Part. 13.
The "stone Buddha" phenomenon--where a person can stay in extraordinary
states of formless absorption for extended periods--and yet be poorly
developed, or even pathologically developed, in other lines and realms, is an
extremely common phenomenon, and it happens largely because integral
development has not been engaged, let alone completed. Likewise, many
spiritual teachers show a good deal of proficiency in subtle states, but
little in causal or gross, with quite unbalanced results--for them and their
followers.
In short, what usually happens is that development is partial or fractured,
and this fractured development is taken as the paradigm of natural and normal
spiritual development, and then students and teachers alike are asked to
repeat the fracture as evidence of their spiritual progress.
The fact that these three great realms/states can be engaged separately; the
fact that many contemporary writers equate spirituality predominantly with
altered and nonordinary states (which is often called without irony the
fourth wave of transpersonal theory); the fact that lines in general can
develop unevenly (so that a person can be at a high level of development in
some lines and low or pathological in others)--and that this happens more
often than not--have all conspired to obscure those important aspects of
spiritual development that do indeed show some stage-like phenomena. My point
is that all of these aspects of spirituality (four of which I mentioned and
will elucidate below) need to be acknowledged and included in any
comprehensive theory of spirituality--and in any genuinely integral spiritual
practice.[14]
Wilber discusses esoteric matters with a language and form of discourse
derived from psychology.
The language and form of discourse of psychology was derived from the hard
sciences, thus Wilber's esoteric discourse inherits a flavour of definitive
closure that mystics would not take seriously, for definitive discourse is
contra to mystical nature.
This is rather like discussing biology with a language and form of discourse
derived from physics?
The text is therefore largely one of style and not one of content.
Ironically, style without content would be better than an essay?
This does not challenge the validity of Wilber's discourse, but it does draw
attention to validating mystical experience?
Also, recourse to mystical tradition allows Wilber to use phenomenology and
at the same time draw it into question; phenomenology cannot indicate
formless structure and Wilber knows this.
Three platforms have now been established explicitly within the essay:
1. Phenomelism.
2. Phenomenology.
3. Mystic tradition.
A fourth platform is implicit throughout the essay and informing its
rhetorical structure is objective scientific method.
4. Objective science.
Thus Wilber has at his disposal a vast range of disunited static intellectual
patterns with which to examine at length without necessarily making concrete
sense out of any of them?
For further reading see Shambolic publications.
Part. 14. follows. (.......maybe).
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