A Question for Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics

[AtheisticNonduality]

The end of history is up, not down.

[Oeaohoo]

40 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I think you're expecting a bit much of the model in terms of what specific things it can tell you. It's not a very specific model. It gives a very broad and general overview, and you lose some details in the process (there's a trade-off in choosing a particular level of analysis; specificity vs. generalizability). Its purpose is metatheoretical in that it places already very wide categories into an even wider context. Eschatology seems to be a rather narrow category in this context.

Spiral dynamics is an integral (!) part of integral theory - Wilber uses it as his main model for the historical element of his attempted synthesis - and spiral dynamics clearly describes a view of history in which every stage is more “advanced” than the last, which is in direct contradiction to the testimony of more or less every major religion. Thus to imply that the idea of progress and a denial of eschatology is not an important part of integral theory is simply false.

19 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

The end of history is up, not down.

What does that mean? 

In a way I agree, in that the feeling of being part of history - in the sense originally created by Herodotus and gradually refined over the last two millennia to the point of total absurdity  - was already a sign of decadence, in the same sort of way that people remember trauma much more clearly than peace and tranquility.

Or do you mean that the next cycle of time will be better than this one? And onwards and onwards forever? If so, why do you say that? That idea suffers from many of the same problems I have raised above: how could the greater come from the lesser? how can becoming be greater than Being? why is there a necessity for ever greater progress if everything is already God?

Or just that the new dawn will be better than the dark night? Obviously this is true.

Or are you just insisting based on nothing, like the original self-help guru Emilé Coué, that “every day, in every way, it’s getting better and better”?

[Barna]

How I see it is that western civilization is maximizing opportunities. And I agree that this is a very dangerous experiment. Because maximizing opportunities means maximizing the possibility of addiction, maximizing the possibility for comfort, maximizing the possibility to choose what to eat, what to read, what to believe, what to spend time with. We also maximize the possibility to annihilate 7 billion people with a push of a button, or by slowly poisoning the planet. 

But I still call this progress. The higher we go the faster we go and the bigger we can fall. It'll always be like this. 

But we're not doomed. You're very fascinated with the asshole of modern humanity where all the shit is. But if you zoom out a bit, you can see the brain and the heart of humanity as well. Look at it as a whole. 
Look at the energy sector, we're becoming more and more sustainable. Look at the food sector, there's more possibility than ever to eat vegetables instead of meat. More and more people realize that enslaving animals for their meat will be considered by future generations as brutal as enslaving people. There's a very progressive part of humanity that's becoming more and more loving, not just to humans, but to the whole planet. Our bubble of care is extended more than ever. 

The most important progress is the progress towards love. That's God's game. God forgot everything to become human, and to learn to love from scratch. And we're learning to love collectively as well. The more we learn the faster we learn, and this manifests itself as ever-accelerating progress all around us.

Nothing is artificial around us. Humanity is part of nature, and tech is part of our nature. It's all just an ever-accelerating evolution of love.

And I agree with you, that if we just look at the world from the perspective of progress then we tend to forget about decay and death. 
But counterintuitively, the more the individual progresses in the spiritual domain, the more he becomes friends with death. People, who are sincere with their spiritual practice, recognize the importance of letting go. They recognize the importance of taking psychedelics to explore death-like experiences. Death is not the opposite of spiritual progress, death is the accelerator of progress in this domain. 

You suggest that the integral model doesn't include the domain of decay and death. For that I recommend you to read for example The Religion of Tomorrow by Ken Wilber. It's a very detailed book, and it explains over and over again that spiritual progress is based on letting go of more and more of our identity. Every step on the ladder requires a deeper and deeper death of the self. Progress and death walk hand in hand on the spiritual path.

[AtheisticNonduality]

@Oeaohoo The greater always comes from the lesser. Complex beings are always made of simpler beings, and across time they must become that way through evolution that is upward in the structural holarchical complexity of their bodies and their minds and what comes beyond that. It is all God, but not all of it is a realization of God.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Oeaohoo said:

Spiral dynamics is an integral (!) part of integral theory - Wilber uses it as his main model for the historical element of his attempted synthesis - and spiral dynamics clearly describes a view of history in which every stage is more “advanced” than the last, which is in direct contradiction to the testimony of more or less every major religion. Thus to imply that the idea of progress and a denial of eschatology is not an important part of integral theory is simply false.

It might be because these eschatological visions don't have much in the way of empirical evidence (historical or experimental), meanwhile the structural stage theory of SD and related theories do have some. Remember that Wilber's synthesis is not merely about theology or ontology, but also science.

[Oeaohoo]

 

2 hours ago, Barna said:

How I see it is that western civilization is maximizing opportunities. And I agree that this is a very dangerous experiment. Because maximizing opportunities means maximizing the possibility of addiction, maximizing the possibility for comfort, maximizing the possibility to choose what to eat, what to read, what to believe, what to spend time with. We also maximize the possibility to annihilate 7 billion people with a push of a button, or by slowly poisoning the planet. 

But I still call this progress. The higher we go the faster we go and the bigger we can fall. It'll always be like this. 

Like I have said, I am not denying that there is progress in material terms. It is like a slider moving from spirit to matter, from angelic to demonic, from quality to quantity. The more there is of one, the less there is of the other.

2 hours ago, Barna said:

But we're not doomed. You're very fascinated with the asshole of modern humanity where all the shit is. But if you zoom out a bit, you can see the brain and the heart of humanity as well. Look at it as a whole. 
Look at the energy sector, we're becoming more and more sustainable. Look at the food sector, there's more possibility than ever to eat vegetables instead of meat. More and more people realize that enslaving animals for their meat will be considered by future generations as brutal as enslaving people. There's a very progressive part of humanity that's becoming more and more loving, not just to humans, but to the whole planet. Our bubble of care is extended more than ever. 

All of these things are only true in a certain sense.

I don’t know enough about energy so I will pass over it, except to say that sustainable energy is largely just a way to artificially prop up the false needs of modern consumer society. There was no need to be sustainable before because there was no need to use absurd amounts of energy to drive to your big appointment with nothingness or beam porn into your lonely bed at night.

I would say that most people should not have access to meat at all. In the Middle Ages, the carnival was a celebration in which the entire social order was inverted: the lords would become serfs and the serfs would become lords. Ordinarily, only the lords would eat meat so, during the carnival, the serfs would enjoy meat instead. That is why it is called a carnival, from the same root as carnivore. Today, we live in a permanent carnival (“clown world” as the meme goes, though most of the people who use it are equally misguided) so everybody always has access to meat. The price of this is factory farms and brutal mass exploitation of animals. This is an example of what I called “artificial egalitarianism”.

Charles Taylor calls societal conventions like the carnival “anti-structure”, a temporary respite from the stifling structures of society. Today the society itself is anti-structure: a society against “social constructs”, a society against walls and borders, a society against the very existence of any distinction or “discrimination”, a society which denies the most basic facts of human nature like the difference between a man and a woman, to say nothing of the absurd self-hatred imposed on people either by largely false ideologies of guilt and privilege or by the imposition of false ideals and standards. Many of these things are simply products of the present postmodern confusion so they don’t necessarily prove that history overall isn’t progressing, but I still can’t agree that any of this constitutes progress.

Many people have become vegetables today, so you are right there!

2 hours ago, Barna said:

The most important progress is the progress towards love. That's God's game. God forgot everything to become human, and to learn to love from scratch. And we're learning to love collectively as well. The more we learn the faster we learn, and this manifests itself as ever-accelerating progress all around us.

Nothing is artificial around us. Humanity is part of nature, and tech is part of our nature. It's all just an ever-accelerating evolution of love.

And I agree with you, that if we just look at the world from the perspective of progress then we tend to forget about decay and death. 
But counterintuitively, the more the individual progresses in the spiritual domain, the more he becomes friends with death. People, who are sincere with their spiritual practice, recognize the importance of letting go. They recognize the importance of taking psychedelics to explore death-like experiences. Death is not the opposite of spiritual progress, death is the accelerator of progress in this domain. 

There is no need to progress towards love! Love existed before time and history came into being. The point of this world is simply as a test of love. Like you say later, decay and death are but one more test of love. I understand that you say this because “God forgot everything to become human and to learn to love from scratch”, but I do not believe that this is so. Infants know very well how to love; they basically are pure love and acceptance. In almost all cases today, however, they are immediately traumatised by a society in which there is very little love left.

You are absolutely right that spirituality is about letting go of more and more of our identity, and maybe that is why the last age is worse than the first. Hell will burn through a lot of identity! After all, in every religion I am talking about the ultimate state is one of negation: Ain Soph Aur, Fana, Nirvana, Nirguna Brahman, the Godhead. The mystics with the deepest experience always spoke in negative language. Leo shared an excellent quote from Meister Eckhart recently, something like: ‘Only the hand that erases itself can write the truth.’

The most fundamental problem I have with your claims is that the love that is celebrated today is a very one sided-form of love, a compassion without wisdom. Not only that, but often a compassion which hates and fears wisdom. Ultimately, Love is not separate from Truth.

2 hours ago, Barna said:

You suggest that the integral model doesn't include the domain of decay and death. For that I recommend you to read for example The Religion of Tomorrow by Ken Wilber. It's a very detailed book, and it explains over and over again that spiritual progress is based on letting go of more and more of our identity. Every step on the ladder requires a deeper and deeper death of the self. Progress and death walk hand in hand on the spiritual path.

I didn’t mean to suggest that, just that the overall view of history in his theory is one of “ever-accelerating progress towards love”, as you said yourself. His exposition of metaphysics is generally pretty good.

I read his shorter book in the same vein on Buddhism, something about a “fourth-turning of Buddhism” where it finally becomes women, gay and transgender friendly… The Buddha himself only reluctantly allowed women into the Sangha in the knowledge that the Dharma would last for half as long! But I guess Ken Wilber knows better than Buddha what Buddhism should be. Why not just call it Wilberism and be done with it? Maybe Buddho-Wilberism! Only a pathological narcissist could refer to “Wilber 1”, “Wilber 2”, “Wilber 10”… They aren’t even his ideas! But I shouldn’t turn this into a character assassination. I started reading The Religion of Tomorrow but I didn’t get very far. Maybe I’ll try it again.

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

The greater always comes from the lesser. Complex beings are always made of simpler beings, and across time they must become that way through evolution that is upward in the structural holarchical complexity of their bodies and their minds and what comes beyond that. It is all God, but not all of it is a realization of God.

This is just a statement of the modern myth. However, there might be something in your last sentence: “It is all God, but not all of it is a realisation of God”. What is is it a realisation of then? The demiurge? The devil? Nothing (as the opposite of something)?

39 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

It might be because these eschatological visions don't have much in the way of empirical evidence (historical or experimental), meanwhile the structural stage theory of SD and related theories do have some. Remember that Wilber's synthesis is not merely about theology or ontology, but also science.

Exactly! Wilber reveals himself as half-postmodern schmuck, half-William-James loving American pragmatist who just cares about the “hard data”. Everybody was crying out for those two things to be “integrated”! Forgive me for having some childish fun. I am not very convinced that there is any more empirical evidence for spiral progressivism than for the traditional view of decay, but your response is clarifying. To me it just seems like there is no need to muddy the waters of pure metaphysics with modern methods of empiricism and skepticism.

[AtheisticNonduality]

Just now, Oeaohoo said:

This is just a statement of the modern myth. However, there might be something in your last sentence: “It is all God, but not all of it is a realisation of God”. What is is it a realisation of then? The demiurge? The devil? Nothing (as the opposite of something)?

That is not a modern myth. Things have gotten and will continue to get more complex teleologically, as has the standardized case of strings to quarks to atoms to molecules to organelles to cells to tissues to organs to organ systems to organisms to communities, etc. But communities are in the intersubjective/interobjective spheres and are not the only highest evolutions here; there are also changes happening in the compositions of individual humans as time goes on. This is definitely not reducible to SD, and Wilber doesn't even mention SD in SES, which has been considered his magnum opus. But even Wilber certainly does not understand the full scale of the upward process going on right now, and additionally no human at all may get anything but insights masked by dreamlike occlusions.

Here is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's model, which shows the physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere and alludes to the Omega Point, which is an ascension, but also the decay alternative option, which I do not take seriously.

As for what our experience is when we are not actively realizing God, that is God unrealized, which you may call "the demiurge" or the "the devil" if you like; Nothing, on the other hand, is Everything, including God realized, and is not just God unrealized.

[Carl-Richard]

12 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

Exactly! Wilber reveals himself as half-postmodern schmuck, half-William-James loving American pragmatist who just cares about the “hard data”. Everybody was crying out for those two things to be “integrated”! Forgive me for having some childish fun.

Loool don't worry 

 

20 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

I am not very convinced that there is any more empirical evidence for spiral progressivism than for the traditional view of decay, but your response is clarifying.

If you're talking about developmental-psychological stage theories and their rampant empirical WEIRD-bias, then you have a point. That said, it's not necessary to project a normative conception of progress onto the core of these models, which is fundamentally about describing the movement from lower to higher complexity. It's perfectly possible to have a highly complex civilization that buckles under its own weight, which could compel you to associate complexity with decay.

 

20 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

To me it just seems like there is no need to muddy the waters of pure metaphysics with modern methods of empiricism and skepticism.

Well, although science cannot settle metaphysical questions, if your metaphysics is in conflict with the existing science (and you care about science), it's a problem.

[Barna]

@Oeaohoo you're completely missing the point in every paragraph I wrote. I'm not trying to convey ideas or beliefs about love. I'm trying to express the attitude of love. 

You already see that you can't progress anymore without letting go of your beliefs, don't you? But instead of letting go of your beliefs, you make up a whole case against progress itself.

Your ego is thinking outside of the box. My deepest congratulations to it. I've never seen such a survivor before  

[Oeaohoo]

 

9 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

That is not a modern myth. Things have gotten and will continue to get more complex teleologically, as has the standardized case of strings to quarks to atoms to molecules to organelles to cells to tissues to organs to organ systems to organisms to communities, etc. But communities are in the intersubjective/interobjective spheres and are not the only highest evolutions here; there are also changes happening in the compositions of individual humans as time goes on. This is definitely not reducible to SD, and Wilber doesn't even mention SD in SES, which has been considered his magnum opus. But even Wilber certainly does not understand the full scale of the upward process going on right now, and additionally no human at all may get anything but insights masked by dreamlike occlusions.

Here is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's model, which shows the physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere and alludes to the Omega Point, which is an ascension, but also the decay alternative option, which I do not take seriously.

What are these changes? What is going on right now?

That graph is a very amusing attempt to combine Christianity and evolution! Maybe they should just teach that to evangelical Christians who still deny evolution. The omega point will obviously be an ascension because life is what is below. “Life is a journey in the nighttime hours”.

9 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

As for what our experience is when we are not actively realizing God, that is God unrealized, which you may call "the demiurge" or the "the devil" if you like; Nothing, on the other hand, is Everything, including God realized, and is not just God unrealized.

The traditional view of Creation is something like this: first (obviously, this is “before” even time) there is only God; God splits itself and is split into an original duality between an active, spiritual and masculine pole which could be called essence, and a passive, material and feminine pole which could be called substance (Purusha and Prakriti, Shiva and Shakti, Adam and Eve). This substance has also been called prima materia: it is the uncarved block out of which the sculptor (essence, the masculine principle) carves His creation, the womb that is impregnated by the male seed, and so on.

The best way to describe both of them, though, is as: Being (essence) and Becoming (substance). Though everything that is created partakes both of essence and of substance, the material aspect of creation is predominantly substance. Would you be happy for me to say that this is what you mean by “God unrealised”? This is how I understand it. The material world lacks essence. This is why, for example, a key part of the alchemical opus is distilling the essence: an allegory for tracing back the process of creation to the penultimate original principle of Being.

It seems to me though that the idea of evolution is only true from the perspective of God unrealised, if at all. Obviously from the perspective of God, the lesser comes from the greater; God is superior to all creation. From the perspective of what we are calling “God unrealised”, however, it originally lacks being, only gaining it through interaction with the masculine and essential principle. Incidentally, this is one of the ways in which certain aspects of the contemporary Western mentality appear to me as a sort of secularised “cult of the Goddess”. The way people today worship matter - with the related devotion to change, becoming and flux and the abolition of any essential principle which could fix or hold it all - is like a peculiar parody of the way in which certain sects of the past worshipped Maya or Shakti.

8 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

That said, it's not necessary to project a normative conception of progress onto the core of these models, which is fundamentally about describing the movement from lower to higher complexity. It's perfectly possible to have a highly complex civilization that buckles under its own weight, which could compel you to associate complexity with decay.

This is very true. Generally speaking, though, this model gets used to justify pre-existing ideas of progress (even by Wilber himself, for example).

8 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Well, although science cannot settle metaphysical questions, if your metaphysics is in conflict with the existing science (and you care about science), it's a problem.

The problem I have with attempts to integrate science and religion is that it seems very obvious that modern science is rooted in a denial of metaphysics and tradition (the positivism, rationalism and empiricism of the 19th and early 20th century particularly so, which to my knowledge is where most of the scientific models which Wilber attempts to integrate come from). Recent attempts to re-spiritualise science in the key of quantum and string theory I find mostly unconvincing, though they do show the inevitable self-immolation of any isolated field of knowledge (postmodernism has a similar value in philosophy).

2 hours ago, Barna said:

You’re completely missing the point in every paragraph I wrote. I’m not trying to convey ideas or beliefs about love. I’m trying to express the attitude of love.

You already see that you can't progress anymore without letting go of your beliefs, don't you? But instead of letting go of your beliefs, you make up a whole case against progress itself.

Your ego is thinking outside of the box. My deepest congratulations to it. I've never seen such a survivor before  

The attitude of love has nothing to do with any ideas of advancement or decline. The attitude of love would have no need to “ever-accelerate towards love” because it would already be love. 

Like I said earlier, I view all narrow and argumentative attempts at “proof” like most of the ones I have given above to be superficial and profane. I only included them for the sake of completeness and because I felt I had been overly blunt in my earlier responses to you.

I am not interested in pushing petty personal beliefs on people, I am simply using this forum to clarify my understanding for the love of the truth. I certainly don’t want to “progress”, that much should be obvious! Interestingly, the word “belief” itself is derived from the word “leubh-” which meant “to care, desire, love”. Even words become corrupted!

[AtheisticNonduality]

@Oeaohoo Brahman is the world, this being a non dual realization that happens in mystical states. Whenever a human being realizes God, that is God realized pouring into this evolutionary world of "substance" and becoming, so God is not restricted from us. However, God in purer forms is incredibly restricted, thus requiring evolution. The idea that the process is not leading anywhere is simply ignorance and faith toward ancient culture, not basis in the realities of the situation. The "creation" stories of prima material that describe Purusha and Prakriti or Adam and Eve as cosmic dualities of masculinity and femininity created by an androgynous transcendental God outside of us and totally abstract from its creation is not useful in this context because that God is not something that may be returned to since it was never part of anything and thus must only be unreachable to us, with the exception of it existing as something else: in us unrealized the entire time and then becoming realized in us, through evolution. It is inaccurate to say using decay to go back in time would trace back to the emergence of God, since there never was a profoundly transcendental God at the beginning of creation (which would have to be completely outside of creation), only creation itself and a hidden God. The process up, on the other hand, is demonstrably true with all denial untenable.

Quote

Incidentally, this is one of the ways in which certain aspects of the contemporary Western mentality appear to me as a sort of secularised “cult of the Goddess”.

?????? No, worship of matter is for the lower holons, not evolution.

Edited June 1, 2022 by AtheisticNonduality

[Oeaohoo]

11 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Brahman is the world, this being a non dual realization that happens in mystical states. Whenever a human being realizes God, that is God realized pouring into this evolutionary world of "substance" and becoming, so God is not restricted from us.

I am aware that many traditions teach the ultimate non-duality of God and the world. I never denied this. I agree with everything you have said so far (except that Brahman also isn't the world, and Nirguna Brahman is totally beyond all manifestation. Like Buddha said, "Gone, gone beyond, gone beyond beyond, Hallelujah!" You know, maybe Ken Wilber could add something to that. ).

15 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

However, God in purer forms is incredibly restricted, thus requiring evolution.

This is where I find these models to be extremely blasphemous (and I do not mean against any specific religion but against God).

What is this based on? Teilhard de Chardin? A Jesuit Darwinian vitalist? You yourself say that "worship of matter is for the lower holons". Darwinian vitalism is surely that. This is what I mean. All these modern Western "thinkers" are just arrogant goofs. That's why I like Nietzsche, at least he thought his arrogance through to madness!

21 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

The idea that the process is not leading anywhere is simply ignorance and faith toward ancient culture, not basis in the realities of the situation. The "creation" stories of prima material that describe Purusha and Prakriti or Adam and Eve as cosmic dualities of masculinity and femininity created by an androgynous transcendental God outside of us and totally abstract from its creation is not useful in this context because that God is not something that may be returned to since it was never part of anything and thus must only be unreachable to us, with the exception of it existing as something else: in us unrealized the entire time and then becoming realized in us, through evolution. It is inaccurate to say using decay to go back in time would trace back to the emergence of God, since there never was a profoundly transcendental God at the beginning of creation (which would have to be completely outside of creation), only creation itself and a hidden God.

It has nothing to do with "ignorance" and blind faith toward ancient culture. I have already attempted to make clear that faith and devotion were already signs of decadence. I do not cling to any tradition: as the Muslim tradition tells us, "everything will perish save his Face". As the Buddhist tradition tells us, "everything is burning". And like a Buddhist said: "When you meet Ken Wilber on the road, kill him"!

I never said it wasn't leading anywhere. No religion ever said that it wasn't leading anywhere. It is leading towards the total unfoldment of God which is an eternal process, and it is leading everything that is created back to God. Ancient culture tells us that this enfoldment takes place over an infinite number of cycles of time, each of which arises out of God (where else could it arise from?) and eventually perishes into nothingness.

It is not that God is totally abstract from creation. It includes all of creation but is simultaneously beyond it, in the same way that the category "man" includes all men but is beyond all of them. I don't understand why you believe that it could not be returned to except by an infinite evolution. In that case, no one could ever have achieved total union with God.

44 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

The process up, on the other hand, is demonstrably true with all denial untenable.

I understand that to the modern mind it is untenable. This is because the modern mind has been moulded by the ideologies that have motivated the revolutionary upheavals of recent centuries. Some countries, like modern America, didn’t even exist before these upheavals. Like the playwright Israel Zangwill wrote: “Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!” America is a utopian project in its very foundation: this, it seems to me, is why Americans are particularly attached to the idea of progress; an idea which seems to have no real justification other than a bubbly optimistic euphoria. Of course it is not just America, similar things could be said for the political apparatus of other modern European nations and anywhere else that has subscribed to the new gospel of the Future, Humanism, Democracy and Progress.

11 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

?????? No, worship of matter is for the lower holons, not evolution.

Six face palms, I must have hit a nerve! Well that’s sort of my point, do you deny that people worship matter today? Have you never spoken to a modern scientist?

[Carl-Richard]

6 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

The problem I have with attempts to integrate science and religion is that it seems very obvious that modern science is rooted in a denial of metaphysics and tradition (the positivism, rationalism and empiricism of the 19th and early 20th century particularly so, which to my knowledge is where most of the scientific models which Wilber attempts to integrate come from). Recent attempts to re-spiritualise science in the key of quantum and string theory I find mostly unconvincing, though they do show the inevitable self-immolation of any isolated field of knowledge (postmodernism has a similar value in philosophy).

Well, the raw predictive utility of such science isn't lost just because of its metaphysical packaging. Science works. It's just that the way we talk about it is different (while also adding or omitting some additional conclusions, but again, not in a way that fundamentally negates the science).

[Oeaohoo]

31 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Well, the raw predictive utility of such science isn't lost just because of its metaphysical packaging. Science works. It's just that the way we talk about it is different (while also adding or omitting some additional conclusions, but again, not in a way that fundamentally negates the science).

That’s true. The developments of modern science are like an ever closer approximation to something which itself could never be fully captured by science. Thinking about it, this is probably true of any attempt to capture reality symbolically. In a certain sense, you could even call this progress, except that it has all ended in the self-destruction of science itself thanks to the dead end inherent in most academic scientific disciplines and the inevitable emergence of postmodern deconstruction.

[AtheisticNonduality]

1 hour ago, Oeaohoo said:

I am aware that many traditions teach the ultimate non-duality of God and the world. I never denied this. I agree with everything you have said so far (except that Brahman also isn't the world, and Nirguna Brahman is totally beyond all manifestation. Like Buddha said, "Gone, gone beyond, gone beyond beyond, Hallelujah!" You know, maybe Ken Wilber could add something to that. ).

This ultimate nonduality is the untarnishable unity of the world as Brahman and Brahman as transcendent to the world, but you're claim of a Brahman (completely)/abstractedly transcendent to the world where there is no world due to the world as creation being anterior is not something we can ever access, because we in our current and future states are tied to "the world" of form. Since the world cannot be prior or anterior to anything, since any time necessitates the world, the world is eternally itself without having been created except through self-existence. That means all we have access to are mystical states of God unrealized becoming realized, the Infinity, the Nothingness, the Everything, that rests within every objective or subjective aspect of reality.

Quote

This is where I find these models to be extremely blasphemous (and I do not mean against any specific religion but against God).

What is this based on? Teilhard de Chardin? A Jesuit Darwinian vitalist? You yourself say that "worship of matter is for the lower holons". Darwinian vitalism is surely that. This is what I mean. All these modern Western "thinkers" are just arrogant goofs. That's why I like Nietzsche, at least he thought his arrogance through to madness!

It is a truth that we are progressing. Your "criticism" of that truth misunderstands it. The model does not worship matter or vitality; it recognizes them as lower holons. "They are more fundamental but less significant." Ultimately, everything is nondual as per the law of Spirit, but the logic, the procession, of reality follows a holarchical pattern of raw, dead, inconscient matter forming into more complex vitality, primitive life that is built into more complex life, until finally there is the yet more complex noospheric mind. This is matter to life to mind to soul to nondual realization of Spirit. Or, in terms of Vernadsky or Teilhard de Chardin, the physiospheric components making up the biosphere, which arises the noosphere, which itself is transcended and included in the greater and more complex patterns that are emerging. This is a truth that is ineluctable. No appeal to the authority of Eastern mystics falsely prophesizing about a cyclical decay can stop this; there are no cycles, and history does not truly repeat itself because everything is novel. It is obvious that once life arose, there was no going back. The same applies to the mind, and to what comes after. And the idea this is not leading to something specifically more complex and truer is preposterousness and an idiocy that stains the mind. There were Western mystics like Plotinus which could just as easily serve as an authority like the Eastern "seers" of back in history, but authority says nothing on this except that which can be proven by self-revealing truth. There is no decay; that simply is not the pattern here. Any "chaos" you see is temporary, or even something so complex it does not appear to be order. Nietzsche's strength was tearing down Christianity and placing the concept of an Overhuman in its place, but this is not good enough; it does not realize a truth or the Truth.

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I understand that to the modern mind it is untenable.

It is untenable because it lacks basis in reality. As "ideals" of progress, North America is Spiral Dynamics "Orange" whereas India, as beautiful and mystically exploring as it is/was, was "Purple". We have more access to further progressed patterns and may observe them; they could not. The same way our systems can only intimate or warn about or dream about what's to come beyond us through thought and feeling and intelligence.

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Six face palms, I must have hit a nerve! Well that’s sort of my point, do you deny that people worship matter today? Have you never spoken to a modern scientist?

That's because by the Wilberian terminology, people that worship matter are Descenders, whereas ascetics than only worship disincarnated Spirit are Ascenders. Those that integrate both are superior, in truth.

[Oeaohoo]

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

It is a truth that we are progressing.

It is untenable because it lacks basis in reality.

There is no point in us just stating our own experience, axioms and sources of authority back at each other. Like I said to Barna, if you want to take people like Teilhard de Chardin and Ken Wilber and the optimistic euphoria of "New World" America (or the Soviet version of this in the case of Vernadsky) as your guides and authorities in this world, that is your choice.

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

This ultimate nonduality is the untarnishable unity of the world as Brahman and Brahman as transcendent to the world, but you're claim of a Brahman (completely)/abstractedly transcendent to the world where there is no world due to the world as creation being anterior is not something we can ever access, because we in our current and future states are tied to "the world" of form.

There is also no point in us getting into a non-duality war and they are apparently not allowed on this forum. You can respond to what I say here but I probably won't go any further with this particular line of argument. Yes, but the "unity of the world as Brahman and Brahman as transcendent to the world" is itself transcendent of either of those. Otherwise, what are Parinirvana and Mahasamadhi? I never said there is no world in God. All worlds are in God.

We aren't tied to the world of form. The world of form only exists within God!

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Since the world cannot be prior or anterior to anything, since any time necessitates the world, the world is eternally itself without having been created except through self-existence. That means all we have access to are mystical states of God unrealized becoming realized, the Infinity, the Nothingness, the Everything, that rests within every objective or subjective aspect of reality.

I think you have changed what you mean by "the world", but otherwise I agree with everything you have said here. God is eternally itself without having been created except through self-existence, but that is not true of the "world of form" which we presently inhabit. It has been created by God, it is preserved in God and it will be destroyed by God. The problem with your analysis is that you conflate God with the present world only, thus this world has to evolve forever otherwise God would be finite.

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

It is a truth that we are progressing. Your "criticism" of that truth misunderstands it. The model does not worship matter or vitality; it recognizes them as lower holons. "They are more fundamental but less significant." Ultimately, everything is nondual as per the law of Spirit, but the logic, the procession, of reality follows a holarchical pattern of raw, dead, inconscient matter forming into more complex vitality, primitive life that is built into more complex life, until finally there is the yet more complex noospheric mind. This is matter to life to mind to soul to nondual realization of Spirit. Or, in terms of Vernadsky or Teilhard de Chardin, the physiospheric components making up the biosphere, which arises the noosphere, which itself is transcended and included in the greater and more complex patterns that are emerging.

I like the phrase "more fundamental but less significant". I find it peculiar that you insist simultaneously that everything will continue to evolve onwards and upwards for all eternity but yet that it will culminate in the non-dual realisation of Spirit. That sounds like the end of evolution to me.

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

This is a truth that is ineluctable. No appeal to the authority of Eastern mystics falsely prophesizing about a cyclical decay can stop this; there are no cycles, and history does not truly repeat itself because everything is novel. It is obvious that once life arose, there was no going back. The same applies to the mind, and to what comes after. And the idea this is not leading to something specifically more complex and truer is preposterousness and an idiocy that stains the mind. There were Western mystics like Plotinus which could just as easily serve as an authority like the Eastern "seers" of back in history, but authority says nothing on this except that which can be proven by self-revealing truth. There is no decay; that simply is not the pattern here. Any "chaos" you see is temporary, or even something so complex it does not appear to be order.

There are no cycles? Isn't every civilisation is a cycle with an ascending phase and a descending phase? Rome ascended, Rome descended; Egypt ascended, Egypt descended; Christianity ascended, Christianity descended. These are all cycles. Now just extend this pattern to history itself. Time manifesting in cycles is not the same as history repeating itself. I agree, "history repeating itself" is at best an imprecise phrase. It would be pointless to repeat the exact same thing over and over again like Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence of the Same. I never said there was any going back.

Sorry for "staining your mind"! I have repeatedly stated that I am not just appealing to empty authority. Do you have any relevant examples of Plotinus' teaching that refute the cyclic and involutional view of history? Greek culture was saturated in the teaching of the Four Ages. I think his idea of the One fits very much with what I have been saying. I can see how he fits into your love of "holons" though, but this is just the traditional doctrine of man as a microcosm. The Corpus Hermeticum, one of the most influential texts to survive from ancient times, is full of this idea. "As above, so below". Nobody needed Wilber to come up with "holons" (besides, he probably borrowed it from someone else like he always does).

There is no decay? Your body is decaying! Your house is decaying! Your country is decaying! The Earth is decaying! Everything is decaying! Buddho-Wilberism will have to discard the Fire Sermon as a heretical treatise of "evil"! Chaos is always lurking behind Cosmos. When Cosmos fails, Chaos rises to consume everything back into itself. If all you have to say to any of this is "that is just not true" then we might as well simply agree to disagree and leave it at that.

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Nietzsche's strength was tearing down Christianity and placing the concept of an Overhuman in its place, but this is not good enough; it does not realize a truth or the Truth.

I only mentioned Nietzsche because he is a good case study in the inadequacies of the modern mentality, particularly the Darwinian and “vitalist” aspect of it. His madness is a testament to the dead ends and vicious circles that the modern mentality entails. Many of the greatest thinkers of recent centuries went mad because secular society was unable to guide them towards true transcendence, yet a “stage purple” society doesn’t seem to have struggled with doing this. Strange, almost as if things haven’t progressed at all...

You might say that things have changed now and that there is presently a resurgence in spirituality. On that note, I can do no better than to quote the master of modern times René Guénon from the preface to his book The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times:

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By virtue of the law of analogy, the lowest point is as it were the obscure reflection or the inverted image of the highest point, from which follows the consequence - paradoxical only in appearance - that the most complete absence of all principle implies a sort of ‘counterfeit’ of the principle itself, something that has been expressed in a ‘theological’ form in the words ‘satan is the ape of God’. A proper appreciation of this fact can help greatly toward the understanding of some of the darkest enigmas of the modern world, enigmas which that world itself denies because though it carries them within itself it is incapable of perceiving them, and because this denial is an indispensable condition for the special mentality whereby it exists. If our contemporaries could see what is guiding them and where they are really going, the modern world would at once cease to exist as such…

That is why you always get a perceived resurgence of mystic sects and spirituality during the end of any civilisation. It is the near-complete absence of God masquerading as God. Just read about the decadence of Rome or any other collapsing civilisation, heresies and false cults of every description always abound.

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

It is untenable because it lacks basis in reality. As "ideals" of progress, North America is Spiral Dynamics "Orange" whereas India, as beautiful and mystically exploring as it is/was, was "Purple". We have more access to further progressed patterns and may observe them; they could not. The same way our systems can only intimate or warn about or dream about what's to come beyond us through thought and feeling and intelligence.

This is just another appeal to the modern myth. When I say it is a myth, I don't even mean that isn't true. It is the story that animates modern life and society, hence it is the modern myth.

"Stage Purple" India had a very sophisticated social structure in which every aspect of life and transcendence was taken into account. Our "society" is a sick joke in comparison.

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

That's because by the Wilberian terminology, people that worship matter are Descenders, whereas ascetics than only worship disincarnated Spirit are Ascenders. Those that integrate both are superior, in truth.

So what? How does that refute what I said about the modern cult of materialism? The people who worship matter are Descenders, and there are a lot of them today! More than ever, methinks...

[AtheisticNonduality]

@Oeaohoo This process is not based on authority. It based on what is happening and what I have perfecting understanding of, as you may. The ascension is based on an actual pattern; your 'decay" / the world being taken away by God is just a superstitious obfuscation with no evidence. All else here is distraction since this is the one entry to a truth.

[Oeaohoo]

@AtheisticNonduality They are both based on actual patterns. I’ve given plenty of evidence and you have generally just called it ignorance and superstition. Never mind! 

What is “the one entry to a truth”? The truth itself?

[AtheisticNonduality]

1 hour ago, Oeaohoo said:

@AtheisticNonduality They are both based on actual patterns. I’ve given plenty of evidence and you have generally just called it ignorance and superstition. Never mind! 

What is “the one entry to a truth”? The truth itself?

My actual pattern is a pattern that is physically, vitally, mentally, supramentally, and spiritually unfolding as a knowable process. Your pattern actually is ignorant superstition, the mere word of "seers" that you take as statements from an authority. There is no true pattern of decay going on, only fluctuations with a general trend upward in complexity, consciousness, agency.

[Oeaohoo]

@AtheisticNonduality Ok. Enjoy your progress to spiral infinity and beyond!