[dmb] Maybe you'll take your favorite example and explain the difference between the original idea and Wilber's version of it. This might give me a chance to see this so-called "abuse" much more specifically. Then we'll have a nice fight about that.
[Krimel] The example that first caught my attention was the Piagetians. Piaget's own work has always been as respected as it is controversial. It seems to me that the biggest change in his theories over the years has been pushing back the date ranges represented in his stages. Kohlberg is less highly regarded. His moral stages of development can be criticized because basically he claims to have found what he was looking for. That is he asked people questions designed to provide answers that could be analyzed through his theoretical framework. His student Carol Gilligan whom Wilber cites throughout SES actually criticized her teacher's work on these grounds and then constructed her own hierarchy which Wilber much admires. My point is that these three people's work is related but also at odds. Wilber claims to have reconciled their difference and drafted them all onto his team whether they actually wish to join or not. Secondly he ignores some of the clear indications of Piaget's work, Instead he runs off to climb ladders with Gilligan. Piaget shows that when an infant it born her brain still has some growing to do. But even at birth she is equipped genetically to fit into her environment. She quickly comes to see specific patterns, to move toward certain smells... As she grows, more cognitive capacity is displayed. The higher stages of cognitive growth are in the direction of increasingly rational thought; language, mathematics, art, music. There is a direct correlation between cognitive functioning, consciousness if you will, and neural development. All of this emergence is in the direction of increased rationality. Rational though is verbal thought. It is symbolic from metaphor to calculus. This all winds up in the "pre/trans fallacy"; one of Wilber boogeymen. Here he claims there is all sorts of trouble over whether or not mystical states are really just reversion to infantile experience. Among the problems with this view is that while rational thought is the highest level of human consciousness it is not the only or even the most important kind of human consciousness. The problem with mysticism is that it speaks a language that can not be spoken. It is not verbal. No set of symbols capture it. It is not rational. But we know these nonverbal parts of our selves pretty well. Wilber mentions Sperry. Sperry's worked showed that we have within us separate selves. Some parts of us can not speak. But they are often expressed through emotion. This is why religions and mystical practices have emotional appeal. There is an emotional way of being and frankly most of us be that way most of the time. Personal decisions are seldom made rationally. As I mentioned to Kevin not long ago the world is not being run into the ground by rational thinking. It is not so much that Wilber wishes to distinguish between infantile and mystical states, who doesn't. He seeks the elevation mysticism through the term "transrational" claiming that mysticism transcends and includes the rational. Poppycock! Wilber talks about "the Witness". The witness is Atman. He says things about it like. "The observer in you, the Witness in you, transcends the isolated person in you" But this: "pure Witness or aboriginal Self, which starts to emerge, however haltingly, as an experiential reality at this psychic stage;" is either a rational process or it is not a Witness. A witness gives testimony. A witness speaks. The witness lies in the ability to recall and give meaning to the mystical state. This witness is in fact a way for the non-rational self to speak through the rational self, as in dreams. But it in no way gives the witness or soul or whatever, a higher or transrational status. The internet is transrational. Beyond this look at the way Wilber talks about the levels of mystical states. Nature mysticism, deity mysticism, formless mysticism, and nondual mysticism, Wilber has a rap about them all. Progressions and stages of consciousness... Says who? Who can say that Emerson and St. Teresa or Aurobindo were talking about the same thing or different things? They express their experiences in the language they are comfortable with. Whatever form you shape their descriptions into, it does not transcend a single human being. It is not transrational. Rational thinking is not all that and chips; but it is a more recent emergence. There is not reason to suspect that non-rational thinking is "better". It clearly is different. Humans filter their nonrational thoughts rationally. When they don't trouble ensues. No, the claim the mystical states are "higher" or "deeper" or more highly evolved has no basis. But that's just part of the trouble with Wilber... moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
