Ken Wilber Conference Call: Integral Post-Metaphysics
I’ve included here a bunch of questions I was given the opportunity to ask Ken Wilber – the visionary Integral philosopher who inspired my own quest for a post-metaphysical approach to spirituality – which is probably the single most important issue in regards to the further evolution of the world’s great religious traditions…
You can listen to the audio download from the Integral Spiritual Center here, (IPM No. 9, 10 & 11) but will have to be a subscribing member to do so.
Hi Ken, here’s my questions for Appendix II:
1. Are there any pre-given realities in an Integral Post-Metaphysics? Here’s a few possible examples from your own work: a) Always Already Awareness – the space in which all sentient beings and perspectives arise and pass away? b) Whitehead’s “creative advance into novelty”, without which evolution could never have gotten started? c) The Twenty Tenets (Ch. 2, SES)?
2. As Heidegger writes on the ontological difference, metaphysics asks the question of Being which concerns something “essentially different from beings”, or, more succinctly, “the Being of beings ‘is’ not itself a being”. Being, therefore, is not a determinate ‘such-and-such a being’ with a Kosmic address, and for Heidegger the very problem with Western metaphysics is that is seeks to rationally delineate the whole range of beings, entities, and things, and in this process we become duped by beings, and end up in a state of oblivion about the question of Being itself. So does an IPM with its precise way of pinning down the meaning of actual occasions by specifying the Kosmic locations of both the perceiver and the perceived still take place within the horizon of traditional metaphysics, which forgets the ontological difference between Being and beings and seeks instead to establish cognitive certainty by fixing in place a stable center of meaning based on the boundaries and distinctions of objective-descriptive language?
3. Does an integral post-metaphysics, and specifically the claim that “the meaning of a statement is the means of its enactment” (the three strands of knowledge) reduce spirituality to a scientific experiment governed by a set or rules, of the form “If you want to know this, do this”? Given that a spiritual path often involves faith – or an interior committment to something beyond any rational calculation or horizon of expectancy, the more that our assertions about Spirit are governed by these kinds of rules and injunctions, then the more easily we can refuse the objetive uncertainty of faith and excuse ourselves from moving forward by saying, ‘this is really not my doing it’s the rule’. So in contrast to specifying the Kosmic address of the different levels of God with a program of rules and procedures for the enactment of ones awakening, is it not better to tolerate ambiguity and live with a degree of uncertainty in our statements about Spirit, and confess that we do not in some deep way know exactly what is what? For when I truly do not know where I am going, and when the clear directives of enacting ones own realization are suspended, then I am faced with making a real move, an inward passionate committment to something, I know not what… as Dom Crossan says “the big difference, it seems to me, is whether you have a goal with no center (i.e. no Kosmic Address) without being scared.”
4. Regarding this claim that the meaning of a statement is the means of it’s enactment, is there a risk that IPM could become a form of what Foucault called bio-power, a technique for subjugating humans via regulatory control. While the 3 strands is appropriate and necessary for many forms of scientific knowledge, is that really how ones spiritual self-understanding deepens? The idea that the meaning of a statement (e.g. God is Love) involves a structure of rules that control the behaviour of human persons sounds like the external observances of mythic-membership religion, as if there are necessary actions that one must perform to have access to the love of God. Moreover, the idea that if you don’t follow the injunction you cannot be “in the know” may even close off the often surprising way in which new discoveries and breakthroughs tend to emerge, as in way Genpo’s Big Mind process breaks with the prescribed rules and injunctions of traditional Zen practice.
5. What is the post-metaphysical status of mystical-poetic language such as: Eckhart’s pointing-out instructions, the enigmatic sayings of Zen masters, or the parables of Jesus of Nazareth? Given that all of these interpretations of spiritual experience also deconstruct the fallacy of conceptual presence (i.e. the myth of the given), is there a post-metaphysical language that can express the inexpressible in a way that can facilitate ones spiritual awakening? Can the skillful use of linguitsic signifiers in mystical poetry, (e.g. your own pointing-out instructions), bring forth and enact (in a receptive audience) the world-space of its actual referent, i.e. Spirit? And given that such teachings do not succumb to the “myth of the given”, is mystical languge a legitimate apporach to post-metaphysical spirituality?
6. Since the fundamental elements of the world have to be set apart before we can even begin to take a persepctive, is this irreducible two-ness or the diffrential spacing of all phenomenal experience an enabling condition of the 4 Quadrants? In this sense what is the ontological status of the 4 Quadrants and indigenous perspectives? Do they constitute a “myth of the given” or are they a priori categories of the knowing subject? Or a Kosmic habit laid down by evolution?
7. You write, “Spiritual realities are on exactly the same footing as electrons, Gaia, rocks, and the square root of negative one.” Given that Spirit is structurally impossible to fix in place and cannot be grasped as a phenomenon ‘out there’, is this re-framing of the different levels of God into a Kosmic address system at risk of conceptual idolatry – the attempt to turn the meaning of God into an object of knowledge, to appropriate Spirit and close off it’s boundaries by forcing a Kosmic self-identity upon it?
8. How does one specify a Kosmic address, particularly in regard to the “possible phenomenological confusion” between madness and mystcism? Is there not always an element of uncertainty when it comes to definite statements about whether one is ecstatic or delusional, enlightened or undergoing a psychotic-inflation, a post-conventional saint or pre-conventional sinner? Is one of the roles of a Kosmic address system to dis-ambiguate these tensions and provide objective certainty and clarity to these limit-experiences and different states of consciousness?
9. Is the statement that Enlightenment is to be “one with all states and all stages that are in existence at any given time” synonomous with the statement that ones True Nature in Christ is “fully human” and “fully divine” – if one accepts that the “truly human” aspect of this statement evolves through time.
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