time.
Equal opportunity and outcome
All truth is relative, no universe truth. Truth is socially constructed. All knowledge is a social construction. Performative contradiction. Needs more integral understanding.
First Tier Stages driven by deficiency needs, where the person tries to get something it is missing.
========
Second Tier Stages are drive by Being needs, driven by a fullness that just keeps overflowing.
A capacity for true integration comes only at second tier.
Systemic, holistic, synthesizing and integrated consciousness emerges. Integral
Integral aperspective - Genuinely inclusive stages. First emergence of a genuine nature. All 1st tier stages simply fragmented approximations. Just beginning to emerge.
Only about 5%... 4% teal, 1% turquoise. Genuine human solidarity. We need an accurate map to get there. Leading edge of evolution at this time.
7. Holistic - Teal
8. Integral - Turquoise
========
=========
The 3 faces of God
If there is any single most important, most confused, most loved, and most hated item anywhere in the world today, its God.
Start with the simple undeniable fact that we humans beings are here. And in our own, typical everyday awareness we have absolutely no idea why this is happening, or how it is happening, or where we really came from or where we are really going. Its one big bloody undeniable fact, we are here and we have no idea what this means. It is sheer mystery. Why is this happening, when did it start, where did it come from, where is it going?
First words from first human: "What the hell is going on!"
It is said that wonder is the start of all philosophy. Goethe said "all understanding begins in wonder".
But that is true of religion and science too.
We are faced with this massive mystery of our existence, and driven by genuine wonder, humans have approached that abyss.
Humans have approached that abyss from every conceivable angle and with any and every tool we might possess. This approaches include religion and spirituality. The very notion of God or UR or a ground of all being is probably the most confused area in all of human reality.
Spiritual Intelligence
Spirit is anything that is taken to be ultimately real, or finally true or ultimate concern.
If you think the material universe is the only thing that is ultimately true, that's fine. That's your version of ultimate reality.
When anyone thinks about what is ultimately real or any sort of infinite reality they are using their spiritual intelligence (one of about a dozen types of intelligence). As humans beings evolve, and in the face of this unrelenting mystery, they were faced with questions about what is it that they can actually know. Then a cognitive intelligence developed. As they were faced with questions of what they should do ethically, a moral intelligence developed. As they looked at what they thought was beautiful, an aesthetic intelligence developed. And when they were faced with questions about what is really and truly and ultimately real, a spiritual intelligence developed (not the same as spiritual experience). Spiritual intelligence is ideas about...
====
Third person views of spirit have gone back hundreds of thousands of years to the earliest shamans. Helps to use stages of development to see the progressions of 3rd person views of spirit. Magic and early mythic views are outmoded for today but their waking up states are as true and important as ever.
We can start 3rd persons views with a modern modern view. It is common to say that the enlightenment produced a massive reductionism to a narrow atomistic materialism.
But the most common idea in the enlightenment was the great unified, interwoven system of all of Nature. John Locke called it the great interlocking order. It was a massive systems theory view. Every single thing and event in the Universe was said to be part of a great networked whole. And you could only understand the whole by understanding the parts and only understand the parts by understanding the whole.
***The Measurement Problem***
Great Chain of being also prevalent as part of great interwoven order.
One problem as Whitehead pointed out, the scientific method Galileo and Kepler which that said the laws of Nature that can best be understood are the ones that can be measured. Measurement was the key and Good lord that changed everything. Newton unified both ideas of Galileo and Kepler in his universal Laws of gravity and motion. Universal because this a great interlocking order.
BUT, the glitch is, the realm that can be most easily and readily measured is the material realm. Now you can measure various bodily feelings and mind states and soulful illuminations but it is much much trickier and took a couple centuries to even begin to understand the soulful interiors.
In the meantime the enlightenment pioneers were measuring EVERYTHING.. material. And then within a century or two we saw the emergence of all the major sciences because of that. Physics, chemistry biology and they would almost exclusively look at only the 3rd person objective, exterior, material aspects of their respective holons because those were the ones that could be measured. Even though early pioneers had in mind the interlocking order and great chain of being, what happened was in a century or two of that materialistic MEASUREMENT, the world was indeed stuck with was in effect a massive scientific materialism.
All of the interiors, the left hand dimensions of
Feeling Bodies
Conceptual Minds
And Illumined Souls
All of them had almost inadvertently had been scrubbed from reality entirely.
The world was still a great interlocking order, but an interlocking order of nothing but the objective material dimensions of everything.
Something was real if it could at least theoretically be videotaped, seen as an object.
If you cannot see it as an objective 3rd person thing, than it is not there.
Mind is a black box, QM a black box, other interior dimensions, a black box.
Material brain is real. It is inside the organism, but you can still cut open and see it, videotape it. But when you look at that objective brain, do you see anything called a mind or consciousness? Nope... not there, not real. So much for 1st person and 2nd person realities.
Neurological processes.. yup, small enough camera you can videotape those.
So 1st person consciousness is nothing but 3rd person neuronal processes.
But still all connected in a great interlocking order including ecological systems in a great web of life. Reality reduced to lower 3rd quadrant. Dynamic system of its. No I or We or Us.
Scientific materialism had become the default official philosophy of the modern world and remains so in academia to this day.
But the problem is as beautiful as the idea is, you CANNOT think your way into waking up, into enlightenment. You cannot think yourself into enlightenment, satori, etc. You can learn everything you want to know about a great web of life, memorize all of it, but it won't wake you up. Or you think say Quantum Mechanics shows you this mystical unity, then go learn all about quantum mechanics, become a professional physicist (Which is why I changed my major to physics), but that will do NOTHING to give you a real satori a real awakening or a real enlightenment experience.
In fact one of the primary practices in virtually ALL waking up disciplines, is to learn to suspend all thinking entirely in a pure awareness. Not in the content of awareness, but AWARENESS ITSELF! Latching on to any sort of thinking process, including thinking about the great web, is exactly what prevents you from waking up. Thinking is just more content of awareness, it will show you the shadows in the cave but it absolutely will not get you OUTSIDE of the cave to pure awareness itself.
Now this 3rd person view is TRUE, but it is very very partial.
And it is definitely the case, that if you latch onto something partial, you are by definition, cutting yourself out of a larger whole.
Not even the best holistic paradigms with all their science, beauty and poetically articulated view can wake you up, because this is STILL MINDSTUFF! Sure you soul might be stirred for a brief moment, but mental maps are not going to wake you up!
Part 2
A lot of talk of uniting Science and Spirituality by recognizing the Oneness in Nature and that reality is a holistic and interconnected systems within systems and the totality of all this interwoven systems is indeed a type of Great Web of Life or New Paradigm.
And this great web is exactly the grand unity it is said that the world's mystics have always told us about. Science and Religion, finally one But knowing that is not going to give you enlightenment or a real satori. You have have to directly experience that reality in its present immediacy (knowledge by acquaintance).
Shankara brief summary of UR
1) The world is illusory (Realize)
2) Brahman alone is real
3) Brahman is the world (great web of life)
1) You start by seeing the web of life is illusory, its a dream (Maya, samsara).
2) Direct and immediate realization. Fully present in all 3 major states of consciousness.
Can also lucid deep dream. Pure tacit awareness with no contents. Constant consciousness.
Waking up is not about the contents of awareness, but awareness itself. Stunning and life changing waking up.
3) Only after 1 and 2, now you can say Brahman is the world.
But if you just tell yourself Brahman is the world, that is not going to wake you up.
Just putting on gold chains, instead of iron chains.
Waking up is not just about understanding what can be seen in reality, but understanding the SEER itself. Pure Witness in you right now. Not content.
Atman - a direct ray of ultimate spirit itself.
==> It's not that science, philosophy or quantum mechanics proves the mystical spirit, it's a matter of who is it right now that is aware of that idea.
The knower IS the Knowledge
*===============*
**2nd person** views start to realize that this world isn't composed of just an awareness looking at all of those objective 3rd person interwoven systems of things (solipsism). Some of those things are looking back at you. Deeply relational view of things. The world comes alive. Not just objects interacting with objects forming a huge inter-objective system. It is also a network of subjects coming together into intersubjective fields that directly resonate with your subject, your awareness. You can feel this world, not just think it. And this world is feeling you.
Took 2nd person as actual embodied person. Great Thou... Gigantic 2nd Person.
Person defined as any being with intelligence.
Does this universe have being ... YES
Does it have intelligence ... YES
So you and Spirit however you conceive it, are in a living and breathing relationship.
We space.
Beyond mythic stages, it really doesn't matter how you picture or imagine God or spirit or Ultimate reality, you can simply sit down and write a dialogue between you and whatever you think might be some sort of ultimate ground of all of this.
Christian, Jesus, Hindu Krishna, Buddha, Anandamayi Ma.
The point of doing dialogue is not to picture spirit in the correct way whatever it might be it is to realize whatever this ultimate reality IS, it includes consciousness and intelligence and awareness. In this exercise it is ok if you personalize it or anthropomorphize it.
The point is you are opening yourself up to the highest dimension of reality and allowing an awareness of whatever that might be to enter into your existence. You are touching it and it is actually touching you.
2nd person acknowledges that there are some aspects of an ultimate reality that are quite beyond anything you might be yourself (humility, devotion). There is a great other, a great beyond, a mysterious thou that is other than you, other than you. Your own higher self even.
Opens up to a vast WE space that you are a full and complete member.
=======
1st person view speaks as God. Mystical tradition. Paths of the Great Liberation, the paths of the waking up. Waking up Schools. Path of actual practice that will lead you out of the cave and into the light. Realization is radically all inclusive. Embraces light and shadows in an
Supreme Identity. Ultimate Reality looked at directly in your own 1st person.
People all have a view of ultimate reality OR ultimate concern that shows up in one or more of the elements or cosmic addresses.
When people say they are spiritual, but not religious, this is exactly what many of them mean. They are interested in direct, immediate, personal experience and meaning, not institutionalized stories and ancient mythic fables. In other worlds a Spirit or UR disclosed in states of consciousness is one of the most important and ultimately most valid of all approaches to UR or Spirit.
It is first person. States in 1st person. Peak experiences of altered states, or plateau.
These direct spiritual experiences are utterly beyond any sort of talk, beyond any words, labels, concepts, or ideas.
There are only 3 ways that they can legitimately be talked about, which means only three ways that they can be discussed.
In order to know spirit (a knowledge by acquaintance), you have to have a direct experience itself. You cannot just talk about it.
----
pg 36 James
1) If you are talking about it, you can say what it is not. This is called Apophatic as with the "Cloud of Unknowing" ... Silencing.
Apophatic - knowledge of God obtained through negation. (neti neti) - mystics
God is not love, God is not light, God is not goodness... God is not any of those because those are all just words. The mystics say God or Spirit is Neti Neti, not this, not that.
Nirguna Brahman (Nondual Godhead - Nameless and Formless) - without qualities or attributes.. Buddha, no God, because God is a concept and ultimate truth is beyond concepts.
2) Or you can say what it is like, this is called:
Cataphatic - knowledge of God obtained through affirmations or positive statements (iti iti)
God is like Love, God is like a Great Universal Mind, Like absolute Freedom. God is like those, but God is not directly any of those. Because again, those are just words and concepts. And will give you at most knowledge by description, not knowledge by acquaintance. Until you have that acquaintance, all those words will distract and actually prevent the discovery.
Saguna Brahman (Dual God - Name and Form) - with qualities or attributes. God conceptualized and anthropomorphized
As long as we take ourselves to be separate, Saguna Brahman is real for all practical purposes
**a. Knowledge by description - not direct knowing about something like having a photograph of a tree or a mountain or reading a book about it. Thinking about something. MAP w/ Pictures (GROWING UP) THINK ABOUT IT.
----
3) The final way you can talk about spirit is to describe the steps, or practices or injunctions that you have to follow if you do indeed what to have a real experience, a real acquaintance of this ultimate reality. That is an injunctive or exemplary form of language which is giving the actual paradigms that will help to bring forth genuine spiritual data or immediate experience which will directly introduce you to that ultimate reality as an immediate first person state of consciousness.
**b. Knowledge by acquaintance - direct and immediate knowledge of the thing in its direct and immediate reality. Like directly looking at a tree or a mountain. Immediately aware. TERRITORY (WAKING UP) BE IT
Waking Up
Direct, immediate and conscious 1st person evidence. Not a belief, story or concept.
Enlightenment, satori, moksha, etc. Waking up.
Schools of waking up maintain that there are spiritual exercises, or practices, or injunctions or exemplars. They are actual spiritual paradigms. And if we engage those seriously, this will lead to direct data, direct experience, a genuine illumination of a radical ultimate ground of being. And the only reason people do not know this is that this knowledge is very different from typical knowledge.
Here you know this ultimate ground by BEING the ultimate ground. In direct experience, you realize YOU ARE IT! What the Sufis call Supreme Identity, Zen call Original Face, Christian Mystics, Christ consciousness, or True Self, Nondual Spirit, etc.
God is not some sort of Super being doing magic tricks all the time, nor is it a mythic being sitting on the top of something like Mt Olympus and bossing the world around; nor is it found in the beliefs that spend their time criticizing those beliefs. God is not just a being among other beings, not even the greatest being ever, but rather was BEING ITSELF. And this being is actually what this mystery IS. This mystery isn't an accident, it isn't the result of just not knowing any of the answers. Rather this mystery is Being itself! It is here, it is everywhere, because it is an ultimate reality itself. We are looking right at God every moment of our lives.
Real religion isn't about addressing this mystery, or answering it or figuring it out or worshipping it. Real religion is moving directly and wholeheartedly right into the middle of this mystery itself.
People that have a waking up experience, maintain it is the most real, most undeniable experience they have ever had, literally.
Where do these paths to waking up begin? Well being based on direct and immediate experience they start where ALL experience starts
With the absolute, utter, undeniable mystery of your existence.
I mean look at it. Look at the stuff arising from moment to moment.
And honestly, we have no idea why any of this is happening. How it's happening, what it all means. Where it's all going. Look at it right now. It's an absolute utter mystery.
The very first words, out of the very first mouth of the very first human there was, was "What the hell is going on here?"
Something is happening from moment to moment to moment... why?!! How? What?
It really is a mystery and this mystery is the constant all embracing reality.
And this mystery IS a mystery because its an infinite emptiness, an openness, an utter transparency, a groundless ground. The very suchness, thusness, isles of it all. You KNOW this ground, by directly BEING this ground. Becoming directly and immediately ONE with it, prior to any words or thoughts or opinions or ideas. And since this mystery is EVERYWHERE, so is this groundless ground and so are YOU when you enter directly into it.
If we really contemplate this mystery, really look into it, what do we find?
The paths of the great liberation say.
Sages and Saints have Started the discovery of what that mystery is NOT.
One of the conclusions of this approach "what the mystery is not" is that YOU are not who you think you are. You've taken this mystery and covered it up with a bunch of names, and labels and identities and concepts which really takes you away from the mystery of who and what you really are. Start by making a list of who you think you are right now.
Who and what you think you are
Bryant, pemf/energy medicine expert, business owner, father, son, brother, friend, Busters daddy, client, luxury car owner, Physicist, nutritionist, minister, yogi, Ma's devotee, Bhakta, kid. Describe your real self.
I like these books, these movies, this music and on and on. General sense of this ME.
I weigh 150, 6'0'.
Object, other, can be known or seen. List is a bunch of stuff that can be seen.
Not a subject but an object, not something that is the Seer, but that which is seen.
This traditions would maintain that all these things you just described is not your real self, it is exactly what you are NOT!
It is a list of false self, mistaken self, a very small and limited self, because it is just a bunch of objects, not your real self, not your true self.
The thing in you that is doing the real seeing, not just something that can be seen. It is the real knower, not something that can be know, it is feeler, not something that can be felt.
In short, your true self is a constant stream of pure witnessing awareness. It is the witness that is doing the seeing.
I see the mountain, but I am not the mountain.
I see the chair, but I am not the chair.
I see the computer, but I'm not the computer.
I have sensations, but I am not those sensations.
I have feelings, but I am not those feelings.
I have desires, but I am not those desires.
I have thoughts, but I am not those thoughts.
I am not identified with any of that.
In fact, I am totally free of all of it - a vast, open, infinite freedom,
I am an opening, a clearing, in which all of that is arising.
Boundless, changeless, absolutely free witness.
A pure awareness. This witness is radically open, transparently free, not stuck to anything. It's a vast emptiness that is pure mystery, beyond any word, object, concept, thing or label.
Because it can never be known as an object.
Anything you see out in world is not IT.
Not this that can be seen. A vast vast sense of absolute freedom.
Rest as that pure freedom. That is why discovering this state is called the Great Liberation. Everything that is arising in this state, is arising in this mystery. This vast openness, emptiness or clearing.
Often call a mirror mind. Receives but does not keep. Reflects but nothing sticks. Easy, spontaneous, free, effortless.
Paradoxical nature of this truth. There is nothing to achieve of become, it is something that is happening right now in any event. And all you need to do is recognize it.
You are a fish that is already wet. All you need to do is recognize that.
You need a Satori to realize that you don't need Satori.
Same is true with the eternal timeless now. You don't have to work hard to achieve the timeless now. It is something that you are truly experience right now in any event.
It is like the witness, you are witnessing this moment in any event, whether you recognize it or not.
The timeless now is not hard to attain, it is impossible to avoid.
You can see this is an illusion really easily... You think the past and future are really real?? Simply think of something from your past. Get a really clear sharp image of it.
And notice that image of the past is actually occurring RIGHT NOW. It is existing in this present now moment. And when that event was really happening, when it was real, IT was a now moment. Anything you are every aware of is the present now moment. Same holds for thinking of anything from the future. Get a good sense of that and notice it too is existing in this Present Now moment. And if it does become a reality it will be a Now moment when it does.
All that you are ever aware of is this endless, timeless ever present now. And that is all your True Self or ever present witness is ever aware of.
Eternal life belongs to those who live in the Present. And your true self is Always Already living in a real Eternity. That is your real self, awareness itself, and not any particular content of awareness.
Direct, immediate and conscious 1st person evidence. Not a belief, story or concept.
Enlightenment, satori, moksha, etc. Waking up.
Schools of waking up maintain that there are spiritual exercises, or practices, or injunctions or exemplars. They are actual spiritual paradigms. And if we engage those seriously, this will lead to direct data, direct experience, a genuine illumination of a radical ultimate ground of being. And the only reason people do not know this is that this knowledge is very different from typical knowledge.
Here you know this ultimate ground by BEING the ultimate ground. In direct experience, you realize YOU ARE IT! What the Sufis call Supreme Identity, Zen call Original Face, Christian Mystics, Christ consciousness, or True Self, Nondual Spirit, etc.
God is not some sort of Super being doing magic tricks all the time, nor is it a mythic being sitting on the top of something like Mt Olympus and bossing the world around; nor is it found in the beliefs that spend their time criticizing those beliefs. God is not just a being among other beings, not even the greatest being ever, but rather was BEING ITSELF. And this being is actually what this mystery IS. This mystery isn't an accident, it isn't the result of just not knowing any of the answers. Rather this mystery is Being itself! It is here, it is everywhere, because it is an ultimate reality itself. We are looking right at God every moment of our lives.
Real religion isn't about addressing this mystery, or answering it or figuring it out or worshipping it. Real religion is moving directly and wholeheartedly right into the middle of this mystery itself.
People that have a waking up experience, maintain it is the most real, most undeniable experience they have ever had, literally.
Where do these paths to waking up begin? Well being based on direct and immediate experience they start where ALL experience starts
With the absolute, utter, undeniable mystery of your existence.
I mean look at it. Look at the stuff arising from moment to moment.
And honestly, we have no idea why any of this is happening. How it's happening, what it all means. Where it's all going. Look at it right now. It's an absolute utter mystery.
The very first words, out of the very first mouth of the very first human there was, was "What the hell is going on here?"
Something is happening from moment to moment to moment... why?!! How? What?
It really is a mystery and this mystery is the constant all embracing reality.
And this mystery IS a mystery because its an infinite emptiness, an openness, an utter transparency, a groundless ground. The very suchness, thusness, isles of it all. You KNOW this ground, by directly BEING this ground. Becoming directly and immediately ONE with it, prior to any words or thoughts or opinions or ideas. And since this mystery is EVERYWHERE, so is this groundless ground and so are YOU when you enter directly into it.
If we really contemplate this mystery, really look into it, what do we find?
The paths of the great liberation say.
Sages and Saints have Started the discovery of what that mystery is NOT.
One of the conclusions of this approach "what the mystery is not" is that YOU are not who you think you are. You've taken this mystery and covered it up with a bunch of names, and labels and identities and concepts which really takes you away from the mystery of who and what you really are. Start by making a list of who you think you are right now.
Who and what you think you are
Bryant, pemf/energy medicine expert, business owner, father, son, brother, friend, Busters daddy, client, luxury car owner, Physicist, nutritionist, minister, yogi, Ma's devotee, Bhakta, kid. Describe your real self.
I like these books, these movies, this music and on and on. General sense of this ME.
I weigh 150, 6'0'.
Object, other, can be known or seen. List is a bunch of stuff that can be seen.
Not a subject but an object, not something that is the Seer, but that which is seen.
This traditions would maintain that all these things you just described is not your real self, it is exactly what you are NOT!
It is a list of false self, mistaken self, a very small and limited self, because it is just a bunch of objects, not your real self, not your true self.
The thing in you that is doing the real seeing, not just something that can be seen. It is the real knower, not something that can be know, it is feeler, not something that can be felt.
In short, your true self is a constant stream of pure witnessing awareness. It is the witness that is doing the seeing.
I see the mountain, but I am not the mountain.
I see the chair, but I am not the chair.
I see the computer, but I'm not the computer.
I have sensations, but I am not those sensations.
I have feelings, but I am not those feelings.
I have desires, but I am not those desires.
I have thoughts, but I am not those thoughts.
I am not identified with any of that.
In fact, I am totally free of all of it - a vast, open, infinite freedom,
I am an opening, a clearing, in which all of that is arising.
Boundless, changeless, absolutely free witness.
A pure awareness. This witness is radically open, transparently free, not stuck to anything. It's a vast emptiness that is pure mystery, beyond any word, object, concept, thing or label.
Because it can never be known as an object.
Anything you see out in world is not IT.
Not this that can be seen. A vast vast sense of absolute freedom.
Rest as that pure freedom. That is why discovering this state is called the Great Liberation. Everything that is arising in this state, is arising in this mystery. This vast openness, emptiness or clearing.
Often call a mirror mind. Receives but does not keep. Reflects but nothing sticks. Easy, spontaneous, free, effortless.
Paradoxical nature of this truth. There is nothing to achieve of become, it is something that is happening right now in any event. And all you need to do is recognize it.
You are a fish that is already wet. All you need to do is recognize that.
You need a Satori to realize that you don't need Satori.
Same is true with the eternal timeless now. You don't have to work hard to achieve the timeless now. It is something that you are truly experience right now in any event.
It is like the witness, you are witnessing this moment in any event, whether you recognize it or not.
The timeless now is not hard to attain, it is impossible to avoid.
You can see this is an illusion really easily... You think the past and future are really real?? Simply think of something from your past. Get a really clear sharp image of it.
And notice that image of the past is actually occurring RIGHT NOW. It is existing in this present now moment. And when that event was really happening, when it was real, IT was a now moment. Anything you are every aware of is the present now moment. Same holds for thinking of anything from the future. Get a good sense of that and notice it too is existing in this Present Now moment. And if it does become a reality it will be a Now moment when it does.
All that you are ever aware of is this endless, timeless ever present now. And that is all your True Self or ever present witness is ever aware of.
Eternal life belongs to those who live in the Present. And your true self is Always Already living in a real Eternity. That is your real self, awareness itself, and not any particular content of awareness.
==
**5 AQAL elements and Kosmic Address**
AQAL framework, the 5 dimensions or elements we use to understand and interpret our world. Not very well known in our cultures at large.
Most professors do not know or understands the stages of development humans go through.
Permeate everything in ourselves and the world.
Everything in the Universe has a Kosmic Address (all 5 dimensions/ elements)
Cosmos with a C, is the total material world, the physical universe.
But spelled with a K, it means ALL of the dimensions in a universe, not just matter, but matter, body, mind, soul and spirit.
AQAL includes all of those and seen from different lines, different levels and different states, a Truly comprehensive Kosmos. If we include all 5 elements we will get a very comprehensive lattice or matrix.
The suggestion here is that everything we are aware of in this universe, will fit into that lattice (lattice or n-matrix not a map because 5D multidimensional).
Every holon in the known universe, is existing in some quadrant (1st, 2nd or 3rd person perspective), each holon is at some level of development, in some line of development, when you are aware of that holon, and those levels and lines will actually govern how you interpret and experience that holon. You are also in some state or another, when you are aware of it (things are very different if you are in an awakened stay vs if you are not).
If you put all those elements together you get a cosmic address. 5 Dimensional lattice.
You can take many 2D slices to get a snapshot like Wilber-Combs Lattice of states and stages.
Torus is generalized to holon to include interiors.
One Kosmic address interacting with another Kosmic address.
Including all of them is known as showing up for relationships, work and play.
Watch how your life becomes roomier and roomier and you become more at home in the world.
You find you become more and more AT HOME.
====
Disaster of Modernity - Disenchantment of the world or the crime of the enlightenment.
So enlightenment was good news bad news.
Good news in that it was the emergence of the rational level of consciousness which differentiated the value spheres or quadrants, invented most modern sciences, outlawed slavery, and began the great emancipation movements of the previously marginalized.
Bad news was it saw everything as a great interlocking whole, but a whole that could be measured; 3rd person objective, dynamically interwoven material ITS.
And the previous great mythic-literal God which was generated by the earlier stage of development was pronounced dead.
Spirit is interlocking web of life and you one strand of this great web.
=====
Five Views of God and Ultimate Reality.
Can be looked at from any major component of cosmic address.
Human beings, staring into the abyss of the absolute mystery of their existence.
Have tried to find What is really real or definitely true, something foundational, something that is of ultimate concern, some sort of ultimate reality.
And whether we actually believe in some sort of Spirit or actual Ground of Being, we all have an ultimate concern of form or another. Make a list of the most important things in your life, the top items of that list is your ultimate concern. Its your God. Write that down and notice it is probably coming from one of the quadrants and perhaps a particular level of development or line. Unavoidably its in a particular state of consciousness.
By believers and nonbelievers alike it is usually taken to be this really old, amazing powerful person sitting somewhere in heaven and watching everything I do and able to make magical interventions on my behalf if I approach that thing correctly.
Its important to realize that any view of an UR can be derived from each and every one of those elements in the cosmic address. And its entirely different from the typical magic-mythic story which is not much more than a fairy tale along the lines of a Santa Claus, Zeus, etc.
We looked at Quadrants in previous section, lets now look at other 4 elements.
Most impressive views of what God or Spirit is have a very specific location in the AQAL matrix.
Its coming from a very specific level in lines in states and types.
1) **LEVELS** Levels of consciousness, structure-stages of development.
PRE-Rational/Personal/Conventional-POST
Egocentric-Ethnocentric-Worldcentric-Integral(loving/Compassion)
Id-EGO-God
Highest levels deemed spiritual/Lowest levels evil/Selfish
Or Spiritual Intelligence its own line
Human beings face the stunning mystery of existence. What is really real. What is that mystery
Not just what Am I feeling now (emotional intelligence), Not just what should I do now (moral intelligence), and not just what is attractive to me, aesthetic intelligence...
What is it that is really and truly there, what is ultimately real, what is of ultimate concern.
Humans develop an intelligence of ultimate reality and ultimate concern. That is what spiritual intelligence is. Absolulistic and unchalllengable... Either believe myths.
New Atheists don't see the evolution of consciousness through different stages.
THey use their rationial arguments to fight mythic,.. too narrow.
Simply yelling at fundamentalists.
Post modern, accepts all viewpoints. Islamaphobia
Human development is not going to go away ...
Need an integral level or approach.
Embrace the universal rights of a human being regardless of their
Race
Color
Sex
Gender
Ethnicity
Or Religious creed
New atheists do not criticize authentic spiritual experiences. That is, the type of spirituality that comes not from spiritual intelligence, but directly from spiritual experience.
States of consciousness:
Satori
Enlightenment
Moksha
Awakening
Metamorphosis
The Great Liberation
** We have looked at spirit in quadrants, the 1-2-3 of Spirit
** We have looked at it in levels, the higher transpersonal levels
** In lines, a line of spiritual intelligence itself.
**And in states, a direct and immediate first person state experience and evidence.
**Finally we have types... traits expressed...
1. Love
2. Compassion
3. Truthfulness
4. Selfless Service
5. Mindfulness
Start with description and end with acquaintance.
5 very different views of Ultimate Reality.
5 Elements in any Kosmic address.
5 Views of Religion
Low growing up (low stages), no waking up... two main problems of modern religions.
====
THREE wildly different views of God in the World.
1) God as some sort of superior being that exists in various magic and mythic narratives. A being who created the entire universe and could intervene in its history with various magic and miraculous events and could intervene in your own life as well, if you knew how to approach , obey and worship.
This came to be seen by the educated and rational as the kind of magic and mythic conviction we have in childhood. Both in todays childhood and the childhood of humanity itself. **PRE-RATIONAL**
2) Atheists , Agnostics, Scientism - This is the group that felt that. They felt that God is a delusional belief carried over from our childish even infantile stages of development. And there is no reason whatsoever that any clear headed modern person needs to take any of those beliefs in God seriously at all. **RATIONAL**
3) This group did not take God to mean a being among other beings, not even the greatest being ever, but rather was BEING ITSELF. And this being is actually what this mystery IS. This mystery isn't an accident, it isn't the result of just not knowing any of the answers. Rather this mystery is Being itself! It is here, it is everywhere, because it is an ultimate reality itself. We are looking right at God every moment of our lives.
God is not some sort of Super being doing magic tricks all the time, nor is it a mythic being sitting on the top of something like Mt Olympus and bossing the world around; nor is it found in the beliefs that spend their time criticizing those beliefs. This group is neither theistic nor atheistic, these are the Pure mystics, similar to the word mystery. And they discovered from all faiths around the world that if you don't simply deny or ignore this mystery, but feel your way right into the very core of this mystery of your existence, you will discover exactly what this mystery is. ***TRANSRATIONAL*** includes rational but transcends it into more encompassing awareness that becomes one with the mystery itself.
Real religion isn't about addressing this mystery, or answering it or figuring it out or worshipping it. Real religion is moving directly and wholeheartedly right into the middle of this mystery itself.
And this mystery IS a mystery because its an infinite emptiness, an openness, an utter transparency, a groundless ground. The very suchness, thusness, isles of it all. You KNOW this ground, by directly BEING this ground. Becoming directly and immediately ONE with it, prior to any words or thoughts or opinions or ideas. And since this mystery is EVERYWHERE, so is this groundless ground and so are YOU when you enter directly into it.
Religious viewpoints of Ultimate Spirit or Ultimate Reality humans have created. They are impacting you right now and how you view your own life. Help you clarify thoughts about this ultimate question and who and what you really are, ultimately.
Start with 4 quadrants, which represent some of the most basic dimensions in our life and in the universe at large.
1st, 2nd and 3rd person perspectives.
Each one of those notions has generated an enormous number of massively influential notions of what Spirit is.
Cognitive Intelligence - what it is one can actually know
Moral Intelligence - what one should do ethically
Aesthetic/Artistic Intelligence - what one thinks is beautiful
Spiritual Intelligence - what is really and truly ultimately real