Central Ideas of the Major Epochs

"Every great epoch of human evolution seems to have one absolutely central idea, an idea that totally dominates the entire epoch, and summarizes its entire approach to Spirit and Kosmos, and tells us something altogether profound. And each seems to build upon its predecessor. These ideas are so simple and so central, they can be put in a sentence.
Foraging: Spirit is interwoven with earthbody. Foraging cultures the world over sing this profound truth. The very earth is our blood and bones and marrow, and we are all sons and daughters of that earth--in which, and through which, Spirit flows freely.
Horticulture: But Spirit demands sacrifice. Sacrifice is the great theme running through all horticultural societies, and not just in the concrete form of actual ritual sacrifice, although we certainly see it there as well. But the central and pervading notion is that certain specific human steps must be taken to come into accord with Spirit. Ordinary or typical humanity has to get out of the way, so to speak-- has to be sacrificed--in order for spirit to shine forth more clearly. In other wods, there are steps on the way to a more fully realized Spiritual awareness.
Agrarian: These spiritual steps are in fact arrayed in a Great Chain of Being. The Great Chain is the central, dominant, inescapable theme of every mythic-agrarian society the world over, without exception. And since most of "civilized history" as been agrarian history, Lovejoy was quite right in stating that the Great Chain has been the dominant idea in most of civilized culture.
Modernity: The Great Chain unfolds in evolutionary time. In other words, evolution. The fact that Spirit was usually left out of the equation is simply the disaster of modernity, not the dignity nor the definition of modernity. Evolution is the one great background concept that hangs over every single modern movement; it is the God of modernity. And in fact, this is a tremendously spiritual realization, because, whether or not it consciously identifies itself as spiritual, the fact is that it plugs humans into the Kosmos in an unbroken fashion, and further, points to the inescapable but frightening fact that humans are co-creators of their own evolution, their own history, their own worldspaces, because:
Postmodernity: Nothing is pregiven; the world is not just a perception but also an interpretation. That this leads many postmodernists into fits of aperspectival madness is not our concern. That nothing is pregiven is the great postmodern discovery, and it plugs humans into a plastic Kosmos of their own co-creation, Spirit become self-conscious in the most acute forms, on the way to its own superconscious shock."

From Ken Wilber's A Brief history of Everything (322-23)

Aperspectival Madness: Hiding Behind Irony

“Aperspectival madness” might fairly well describe much of the last two decades of art, art criticism, lit crit, and cultural studies. Irony is one of the few places you can hide in a world of aperspectival madness -- say one thing, mean another, therefore don’t get caught in the embarrassment of taking a stand. (Since, allegedly, no stand is better than another, one simply must not commit -- sincerity is death). So skip sincerity, opt for sardonic. Don’t construct, deconstruct; don’t look for depth, just hug the surfaces; avoid content, offer noise -- “surfaces, surfaces, surfaces is all they ever found,” as Bret Easton Ellis summarized the scene. No wonder that David Foster Wallace, in a recent essay that received much attention, lamented the pervasiveness of the art of “trendy, sardonic exhaustion” and “reflexive irony,” art that is “sophisticated and extremely shallow.”

From Ken Wilber Online: Here

Ken Wilber's Four Quadrants: The Basics

"Okay. Let's say i have a thought of going to the grocery store. When I have that thought, what I actually experience is the thought itself, the interior thought and its meaning--the symbols, the images, the idea of going to the grocery store. That's Upper Left.
While I am having this thought, there are, of course, correlative changes occurring in my brain--dopamine increases, acetylcholine jumps the synapses, beta brain waves increase, or whatnot. Those are observable brain behaviors in my brain. they can be empirically observed, scientifically registered. And that is Upper Right.
Now the internal thought itself only makes sense in terms of my cultural background. If I spoke a different language, the thought would be composed of different symbols and have different meanings. If I existed in a primal tribal society a million years ago, I would never even have thought "going to the grocery store." It might be, "Time to kill the bear." The point is that my thoughts themselves arise in a cultural background that gives texture and meaning and context to my individual thoughts, and indeed, I would not even be able to "talk to myself" if I did not exist in a community of individuals who also talk to me.
...
But culture itself is not simply disembodied, hanging in idealistic midair. It has material components, which as my own individual thoughts have material brain components. All cultural events have social correlates. These concrete social components include types of technology, forces of production (horticultural, agrarian, industrial, etc.), concrete institutions, written codes and patterns, geopolitical locations (towns, villages, states, etc.), and so on. And these material, social, empirically observable components--the actual social system-- are crucial in helping to determine the types of cultural worldview."

-- From A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber, pg. 80-81

Timeless Present or Fleeting Present?

"Because we demand a future, we live each moment in expectation and unfulfillment. We live each moment in passing. In just this way the real nunc sans, the timeless present, is reduced to the nunc fluens, the fleeting present, the passing present of a mere one or two seconds. We expect each moment to pass on to a future moment, for in this fashion we pretend to avoid death by always rushing toward an imagined future. We want to meet ourselves in the future. We don't want just now--we want another now, and another, and another, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And thus, paradoxically, our impoverished present is fleeting precisely because we demand that it end! We want it to end so that it can thereby pass on to yet another moment, a future moment, which will in turn live only to pass."

Ken Wilber in No Boundary

The "Big Three" -- I, WE & IT

Below is a table showing ways in which various thinkers touched on the "Big Three" -- I, WE & IT -- that make up Ken Wilber's Four Quandrants.

Four Different Ways, Four Quadrants

In Walter Truett Anderson's "Four Different Ways to Be Absolutely Right" he discusses four different world views:

"The four worldviews are (a) the postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed; (b) the scientific-rational, in which truth is "found" through methodical, disciplined inquiry; (c) the social-traditional in which truth is found in the heritage of American and Western Civilization' and (d) the neo-romantic in which truth is found either through attaining harmony with nature and/or spiritual exploration of the inner self. Each of these has its own set of truths, and its own ideas about what truth is-- where and how you look for it, how you test or prove it."

I've been listening to Ken Wilber's interviews in an audio series called Kosmic Consciousness, and after re-reading the above article I'm struck by how well the Four Different Ways fit into Wilber's four quadrants:


The neo-romantic would be I
The scientific-rational would be IT
The social-traditional would be ITS
The postmodern-ironist would be WE

Meditation Notes from Ken Wilber

Higher Consciousness Level 1: Unified Bodymind (Body/Mind/centaur level)

1. Lie down on your back, arms alongside, legs slightly parted, close your eyes, breath deeply and easily
2. Give direct feeling-attention to different parts of the body; feel the deep body sensations; not conceptual thinking about those parts of the body
3. Draw deep breaths from the throat all the way down to the abdomen; breath = "vital force"; inhale as charging up the hara/naval-abdomen with energy; exhale as pleasure/joy radiating throughout your body and out to the entire cosmos
4. "Once this cycle becomes full, then start to allow all thinking to dissolve in the exhalation and pass to infinity. Do the same with all distressful feelings, with disease, with suffering, with pain. Allow feeling-attention to pass though all present conditions and then beyond them to infinity, moment to moment to moment."
5. Discover blocked areas: numbness, lack of feeling, deadness, tightness, tension, rigidity, or pain; common areas of tightness and tension: neck, eyes, anus, diaphragm, shoulders, lower back; common areas of numbness: pelvic area, genitals, heart, lower abdomen, or the extremities

• "Every block, every tension or pressure in the body, is basically a muscular holding-in of some taboo impulse or feeling."; common meanings bottom TEKW p.79, each part of the body associated with a different emotion
• "Forced relaxation" does not work, although all of these are under voluntary muscle control; give your full attention to that area and actively and consciously attempt to increase the tension; release the buried emotions associated with the tension area; remind yourself that you are actively trying to hold something in (this will usually force the release), try to increase the resistance (which will make it give way)
• "The block is released when feeling-attention can flow though that area in a full and perfectly unobstructed fashion on its way to infinity."

From Meditation Notes from Ken Wilber on IntegralWorld.net

Who's Crazy Here?

Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?

—Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, 42–3


If what is at issue is not truth but happiness and freedom, why must philosophy have the last word? Why should not faith and myth have equal rights? Formerly philosophers sought peace of mind while pretending to seek the truth. Perhaps we should set ourselves a different aim: to discover which illusions we can give up, and which we will never shake off. We will still be seekers after truth, more so than in the past; but we will renounce the hope of a life without illusion. Henceforth our aim will be to identify our invincible illusions. Which untruths might we be rid of, and which can we not do without? -- that is the question, that is the experiment."
—John Gray, Straw Dogs, 83

Meditation Notes from the Writings of Ken Wilber

"Slowly begin to silently recite the following to yourself, trying to realize as vividly as possible the import of each statement:"

• "I have a body, but I am not my body. I can see and feel my body, and what can be seen and felt is not the true Seer. My body may be tired or excited, sick or healthy, heavy or light, but that has nothing to do with my inward I. I have a body, but I am not my body."
• "I have desires, but I am not my desires. I can know my desires, and what can be known is not the true Knower. Desires come and go, floating through my awareness, but they do not affect my inward I. I have desires, but I am not desires."
• "I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I can feel and sense my emotions, and what can be felt and sensed is not the true Feeler. Emotions pass through me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have emotions, but I am not emotions."
• "I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts. I can know and intuit my thoughts, and what can be known is not the true Knower. Thoughts come to me and thoughts leave me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts."
  
  

Affirm as concretely as possible:

• "I am what remains, a pure center of awareness, an unmoved witness of all these thoughts, emotions, feelings, and desires."

From http://www.integralworld.net/meditation.html

K. Wilbs

Ken Wilber:

"There is nothing spooky or occult about this. We have already seen identity shift from matter to body to mind, each of which involved a decentering or dis-identifying with the lesser dimension... consciousness is simply continuing this process and dis-identifying with the mind itself, which is precisely why it can witness the mind, see the mind, experience the mind. The mind is no longer a subject, it is starting to become an object [in the perception of] the observing self. And so the mystical, contemplative and yogic traditions pick up where the mind leaves off... with the observing self as it begins to transcend the mind."

"The contemplative traditions are based upon a series of experiments in awareness: what if you pursue this Witness to its source? What if you inquire within, pushing deeper and deeper into the source of awareness itself? What do you find? As a repeatable, reproducible experiment in awareness? One of the most famous answers to that question begins: There is a subtle essence that pervades all reality. It is the reality of all that is, and the foundation of all that is. That essence is all. That essence is the real. And thou, thou art that. In other words, the observing self eventually discloses its own source, which is Spirit itself, Emptiness itself... and the stages of transpersonal growth and development are basically the stages of following this observing self to its ultimate abode."

Q: "How do you know these phenomena actually exist?

A: "As the observing self begins to transcend... deeper or higher dimensions of consciousness come into focus. All of the items on that list are objects that can be directly perceived in that worldspace. Those items are as real in [that] worldspace as rocks are in the sensorimotor worldspace and concepts are in the mental worldspace. If cognition awakens or develops to this level, you simply perceive these new objects as simply as you would perceive rocks in the sensory world or images in the mental world. They are simply given to awareness, they simply present themselves, and you don't have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out if they're real or not."

"Of course, if you haven't awakened to [this] cognition, then you will see none of this, just as a rock cannot see mental images. And you will probably have unpleasant things to say about people who do see them".^[10]