Journal of Integral Theory and Practice 2012—Vol. 7, No. 2

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Vol. 7, No. 2

Journal of

INTEGRAL THEORY and PRACTICE

A Postdisciplinary Discourse for Global Action

Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

June 2012 Volume 7 Number 2

Integral Religious Studies

Editorial Executive Editor’s Note – Sean Esbjörn-Hargens Guest Editors’ Introduction: Integral Religious Studies – Dustin DiPerna, Mark Schmanko, and Ben Williams Articles Integral Religious Studies in a Developmental Context – Dustin DiPerna

June 2012

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1

Neither God nor Goddess: Why Women Need an Archetype of the Self – Sarah Nicholson

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The Outskirts of Integral Theory: Visions of the Sacred and the Paranormal in the Oeuvre of Jeffrey Kripal – Mark G. Schmanko

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Opening Space for Translineage Practice: Some Ontological Speculations  – Bruce Alderman

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Beyond Enacted Experiences  – Amod Lele

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Playing at the Murky Edge: On Birthing an Integral Anthropology  – Karen De Looze

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Perspective Perspectivism in the Study of Religion – William E. Paden, with an Introduction by Ben Williams

www.integralinstitute.org www.integralinstitute.org

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Book Review The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies, by Jorge N. Ferrer and Jacob H. Sherman (Eds.) – Bruce Alderman

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JOURNAL of INTEGRAL THEORY and PRACTICE

Journal of Integral Theory and Practice is published quarterly by: Integral Institute 2503 Walnut Street, #300 Boulder, CO 80302 United States of America Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (JITP) is the official source for material related to Integral Theory and its application. The journal publishes peer-reviewed articles, case studies, integral research, critical dialogues, book reviews, and conference reports. JITP embraces a post-metaphysical and post-disciplinary perspective that is dedicated to articulating the ways ontology, epistemology, and methodology interact and co-arise across various scales of time and space. Authors emphasize the perspectival nature of reality, which emerges as first-, second-, and third-person perspectives interact with each other to enact phenomena.

www.integralinstitute.org Integral Institute provides research and leadership for humanity’s most pressing problems. Through education and events that foster intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social self-awareness, the Institute aims to help leaders from all arenas to improve the human condition. Among the primary goals of the Institute is research of complex, global issues facing humanity in the 21st century. Climate change, evolutionary forms of capitalism, and cultural conflict in political, scientific, or religious domains are examples of problems to which the Institute hopes to bring new clarity.

www.metaintegral.org MetaIntegral Foundation is a philanthropic and research organization devoted to creating a more ethical, sustainable, and psychologically mature humanity. The Foundation is engaged in three types of initiatives: 1) global initia-

tives that represent the leading edge of thinking on how humanity responds to complex, multidimensional problems; 2) academic initiatives that showcase how integral frameworks effectively communicate and coordinate across disciplinary boundaries; and 3) center initiatives, via eight application centers, that sponsor integral projects in a variety of disciplines.

© Integral Institute, 2012

No part of any article may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion. The opinions expressed in articles, reviews, and other text material are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the editors, editorial board, or publisher. The editors and publisher deny any responsibility or liability for statements and opinions expressed by the authors. Accuracy of reference data is the responsibility of authors. ISSN: 1944-5083 (print) ISSN: 1944-5091 (digital)

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To subscribe, visit http://foundation.metaintegral.org/JITP or contact [email protected]

JITP is indexed by the American Psychological Association (PsycINFO), EBSCO (Humanities International Complete), Elsevier (Scopus), ProQuest (General Reference, Psychology, and Religion), and Ulrich’s. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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EDITORIAL STAFF Editor-in-Chief

Ken Wilber

Chief Executive Officer

Clint Fuhs

Executive Editor

Sean Esbjörn-Hargens

Managing Editor

Lynwood Lord

Guest Editors Dustin DiPerna, Illustrator Brad Reynolds Mark Schmanko, and Ben Williams BOARD OF EDITORS John Astin, Ph.D. Medicine California Pacific Medical Center

Thomas Goddard, Ph.D., J.D. Healthcare George Mason University

Kevin Bowman, Ph.D. Economics Augsburg College

Olen Gunnlaugson, Ph.D. Leadership/Management Université Laval

Allan Combs, Ph.D. Transformative Studies California Institute of Integral Studies

Gail Hochachka, M.A. International Development Drishti–Centre for Integral Action

Susanne Cook-Greuter, Ed.D. Psychology Harthill USA John Dupuy, M.A. Recovery Integral Recovery, LLC Brian Eddy, Ph.D. Ecosystems Science Natural Resources Canada Lynne Feldman, Esq. Education New York Integral, Inc.

Joanne Hunt, M.M.S, M.C.C. Coaching Integral Coaching Canada, Inc. Elliott Ingersoll, Ph.D. Psychotherapy Cleveland State University Heather Larkin, Ph.D. Social Service Catholic University of America Andre Marquis, Ph.D., LPC Psychotherapy University of Rochester

Mark Fischler, J.D. Law Plymouth State University

Randy Martin, Ph.D. Criminology Indiana University of Pennsylvania

John Forman, OblSB Christian Ministry Mt. Angel Abbey

Cynthia McEwen, M.A. Sustainability Avastone Consulting

Marc Gafni, Ph.D. Spirituality Integral Life Spiritual Center

Bert Parlee, Ph.D. Psychotherapy John F. Kennedy University

Jennifer Gidley, Ph.D. Psychology, Education, Futures RMIT University

Terry Patten, M.A. Practice Integral Institute

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Gerald Porter, Ph.D. Education State University of New York John Records, J.D. Social Service Committee on the Shelterless Michael Schwartz, Ph.D. Art Augusta State University Simon Senzon, D.C., M.A. Subtle Energies John F. Kennedy University Elizabeth Smith, D.S.W. Social Service Catholic University of America Paul van Schaik Sustainability iSchaik Development Associates Joseph Voros, Ph.D. Science, Futures Swinburne University Roger Walsh, M.D., Ph.D. Psychiatry University of California, Irvine David Zeitler, M.A. Psychotherapy John F. Kennedy University Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D. Ecology University of Colorado, Boulder

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Volume 7 • Number 2 • June 2012

INTEGRAL THEORY and PRACTICE A Postdisciplinary Discourse for Global Action

EDITORIAL v

Executive Editor’s Note – Sean Esbjörn-Hargens

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Guest Editors’ Introduction: Integral Religious Studies – Dustin DiPerna, Mark Schmanko, and Ben Williams

ARTICLES 1

Integral Religious Studies in a Developmental Context – Dustin DiPerna

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Neither God nor Goddess: Why Women Need an Archetype of the Self – Sarah Nicholson

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Beyond Enacted Experiences – Amod Lele

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Playing at the Murky Edge: On Birthing an Integral Anthropology – Karen De Looze

The Outskirts of Integral Theory: Visions of the Sacred and the Paranormal in the Oeuvre of Jeffrey Kripal – Mark G. Schmanko Opening Space for Translineage Practice: Some Ontological Speculations – Bruce Alderman

PERSPECTIVE 112

Perspectivism in the Study of Religion – William E. Paden, with an Introduction by Ben Williams

BOOK REVIEW 120

The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies, by Jorge N. Ferrer and Jacob H. Sherman (Eds.) – Bruce Alderman

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JOURNAL of INTEGRAL THEORY and PRACTICE Aims and Scope

Integral Theory is a meta-framework that draws on the key insights of the world’s knowledge traditions. The awareness gained from drawing on all perspectives allows integral practitioners to bring new depth, clarity, and compassion to every level of human endeavor—from unlocking individual potential to finding new approaches to global-scale problems. Articles published in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (JITP) represent explorations in several modes of discourse: philosophical, theoretical, pragmatic, experiential, and critical. JITP is committed to the refinement, development, and expansion of Integral Theory.

Instructions for Authors

JITP follows American Psychological Association (APA) style guidelines. Visit http://foundation. metaintegral.org/JITP for full submission guidelines and a glossary of Integral Theory terminology. An abbreviated outline of the manuscript review process is listed below. In light of the fact that both Spiral Dynamics and the Integral model sometimes use a color scheme to describe levels of development, we request that authors specify which color scheme they are using (e.g., orange altitude vs. orange vMeme). Altitude can be used to refer to any developmental line (e.g., orange cognition, orange self-identity,

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etc.), while Spiral Dynamics, in the context of Integral Theory, specifically refers to levels of values development.

Review Process Initial Review

Authors must submit articles to Lynwood Lord at [email protected]. In cases where authors do not adhere to JITP submission guidelines, manuscripts will be returned with a request that all components be provided. Theoretical changes, copy editing, and structural suggestions may be suggested at this stage.

Peer Review

The editorial team then assigns manuscripts to external reviewers. Information from submitted manuscripts may be systematically collected and analyzed as part of research to improve the quality of the editorial review process. Authors are expected to revise their article in light of peer-review comments and provide a revised draft within one month. Changes should be made using the track changes feature in Microsoft Word, so our editorial team can quickly identify edits.

Theoretical Review

Once a draft with peer-review comments incorporated is received, a theory call will be scheduled with Ken Wilber, Editor-in-Chief. Wilber

Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

will offer constructive criticism and theoretical clarifications. This is a good opportunity to learn and refine your understanding of Integral Theory. The call will be recorded and a link to download the audio will be provided within a week.

Editorial Review Accepted manuscripts are edited in accordance with JITP editorial style.

Author Review Authors will be e-mailed a proof and will have one week to suggest changes.

Critical Presentations

Authors are encouraged to explore hypothetical and critical views in relationship to Integral Theory. When presenting hypothetical material (e.g., the possibility of a new line of development in one of the quadrants), authors should make it clear that a suggestive addition that is not currently part of Integral Theory is being offered, and then provide as much evidence, argumentation, and supportive material as possible to substantiate their position. When presenting critical material, authors must represent the components and claims of Integral Theory within an academically acceptable range of interpretation. JITP views the process of hypothetical and critical engagement as essential to the development of Integral Theory.

EXECUTIVE EDITOR’S NOTE Sean Esbjörn-Hargens

One of the great difficulties in discussing religion—its sociology, its possible universality, its “civil” dimensions—is that it is not an “it.” In my opinion, “it” has at least a dozen different, major, largely exclusive meanings, and unfortunately these are not always, not even usually, distinguished in the literature. – Ken Wilber (1983, p. 55)

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o opens chapter five of A Sociable God. In this chapter, Wilber outlines nine different definitions of “religion” and points out that each of them is legitimate. I take this quote as well as the book from which it comes to be a clarion call for the need of an integral approach to religious studies. Although Wilber was not yet using the term integral to describe his work, the integral dimensions of A Sociable God are obvious enough. After all, the book is devoted to integrating three major schools of sociology (functionalism, hermeneutics, and developmental-structuralism) within a context of “transpersonal possibilities.” Viewing these schools through the lens of Integral Methodological Pluralism, we see zones 8, 3, 4, and 1, respectively. Wilber’s goal in the book was to articulate a “non-reductionistic” sociology of religion. So while the volume focuses on the sociological aspects of religious studies, it provides the first really integral treatment of religion. Nearly 30 years later here we are with the first academic material that explicitly builds on Wilber’s initial work in creating an Integral Religious Studies. In addition to this present issue, JITP published our first issue on Integral Spirituality in March 2011, guest edited by Marc Gafni. In fact, Dustin DiPerna—one of the guest editors of this issue—was one of the contributing authors in that issue. These two issues together, along with a few miscellaneous articles published in JITP over the years, represent an emerging body of literature where the various definitions and core elements of spirituality and religion are honored through an integral embrace. I have often highlighted how Integral Theory grew out of transpersonal psychology. As a result, Integral Spirituality and Integral Religious Studies are emerging integral fields that are quite close to the core of Integral Theory. It seems fair to say that Integral Theory is deeply committed to integrating spiritual and religious understandings of the human condition into the majority of other fields: art, business, education, politics, sustainability, and so on. Thus, Integral Theory carries the torch of transpersonal psychology beyond the cul-de-sac that it unfortunately found itself in and makes the transcendental—both individually and collectively experienced—relevant to all disciplines. It is for these reasons that I feel the project of an academic approach to Integral Spirituality, as begun by Gafni and others, and to Integral Religious Studies, as articulated in this issue by Diperna and his Harvard University colleagues Mark Schmanko and Ben Williams, is so important to Integral Theory. Such an academic approach honors the transpersonal impulse and background within Integral Theory but does so in a way that is more relevant to contemporary society. In this sense I feel that the academic fields of Integral Spirituality and Integral Religious Studies hold the potential of fulfilling the promise that transpersonal psychology has yet to deliver on: making individual and collective expressions of the transpersonal relevant to the mainstream. This issue does a great job building on JITP’s inaugural Integral Spirituality issue (Vol. 6, No. 1) while simultaneously launching the field of Integral Religious Studies. In the editorial introduction, the guest edi-

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tors clearly lay out their vision for the issue and set the stage for the evolution of the field. Then, Dustin DiPerna creates the blueprint for Integral Religious Studies with his opening piece on human development within the context of religious studies. Next, Sarah Nicholson’s piece is a great reminder of the value of the feminine in crafting a discourse within religious studies. Mark Schmanko’s article explores the recent work of Jeffrey Kripal, an author I have long felt is worthy of integral engagement, and Bruce Alderman’s piece is noteworthy in that he takes on for the first time in a substantial way the issue of translineage practice. Following Alderman’s article, Amod Lele raises critical questions about Integral Theory’s purported inclusion of the core aspects of premodern traditions, a critique that he also applies to Integral Theory more generally. In addition to these pieces, Karen De Looze offers an extended article on integral anthropology that demonstrates what I would call “embodied religious writing” (i.e., expressing a religious sensibility in the context of other disciplines). In the Perspectives section of the issue, we include a transcript of a speech by William Paden that serves to provide a broader context for an integrally informed approach to religious studies. Finally, Alderman also provides a valuable book review of Jorge Ferrer and Jacob Sherman’s (2008) The Participatory Turn. All together, these eight pieces provide a strong foundation for the further development of the field of Integral Religious Studies. In terms of general announcements about JITP, we are pleased to announce that PsycINFO has recently accepted the journal. Published by the American Psychological Association (APA), PsycINFO is the “premier database devoted to the behavioral sciences and mental health.” APA has more than a 100,000 members worldwide (American Psychological Association, n.d.), so we are honored and excited that selected JITP content will start to appear in their databases later in 2012. Take a look at the blog post, “Academic Indexes and the Evolution of Integral Theory,” on our new website that details JITP’s inclusion in PsycINFO and other academic indexes. JITP’s new online home can be found at http://foundation.metaintegral.org/JITP. We are thrilled to finally have a whole website devoted to the journal! This will be the platform for all of our content, future and past, but also will allow us to showcase our authors and support our readers much more fully. The site is in its beta release at the moment, but is fully functional and provides an easy way to get updates, subscribe, and download issues or articles. Feel free to browse the rest of the MetaIntegral site, too. The three pillars of the site, MetaIntegral Academy, MetaIntegral Associates, and MetaIntegral Foundation, offer various media, blog posts, and announcements about events, initiatives, and other ways to join the integral dialogue. Thus, MetaIntegral is not only a new home for the journal but is also a new global platform for the entire integral community.

REFERENCES American Psychological Association. (n.d.) About APA. Retrieved June 15, 2012, from http://www.apa.org/ about/index.aspx. Ferrer, J.N., & Sherman, J.H. (2008). The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Wilber, K. (1983). A sociable god: Toward a new understanding of religion. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

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GUEST EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION Integral Religious Studies Dustin DiPerna, Mark Schmanko, and Ben Williams

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elcome to this special issue of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (JITP) devoted to Integral Religious Studies. It is with great anticipation that we, as co-editors, inaugurate an inquiry into some of the fundamental lineaments of the emerging field of Integral Religious Studies, within and beyond academia, and frame a set of contributions that exemplify the sensitivities that are necessary for this pioneering effort. Although several articles previously published in JITP have employed an Integral approach to religion and spirituality, this is the first issue of JITP to turn the lens of Integral Theory principally onto the academic field of religious studies. It is our conviction that the already healthy pluralism inherent in the contemporary academic study of religion, when married as a diversified discipline to Integral Theory and practice, holds rich potential for the future of the humanities. Two reasons for this claim warrant mention, along with a brief elaboration. First, an integrally informed approach to religious studies promises robust and grounded forms of transdisciplinarity. This is in virtue of the concurrence of two radically different orientations: the unapologetically generalist spirit that animates Integral Theory, and the post-Eliadean wave of scholarship in religious studies that has had an ongoing love affair with particularity, in all of its social, historical, cultural, and philosophical splendor. Being trained as historians of religion, we appreciate the ways in which profound meditation upon the particular and deep contextualization continually shatters intellectual frameworks and creates the condition for more inclusive attempts at theoretical work. And yet, being integral thinkers, we are also careful not to get caught in the tendency toward the fracturing of knowledge systems, often stemming from an immanent sense of incommensurability between paradigms that haunts much of the scholarship in the humanities. Bringing these two impulses together—the universalist and particularist—without subordinating either of their roles to the other, constitutes the remarkable aporia that the articles in this issue work from, at least implicitly. The confluence of religious studies and Integral Theory also reveals a new horizon of engagement between the methodologies of religious studies and central elements of its very object of study: religious formations, contemplative practices, technologies of self, and traditions of exegesis. To begin to creatively and critically learn from and be changed by the textual, existential, phenomenological, and social resources of religious traditions, not to mention the challenge of making these resources intelligible to diverse audiences in the 21st century, requires innovative methods of theology, philosophy of religion, existential historicism, and, more to the point, a revision of the ontological status of the scholar. It is our contention that deconstructing and unearthing the social, historical, and political dimensions of religious traditions is in fact complementary to a sincere engagement with the mystical, gnostic, and esoteric teachings propounded by religious virtuosos and communities across traditions. This emphasis introduces a range of existentially rich and spiritually compelling topics to the current milieu of religious studies, such as post-metaphysical speculation upon ultimacy and totality, a reevaluation of the reality-generating power of myth and radically distinct modalities of human imagination, as well as constructive work on the topics of human potential, awareness, and embodiment. To appreciate the significance of these features of Integral Religious Studies, a couple of words on our working presumption of the context of this field are in order. Integral Religious Studies—the study of religion as an academic discipline informed by Integral Theory (and vice versa)—brings all of the foci of religious studies under a critical and nonreductionistic gaze that attempts to retain the important contributions of premodern, modern, and postmodern thought and practice, while also striving to uncover or disclose greater

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insight into the human condition. This demands a recontextualization of the role and nature of religion in light of such issues as globalization, the proliferation of technology, and the ethical complexities of cross-cultural difference. On the one hand, Integral Religious Studies endeavors to maintain scholarly distance, even skepticism, with regard to various theological “truth claims” and givens, which are the hallmark of metaphysical thought, thereby drawing from the important contributions of contemporary scholarship. From the “hermeneutics of suspicion” catalyzed by such intellectuals as Marx and Nietzsche, to the politics of power and language in the thought of figures like Foucault and Derrida, an Integral approach honors such knowledge in exploring a subject as controversial and vital as religion. On the other hand, an Integral approach to religion also recognizes that there exists an untapped reservoir of insight and possibility in the study of religion that has yet to be properly appreciated and assessed in our current academic and public discourses. Through this simultaneously nonreductionistic and critical scholarly lens we can begin to study various permutations of religious genius and practice, along with concomitant representations of individual and collective agency, as they have taken form in different cultural contexts, thinking globally and comparatively about their meaning while continually attending to their particularity. We can begin to evaluate how these examples of religiosity are enacted through traditional, modern, postmodern and now integral orientations. We are in the position, arguably for the first time in history, to begin the unending and assiduous task of contextualizing numerous domains of religious life into an interculturally sensitive and universalizable framework, all under the auspices of a demanding set of methodological sensitivities fashioned through the historical life of religious studies as a discipline, and our own reflexivity as scholars who take seriously the implications of such studies. It is our hope that through the critical and historical reconstruction of religious traditions, vis-àvis an integral orientation to religious studies, we can gain greater clarity into the manifold living experiments on being human in a Kosmos of possibility.

In This Issue We open the issue with an important theoretical article by Dustin DiPerna, “Integral Religious Studies in a Developmental Context.” While supporting many of the important truths uncovered by today’s postmodern scholarship, DiPerna’s article decisively moves beyond contemporary rhetoric to disclose an integral stance. The core of DiPerna’s article traces the contours of religious studies as it unfolded through four historical paradigms: premodern, modern, postmodern, and post-postmodern (or integral). DiPerna’s work is the first of its kind to trace both vertical developmental paradigms (premodern, modern, postmodern, etc.) alongside the various horizontal approaches to religious studies that emerged at each stage (e.g., anthropology of religion, psychology of religion, hermeneutics, etc.). DiPerna’s historical outline and analysis provides a metatheoretical blueprint for how religious studies as a whole can learn to operationalize a culturally sensitive hermeneutic of psychological development that fully honors and integrates the already existing approaches to the discipline. Showing where the discipline of religious studies has been, DiPerna argues, provides a glimpse into where it might be going. Not only will scholars of the future have to take responsibility for their own cultural, social, and linguistic biases, but within an integral paradigm they will also have take full responsibility for their developmental biases. Rather than stand against today’s expressions of postmodern sensitivity, DiPerna shows how a developmental level of sensitivity enhances the current academic agenda. A developmental lens brings greater accuracy and granularity to scholarship. Liberating religious studies along a developmental spectrum, as DiPerna has done in this article, is sure to have a lasting impact in the discipline. Next, we move to Sarah Nicholson’s article, “Neither God nor Goddess: Why Women Need an Archetype of Self.” Nicholson’s article offers important insight into the role and influence played by feminist literature in religious studies. Examining the “Goddess” and the “divine feminine” in contemporary feminist spirituality, Nicholson employs an integrally informed approach to show which dimensions of the movement are positive and what areas might be skillfully transcended. Using a balanced methodology, Nicholson explains

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that despite the positive contributions of including the feminine in today’s often hyper-masculinized world of spirituality, much of contemporary feminist spiritually does so at the expense of the masculine principle. As Nicholson sees it, even if we can all agree that there is benefit to the “resacralization of the earth and the female body” and honoring the Goddess, this ought not be done in a way that demonizes “the male divine, and the male (body) as divine.” In other words, we must not simply replace God with Goddess, exchanging it for a new form of domination and oppression. Using various references to adult development, Nicholson sets us on a path of Integral Religious Studies that fully honors both man and woman, God and Goddess, while also providing a window into the particularities and needs unique to each gender. The next article in this issue, “The Outskirts of Integral Theory: Visions of the Sacred and the Paranormal in the Oeuvre of Jeffrey Kripal,” is authored by Mark Schmanko. Essentially, this article endeavors to build a methodological bridge between Ken Wilber’s phase 4 and 5 writings on religious realization and Jeffrey Kripal’s recent scholarship on the paranormal and the sacred. Schmanko begins with a helpful articulation and interpretation of Wilber’s phase 4 and 5 works. Although primarily descriptive, in this first section Schmanko synthesizes important strands and themes of Wilber’s thought, revealing what he dubs a “metapragmatic psychospiritual approach to evolution.” After setting this hermeneutical foundation, Schmanko introduces Kripal’s work as an outstanding voice in the academic field of Religious Studies, especially for integrally informed scholars. Schmanko identifies integral features of Kripal’s corpus—in particular his “dialectic of consciousness and culture” and his ethnographic interdisciplinary treatment of “the paranormal and the sacred,” suggesting that it would do us well to undertake a rigorous study of these phenomena in the modern religious landscape. Schmanko then lays out some “fantastic questions and constructive departures” with regard to Kripal’s methods in light of Wilber’s approach analyzed in the first part of the article. In juxtaposing dimensions of Kripal and Wilber’s work, the article offers some engaging suggestions and even wild speculations about how integrally informed researchers, contemplative practitioners, and communities might begin to grapple with the most confounding inquiries and emergent possibilities of the sacred in the contemporary hybrid religious landscape. Bruce Alderman’s article, “Opening Space for Translineage Practice: Some Ontological Speculations,” provides a thoughtful inquiry into the possibilities of creating a “translineage religious orientation.” If there were to exist an emerging discipline called Integral Theology, Alderman demonstrates a modest but important step in elucidating some of its philosophical principles and groundwork. Drawing from such ideas as Jorge Ferrer’s theory of “participatory enactment” to the polydox theologian John Thatamanil’s translineage, trinitarian model of interfaith relations, and Jean-Luc Nancy’s conception of the “plurisingularity” of being, Alderman invites a host of astute speculations about the ways we may reevaluate the role of metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology in today’s complex interreligious landscape. Alderman writes, “it is imperative that we explore both the implicit ontological commitments of Integral Theory to date, and the promise of emergent ontological models that are being forged in the crucible of interfaith and intercultural dialogue and engagement” (pp. 58-59). One of the article’s key contributions is to suggest, and to some extent enact, how ontological models can be reformulated not only to challenge academic dismissals of theology writ large, that is, via Integral Post-Metaphysics, but also to develop a discourse through which we can actually participate in translineage dialogue, theory, and even mutually transformative practices. A philosophical theologian in his own right, Alderman offers a solid step in just this direction, pointing to some exciting horizons for discovering and enacting an integral version of translineage religiosity. In “Beyond Enacted Experiences,” Amod Lele brings a critical gaze to Wilber’s reading of religion and the integral ideal of “inclusion” when it comes to the essential elements of the great wisdom traditions. Primarily following a historical methodology, Lele sets out to refute the conception in Wilber’s works that it is the phenomenological elements of religious traditions, the replicable paradigms of mystical experience, that are essential in terms of their predominant focus throughout history and regarding what should be mean-

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ingfully incorporated into the theory and practice of the integral wave of social and individual development. Lele’s reconstruction of the central orientations and writings of the masters of the traditions, who are usually identified as exemplars of mystical realization and time-honored teachers of the path to such a realization, reveals not only a striking absence of substantive claims of personal experience, but also consistent deferral of authority to tradition and scriptural revelation over and against the authority of personal experience. Thinking of ways forward from this critique, Lele proposes an approach of “enfolding” the essentials of religious traditions that requires a different approach to each tradition, based upon the divergent emphases and components of the tradition at hand. He also suggests a reevaluation of the merits of traditional exegesis as a source for future speculation that does not fully abandon traditional claims and modes of metaphysical thinking. Our final article by Karen De Looze, “Playing at the Murky Edge: On Birthing an Integral Anthropology,” is a beautiful and ambitious work of integral scholarship. Although tangential to Integral Religious Studies, we have included this piece as our final article of the issue for a number of reasons worth mentioning here. First, while this piece does not explicitly deal with content related to Integral Religious Studies, it is written in a manner that brings religious imagery, concepts, and distinctions to frame the emergence of the field of Integral Anthropology. As such, we feel this piece is an important example of how we might bring elements that have been traditionally associated with religious studies (e.g., transcendence, sacred ritual diagrams, soteriological concerns) and use them to support inquiry and exploration within other disciplines. De Looze’s piece is quite refreshing in this sense because she helps us imagine not just what the content of Integral Religious Studies might consist of (the other articles in the issue do that), but how the field can help other disciplines integrate the spiritual and religious aspects of human existence. As De Looze explains, “My aim is to look at the sacred and the spiritual not as separate areas of study, but as dynamic and static qualities in the midst of the ‘worldly’ discipline that is anthropology” (p. 97). Second, De Looze’s article is a valuable contribution to this issue insofar as the history of religious studies has a long and complex relationship to the field of anthropology, which still exerts a strong influence on the ways religious studies is historicized and approached in the humanities. While De Looze has placed before herself an ambitious task in terms of the implicit scope of her article, her work offers a relevant point of departure to consider the theoretical and practical relationships between Integral Theory and anthropology. The inclusion of William Paden’s plenary talk at the Brazilian Association for the History of Religions Symposium accomplishes three aims in the context of this issue: 1) the context of its performance offers a window into the changing currents of the study of religion in Brazil; 2) it presents a clear and compelling argument for a self-reflexive understanding of the perspectivism that underlies the contemporary study of religion; and 3) it serves as a powerful introduction to the parameters of the field of religious studies for readers not already acquainted with its methodological scope. Paden begins the talk by speaking about the need of reflexive framing in the study of religion, a self-awareness of the ways in which one’s theory, methodological tools, or epistemic starting point naturally delimit the object of study and play a constitutive role regarding the evidence one seeks to furnish. This is followed by some reflections on some of the prominent components of religion as an academic discipline, as it is institutionally framed in the liberal ecology of humanities programs in North America, and here Paden goes further to distinguish the differences and potential congruities between the views of religious insiders and the academic analysis of religion as a subject matter. In conclusion, Paden explores the importance of comparativism across perspectives and frameworks, suggesting a comparative strategy that is delimited to “selective features” of religion. He also introduces his own recent work as a scholar of religion and comparativist: the utility of evolutionary perspectives in explaining and understanding religious behaviors and prototypes cross-culturally. In this issue’s book review, Bruce Alderman offers a fine overview of Jorge Ferrer and Jacob Sherman’s text, The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies (SUNY Press, 2008). Alderman describes the modus operandi of the book, which is to historicize, justify, and demonstrate or enact the

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participatory approach to the study of religion, while highlighting key figures and methods of its theory and praxis. Alderman articulates the participatory model as an integration of cultural, linguistic, and historically sensitive methods, on the one hand, and universalist methods inclined towards metaphysics, notions of ultimacy, and sameness, on the other hand. Although Ferrer’s participatory enactment is still missing several key elements of an integral orientation, as Alderman points out, it does provide some insight as to how these two orientations can be recursively engaged by scholars and communities—especially post-metaphysical theologians—in a dynamic process of disclosure (particularity) and revelation (universality) in and through action-oriented modes of understanding, analysis, and evaluation. In addition to summarizing certain features of the participatory approach in relation to religious studies and Integral Theory, Alderman also highlights a few salient arguments made by contributors of the book. For instance, citing Sean Kelly’s chapter on “Participation, Complexity, and the Study of Religion,” Alderman highlights Kelly’s very interesting critique of Wilber’s conception of holarchy, where he basically argues for a more heterogeneous and complexityoriented approach to development than Wilber’s view. Alderman suggests that anyone interested in exploring the relationship between theory and practice, philosophy of religion and theology, the historical contours of participatory methods in the field of religious studies, as well as the relevance of all this to Integral Theory and practice, will have much to appreciate and learn from The Participatory Turn. We hope you find this issue on Integral Religious Studies to be as intellectually stimulating and theoretically promising as we do. It is our intention that this issue serve as a kickstarter, as it were, for future Integral Religious Studies issues, all of which can continue the important task of establishing a theoretical, practical, and participatory space for trandisciplinarity in the study of religion, and an ongoing assessment of the corresponding forms of knowledge and the agents of that knowledge within this emergent field.

About the Editors Dustin DiPerna holds a B.S. degree from Cornell University (2003). He completed his graduate coursework at Harvard University in 2010 and is scheduled to receive a Master of Liberal Arts degree in Religion from Harvard in November 2012. In 2004, Dustin began his work in the field of Integral Religious Studies under the mentorship of Ken Wilber. In 2005, he had the privilege of attending the inaugural Integral Spiritual Center event, which brought together over 40 religious and spiritual leaders from a diverse array of traditions. Each leader, as a lineage holder and authority of their respective stream, explored how the Integral approach might be brought to their tradition. Since then Dustin has written two books on Integral Religious Studies. Both books will be published later in 2012 under a series he’s titled The Great Human Tradition. Volume 1, In Streams of Wisdom, integrates the work of Wilber and Daniel P. Brown to show the core vectors of spiritual development most relevant to the emergence of a global spirituality. Volume 2, The Rainbow of Enactment, examines Wilber’s notion of the conveyer belt to introduce a concept he calls Developmental Religious Pluralism within the context of Integral Religious Studies. Mark Schmanko holds M.A. degrees in Religion from Harvard University (2011) and Naropa University (2007) and a B.A. in English from Kean University (2003). Mark is currently an adjunct faculty member at John F. Kennedy University and works for Digital Network Group’s (LLC) Kinetic Potential Scholars initiative, which offers transformative mentoring programs and online services for underprivileged students. Mark’s creative passion and scholarly training are fueled by the study of South Asian philosophy and culture, with an emphasis on comparative mysticism, the American counterculture movement, intersubjectivity, and anthropology. Mark’s goal is to create sophisticated paradigms that can articulate, challenge, innovate, and engage powerful modes of religiosity in light of today’s public landscape, a landscape that has practically divorced itself from all considerations and injunctions related to the sacred. Ben Williams graduated with a B.A. in Religion from the University of Vermont (2007) before going on to complete an M.T.S. degree in Hindu studies at Harvard University’s Divinity School (2009). He is cur-

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rently a Ph.D. student and teaching fellow in the South Asian Studies department at Harvard. His focus is on forms of argumentation in medieval Shaiva and Vaishnava text traditions during a transitional period in the Indian intellectual landscape when sectarian theologies and religious cosmologies began to emerge as important discursive elements in analytic philosophical treatises. Ben is also a longtime devotee and student of hip hop music and culture and helped create a conference at Harvard on the social and political ramifications of grassroots hip hop movements in the Middle East region and Africa.

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Tashi Mannox/tashimannox.com

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INTEGRAL RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN A DEVELOPMENTAL CONTEXT Dustin DiPerna ABSTRACT This article articulates how, through the use of a developmental lens, the academic study of religion can further liberate religion as a vehicle for human transformation. In short, this article positions the theoretical aims of Integral Religious Studies within the multifaceted streams of inquiry already underway in today’s broader examination of religious studies. It begins with a description of how religious studies first emerged in the West, and then historicizes the trajectory of the discipline over the past several centuries. Next, having articulated the early streams of scholarly thought, it examines the limitations of the modern approaches to religion to show how postmodern methodologies in general, and the approach offered in this article in particular, correct for the mistakes of modern scholars. Finally, supporting the important truths uncovered by today’s postmodern scholarship, and holding them in the proper context, the article moves on to explore how a model of Developmental Religious Pluralism enfolds a culturally sensitive hermeneutic of psychological development into a more holistically oriented, integral version of religious studies. KEY WORDS human development; Integral Methodological Pluralism; pluralism; postmodernism; religion

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eligion has the potential to serve as a potent vehicle for human transformation.1 Not only is religion the sole preserver of mystical knowledge capable of moving individuals through states of consciousness (from gross, to subtle, to causal, to witness, to nondual), but when understood through a developmental lens, religion also has the capacity to move individuals along a “conveyor belt” of human transformation (from traditional, to modern, to postmodern, to integral worldviews and beyond).2 The rejuvenation of religion as a transformative catalyst will be the result of several factors. Much of religion’s potency will be unlocked as a result of lineage holders, religious leaders, and practitioners of various streams growing beyond the confines of traditional worldviews. Such a shift will allow modern and rational interpretations of their traditions to enter into the larger discussion and practice of religion on a global scale. The importance of these developmental shifts cannot be overstated. When modern/rational interpretations of our world’s religions are released into the world, major swaths of individuals who might have otherwise discarded religion as pre-rational myth will suddenly have access to mystical teachings. In addition to the formative role of lineage holders, religious leaders, and practitioners of the world’s wisdom streams, the academic study of religion also holds several keys that are sure to help unlock religion’s potential for transformation. This article gives primary focus to the academic study of religion in general, and the role of religious studies in particular. My contention is that when properly situated within a developmental context, religious studies has an important role to play in the broader emergence of an integral worldview throughout the globe. The result is something I call Integral Religious Studies. I begin with a historical account. By way of historicizing Integral Religious Studies and situating the emergence of Developmental Religious Pluralism into the proper moment in time, I hope to account for the fact that all belief, theory, and modes of discourse are dependent upon and conditioned by not only the particular historical context in which they arise but also by the developmental view enacting them in any given Correspondence: Dustin DiPerna, 17265 Taylor Lane, Occidental, CA 95465. E-mail: [email protected]. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 2012, 7(2), pp. 1–18

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occurrence. Such historical illuminations, alongside principles of developmental enactment, not only create deep reverence for the past but also allow us to consciously create new possibilities for the future.

Historicizing Religious Studies The history and complexity of religious studies is full of nuance, particularities, and overlapping factors that influence our understanding of and assumptions about religious topics. As with almost any subject it can be problematic to address such complexity with a framework that employs broad generalizations. However, despite the validity of critical arguments against the use of generalizations, it is my contention that providing at least some sort of general historical account of religious studies does have heuristic value insofar as it helps to orient the reader. To this end, the following section seeks to demonstrate, in brief, how the evolution of religious studies has unfolded and how we, as scholars, thinkers, practitioners, and external observers of religion now have the capacity to use a metatheoretical perspective to observe and integrate all of the practice and scholarship that has come to pass thus far. All of this, I hope, will help to situate this particular issue of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice and its given aim to examine an integral perspective on religious studies.

The View Through a Western Lens For the purposes of this article, leaving open the possibility of multiple paths to modernity (Eisenstadt, 2000), I examine religious studies as it evolved in the cultural context of the West.3 For means of classification and categorization I begin by looking at two general types of theoretical shifts within the field. I label these two types of shifts vertical and horizontal, respectively. Vertical transformational shifts, or what might be called paradigm shifts, are those changes in academic inquiry that dramatically revolutionize the way in which the field of study is understood. Most often, vertical shifts result from revolutions in culture, society, and identity that deeply transform collective worldviews. Vertical shifts in paradigm can be directly contrasted with horizontal categorical shifts that represent changes in theoretical approach within an already existing paradigm. Horizontal shifts use a multitude of orientations to ask a wide variety of questions within a common working model of the world.4 In other words, despite the new additions to the field that horizontal shifts bring, the general worldview or vertical paradigm within which differences emerge is left unchanged. Disaggregating these two types of theoretical shifts (horizontal and vertical) in the subsequent pages will provide an initial framework that helps to make sense of the countless recalibrations that have transpired in the field of religious studies over the past few centuries. As our shared narrative of religious studies unfolds, I will clarify which categorizations represent horizontal shifts in methodological approach and which represent vertical shifts in paradigm.

The Four Paradigms of Religious Studies Thus far, three broad historical stages of vertical transformation have unfolded within the field of religious studies: 1) premodern fusion, 2) modern differentiation, and 3) postmodern contextualization. Currently, with the release of several pioneering books in the field, we find ourselves on the verge of a fourth paradigmatic shift into an integral or post-postmodern version of religious studies. As with most developmental sequences, not only did these three historical stages move from levels of less complexity (premodern) to levels of greater complexity (postmodern), but each new stage of historical unfolding also used relevant characteristics of each previous stage for its foundation. In other words, each emergent vertical paradigm successfully “enfolded” the paradigm that came before it. 2

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Historical Stage

Vertical Paradigm

Horizontal Approach

PostPostmodern

Participatory Integration

Integral Methodological Pluralism

Postmodern

Contextualization

Hermeneutics; Postcolonialism; Historicization; Identity

Modern

Differentiation

Anthropology of Religion; Sociology of Religion; Psychology of Religion

Premodern

Fusion

Religion not yet objectified

Figure 1. Historical stages, the major shifts in vertical paradigm, and the horizontal approaches emphasized in each paradigm.

Figure 1 depicts the historical time periods, the major shifts in vertical paradigm, and the horizontal approaches emphasized at each paradigm. I will leave the graphic for now without much explanation and will return to it again toward the end of this article to explain the details. Let us examine each of these paradigmatic shifts in greater detail moving from bottom (furthest in the past) to top (present/emerging paradigms).

Premodern Fusion In the West, centuries of dominance and obedience gave full reign of power and authority to the Catholic Church. For most of the first millennium and for several centuries into the second millennium, knowledge in general and theological knowledge in particular was trapped in the interpretive framework and filter of the Church. The inerrancy of the Bible dictated cultural and social possibility, leaving little room for freedom of thought outside of its narrow lens. In short, the Church was simultaneously researcher, authority, and disseminator of wisdom. As a result of this early fusion of value spheres, the study of religion was not divorced from the rest of knowledge. Religion itself had not yet been made an object of conscious reflection; religious studies, as we know it today, simply did not exist. Religious scholars are all too familiar with these early modes of scholarship. University of Chicago professor Bruce Lincoln (2006) articulates how we might best view religious studies within the context of premodern fusion: For insofar as the task of defining anything presumes a discrete object that can be identified in contradistinction to others, this implies a model of “religion” that emerged only with the Enlightenment. Prior to that time, even in western Europe religion cannot be analytically (or practically) disarticulated from virtually all other aspects of culture. (pp. 1-2) To say it another way, and to reinforce Lincoln’s point, in premodern times religion was so completely embedded into culture that it had not yet emerged as a legitimate field of objective inquiry. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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Integral theorist Ken Wilber (1998) explains premodern fusion along the same lines as Lincoln, emphasizing the fact that “none of the premodern worldviews clearly differentiated art-aesthetics, empiricalscience, and religion-morals” (p. 126). It was precisely because these value spheres were undifferentiated in the premodern historical paradigm that “what happened in one sphere could dominate and control what happened in the others” (p. 126). Wilber continues, Thus, a scientist like Galileo could be prevented from pursuing the sphere of science because it clashed with the prevailing sphere of religion-morals. An artist such as Michelangelo was in constant conflict with Pope Julius II about the types of figures he was allowed to represent in his art, because expressive-art and religion-morals were not clearly differentiated, and thus oppression in one sphere was oppression in the other. (p. 126)

Historical Stage

I will come back to this idea shortly, but for now it is worth noting that certain elements of this type of oppression and domination created a ruthless reaction in the opposite direction as the next vertical paradigm began to emerge (leading from differentiation to disassociation). As I will argue below, the reaction to years of Church oppression was so strong that, for many, it led to a direct repression of all forms of lived spirituality. Figure 2 shows a snapshot of the descriptions above in graphic form. The historical time period is “premodern” while the vertical paradigm is one of “fusion,” wherein religion is still undifferentiated from all other spheres of life. At this stage a horizontal approach is not yet possible because religion has not yet been enacted as an object of contemplation or examination. This stage, as described later in this article, is the simplest of all the stages; it represents a time period prior to the emergence of religious studies. Vertical Paradigm

Premodern

Fusion

Horizontal Approach

Religion not yet objectified

Figure 2. A premodern orientation to religious studies.

Modern Differentiation Beginning with the Renaissance and culminating in the Western Enlightenment, a vertical shift in consciousness developed that would forever change the way in which knowledge was pursued.5 Between the 14th and 18th centuries elite thinkers began to gravitate away from a type of conformist and mythic-centered knowledge platform. As reason and self-reflexivity gained strength, the Church systematically lost its hold as single source of authority. These key confluences combined to create a full vertical paradigmatic transformation leading from premodern fusion to modern differentiation. Again, it is perhaps Wilber who offers the most astute articulation of this vital fulcrum in Western social consciousness. Echoing the modern scholar Max Weber and theorists like Jürgen Habermas, Wilber explains that the modern paradigm of consciousness allowed a new perspective to emerge that consciously differentiated the major value spheres. Plato’s spheres of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, or simply put, Art, Science, and Morals, were free from the domination of the Church and able to pursue their own truths independently. 4

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The relative autonomy of value spheres represents a substantial leap forward. Whereas in the premodern paradigm it was simply not possible to pursue any independent truth outside of the confines of the Church, the modern paradigm created the possibility of the independent pursuit of knowledge that placed universal reason as the new centralizing authority. The significance such a shift had for the cultural consciousness of the West cannot be understated. One prime example delivers the point home. As described above, in premodern times Church and State were fused: “If you disagreed with religious authorities, you could be tried for both heresy (a religious crime) and treason (a political crime). For heresy, you could be eternally damned; for treason, temporally tortured and killed...” (Wilber, 1998, p. 126). Now, with a relative degree of differentiation, truth based on reason and science was positioned on a pedestal, replacing the infallibility of scripture. Quite extraordinarily, with the rise of the Enlightenment, the religious and political heretics of yesterday became the intellectual leaders of the new modern cultural revolution. Despite the positive implications of this differentiation of values, the transition into modernity was not without its own set of problems. Following Wilber’s articulation, it becomes clear that the momentum to differentiate each sphere of knowledge as separate and distinct was so strong that each went in a different direction without maintaining connection to the other. Differentiation turned into a pathological form of dissociation. In fact, the dissociation became so extreme that the sphere of empirical Science began to dominate the spheres of Art and Morality by “denying them any real existence at all” (Wilber, 1998, p. 126). Science became the new king, while morals and art suffered the repercussions of being second-class considerations (a phenomenon that still exists today). Wilber (1998) puts it succinctly: “If differentiation was the dignity of modernity, dissociation was the disaster” (p. 126).6 In addition to differentiation of values, modern consciousness also created a rational turn inward toward greater degrees of self-reflexivity, taking the external focus away from the heaven of “other-worldlyness” and brought the focus into “this world.” “Instead of the infinite above,” as Wilber (2000) puts it, “the West pitched its attention to an infinite ahead” (p. 410). Progress and the promise of an improved future became the new God of those with modern consciousness: The standard God of the modern Western world was set. It would become the God of the bourgeois as well as of the dedicated scientist; the God of the materialist as well as the social reformer; the God of the Greens and the “back to nature” movement wherever it appeared; the God of democracy as well as the God of the Marxists and Maoists—what they all had in common is the God of all that is visible, and all that can be seen, and all that can be grasped with the hands... An “other world” of any sort was thrown over; and the eyes of men and women settled steely on the horizons not above but in front of them, settled coldly on this world, and this world, and this world again. If salvation could not be found on this small earth, it could not be found at all. (p. 410) At this point in the historical narrative, it is vital to make a clear distinction between the practice of religion and spirituality (in its more transformational dimensions) and the study of religion and spirituality (in its more translative dimensions). Whereas the practice of spirituality involves a direct relationship to spiritual teachings and personal implication, the study of religion and spirituality requires only an indirect and objective stance. Of course there are, indeed, those who take both perspectives as well (scholar-practitioners) but for the purposes of this brief outline this distinction between a personal relationship (practitioner) and objective relationship (scholar) to spirituality provides a foundation for a more comprehensive historical understanding.7 As we shall see, the clear differentiation and eventual integration of each of these approaches play a significant role in the emergence of an integral approach to religious analysis. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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Up until and through the beginning of the Renaissance, personal and objective approaches to the study of religion were fused (along with the major value spheres). It was assumed, with a few exceptions, that the study of religion could only be legitimately conducted by adherents of the tradition. With the birth of modernity, however, these two approaches were distinguished and seen as independent from one another (i.e., for the very first time, one could take religion as an object of study from outside of the tradition itself). Religious belief was no longer a prerequisite for engagement. However, Wilber observes that as reason and autonomy gained even more momentum, social consciousness confused the whole of spirituality with its premodern variations (an error still rampant today). Alas, the practice of religion became conflated with a premodern level of consciousness, leaving us with what Wilber calls the level-line fallacy.8 Even as the personal practice of spirituality became frozen at premodern levels and trumped by the age of reason and scientific inquiry, the study of religion and spirituality as object carried on. This means that while premodern interpretations and personal practice stagnated for the vast majority of spiritual adherents, the study of spirituality as an objective field of inquiry continued to progress through modern and eventually postmodern paradigms of inquiry. One of the secondary objectives of this article, and the particular integral methodology I call Developmental Religious Pluralism, is to reunite the practitioner and scholarly orientations towards religion and spirituality. Ultimately, a deeper understanding of religion and spirituality’s historical stagnation will open and release spiritual practice from its premodern shackles, allowing its more complex manifestations to flourish in modern, postmodern, and integral engagement. Before explaining how this liberation may happen, let us first consider some of the other ways that the modern study of religion continued beyond the premodern paradigm of understanding.

Sensitivity to Methodological Approach

Historical Stage

Just as the shift from premodern to modern represents a vertical shift, many horizontal shifts occurred within modern consciousness as well. Following the Enlightenment, a particular type of sensitivity developed with regard to the objective study of religion. This new sensitivity showed scholars that there were multiple horizontal approaches to the same subject. Scholars discovered that the scientific study of religion produced dramatically different but equally valid results depending upon the disciplinary lens used by the researcher. As the centuries unfolded, scholars began to apply specific methodologies from other fields of academic inquiry to examine religion and religious phenomena. Over time, religion was examined through the lenses of sociology (Durkheim; Weber), psychology (Adler; Frazer; Freud; James; Jung; Otto; Tyler), phenomenology (de la Saussaye; Kristensen; van der Leeuw), and anthropology (Feuerbach).9 Although each of the above approaches was in fact new, representing authentic categorical shifts in terms of their horizontal methodology, they all occurred within the same vertical paradigm of modern differentiation (Fig. 3). That is to say, all attempts at theorizing, no matter how diverse, were still articulated (historically) from within the same enacted worldspace of a modern level of consciousness. Vertical Paradigm

Modern

Differentiation

Horizontal Approach

Anthropology of Religion; Sociology of Religion; Psychology of Religion

Figure 3. A modern orientation to religious studies. 6

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With religion as object, multiple horizontal approaches emerge to examine religion from different perspectives. As shown in Figure 3, horizontal approaches include anthropology of religion, sociology of religion, psychology of religion, among others.

Essentializing Religion In addition to a more particularized approach that understood how different lenses of social science produce different perspectives on religion, an essentialized approach also unfolded with modern consciousness that attempted to position and categorize major religious traditions. In an effort to gain more clarity, modern scholars assumed that they could systematize religion and religious phenomena into broad universal categories. This particular approach, seeking universal essences and broad commonalities, is now emblematic of the modern paradigmatic approach. The common classification “world religions” stems directly out of this early attempt to find the essence of the great religious traditions around the globe. When speaking of world religions in an academic context, at least 13 major systems of praxis are typically listed: Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Jainism, Taoism, Shintoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, Baha’i, and Indigenous. Although it can be helpful to use such categories, it is valuable to remember that this type of categorization is limited by the contours of modern consciousness. Gavin Flood (1999) explains: The construction of “world religions” is underpinned by a certain kind of theorizing whose roots are in the Enlightenment and which seeks universals. The ability to abstract the world religions from history and to see them as in some sense equal (though not often equal to Christianity with which they have been set in contrast), might itself be seen as part of the modernist idea of progress towards a clearer future in the academy. (p. 3) In the discussion of postmodern contextualization, Flood’s comment does not imply that the category of “world religions” is problematic in and of itself, but rather, it points to the fact that significant issues arise if the generalizations about traditions lack a deeper and more nuanced perspective. The differentiation of value spheres, the sensitivity to horizontal methodology, and the first attempts to categorize world religions are vital to our understanding of religious studies today. Despite the fact that scholars today correct many of the mistakes made by these early modernists, the value that this initial clarification adds cannot be understated. The important distinctions of anthropology of religion and sociology of religion, those initial insights into the origin of religion, psychology of religion, and use of phenomenological methodologies to explain the “sacred” in its various forms, continue to add to our collective knowledge systems and religious sensibilities. Similarly, the categorizations of various systems of faith, despite the misleading sense of homogeneity that they once implied, are still key elements to developing greater religious understanding and religious literacy worldwide. Now, however, we move on to the third vertical shift in religious studies to see how even these modern approaches were transcended and enveloped into a new vertical paradigmatic shift.

Postmodern Contextualization The modern paradigm of differentiation, despite the incredible value that it added, left several substantial problems that would need to be resolved by the next generation of scholars. The next major vertical paradigm shift into postmodernity is usually linked to the second half of the 20th century, although its roots began to sprout almost a century earlier. Radical critiques of the modern position (from its lack of cultural, historical, Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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and contextual sensitivity to its erroneous assumption about the existence of some sort of objective “God’s eye view”), lead postmodern scholarship to revolutionize the modern paradigm with a new kind of contextualization and an ultrasensitivity to time, place, identity, language, and interpretation. I will unpack each of the horizontal categorical shifts at the postmodern paradigm one at a time. Recall, all of this historical account is provided to remind the reader where we have come from and to where we might head as religious studies blossoms into an integral age.

Sensitivity to Universal Claims As modern consciousness found itself taken as the object of reflection, its theories were brought into greater suspicion. For starters, as touched upon above with Flood’s insight, postmodernists continually bring the term world religion under strong scrutiny due to the fact that it emerged from a modern level of consciousness that lacked an awareness of the social power structures of Western discourse (e.g., Foucault), which inadvertently imposed static categories onto the cultural and religious “other” (e.g., Said’s Orientalism). Today’s scholars claim that any approach to categorize universal characteristics of traditions is naïve at best and based on totalitarian impulses at worst. The claim is made on solid ground, in principle. Each tradition, the postmodern critique explains, is so internally diverse, and so much shaped by regional values and identity that such broad categorizations lose value. Flood (1999) continues his point with even greater strength: While the academic study of religions has largely moved away from the essentialist understandings that religion has some common, perhaps transcendent, essence it has only begun to take seriously the claim that religion cannot be abstracted from its cultural matrices. Courses on ‘world religions’ still present these constructed entities as if they are in some timeless realm (perhaps a realm of pure doctrine) outside of wider cultural patterns and history (especially colonial history, the relation between religion and capitalism, and recently globalization)... To address this issue the academic study of religion needs to examine religions within their political, cultural, and social contexts. (pp. 2-3)

Postmodern scholar Paul Griffiths (2006) takes a more critical approach, although it manages to deliver equal force along similar lines: “the sortal ‘world religion’ was developed and is still often deployed for the properly theoretical purpose of depicting alien practice as a consumable good accommodatable by late-capitalist appetites” (p. 72). In other words, rather than engaging the uniqueness of each manifestation of religiosity in the world, modern approaches tend to homogenize religion and place it neatly into categories that represent merely a pale reflection of the diverse reality on the ground. It is from this base that, for better or worse, generic categorizations of religion are “consumed” by a privileged (often Western) elite. Other postmodern scholars, like Jonathan Z. Smith, level less a critique on the categorization of religion but take strong positions regarding the study of religion as a whole. Smith (1982) explains, Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy. For this reason, the student of religion, and most particularly the historian of religion, must be relentlessly self-conscious. Indeed, this self-consciousness constitutes has primary expertise, his foremost object of study. (p. xi) Although extreme in nature, Smith’s comments set the foundation for almost all postmodern scholarship. 8

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Rather than focusing upon a world “out there” of religious practices and beliefs (the modern paradigm’s primary object), postmodern scholarship in religion turns the lens onto knowledge itself and its linguistic and cultural modes of expression.

Sensitivity to the Scholar’s Point of View Among the many horizontal realizations of postmodernity, one fundamental discovery was that the postmodern scholar must be self-reflective. He must be aware of his own position, biases, and subtle conditioning that might bend a research project in a particular direction of an ideological agenda. Such self-reflective awareness was simply not present in modern scholarship. Building upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Flood (1999) explains that “reflexivity refers to the ability of a researcher, or indeed as a strategy embedded within method, to become aware of the contexts of research and the presuppositions of the research programme” (p. 35). According to Flood (1999), assumptions are “the inevitable historical contingencies within which we all operate” (p. 7). Therefore, it is not to say that we must avoid assumptions all together, but rather we must seek to uncover and critically reflect upon all those assumptions molding and shaping our particular discourse that might otherwise remain unknown. Bringing assumptions to light and exposing the cultural, linguistic, social, and historical conditioning behind them offers a more transparent perspective on reality. Following the lead of postmodern scholars, the method employed in this article deliberately employs this type of self-reflexive approach, to some degree. Although explored further in the following section on interpretation, one example of self-reflexivity is useful to provide the reader with an understanding of how this postmodern approach shows up in scholarship. As postmodern scholarship deepened, a realization began to emerge that the language used to describe a given subject was equally if not more important than the content of the subject itself. Wilber (1998) explains, The importance of contextualism, interpretations, and hermeneutics in general came to the fore with what has been called the linguistic turn in philosophy—the general realization that language is not simply a representation of a pre-given world, but has a hand in the creation and construction of that world. With the linguistic turn, which began roughly in the nineteenth century, philosophers stopped using language to describe the world, and instead started looking at language itself. (p. 189) The self-reflexive mirror had been set in place. So what does it mean if all research and theory is shaped by language and co-created by the point of view of the researcher? Karl Popper’s (1994) “myth of the framework” suggests that within the context of religious studies and spiritual praxis “mystics and religious practitioners are prisoners of their conceptual frameworks” (as cited in Ferrer & Sherman, 2008, p. 27). Furthermore, Popper (as cited in Ferrer & Sherman, 2008) explains, “spiritual knowledge must always be shaped by or screened through them” (p. 27). Popper’s insight teaches us that identities and speech are preconditioned by the particular frameworks that lend meaning and social validation to our experience. Even if the insights are valid, whether one is a spiritual practitioner or a religious scholar, each insight can only be accessed by way of “our situated phenomenal awareness of them” (Ferrer & Sherman, 2008, p. 27). Similarly, renowned postmodern scholar and philosopher Paul Ricœur “has accepted the modern mantle of criticism, to take nothing for granted and to test everything. So far, he is with Descartes,” explains Ferrer. “With other postmodernists, however, he has turned his critical eye upon modernity itself, questioning the human capacity to arrive at the Cartesian idea of a single, clear and distinct, God’s-eye point of view” (as cited in Stiver, 2001, p. 137). Gavin Flood (1999) helps to further fill out the postmodern perspective on “point of view” using a congruent line of thought: Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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Research within the many fields which comprise religious studies is in the end conversation with texts and persons. The researcher is entering into a dialogue with a text or person and herself becoming a part of an intersubjective and intertextual matrix in which all understanding—and explanation—arises. Understanding is always from a place.... and is legitimized by wider social forces. To develop method sensitive to context is to be open to the ‘otherness’ of the material or persons who are the ‘object’ of study and to recognize speaking and hearing subjects as the place of meaning. (Flood, 1999, p. 35) It is clear that “point of view” is not only subject to language, but also to time, place, and culture—all of which represent fundamental postmodern sensitivities employed throughout this article.

Sensitivity to Interpretation

Because there is always an observer, a researcher, or an individuated perspective with all of its relative conditioning (in all four quadrants), scholarship now understands that the whole of reality is subject to interpretation.10 This leads to the startling discovery that there is not a single objective world out there that we are all describing. Rather, the world out there is always subject to our own unique perspective; we participate in the creation of the world in each instant of cognition. In the most general sense, the study of interpretation is called hermeneutics. As Ricœur points out, “Hermeneutics itself puts us on guard against the illusion or pretension of neutrality” (Ricœur & Thompson, p. 43). There is always a relative vantage from which one is articulating. As one of the pillars of the postmodern paradigm, it serves us well to understand interpretation with a more nuanced perspective. Understanding interpretation not only serves the heart of postmodern thought but it too serves as the core foundation of this article. In the words of postmodern scholar and theologian David Tracy (1994), “Any act of interpretation involves at least three realities: some phenomenon to be interpreted, someone interpreting that phenomenon, and some interaction between these first two realities” (p. 10). It is perhaps easy to underestimate the power and importance of interpretation. “Interpretation seems a minor matter, but it is not,” Tracy (1994) explains. “Every time we act, deliberate, judge, understand, or even experience, we are interpreting. To understand at all is to interpret” (p. 9). Tracy continues, Interpretation is thus a question as unavoidable, finally, as experience, understanding, deliberation, judgment, decision, and action. To be human is to act reflectively, to decide deliberately, to understand intelligently, to experience fully. Whether we know it or not, to be human is to be a skilled interpreter. (p. 9) The significance of interpretation is directly linked to the discovery that language creates our day-today reality on levels previously unimagined. For instance, new discoveries in the field of cognitive neuroscience support the strong version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis (the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”), namely that language does not simply influence the way we perceive reality (the weak version of the argument) but actually constrains it.11 Modern scholars simply lacked the realization that in every instant we are imprisoned within the confines of language; we know the world only through representation. Fundamental to this linguistic turn is a more profound understanding that language is composed of what Saussure called signs and signifiers; representations of reality that do not and cannot refer directly to the thing-in-itself. The American Pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce (as cited in Hawthorn & Weiss, 1934), taking a slightly different approach to the significance of signs, explains what it is like to live from within this new linguistic postmodern paradigm of interpretation: 10

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It seems a strange thing, when one comes to ponder over it, that a sign should leave its interpreter to supply a part of its meaning; but the explanation of the phenomenon lies in the fact the entire universe—not merely the universe of existents, but all that wider universe, embracing the universe of existents as part, the universe which we are all accustomed to refer to as ‘the truth’—that all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs. (p. 5)

Historical Stage

In other words, signs are never neutral with an absolute meaning, but rather they are always, first and foremost, representations and interpretations of ideas. As religious studies gained clarity and sophistication, scholars began to point out that there are other individual and social factors outside of language that also influence interpretation. Like linguistic differences, such variances create significant differentiation in religious praxis, belief, and behavior. For instance, gender or power differentials drastically influence the way a particular tradition evolves over time. Similarly, interaction with other value systems creates versions of syncretism and accommodation that might seem foreign to a practitioner of the same faith in a different area of the world. Although this article focuses on the role of interpretation from an individual perspective, all arguments are always first and foremost situated in the larger context of culture, social structure, identity, and history. Interpretation, as valuable as it is to recognize, is not in and of itself the ultimate end or goal. Rather scholarship follows a pragmatic imperative that insists that interpretation leads to some form of effective action. “All theory of interpretation—like all theory itself—is an interpretation as good or as bad as its ability to illuminate the problems we discover or invent and its ability to increase the possibilities of good action” (Tracy, 1994, p. 9). The entire thrust of this article is designed to produce more effective action in the world as a result of a better understanding of religious interpretation. The result of this new contextual understanding, among other things, creates a radical shift toward a new form of religious pluralism. As the study of religion turns the lens inward towards the one doing the inquiry, a whole series of new horizontal approach emerge. These approaches include: hermeneutics, a focus on postcolonial considerations, an emphasis on historical context, and a deeper questioning of the influence of identity (Fig. 4). Vertical Paradigm

Postmodern

Contextualization

Horizontal Approach

Hermeneutics; Postcolonialism; Historicization; Identity

Figure 4. A postmodern orientation to religious studies.

Post-Postmodern Participatory Integration Astute scholars like Flood sense the need for yet a fourth vertical paradigm shift in religious studies. There is a growing need for religious studies to “engage much more with wider debates in social sciences and humanities and to develop a rigorous metatheoretical discourse” (Flood, 1999, p. 3). However partial and preliminary it might be, this article begins to fill out Flood’s vision for a fourth vertical shift. According to Wilber (2000), “If the great achievement of the Enlightenment (and “modernity”) was the necessary differentiation of the Big Three [value spheres of Art, Morals, and Science], the great task of Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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“postmodernity” is their integration, overcoming what [Charles] Taylor called ‘a monster of arrested development’” (pp. 148-149). It is to this end that I continue the postmodern march toward a more holistic model of religious studies. Only time will tell if the ideas posited in this article earn the right to declare a valid paradigm shift, but it is still useful to differentiate this work from the past methodologies by using a new term: Integral Religious Studies. In this context, the word integral has a specific meaning, best defined as: Comprehensive, inclusive, non-marginalizing, embracing. Integral approaches to any field attempt to be exactly that: to include as many perspectives, styles, and methodologies as possible within a coherent view of the topic. In a certain sense, integral approaches are “meta-paradigms,” or ways to draw together an already existing number of separate paradigms into an interrelated network of approaches that are mutually enriching. (Wilber, as quoted in Visser, 2003, pp. xii-xiii) Using the three categories of historical stage, vertical paradigm, and horizontal approach, I have graphically represented this new stage in Figure 5. One of the most significant features that arises in this particular category is the understanding that reality (and therefore religious studies itself) is enacted not only according to cultural context, history, and identity, but also according to the developmental level of the researcher. If we call the postmodern era the emergence of “contextual” sensitivity, the paradigm of Integral Religious Studies is most certainly an era of “developmental” sensitivity. From this view, we begin to see that vertical paradigms also represent stages on a path of vertical development. Including the developmental view of the researcher allows a much greater degree of sensitivity to the ways that religious studies is brought forth into the world. For instance, even if a researcher is embedded in a post-postmodern context, the vertical paradigm of “participatory integration” can only be brought forth if the researcher holds the level of development necessary to enact it. (Such is the case for all previous paradigms as well. It is only at this vertical paradigm that developmental enactment becomes obvious.) An example will help to explain this point in a bit more detail. If a researcher only has the developmental capacity for contextualization (postmodern) or merely differentiation (modern), the horizontal approach of Integral Methodological Pluralism (an approach enacted by a more complex stage of development than the one in which the researcher currently finds himself) will remain over his or her head. Paradigms that are beyond the developmental capacity of the researcher will remain out of reach of being operationalized. From this more integral view, we can consider the entire field of religious studies (all vertical paradigms and all horizontal approaches) all at once. We can now return to the illustration at the beginning of this article (Fig. 1) and see how an integral orientation successfully synthesizes all existing vertical paradigms and all existing horizontal approaches to religious studies.

Historical Stage

Vertical Paradigm PostPostmodern

Participatory Integration

Horizontal Approach

Integral Methodological Pluralism

Figure 5. A post-postmodern or integral orientation to religious studies.

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Another important realization comes online with this vertical paradigm. From the point of view of “participatory integration” (or what can simply be called Integral Religious Studies) using the horizontal approach known as Integral Methodological Pluralism, the researcher now sees that each new vertical paradigm transcends and includes the important features of the one that preceded it. For example, the postmodern paradigm includes the valuable horizontal methodological approaches that emerged in the modern paradigm. In most cases this shift occurred in a healthy way. That is to say, even though the postmodern paradigm gives way to new approaches like hermeneutics, it still includes the earlier approaches like the psychology of religion and sociology of religion. In cases where the developmental shift to a vertical paradigm is less healthy, certain useful aspects of previous stages can be denied. For instance, although religion was not a direct study of inquiry during the paradigm of fusion, there were still many individuals who were practitioners of the tradition. At the modern level of differentiation, being a practitioner was frowned upon. In many cases, being a practitioner was seen as a factor that created too much bias in the researcher to make an honest inquiry. Using the map provided in this article, an integral researcher would notice the dissociation that occurred in the transition from fusion (premodern) to differentiation (modern) and would encourage more practitioners and scholars to bring their insights to the table. Overall, we can notice that certain principles only become obvious at an integral stage of development. For example, the fact that each paradigm transcends and includes the former and the fact that each stage brings a new perspective become available only when the researcher can enact an integral worldspace. This realization extends the postmodern idea that the researcher has to be aware of his or her own perspective. In this case, the researcher must not only be aware of cultural and linguistic biases, but also about their developmental stage. Without an honest assessment of personal development, the researcher is not only ignoring their own tenets about self-knowing (bringing their own perspectives to the table), but rather is generally ignoring a substantial amount of important information (which is contradictory to the entire postmodern paradigm).12

Conclusion I would like to reiterate several characteristics that emerge when religious studies in placed in a developmental context. In doing so, I will also list a few examples of what sets “participatory integration” apart from the earlier paradigms. While including the sensitivities of modern and postmodern consciousness, I offer several ways that religious studies might leap forward yet again. An Integral approach to religious studies: 1. C ​ orrects for the errors of modern scholarship while still including an evolutionary perspective. Although developmental in nature, the modern paradigm failed to see cross-cultural contexts and the influence of linguistics and social structures of power. Because it lacked a general sensitivity to these various complexities, the modern level of consciousness posited a world “out there” that was real in-and-of-itself as if it could be directly known. These basic errors led to universal assertions about the nature of reality, especially in the realm of religion. Not only did these assertions tend to be Western-centric but scholars within the modern paradigm often made arrogant strides to place Christianity in particular, and the monotheistic traditions in general, above and superior to all other religious traditions.13 As its first point of methodological self-reflexivity, this article navigates around this modern trap. Although I do indeed employ a developmental approach, I do so only on careful footing so as to not make similar mistakes as early modern pioneers like Edward Tylor (1871) and James Frazer (1922), who, using an evolutionary perspective, failed to bring a critical and sensitive perspective to their approach.14 Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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2. ​A ​ dds a developmental understanding to postmodern interpretation. Just as each idea and concept needs to be contextualized into what Flood (1999) calls the “intersubjective and intertextual matrix,” I use such ideas to also elaborate how we might take seriously the notion that “understanding is always from a place” (p. 35). Each interpreter or researcher is always positioned from a particular perspective. Whether that place of understanding is related to identity (e.g., gender, profession, race) or some broader social, cultural, or historical lineage, perspectives are always conditioned to a certain degree. Furthermore, because no single perspective can be devoid of a particularized position, an integral scholar of religious studies must pay careful attention to how psychological development enacts different realities. Moreover, these realities are enacted in conjunction with one’s identity, role, and sociocultural context (i.e., reality is enacted by all four quadrants). Rather than falling back to a modern universal truth claim, pegging tradition against tradition or culture against culture, an integral orientation to religious studies enhances and propels a more nuanced perspective of religious interpretation by basing its claims on crosscultural studies of how individual human beings grow in terms of psychological complexity. 3. U ​ ses broad categorizations of “world religions” but does not seek to essentialize each tradition as monolithic and homogeneous in structure and content. Although some authors in this issue of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice may indeed refer to great wisdom traditions (e.g., Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.), they do so to further prove the diversity within each of these categories rather than to essentialize them. Not only is this article privy to culturally conditioned differences between traditions, but it also takes this sort of careful scholarship one step further to show how, beyond broad identity categorizations, psychological development plays yet another important factor that creates radical diversity and heterogeneity even within traditions embedded in the same cultural-linguistic matrix. Although pushing beyond the limitations of postmodern contextualization to transcend yet include its important distinctions is a fairly recent endeavor in religious studies, several scholars are beginning to explore this orientation more fully. At the Integral Theory Conference held at John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, California, in 2010, Bruce Alderman gave a superb presentation on the ways in which a postpostmodern view can help religion move beyond its tendencies toward mere inclusivism and pluralism.15 At the same conference, Geert Drieghe surveyed some of the various problems that religious diversity presents to the average pluralist and how an integral lens can help scholars move beyond their current roadblocks toward a more effective methodological approach.16 In the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (Oxford University Press, 2006) still other integral scholars find an even broader application. In their timely article, Sean Esbjörn-Hargens and Ken Wilber (2006) use an integral lens to offer a successful and truly impressive proposal for the “comprehensive integration of science and religion.” Outside of the realm of academic scholarship, grassroots attempts to apply Integral Religious Studies in a more direct way are also under way. Three prime examples come from within the Christian tradition in the United States. The first is represented by the efforts of Reverend Tom Thresher, in the state of Washington. Setting his teachings in a developmental context, Thresher follows Wilber’s lead and is in sync with the ideas presented in this article, claiming that churches are uniquely positioned to transform our society. Currently, Thresher heads one of the very first integrally informed churches and is successfully guiding his congregation from a predominately pluralistic religious orientation to one that is fully integral. Thresher’s (2010) recent 14

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book, Reverent Irreverence: Integral Church for the 21st Century, begins to outline what we might hope for from an integral church. Cindy Wigglesworth’s work with Unity Church represents a second powerful example. Recently, Unity Church pledged to become an “explicitly integral church” (personal communication, February 11, 2012). In her current position as Founder and Owner of Conscious Pursuits, Inc., Wigglesworth plans to use both her knowledge of Integral Theory as well as her “Spiritual Intelligence Assessment” to help transform Unity’s entire system into one that employs post-postmodern sensibilities. Although still in its initial phases of transformation, the work Cindy is involved with at Unity Church is a harbinger of times to come.17 A final example is brought forth by the work of Father Chris Dierkes in Vancouver. Not only does Father Dierkes bring a horizontal approach based on Integral Religious Studies to his work in his community, but he has also put his genius into written work as well (Dierkes, 2010, 2011). His forthcoming book, Indistinct Union: Integral Christian Mystical Theology and Practice, offers an exciting example of how a scholar practitioner can bring deep clarity and wisdom using Integral Methodological Pluralism. It is my deepest hope that this article falls in line and helps to support the pioneers listed above so that this work might spread in the world and have positive influence. One step at a time, we can rejuvenate religion as a vehicle of transformation. If we are successful, religion has the potential to emerge as the single greatest catalyst capable of ushering human beings through the dual-conveyor belts of mystical states and developmental structures.

NOTES 1

This article is excerpted from The Rainbow of Enactment, Volume Two of a series titled The Great Human Tradition (DiPerna, in press). 2 For more information on states of consciousness, see Wilber’s (2006) discussion in Integral Spirituality. 3 Even a statement like “the West” is problematic if it is reified. The West, like all other regional blocks of culture, is not monolithic. It is not accurate to say that the entirety of Western culture is a result of Greek thought any more than we can say that it is all Christian. Although both statements are partially true (the West was certainly influenced by Christianity and Greek thought), it is not accurate to make blanket statements as if they are true and comprehensive facts in and of themselves. For the purposes of this article, however, there is heuristic value in telling the narrative of “the West” as if it is a simple entity, as long as we do not assume that its homogeneity is the case in any sort of absolute sense. 4 Wilber (2005) refers to this difference as “transformation vs. translation” (p. 90). 5 Of course, this particular vertical shift (along with all vertical shifts) was a result of transformation in all four quadrants, not only consciousness (Upper-Left quadrant). 6 An integral approach emphasizes and acknowledges both the differentiation and dissociation of value spheres. 7 An anonymous reviewer of this article emphasized the fact that the distinction between translative and transformational approaches to religion also helps us to see more nuance within each of the paradigms themselves, as well as in the transitions from one vertical paradigm to the other. For instance, although religious studies as a field had not yet emerged in the era of premodern fusion, there were strong distinctions that existed within the traditions themselves during that particular historical time. As one example, the reviewer notes: A more comprehensive consideration might mention that if a tradition is left as purely translative, there is no contextual backdrop of transformational shifts in perspective in which to relativize any single perspective. As can be seen from studying the works of church fathers whose lineage transmission had retained the transformational component, such as Origen, when the transformation component of a tradition is retained alongside the translation component, the vehemence of the latter is definitely lessened. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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Hence, when founded within a paradigmatic context of premodern fusion, such traditions are likely to tend toward dogmatic assertion of pre-rationally enacted theological values. This point on the degree to which traditions retain both their translative and transformational components can also be extended as germane to the discussion of the modern and postmodern paradigms. Another potential reason for the dissociation of religion which occurred with the shift from premodernity to modernity is that the religious tradition of greatest relevance to this shift according to the present discussion, Christianity, had largely lost its transformational lineage. Hence, with the shift into modernity and the differentiation of the value spheres, there also arose alternative modes of translation, namely from the scientific tradition. These, quite naturally owing to their being rationally rooted, are of greater relevance and attraction to those enacting the rational stage of development. The argument could be made that had Christianity retained its transformational lineage, its relevance to society might have been considered as greater than was the case, and the dissociation averted. (personal communication, March 13, 2012) 8

Here Wilber uses the term level to refer to the stage of consciousness (e.g., premodern, modern, postmodern). The term line refers to the specific area of intelligence (e.g. spiritual, cognitive, emotional). The term level-line fallacy refers to a case when a particular line of development (spiritual) is confused with a level of development (premodern), and consequently the entire line of spiritual development is repressed and abandoned to lower levels of development (mythic/premodern). For further details on the level-line fallacy, see Wilber (2006). 9 One of the first anthropological accounts of religion outside of the West comes from the Persian scholar Abu Rayhan Biruni in the 11th century. 10 Although we list the importance of interpretation here within the post-postmodern paradigm, we find examples early strides at hermeneutics in the modern era. This is a reminder that stages are more like probability clouds rather than strict rungs on a ladder. With that said, the strength of interpretation and hermeneutics did not take hold until the postmodern era and as such, is rightfully situated here. 11 For more details on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, see Thierry and colleagues’ (2009) work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 12 A deep thank you to Ken Wilber (personal communication, April 17, 2012) for his help with this paragraph. 13 Over the past century, the discovery of “myth of the given” has crippled these early beliefs. The “Myth of the Given” has been unpacked and explained by scholars such as Wilfrid Sellars (1997) and more recently by Wilber (2006). 14 Modern scholars also became too reductionistic. For example, some scholars took the methodology of studying lower-level holons and made them paradigmatic of all other holons (e.g., lower holons do not have language, so it is inappropriate to apply their truths to the study of higher holons like humans). By overemphasizing the lowest levels of holons (chemistry, biology, etc.), these scholars overlooked the types of problems that emerged at higher levels. This is one of the reasons that hermeneutics becomes so vital at the postmodern paradigm. Early modernists had an essential bias toward scientific materialism that left out many of these other factors. 15 For a distillation of Alderman’s conference presentation, see his article published in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (Alderman, 2010). 16 This article, “Integral Pluralism and the Problem of Religious Diversity,” is available on the Integral Theory Conference website (Drieghe, 2010). 17 In addition to the efforts toward forms of Integral Christianity, other traditions are beginning to use Integral Theory to update their teachings. Communities are beginning to form around integral expressions of Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, all of which are likely to continue as developmental sensitivity continues to grow.

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REFERENCES

the framework: In defence of science and rationality. London: Routledge.

Alderman, B. (2010). Kingdom come: Beyond inclusivism and pluralism, an integral post-metaphysical invitation. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 6(3), 14-31. Dierkes, C. (2010). Indistinct union: An integral introduction to nonduality in Christianity. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 5(3), 137-156. Dierkes, C. (2011). Post-metaphysics and the paradoxical teachings of Jesus [book review]. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 6(1), 175-187. DiPerna, D. (in press). The great human tradition. The rainbow of enactment. Occidental, CA: Integral Publishing House. Drieghe, G. (2010). Integral pluralism and the problem of religious diversity. Retrieved May 11, 2012, from http://integraltheoryconference.org/sites/ default/files/itc-2010-papers/Drieghe_ITC%20 2010.pdf. Eisenstadt, S.N. (2000). Multiple modernities. Daedalus, 129(1), 1-29. Esbjörn-Hargens, S., & Wilber, K. (2006). Toward a comprehensive integration of science and religion: A post-metaphysical approach. In P.C.Z. Simpson (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of religion and science (pp. 523-546). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ferrer, J.N., & Sherman, J.H. (2008) The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Flood, G.D. (1999). Beyond phenomenology: Rethinking the study of religion. New York, NY: Cassell. Frazer, J.G. (1922). The golden bough: A study in magic and religion. New York, NY: Macmillan. Co. Griffiths, P. (2006). On the future of the study of religion in the academy. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 74(1), 66-74. Hawthorn, C., & Weiss, P. (Eds.). (1934). Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lincoln, B. (2006). Holy terrors: Thinking about religion after September 11. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Popper, K. (1994). In Notturno, M.A. (Ed.), The myth of

Ricœur, P., & Thompson, J.B. (1981). Hermeneutics and the human sciences: Essays on language, action, and interpretation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Sellars, W. (1997). Empiricism and the philosophy of the mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Smith, J.Z. (1982). Imagining religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stiver, D. (2001). Theology after Ricœur: New directions in hermeneutical theology. Louisville, KY: Westminister John Knox Press. Thierry, G., Athanasopoulosd, P., Wiggetta, A., Deringa, B., & Kuipersb, J-R. (2009). Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(11), 4567-4570. Thresher, T. (2010). Reverent irreverence: Integral church for the 21st century. Pacific Grove, CA: Integral Publishers. Tracy, D. (1994). Plurality and ambiguity: Hermeneutics, religion, hope. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tylor, E.B. (1871). Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art and custom. London: Bradbury, Evans, and Co. Visser, F. (2003). Ken Wilber: Thought as passion. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Wilber, K. (1998). The marriage of sense and soul: Integrating science and religion. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2000). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2005). A sociable god: Toward a new understanding of religion. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2006). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world. Boston, MA: Integral Books.

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DUSTIN DIPERNA, B.S., received his undergraduate education from Cornell University and is currently completing graduate studies at Harvard University. He has been a close student of Ken Wilber since 2004 and studies in the lineage streams of Mahamudra and Dzogchen under the direction of Daniel P. Brown and Rahob Tulku Rinpoche. Dustin is the author of two books, In Streams of Wisdom (Integral Publishing House, in press) and The Rainbow of Enactment (Integral Publishing House, in press). Both books examine how the world’s religious traditions can serve as a positive catalyst for social, political, and cultural transformation in today’s modern and postmodern world. Dustin spent three years as the Director of Integral Affairs at the World Council of Religious Leaders in New York City, an organization dedicated to serve as an advisory board to global organizations like the United Nations and other non-governmental organizations on how religious leaders might help in internal affairs and diplomacy. This is his second article published in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice.

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NEITHER GOD NOR GODDESS Why Women Need an Archetype of the Self Sarah Nicholson ABSTRACT This article discusses some of feminist theory’s most prominent scholars of religion, addresses the shortcomings of feminism, and advocates for a women’s spirituality that is more deeply integral while also seeking to ensure that the history of feminist religious theory is included in integral religious discourse. While feminist theologians reacted to issues of male dominant symbolism in religion by creating a strategic dualism that places the Goddess on top, I utilize adult developmental studies in order to propose the creation of a uniquely female archetype of the Self for women. KEY WORDS archetype; feminism; self; spirituality; theology

T

his article discusses some of feminist theory’s most prominent scholars of religion. These scholars developed radical feminist and goddess theology as a way of finding a vocabulary for women’s experience of self and spirit outside of the bounds of Western Christian traditions. The title of this article is a direct response to a highly influential piece written by Carol Christ in 1978 titled “Why Women Need the Goddess,” which advocated for the emergence of the Goddess and “divine feminine” movement. My response aims to address the shortcomings of this movement and advocates for a women’s spirituality that is more deeply integral in philosophy and kind. My aim here is to ensure that the history of feminist religious theory is included in the field of Integral Religious Studies, while outlining what elements need to be skillfully transcended. The philosophy and history of feminist religious discourse has remained largely unexamined by integral scholar-practitioners, yet it is highly influential within the academy and forms a key behind-the-scenes influence on the discourse of feminine and feminist spirituality, particularly as figured in the Goddess movement and the “return of the divine feminine.” I argue that the key problem with thealogy’s reclamation of the female divine, re-sacralization of the earth and the female body, is its strategic duality (the Goddess is formed as the antithesis of God) and the consequent marginalization and evisceration of the male divine.1 I am in absolute agreement with feminist religious discourse that women require a figure of the divine in female form, but argue that this figure must represent the journey of woman as heroine, her process of individuation, and finally her immanently incarnated revelation of divinity.2 This figure, I propose, would be a uniquely female archetype of the Self. And further, I argue that integral adult developmental studies provide a useful resource in sketching out this path in more detail.

Religion in Feminist Thought While religion has been a consistent concern of feminist theorists, with suffragist Cady Stanton and her revising committee publishing The Women’s Bible boldly denouncing the Bible’s portrayal of women as early as Correspondence: Sarah Nicholson, 28 Simmons Street, Enmore 2042, New South Wales, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 2012, 7(2), pp. 19–29

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1896, it was during the second wave of feminism that religious discourse came to be wholly rejected by large sections of its advocates. It is understandable, considering the fact that “not one of the religions of the world has been totally affirming of women’s personhood” (Frankenberry, 2005, p. 2), that the majority of feminist academic thought renounced the male God of monotheism who represented “the supreme instance of the ‘phallocentrism’ of Western metaphysics … the centre and source of all truth,” as reflected and consolidated in male-only religious hierarchies (Joy et al., 2002, p. 9). Carol Wayne White (2002) notes that this is now a “very dated (and myopic) view of religion” that sees it as essentially composed of “belief in the existence of God,” and asserts that it was not surprising that the term religion fell “into bad repute in the public and academic spheres” (p. 149). In the spiritual history of Western civilization, the history of woman as spiritual hero has for the most part been lost or erased by a masculine symbolic in which both the (unmanifest) divine ground of being and the divine hero in flesh, whose journey gives rise to the question of what it is to be human, have been depicted as male. The following examination of feminist theology and thealogy sets out to demonstrate why women do not need the Goddess, but rather require a figure who represents the journey of a woman’s process of individuation and finally her immanently incarnated divinity; this would be the female archetype of the Self, a figure who lights the path from the divine horizon of the spiritual journey.3

Feminist Theology Due to a predominantly Western context, it is not surprising that many of the most significant figures in the field of feminist religious theory have set their foundations in and operate out of Christianity.4 Examining the work of feminist theology—which generally refers to a feminist analysis of one of the major monotheisms (Stuckey, 1998, p. 15)—commentators have isolated four separate categories that feminist theological approaches have taken: revisionist, renovationist, revolutionary, and rejectionist.5 I will outline these four approaches and illustrate them with some key examples from the discourse of feminist religious theory. Revisionism refers to the position of theorists who argue that a “correct … interpretation” of a tradition’s sacred text will reveal its “liberating message” (Stuckey, 1998, p. 71). Feminist revisionists have taken on the task of reinterpreting traditional monotheistic texts with the intention of uncovering their “revelatory message for women” (Stuckey, 1998, p. 79). At first glance, this approach appears reminiscent of the perennial philosophy, yet the fundamental difference lies in the manner in which revisionists, sometimes also referred to as “apologists,” remain insistently within the confines of their tradition. While they advocate textual reinterpretation, they deny the need for any deeper change (i.e., their tradition is the right and only one and just needs correct interpretation). Renovationists argue that reinterpretation is simply not enough. They focus on peeling back the cultural and institutional dressings of tradition. In terms of Christianity, this has meant insisting on the “alteration of language and symbols of deity” as well as focusing on the ordination of women (Stuckey, 1998, p. 71). Where the renovationist’s push is primarily an editorial one, the revolutionary’s goal is renewal. Advocating “pushing a tradition to its limits” while remaining inside it, the revolutionary’s answer to the dilemma of a sexist tradition is transformation. Revolutionaries rewrite their religion by “reviving” old practices, “importing” elements from other religions, and “inventing” new figures, language, and practices (Stuckey, 1998, p. 151). Finally, rejectionists are described as those who have left the framework of institutional religion to “set about creating new spiritual traditions”(Stuckey, 1998, p. 17). While the revisionist is apologetically wedded to the core metaphysical function and blinkered to all else, and the renovationist and the revolutionary struggle with the sociological dimensions of religious institution, the rejectionist begins to journey beyond the limits of the frame.6 Two of the central figures in the canon of feminist religious scholarship, Mary Daly and Carol Christ, demonstrate the movement through these categories as stages in the evolving course of their work, which I will now explore. 20

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Mary Daly: Reweaving The Journey Mary Daly began her scholarly exploration in the discourse of classical Catholic theology. Her experience as a woman within the confines of this tradition provoked her to launch a fervent, feminist post-Christian attack on sexism in the Church and society at large in her books The Church and The Second Sex (1968) and Beyond God the Father (1973) (Stuckey, 1998, p. 77). She wrote that “if God in ‘his’ heaven is a father ruling his people, then it is the ‘nature’ of things and according to divine plan … that society be male dominated. Within this context, a mystification of roles takes place: The husband dominating his wife represents God ‘himself’” (Daly, as cited in Christ 1979, p. 275). While her work recognized the women’s movement as ontological, her early impulses were to revolutionize the Church. While recognizing that God needed to be rethought and re-worded, in this early phase Daly still felt the need to “save” Him, as the ground of being and core spiritual essence (Campbell, 2000, p. 175; Daly, 1992, p. 222). Her revisionist response was “God the Verb.” In the process of “leaving the patriarchal space-time of God the Father,” women might participate in God the Verb: a “form-destroying, form-creating, transforming power that makes all things new” (Daly, as cited in Stuckey, 1998, p. 77). Daly’s early work was significantly responsive to the progressive theology of Paul Tillich. Tillich posed “Being-itself” (a metaphor for God) as a response to the “universal ‘human’ existential dilemma” of nonbeing (Schneider, 2000, p. 59). For Tillich, “New Being” appeared in the figure of Jesus Christ as the reality and possibility of “reconciliation and reunion, of creativity, meaning and hope” (Schneider, 2000, pp. 59-60). Daly recapitulated “Being-itself” to the specifics of woman’s confrontation with the dilemma of patriarchy: “Women’s Be-ing,” “New Be-ing,” and ultimately “Metabe-ing” were infused with “an evolutionary understanding of the nature of the immanent and the transcendent” (Schneider, 2000, p. 68). “Women’s Be-ing” was manifest in the “unfolding of woman-consciousness.” This consciousness was created through the confrontation with, and journey beyond, patriarchal space, and as such Daly recognized the feminist journey itself as “an intimation of the endless unfolding of God” (as cited in Campbell, 2000, p. 175). In Beyond God the Father, Daly identified women’s marginalization from the power of symbols and naming as the root of their oppression. Women, she boldly declared, have “had the power of naming stolen from us” (Daly, 1973, p. 8). Gyn/Ecology marked Daly’s philosophic movement into radical feminist separatism. Performing a classic rejectionist inversion, Daly completely rejected men and all male imagery for God, “reversing its reversals” (Daly, 1993, p. 326), and heralded female-only imagery as life-affirming for women (Stuckey, 1998, p. 77). She set out to reclaim the power of naming by re-“spinning” language (Daly, 1992, p. 322). Daly’s work has been one of the most significant demonstrations of feminist mythopoesis (the artistic reimagining or revision of mythology), which represents a significant strategic response to the constraints of the male symbolic. One frequently used mythopoetic strategy has been to deconstruct a myth in which woman has been excluded and to reconstruct it in a way that gives voice to a female figure from the corpus who was previously “silent, objectified or inaudible”(Purkiss, 1992, p. 445: cf. Ostriker, 1986, p. 316). Daly’s mythopoetic strategy has been to consciously deconstruct the barriers between philosophy, theology and the mythic, and to redefine symbolic spiritual language with woman positioned as the primary subject (Daly, 1992, pp. 323-324). With “phallocentric reality” maintained by the Western religious construct, Daly proposed that a reversal of the religious symbolic contained the potential to create an upheaval that would shift the very base of Western thought (Caputi, as cited in Larrington, 1992, p. 425), causing “the world to ‘split open’” (Caputi, 2001, p. 20). Through the “restoration and reinvention” of language, women might “once more name and own their elemental, magical powers” (Raphael, 1996, p. 60). Daly’s practice of symbolic transformation was purposefully designed to “open up levels of reality otherwise closed,” to “unlock dimensions and elements of our souls” (Caputi, as cited in Larrington, 1992, Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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p. 428). In this she utilizes what Campbell (1972) described as the “energy-evoking and -directing” principle of symbolic affect (p. 219). Symbolic affect is defined as coming into being and existing independently of language, speaking directly to the feeling system and manifesting itself “with a viscerally felt integrity” that is “not addressed first to the brain” (Cates, 1995, p. 1). Campbell (1972) writes that an affective symbol hits one where it counts …[and] immediately elicits a response … There is some kind of throb of resonance within … like the answer of a musical string to another equally tuned … when the vital symbols of any given social group evoke in all its members responses of this kind, a sort of magical accord unites them as one spiritual organism. (p. 89) This was Daly’s desire: to affectively unite women and evoke transformative change “not only [in] the self, but also [in] the world” (Caputi, as cited in Larrington, 1992, p. 428). This is not an easy task. Daly (1992) refers to herself as a pirate on a mission to reclaim “the Treasure Trove of symbols and myths that have been stolen and reversed by the theological thieves” (p. 325). The negotiation of this complex maze of symbol and imagery is itself, she says, “the journey of women becoming” (Daly, as cited in Morris, 1998, p. 27). The concept of a journey has been described as the “central axis” of Daly’s philosophy (Campbell, 2000, p. 174). It is the patriarchal threshold of gender roles and rules that she must cross and her journey is an ongoing process of questioning the conventional cultural space in which she finds herself (Campbell, 2000, p. 166). This enquiry and her bold response enables her “Be/Leaving,” her increasing realization, and her “Be-coming”—all of which deepen her ability to participate in “ever Unfolding Be-ing” (Daly, 1992, p. 3).

Carol Christ: Thealogy Carol Christ, another prominent scholar of religion working out of feminist theory, expresses an interpretation of women’s spiritual quest that resonates with Daly’s. For Christ (1995), woman’s quest for wholeness is both social and spiritual and begins with the realization of the “emptiness of life as a woman, configured by patriarchal relations” (p. 13). The journey involves “probing to the bedrock of woman’s experience of self and world” (Christ, 1995, pp. 11-12) and through awakening to the immanent powers of “being woman,” she becomes able to ground herself “in a new sense of self and a new orientation in the world” (Christ, 1995, p. 13). Like Daly, Christ began her scholarly journey in classical theology and a combatant engagement with Christianity remains a resonant and ever-present background in her work. Christ (1995) writes that while “all around her the voices of patriarchy” spoke disparagingly about women, almost no women’s voices spoke to “name the gap between men’s stories about women and women’s own perceptions of self and world” (p. 7). “Without stories,” she asserts, a woman “cannot understand herself … she is alienated from those deeper experiences of self and world that have been called spiritual or religious” (Christ, 1995, p. 1). Confronting this, Christ began the struggle to find a vocabulary for women’s experience of self and spirit outside of the bounds of the Western Christian tradition. Christ also shares with Daly the opinion that the reconstruction of symbolism, language, and history that is specific to women is of prime importance. However, for Christ the primary symbol of this new feminist canon is The Goddess. An advocate of feminist Goddess worship, Christ has, over a period of 20 years, produced a systemic thealogy, which means “study of the Goddess” (Stuckey, 1998, p. 144).7 In thealogy, the Goddess is the supreme creator and ground of all being.8 As the female divine, she is “a personification who can be invoked in prayer and ritual” and the “symbol of life, death, and rebirth energy” (Christ, 1979, p. 278). She is the Many in the One; multiply manifest as a diverse array of goddesses across the mythic-religious spectrum. As a practitioner of Goddess devotion explains: 22

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You can say it’s the Great Goddess and that’s the one Goddess but she’s also all of the many goddesses and that’s true. And she is everywhere, she’s immanent in everything … So I worship the great goddess and I’m polytheistic and pantheistic and monotheistic too. (Eller, as cited in Long, 1996, p. 2) A long, almost limitless period of prehistoric Goddess worship is set as counterweight against the “psychological weight of thousands of years of cross-cultural male dominance” (Eller, 1991, p. 282). Challenging the canonical religious representation of women’s spiritual history, Goddess feminists have crafted their own version of spiritual history (herstory) that maps a lineage of Goddess worship from prehistory to present. Merlin Stone (as cited in Eller, 1991, p. 285) writes, “female religion, far from naturally fading away, was the victim of centuries of continual persecution and suppression.” Utilizing the archaeomythological scholarship of Marija Gimbutas, thealogy finds support for a prehistory in which the “disregarded but fundamental truth of human nature,” needed to restore “the degenerate consciousness of a corrupt civilisation,” can be found (Purkiss, 1992, p. 442).

Goddess Spirituality And The Great Mother The Goddess is first of all earth, the dark, nurturing mother who brings forth all life. She is the power of fertility and generation; the womb, and also the receptive tomb, the power of death. All proceeds from Her; all returns to Her. As earth, She is also plant life; trees, the herbs and grains that sustain life. She is the body, and the body is sacred. – Starhawk (as quoted in Muten, 1994, p. 8) Much early thealogical philosophy invokes radical second-wave and ecofeminist principles. These include the reclamation and celebration of the female body, particularly its relationship to the immanent power of nature, and a separatist ideology that advocates for the creation of women’s only space. In an early influential essay, “Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections,” Christ (1979) suggests that, at base, the symbol of the Goddess is an “acknowledgement of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power” (p. 277). According to Cynthia Eller’s study Living In The Lap of The Goddess, the radical separatist ideology of the Goddess movement can be traced back to Dianic Wicca. Emphasizing “female power” expressed through “the positive valuation of will,” adherents of Dianic Wicca “do ritual only with women and … worship female, not male deities” (Stuckey, 1998, p. 145: cf. Christ & Plaskow, 1979, p. 114). As Christ and Plaskow (1979) note in an early text, “feminists may be divided into those who favor full equality between the sexes and those who favor temporary or permanent ascendency of women and the female principle” (p. 13). Many adherents of Goddess worship fall into the latter category, espousing the belief that “the overarching divine principle is more appropriately symbolized in female terms, as Goddess, while the male principle or God must remain secondary, the son and lover, but not the equal of his mother” (Christ & Plaskow, 1979, p. 14).9 As representatives of this thealogical quandary, Christ and Plaskow (1979) rightly pose the questions: “Will the Goddess be the sole religious symbol in a new gender specific monotheism? Or will Goddess and God both be included in the new spiritual vision?” (p. 13). Thealogy, Melissa Raphael (1996) writes, is “grounded in female physiology” as a response to the desacralization of women’s body in classical theology (p. 68). The Goddess, revered as Great Mother, “is inseparable” from motherhood and the act of human motherhood is seen to mirror the “cosmic generativity” of the Goddess (p. 56). Raphael (1996) reports that in feminist Goddess spirituality “where the divinised earth is held to gestate and feed all life-forms in an essentially female manner, the human female body images or Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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‘is’ the Goddess in its own biological and cultural processes” (p. 52). She argues that in so doing, the female body is re-sacralized as a microcosmic representation “of the generative purposes of the divine” (p. 70).10 The problem with thealogy’s reclamation of the female divine and re-sacralization of the earth is its strategic duality and the consequent marginalization and evisceration of the male divine (and the male body as divine), as I will now discuss.

The God Problem … the liberation of women is finally contingent on overcoming those dualisms that have for centuries molded Western consciousness… – Carol Christ (1979, p. 22) Locked in a tense battle with the looming figure of the Western Christian symbolic, the Goddess has been invoked as a replacement to (the problem of) God. She is “the reverse of the God we have had in the Semitic monotheistic traditions” (Coleman, 2005, p. 228). The strategy of the Goddess movement has been, to paraphrase Coleman, the symbolic destabilization or rupture of traditional western metaphysics by radically transforming “the hegemonic signifying system”; it has been, “in short, a deconstruction of ‘God’” (Coleman, 2005, p. 229). The result of this is the Goddess is reassigned to the vacant position of a “transcendental signified” (Coleman, 2005, p. 232). While employing a strategic dualism in her early work, Christ (1997) outlines the problem: Because dualistic habits of thinking are so deeply ingrained, it is tempting simply to turn them upside down: to affirm nature, body, sexuality, the non-rational, and the female and to deny or devalue spirit, mind, rationality, and the male. While it can be radicalising to think this way for a period of time, dualistic habits of thought are not thereby transcended. (p. 100) According to philosopher Michelle Le Doeuff, the patriarchal symbolic can in large part be defined by its dualistic practices (Morris, 1988, p. 43). Dualism might be understood as the creation and radical expulsion of a subordinated Other on whom there is a denied dependency (Campbell, 1996, p. 175). As O’Grady (2002) explains, the Other comes to be “shunned, marginalized, punished or … cast out … in order to protect the homogeneity upon which [the one] is established. Yet, this expelled ‘other’ is, by the same token, ‘the hidden face’ of any identity” (p. 50). Radical feminist philosophy has been particularly guilty of a strategic dualism that responds to the patriarchal symbolic by establishing and expelling the male and masculine as Other. As Meaghan Morris (1988) aptly notes in her analysis of Daly: “What remains discreetly un-reversed” in this mode of feminist thought and practice “is the structural necessity for a symbol of the Other” (p. 43). While remaining within a system of binary opposition, “their only possible movement is into inversion” (Mulvey, 1989, p. 162). As long as the practice of creating and projecting an Other continues, dualism continues unabated. Whether employed consciously or unconsciously, duality denies our intimacy and interconnectedness with the Other. It can certainly be argued that the early feminist reversal of the dualist framework was a strategically necessary act of differentiation and thus appropriate in the context of feminist thought at the time, but these rigid dualistic boundaries ultimately hinder change by remaining caught within their own “conceptual frame of reference, unable to advance” (Mulvey, 1989, p. 162). I believe Mulvey (1989) looks into the heart of the issue in stating that the “problem of dealing with difference without constituting an opposition may just be what feminism is all about” (p. 161). Braidotti (as cited in Butler, 1994) writes that in our recognition of the “asymmetrical position between the sexes, reversibility is not an option, either conceptually or politi24

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cally.”11 It is clear that “the point is to overcome the dialectics of domination, not to turn the previous slaves into new masters” (p. 8). In continuing through and beyond the process of deconstructing God, it remains necessary to acknowledge the sacredness of: male bodies, the mind, agency of the “masculine” as divine alongside the “feminine” as divine found in the female body, communion, feelings, and earth. In assigning a single gender to the Absolute, thealogists are replicating a theological error. To ascribe a solely female gender to the “anchor of ‘reality’” (Coleman, 2005, p. 232) is as fruitless and dualistic as it is to ascribe a male one. While Coleman (2005) asserts that “God as It would still be God [veiled He]” (p. 235), I argue that the ground of being is immanently present in, and reflective of, both sexes (as it is present and reflective of all things), and yet also Absolutely transcends sex and gender and its manifestations. Constructing an appropriate symbolic for the Absolute and its immanent embrace and transcendence of both sexes remains a challenge. This said, it is clear that women require a figure of the divine in female form. This figure would not be a re-gendered Absolute, but a figure who represents the journey of the heroine, her process of individuation, and finally her immanently incarnated revelation of divinity. This figure I propose would be a female archetype of the Self.

Jungian Archetypes Carl Jung derived the term archetype from that used by “Plato, Pliny, Cicero [and] St. Augustine” (Gerringer, 2006, p. 4) and used it to refer to images that arose as “autochthonous, individual products of unconscious origin” from the collectively inherited structures of the psyche (Jung, as cited in Gerringer, 2006, p. 4). Jung posed archetypes as aspects of the collective unconscious, correlates of “basic mythic structures … like the trickster, the shadow, the Wise Old Man, the ego, the persona, the Great Mother” (Wilber, 1998, p. 148). He termed the psychological process of working with and integrating these archetypes individuation. Wilber (1998) interprets these archetypal forms as distillations of “some of the very basic, everyday, existential encounters of the human condition—life, death, birth, mother, father, shadow, ego, and so on” (p. 149). He contextualizes Jung’s work by suggesting that archetypes are directly related to the “pre-formal stages of the mind’s development, particularly pre-operational and concrete operational thought … [stages that] all modern men and women pass through” (Wilber 1998, 147).12 Thus he asserts that, in terms of psychological development, archetypes represent our ancestral inheritance of behavioral patterns (Wilber 1998, 147). Wilber (1995) writes: “it is altogether necessary to contact and befriend” these pre-operative and conventional archetypes, and also “necessary to differentiate and individuate from them” (p. 247). Johanna Stuckey (1998, p. 133) notes that feminist spirituality has had an ongoing relationship with Jungian psychoanalysis due to Jung’s interest in the figure of the goddess as archetype. Jungian analyst Jean Shinoda Bolen (1994) has proposed, for example, seven Greek goddesses as archetypal figures for women. She writes that these archetypal figures were “less powerful … and more specialised” (p. 249) than the earlier figure of the Great Goddess from whom they were derived. Where Jungian archetypal readings of female mythic characters, such as Bolen’s, have argued for the psychological relevance of these figures to women today (see also: Murdock 1990; Perera, 1981; Shinn, 1986), other feminist scholars have countered Bolen’s (and Jung’s) claim that “archetypes exist outside time” (Bolen, 1984, p. 22), arguing that to see historical gender archetypes as “sacrosanct [and] immutable” is to play into the hands of patriarchal gender structures (Powers, 1991, p. 155). Particular issue has been taken with one of Jung’s fundamental archetypal images, the “feminine” anima. While the anima has been presented as an image of the feminine “common to all people,” it has been exposed, in actuality, as the “image of the female in the individual male unconscious” (SimmerBrown, 2001, p. 13). Feminist Jungian Demaris Wehr suggests that any utilization of Jung’s powerful understanding of the symbols of the psyche must be balanced against its potential to legitimate androcentric images of “the femiJournal of Integral Theory and Practice

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nine” in the guise of a universal given (Wehr, 1987, pp. 13, 22-23). Wehr advocates for archetypal images to be stripped of their false power as timeless universals, and recontextualized as images that arise as part of an “ongoing conversation” in human society (Wehr, 1987, p. 14). Furthermore, she advocates for the investigation of gender-specific pathways to individuation (Wehr, 1987, p. 100). Bolen’s process of using Greek goddesses as archetypes presents a powerful way of dealing with the inheritance of Western cultural gender roles and feminine behavioral patterns ingrained in the collective unconscious. The integration of these mythological figures unleashes the energy trapped in these representations of conventional gender roles. This process of identifying how gender identity is positioned in the conventional sphere is vital to women’s emergence into authentic selfhood. Yet, while the recognition of cultural role identity and the development of the psyche are deeply and inextricably linked to matters of Spirit, the archetypal figures that Bolen puts forward are archetypes of parts of the Self, rather than archetypes of the unified Self. To clarify, the path of individuation begins with the preoperative “chthonic Self” (Harris, 2001, p. 1), a phase that requires the integration of a range of conventional, inherited archetypes, and at the end of the sequence concludes with the archetype of meaning (wise self), and finally with the archetype of the Self (“the unified psyche”) (Whitlark, 2005, p. 1). While archetypal images such as the Greek goddesses point in the direction of, and are an essential part of the passage toward, transpersonal union, they are not themselves representations of the full potential of the Self. The integration of archetypal images, which arise with respect to (and are translated by) specific structures in the human psyche at each stage of development, are part of the journey of human developmental (psychological) growth.13 The culmination of the transformative process of individuation (self-realization) is represented by the Archetype of the Self. With the body-mind fully and consciously integrated, the healthy ego is surrendered, transcended, and transparently included in union with the Absolute (Harris, 2001, p. 5).

The Archetype of the Self for Woman female sacrality … transforms not merely the procedures and apparatuses by which we live, but what we can be. – Melissa Raphael (1996, p. 72) The archetype of the Self relates directly to the contemporary journey of woman’s becoming as posed by Christ and Daly. For Daly, a woman’s social and spiritual journey toward wholeness engenders her ability to participate ever more fully in “the real source,” the “deep background” that is “Be-ing” (Daly, as cited in Frankenberry, 2005, p. 4.2.1). Thus, after Daly (and Tillich), the female archetype of the Self would be the symbol of “Woman’s New Being”: a figuration of the revealed potential of woman’s self.14 For thealogian Christ, the intelligent awareness of Goddess/god manifests the “power of loving persuasion that calls beings into transformative response” (Ruether, 1992, p. 291).15 While Christ (2005) leaves the question of persuasion somewhat open, she writes that “becoming aware” is part of the “process of transformation” (p. 295). It is through the cultivation of increasing awareness (of self, of world) that one might come to more fully embody the qualities of the divine. Elsewhere I have sketched a path, utilizing research that contextualizes adult development in an expanded, transpersonal spectrum that is relevant to women’s development toward an archetype of the Self. In “In the Footsteps of the Heroine: The Journey to Integral Feminism” (2009), I argue that there is a specific path for women toward the Unitive stage of development (which can be equated with the embodiment of the archetype of the Self) (Cook-Greuter, 2005). In accord with the integral feminist perspective that I outlined, the effects of biology, psychology, culture, and systemic regulation form an interactive matrix that produces gendered subjectivity. In the contemporary sociotemporal space, this means that differences in the developmental pathways of women and men toward the Unitive stage are apparent. For example, women have a 26

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tendency toward developing a permeable and relational self that later leads to the negotiation of what Jenny Wade terms the Affiliate (rather than Achiever) stage of development, a crisis of development in adolescence (vs. childhood for boys) when a young woman comes face-to-face with a culture that has a tendency to oversexualize and be physically threatening toward women. The archetype of the Self is an omega point of development; actual, imagined or intuited, that represents the full potential of divine/human embodiment in the form of woman.16 The female archetype of the Self would represent both the journey of woman, and the culmination of her journey in which she immanently reveals divinity in her female form. The establishment of such an archetypal figure is both a historical task, one that requires us to excavate mythic and religious history to establish a genealogy of spiritual heroines of the past, and a contemporary one. In an integral sense it is a task that requires us to examine and map the contours of the biological, psychological, historical, and sociocultural specifics that woman negotiates on her pathway to individuation. From these many faces and threads the Archetype of the Self in female form can emerge as a light on the divine horizon of woman’s journey of becoming and flourishing.

NOTES 1

Theaology is defined as “study of the Goddess.” The divine can be understood as the ground of pure emptiness and unqualified release (i.e., the divine unmanifest and without qualities) and as the divine manifest in particular forms (in this case, female form) (Wilber, personal communication, May 15, 2012). 3 I use the term Archetype of Self to differentiate this figure of realized immanent divinity from the more generalized sense of Jungian archetype. 4 Including Mary Daly, Carol Christ, Grace Jantzen, Luce Irigaray, Catherine Keller, and Rosemary Ruether. 5 These categories were initially proposed by Carol Christ (1979) and were revised and expanded by Joanna Stuckey (1998). 6 Accepting that these categories map the contours of feminist theology as a discourse, I find Stuckey’s rejectionist category limited by its sense of entrenched, fixated opposition to a central religious institution. I believe that the term evolutionist might more aptly capture the spirit of unfettered forward-looking spiritual creativity. 7 Thea being the Greek for goddess, logos meaning study (Stuckey, 1998, p. 144). 8 Thealogy’s discussion travels across the map locating the Goddess from first-, second-, and third-person perspectives. Third-person perspectives are primary in theology, with argument focused on the ontological reality of the Goddess as manifest as the divine with powers. But second-person (and I–Thou relationship with the divine) is also present as found in the assertions such as She “can be invoked in prayer,” as are first-person accounts of the Goddess as/in self (Wilber, personal communication, May 15, 2012). 9 Asphodel Long makes a distinction between European and American Wicca in this respect; with European Wicca being distinct from its radical U.S. feminist cousin in offering male and female god/dess images of “equal and complementary polarity” (Long, 1996, p. 2). This gender separatism is not representative of all Goddess communities (e.g., Starhawk’s Goddess community “Reclaiming” welcomes men, and also reveres male figures of the divine). 10 Thealogist Kristy Coleman (2005) writes that the Goddess “encompasses all, female and male, just as all things come from a mother” (p. 235). Such parthenogenesis is not reflective of human creation for whom, I would pointedly note, reproduction requires the input of both mother and father. 11 Also see Irigaray (as cited in Whitford, 1991) on the irreversibility of male and female “difference.” 12 Wilber is referring here to Piaget’s stages of psychological development. 13 The stages of development are common to humanity, yet each stage is experienced differently due to factors that include interior subjectivity and historio-cultural context of the individual. 14 Tillich proposed Christ as the “symbol for the archetype of the Self” (as cited in Harris, 2001, p. 3). Christ, Tillich 2

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(1955, pp. 3-4) says, invites us to participate in New Being, to reveal this potential for divinity, self-reunion, healing, and self-revelation in ourselves. 15 Christ’s most recent work begins to reintegrate the male and masculine with the divine as her use of the term Goddess/ God reveals. 16 While embodying specific qualities, the figure of a transpersonal archetype for woman would need to be broad enough to encompass difference, acknowledging the fact that in each woman the path to the horizon is differently embodied.

REFERENCES Bolen, Jean Shinoda. (1984). Goddesses in everywoman: A new psychology of women. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. Bolen, Jean Shinoda. (1994). Crossing to Avalon: A woman’s quest for the sacred feminine. San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins. Butler, Judith. (1994). Feminism by any other name. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 6(2-3), 27-61. Campbell, Debra. (2000). “Be-Ing Is Be/Leaving.” In S.L. Hoagland & M. Frye (Eds.), Feminist interpretations of Mary Daly. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvannia State University Press. Caputi, Jane. (1992). On psychic activism: Feminist mythmaking. In C. Larrington (Ed.), The feminist companion to mythology. London: Pandora. Caputi, Jane. (2001). On the lap of necessity: A mythic reading of Teresa Brennan’s energetics philosophy. Hypatia, 16(2), 1-26. Cates, Lorraine B. (1995). Nonverbal affective experiences and their role in generating selfhood. Paper presented at the American Psychological Association, Div. 39: Symposium of Affect. Santa Monica, California. Christ, Carol. (1979). Why women need the goddess: Phenomenological, psychological, and political reflections. In C. Christ and J. Plaskow (Eds.), Womanspirit rising: A feminist reader in religion. San Francisco, CA: Harper. Christ, Carol. (1995). Diving deep & surfacing. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Christ, Carol. (1997). Rebirth of the goddess. New York, NY: Routledge. Christ, Carol. (2005). Does feminism need a metaphysic? Toward a feminist process paradigm. Feminist Theology, 13(3), 281-299. Christ, Carol, & Plaskow, Judith (Eds.). (1979). Wom28

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anspirit rising: A feminist reader in religion. San Francisco, CA: Harper. Coleman, Kristy S. (2005). Who’s afraid of “the goddess stuff’?” Feminist Theology, 13(2), 217-237. Cook-Greuter, Susanne. (2005). Ego development: Nine levels of increasing embrace. Retrieved September 20, 2010, from http://www.stillpointintegral. com/docs/cook-greuter.pdf. Daly, Mary. (1968). The church and the second sex. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Daly, Mary. (1986). Beyond god the father. London: The Women’s Press Limited. Daly, Mary. (1993). Outercourse: The be-dazzling voyage: Containing recollections from my logbook of a radical feminist philosopher (be-ing an account of my time/space travels and ideas-then, again, now, and how). Melbourne: Spinifex Press. Daly, Mary. (1996, February 26). Sin big. The New Yorker, 76-84. Eller, Cynthia. (1991). Relativizing the patriarchy: The sacred history of the feminist spirituality movement. The History of Religions, 30(3), 279-295. Eller, Cynthia. (1995). Living in the lap of the goddess: The feminist spirituality movement in America. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Eller, Cynthia. (2000). The myth of matriarchal prehistory: Why an invented past won’t give women a future. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Frankenberry, Nancy. (2005). Feminist philosophy of religion. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved February 11, 2012, from http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-religion/. Gerringer, Stephen L. (2006). The mythology of archetypes. Retrieved February 1, 2008, from http:// www.jcf.org/new/index.php. Harris, Ray. (2001). Revisioning individuation. Bringing Jung into the integral fold. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from www.integralworld.net. Joy, Morny, Kathleen O’Grady, & Judith L. Poxon

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(Eds.). (2002). French feminists on religion—a reader. New York, NY: Routledge. Long, Asphodel. (1996). The one or the many—the great goddess revisited. Paper presented at the Britain and Ireland School of Feminist Theology Annual conference, Dublin, Ireland. Retrieved January 12, 2012, from www.asphodel-long.com/html/ the_one_or_the_many.html. Long, Asphodel. (2000). Goddess. In C. Kramarae & D. Spender (Eds.), Routledge international encyclopedia of women. New York, NY: Routledge. Morris, Meaghan. (1988). The pirate’s fiancée: Feminism, reading, postmodernism. London: Verso. Mulvey, Laura. (1989). Visual and other pleasures. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Muten, Burleigh (Ed.). (1994). Return of the great goddess. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. O’Grady, Kathleen. (2002). The tower and the chalice: Julia Kristeva and the story of Santa Barbara. Feminist Theology, 29, 40-60. Nicholson, Sarah. (2009). In the footsteps of the heroine: The journey to Integral feminism [doctoral thesis]. Sydney, Australia: University of Western Sydney. Ostriker, Alicia. (1986). The thieves of language: Women poets and revisionist mythmaking. In E. Showalter (Ed.), The new feminist criticism. London: Virago. Powers, Meredith. (1997). The heroine in Western literature. Jeffercon: McFarland and Co. Purkiss, Diane. (1992). Women’s rewriting of myth. In C. Larrington (Ed.), The feminist companion to mythology. London: Pandora. Raphael, Melissa. (1996). Thealogy and embodiment. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. (1990). Women’s body and blood: The sacred and the impure. In A. Joseph

(Ed.), Through the devil’s gateway: Religion, women and the taboo. London: The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. (1992). Gaia and God. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. (2005). Goddesses and the divine feminine. A Western religious history. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Schneider, Laurel C. (2000). The courage to see and to sin: Mary Daly’s elemental transformation of Paul Tillich’s ontology. In S.L. Hoagland & M. Frye (Eds.), Feminist interpretations of Mary Daly. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Simmer-Brown, Judith. (2001). Dakini’s warm breath: The feminine principle in Tibetan Buddhism. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Stuckey, Johanna H. (1998). Feminist spirituality. Toronto: York Centre for Feminist Research. Tillich, Paul. (1955). The new being. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from www.thewords.com/articles/tillich1. htm. Wayne White, Carol. (2002). Poststructuralism, feminism and religion: Triangulating positions. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.  Wehr, Demaris S. (1987). Jung and feminism. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Whitford, Margaret. (1991). The Irigaray reader. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Whitlark, James. (2005). The sequence of archetypes in individuation. Retrieved March 4, 2012, from http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2005/Whitlark.htm. Wilber, Ken. (1995). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Wilber, Ken. (1998). The essential Ken Wilber: An introductory reader. Boston, MA: Shambhala.

SARAH NICHOLSON, Ph.D, teaches in the fields of religion, culture, and literature at the University of Western Sydney, is a Research Associate of Sydney University’s Department of Studies in Religion, and is the curator of a series of Transformative Practice talks and workshops. Her dissertation, “In the Footsteps of the Heroine: The Journey to Integral Feminism,” follows the figure of woman as heroine from the Archaic stage of human history to the burgeoning Integral stage, exploring the development of feminist spirituality from within the context of Integral Theory and human evolutionary development.

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THE OUTSKIRTS OF INTEGRAL THEORY Visions of the Sacred and the Paranormal in the Oeuvre of Jeffrey Kripal Mark G. Schmanko

ABSTRACT This article explores Ken Wilber’s phase 4 and 5 works, in particular what I call his “triadic hermeneutic of religious realization” and three principles of nonexclusion, unfoldment, and enactment in relation to his articulation of enlightenment. I analyze how the implications of these concepts, when considered together, speak to the edge of Wilber’s corpus, revealing a metapragmatic psychospiritual approach to evolution. I then introduce Jeffrey Kripal’s work as an important voice in the study of religion, and focus on what I see as salient integral features of his corpus, namely his dialectic of consciousness and culture and his ethnographically sensitive treatment of the paranormal and the sacred. I suggest that Kripal’s dialectic and hermeneutical reconsideration of the sacred in light of Wilber’s metapragmatic psychospiritual approach afford constructive suggestions as to how integrally informed religious agents and communities can explore the dynamics of the sacred in our emerging intercultural lifeworlds. KEY WORDS empiricism; hermeneutics; Jeffrey Kripal; mysticism; paranormal; religion; Ken Wilber

If religion lives up to its promise as being that endeavor in humanity that allows Spirit to speak through it, and Spirit is indeed evolving in its own manifestation, then religion becomes a conveyor belt for humanity, carrying it from the childhood productions of Spirit to the adolescent productions of Spirit to the adult productions of Spirit… and beyond that into the great tomorrow of Spirit’s continuing display. – Ken Wilber (2006, p. 200) This article takes as a point of departure two assumptions which Zachary Stein’s articles, “Between Philosophy and Prophesy” (in press) and “On the Normative Function of Metatheoretical Endeavors” (2010), have addressed with some substantive insight. In the former, Stein endeavors to justify Ken Wilber as a “signpost at the edge of history,” as a religious person in the deepest sense shaped by a spiritual ethos or what he calls “soteriological knowledge constitutive interest,” and as someone whose “engineered popularity” in the context of the media-saturated, post-industrial West should not be confused with the depth and nuance of his corpus (i.e., the medium is not the message). In the latter article, Stein traces a programmatic trajectory in the American philosophical landscape over the past two centuries of key figures whose work and vision demonstrate a metatheoretical approach. Stein analyzes how these metatheorists have an explicit normative agenda guided by a “discourse-regulating” principle, one that endeavors to discern, construe, and hierarchically organize the methods and “knowledge-production processes” in every conceivable disciplinary space, ultimately for the purpose of providing directionality to humanity as a whole. Accordingly, Stein identifies Wilber as one such living example of a “cosmopolitan-comprehensivist metatheorist” who is enacting in real

Correspondence: Mark G. Schmanko, 15 Godfrey Road, Montclair NJ, 07043. E-mail: [email protected]. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 2012, 7(2), pp. 30–48

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time a distinct version of this American metatheoretical lineage, in the context of a public planetary sphere. Following this trajectory of Stein’s contextual and constructive insights, I suggest that there are features of Wilber’s phase 4 and 5 works that point to a distinct hermeneutical orientation in his corpus. I begin with a brief description of Wilber’s articulation of Integral Enlightenment (2006) and what I am calling his “triadic hermeneutic of religious realization” (2000, 2006).1 I then analyze these concepts in relation to the principles of nonexclusion, unfoldment, and enactment (2002a, 2002b, 2002c), and suggest that—when considered together—they speak to the edge of Wilber’s corpus, revealing what I am dubbing a “metapragmatic psychospiritual approach to evolution.”2 After setting this interpretive foundation, I introduce Jeffrey Kripal’s work as an important voice in the academic study of religion for integral scholars, and focus on what I see as the salient integral features of his corpus, namely his “dialectic of consciousness and culture” and his ethnographically sensitive treatment of “the paranormal and the sacred,” which he has wryly referred to as “the return of the repressed” (2010, p. 199). I suggest that Kripal’s dialectic and hermeneutical reconsideration of the sacred, what I call “impossible potentials,” in light of Wilber’s metapragmatic psychospiritual approach affords some constructive suggestions as to how we—as integrally informed religious agents and communities—can enact and unfold the potentials of the sacred in our emerging intercultural lifeworlds.3 While I would suggest that Wilber’s treatment of Integral Enlightenment, religious realization, and his metapractical principles are strikingly relevant to Kripal’s dialectical approach to the sacred and the paranormal, I do not unpack these implications in detail. Rather, I explore how Kripal’s approach and his case studies suggest alternate ways to approach sacred and paranormal phenomena in community contexts; that is, how might we analyze the implications of certain profound and confounding religious experiences and enactments in terms of their implications for intercultural evolution—especially in relation to cultural formations in which such phenomena arise—while retaining the best post-metaphysical, developmental, and evolutionary insights of Integral Theory? Thus, an integration of Kripal’s dialectic in light of Wilber’s psychospiritual approach to evolution, I imagine, might disclose horizons of being and doing in emerging religious lifeworlds and their correlating states of consciousness and culture that, on the one hand, simply do not fit into integral categories—be they quadrants, levels, or reflexive semiotic structures articulating complex modes of human agency—but which, on the other hand, open up a host of possibilities that we can explore with a meta-conscious (not cognitive per se) adaptation and constructive revision of our own methods for the purpose of evolution. What follows is a description of some of Wilber’s core concepts mentioned above that, taken together, reveal this metapragmatic psychospiritual approach to evolution.4 Please note that this approach is presented only implicitly over the next several pages of description. And while the nature and implications of this approach are suggested as the article unfolds, this is only a first step to clarify and enact the “meaning event” (Sells, 1994) of this emerging “groove” in Wilber’s corpus. Therefore, the reader should not be surprised that I do not unpack any explicit conclusions or coherent speculations about the significance and meaning of this metapragmatic psychospiritual approach. At the same time, understanding Wilber’s corpus as such sets a foundation for us to consider, make sense of, and participate fruitfully in topics like the paranormal and sacred, as well as alternative approaches like Kripal’s dialectic of consciousness and culture and his ethnographically sensitive investigation of the paranormal.

Unfolding and Enacting Integral Enlightenment It is patently the case that spiritual, mystical, or contemplative realization is a central organizing feature of Wilber’s entire corpus and hermeneutical agenda. What follows is a brief synopsis of his view of spiritual realization and structural development as mutually constitutive features of Integral Enlightenment.5 I draw primarily from Integral Spirituality (2006), where Wilber articulates the complex interrelationship between states of consciousness and stages of psychophysical development under two simple, abstract notions: “freedom” and “fullness.” Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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For Wilber, freedom refers to the process of spiritual awakening to progressively subtler interior (UL) states of awareness. These states of consciousness are posited as basic universal structures of human embodiment that refer to the states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, and correlate to the gross, subtle, and causal bodies, respectively, in terms of the UR quadrant. Further, there is an ultimate nondual realization described as transcending and including all states and their bodies, and marks a condition of unity or oneness with all states and available stages. Moreover, identity with each state can be cultivated and mastered through proper contemplative injunctions, which lead to “state-stage” abiding, (i.e., a permanent phenomenological identification with the respective state realized as what we might call one’s “basis of identity”).6 The degree to which one stabilizes their identity in these increasingly subtle states of awareness—from gross, to subtle, to causal, to nondual awakening—the more freedom one has from the fluctuations, obscuration, and suffering of the creative process of life (samsara). Thus, the culmination of this interior movement of state-stage identity completed in nondual consciousness reveals a condition of radical existential freedom from the manifest world—from pleasure, pain, ego, narcissism, and all else that causes suffering and confusion—illuminating a constant experience of unbounded unity and repose. Simply put, this is called freedom going up, or freedom ascending. Furthermore, Wilber includes in his view of freedom a vital feature of coming down or descending, which marks the ongoing compassionate embrace of form and embodiment. Freedom coming down is characterized as a spontaneous and unconditional empathy and care that manifest with increasing intensity (hurts more, bothers less) according to one’s level of awakened state-stage identity as that mystical consciousness pervading all things—gross to transcendent to every intimate texture, taste, and sensation, collective and singular, in the Kosmos. Thus, an individual experiences and enacts the realizations of state-stage spiritual identity, from gross to nondual, as an increasingly radical empathy and desire to liberate all beings from suffering and confusion. For Wilber, freedom descending is just as essential to enlightenment as transcendence, for in seeing all manifestation as no different than consciousness via nondual awakening, one embraces all things as one’s own, literally, in the deepest existential phenomenological sense. Therefore, complete freedom as always ascending and descending together transcends and includes all states of consciousness in nondual abiding, where every moment of experience and action arises with compassion for all beings and conditions through an ongoing descending embrace of manifestation—which is inseparable from one’s own unborn, all pervasive consciousness. However, and this is critical, for Wilber complete realization of freedom ascending and descending together make up only half of what it means to unfold and enact Integral Enlightenment in terms of the highest contemplative goal of an integral worldspace. Whereas this freedom ascending and compassion descending, from the perspective of the Great Traditions, is seen as the ultimate goal of human life, here it is only half of the story. Developmentally speaking, the phenomenon of fullness is equally important to the human soteriological endeavor and evolutionary process. While Wilber (2006) writes about the fullness process of the Kosmos in complex developmental and evolutionary terms, his basic argument is that structural development occurs through time and is contingent upon principles of evolution operating interdependently in all four quadrants. As such, fullness has to do with the myriad ways in which the Kosmos develops structurally in terms of phenomena unfolding from less complex to more complex manifestations—all of which transcend and include lower forms in a holarchichal continuum driven by the processes and telos of evolution (Wilber, 2006). While a nondual mystic discovers a phenomenological and existential dimension of freedom ascending and a capacity for empathy and love descending, there are critical aspects of their psychophysical (UL, UR) embodiment in relation to matter, culture, and society that UL practices of spiritual realization cannot address. In this way, figures such as Shakyamuni Buddha, Lao Tzu, or Ramana Maharshi could be immersed in a boundless experience of infinite nondual awareness—altogether free of ego, suffering, and fear, incarnating empathy and compassionate enactment from within—but this is only half of the picture. Consider the following passage in 32

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which Wilber (2002d) speaks to the relationship between states of consciousness and stages of development: We see that the energy fields thought to be hovering metaphysically beyond matter actually emerge in intimate correlation with complexifications of matter. These subtle fields cannot be reduced to matter, but neither are they ontologically actually intimately correlated with the degree of complexity of the machine. Every mind has its body. Subtler, more sophisticated mind simply means subtler, more sophisticated body. As we will soon see, the traditions (particularly Vedanta and Vajrayana) had a very profound understanding of the relation of gross, subtle, and casual consciousness with gross, subtle, and causal bodies—but they did not fully grasp connecting hypothesis #3 (namely, the relation of all of that to the complexifications of gross matter). So long as a person’s awareness is not integrally oriented to understand and engage the interplay of statestages of consciousness and complexifications of the psychophysical system in terms of injunctions and unfoldment (Wilber, 2002a, 2002c), spiritual awakening only meets half the criteria of the human soteriological and evolutionary endeavor. Thus, the ongoing goal of embodiment is marked by the dynamic capacity of consciousness to awaken via freedom and develop via fullness in and through increasingly complex modes and manifestations of unfoldment. Indeed, for Wilber Integral Enlightenment is seen as drawing as much from psychological and scientific paradigms as it does mystical or contemplative exercises arising in the religious moments and figures of what Wilber (2000) calls the Great Traditions.

Wilber’s Triadic Hermeneutic of Religious Realization In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and Integral Spirituality, Wilber articulates three functions or strands of a community worldspace posited as necessary for the unfoldment and enactment of “good knowledge,” namely: 1) injunction, 2) direct experience or illumination, and 3) communal confirmation (Wilber, 2000, p. 282; Wilber, 2006, pp. 309-310). Although these functions apply to all group holons, I will describe their role in light of contemplative communities, which I denote using the adjective religious to characterize the general type of groups and individuals to which this article refers. Injunction is defined as a set of practices or methods that, when done systematically and effectively, bring forth or disclose a direct experience of an unfolding phenomenon or event that is significant to the community’s values and worldview. We will return to the function of injunction below in Wilber’s (2002b) more general reframing of it as a paradigm, as “a mode of phenomena production or generation, a social practice that enacts or brings forth a phenomenological world, and theories are after-the-fact frameworks that attempt to explain or elucidate the newly-disclosed worlds.” In the meantime, injunctions in the context of a religious community operate in relation to the second function, direct experience or illumination, which occurs in the phenomenological zone of subjective apprehension and immediacy. The third function is community confirmation. Here insiders of a community provide formal and spontaneous support to assess experiences of certain individuals who have taken up a particular injunction and are subsequently reporting on their progress as such to mentors, teachers, or authoritative figures that have more experience in the respective domain or line of praxis. The purpose of community confirmation or legitimation, then, is to determine the nature and validity of significant experiences the individual or group has (this is not limited to individual practices), as such confirming, refuting, or correcting them according to the endemic criteria of the practice.7 Imagine, for example, the enactment of a mystical goal within a Hindu-inspired modern religious community. The goal involves a set of injunctions that call for the cultivation of a distinct mode of spiritual praxis, namely, stabilizing the causal state-stage of consciousness as one’s center of identity.8 This constitutes Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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a subtle capacity to immerse one’s attention and entire felt sense of consciousness (note: the individual consciousness will be more or less full depending on its overall structural-stage, as conveyed earlier, and lines of development) in a phenomenological condition of formless awareness (Wilber, 2006); that is, a state of consciousness that is free from identification with content, bodily and energetic sensation, and subtle symbols, textures, and forms (a state of pure “casual awareness” in the words of Wilber [2000, 2006]). Further, mastery of this condition, that is, the ability to make the subjective side of causal abiding one’s “vantage point” (Brown, 2006), is considered by this contemplative community as a laudable mark of progress on the soteriological path. Accordingly, if a contemplative practitioner claims to attain this goal as such, someone within the community comes forth to officially engage the student, assessing the authenticity and depth of his or her causal realization.9 While this example is a gross simplification of what actually happens in a lifeworld, the fundamental point is that for Wilber there is significant interplay between direct contemplative or religious realization, social practice, and collective modes of inquiry and agency in relation to contemplative realization and enactment. Wilber’s identification and analysis of phenomenological (UL), social (LR), and communal (LL) modes of religious agency via the triadic hermeneutic of religious realization is especially relevant to his growing emphasis on social practice via the three principles of nonexclusion, unfoldment, and enactment (2002c), to which I now turn. Contrary to many areas in his corpus where theory, in particular the cognitive line, is given primacy (Wilber, 2000, p. 282; 2002c; 2006, pp. 82-84), here we see Wilber turning evermore toward a metapragmatic orientation.

Metapragmatic Principles: Nonexclusion, Unfoldment, and Enactment [T]he study of religion has frequently been too facile in its division between theory and praxis. The theory, typically limited to metaphysical theory, has become the domain of theology and philosophers of religion. The study of praxis has been left to historians of religion and anthropologists. The distinction between “high” and “low” religion has only contributed more to the confusion. It separates out those traditions or aspects of tradition with a highly developed metaphysics and a weak sense of praxis from those with a strong sense of praxis and a little metaphysical development. As long as we do not bring metapraxis more into the foreground of our analyses, we cannot fully bridge that separation between theory and practice. – Thomas P. Kasulis (1992, p. 173) What follows is a synopsis of the principles of nonexclusion, unfoldment, and enactment. Although Wilber heuristically differentiates these three principles as described below, it is important to note that, within the AQAL model, these are presumed as mutually constitutive guidelines for observing, evaluating, and evolving the Kosmos. In other words, their interrelation is apparent by virtue of an integrally informed understanding, which posits that all interior and exterior data co-arise (Wilber, 2002d, 2006) to foster the process (injunctions) and enactments of unfoldment in a given lifeworld through a particular zone. In this sense, not only do we need to embrace nonexclusion, enactment, and unfoldment in relating to the exteriors of a given moment, but also in relating to the individual (UL) and collective (UR) interiors accompanying via direct experience the outward display of such phenomena. The principle of nonexclusion is a guideline for navigating the ways in which general “holistic patterns” of phenomena include or embrace all others within the proximal range of their apprehension and operations (i.e., within their respective lifeworld zone).10 This principle of embrace is discernable on the human scale in terms of psychophysical and life processes of growth and action, on the one hand, and on the macrocosmic scale in terms of the larger trajectory of evolution that is presupposed as foundational to an integral world34

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view. Put differently, nonexclusion is an intrinsic feature that accompanies all developmental life processes and larger evolutionary patterns in the Kosmos. Through applying the Integral Operating System (Wilber, 2006) one can thus see how all phenomena and events demonstrate this principle of nonexclusion. Wilber also seems to suggest that nonexclusion entails an implicit moral sensitivity relative to the immediate worldspace of a given holon; that is, nonexclusion ensures that inclusion should accompany each paradigm, view, and experience we enact in an integral lifeworld. After all, every holon is interrelated with all others insofar as there can never be the exclusion of something that actually exists. The function of the principle of unfoldment is closely linked to nonexclusion in that all things, patterns, modes, views, interior phenomena—in short, all holons—develop or complexify by embracing or enfolding their holonic predecessors (Wilber, 2002b) in and through each manifestation in a given lifeworld zone. However, unfoldment further entails the agency of holons transcending their subordinate holons for the sake of evolution, development, or the capacity of fullness in its lifeworld in light of the larger telos of the Kosmos. In this sense, the principle of unfoldment recapitulates Integral Theory’s “transcend and include” (Wilber, 2000) principle of evolution, but here the scope of unfoldment is delimited by its respective zone of operation (i.e., the lifeworld where practices are enacted). Thus, unfoldment happens by the application of a paradigm in a zone that is necessarily delimited and does not apply, for instance, across cultures or disciplines. Consider the example of the contemplative Hindu community mentioned above. The mastery of causal state-stage realization enacts a distinct type of interior unfoldment that occurs primarily through zone 1 (phenomenological) and zone 5 (somatic) methods, while its confirmation unfolds primarily through zone 3 (intersubjective) and zone 5 (somatic, i.e., speech) methods. While there is obvious overlap or mutual imbrication, the trajectory of the unfolding phenomena, in this case causal state-stage identity, can be located in terms of precedence in zone 1. One cannot realize state-stage identification with casual consciousness by practicing and excelling in political rhetoric per se, nor can one’s experience and mastery of causal awakening be confirmed by climbing up a mountain in solitude, or channeling interdimensional beings in dialogical fashion to receive liberative confirmations. Then again, maybe the latter is possible and calls for a rearranging of our presuppositions of things deemed incomprehensible or incommensurate. For Wilber, the principles of nonexclusion and unfoldment are corroborated and brought to life in a mutually constitutive manner via the principle of enactment. On the one hand, I observe that Wilber’s (2006) treatment of enactment is functionally inseparable from the principle of injunction. As described earlier in the example of causal realization in a contemplative religious community, injunction serves to prescribe transformative practices, the results of which are experienced and legitimated in the context of community inquiry and hierarchical modes of affirmation. Simply put, phenomena are enacted and brought forth by injunctions, paradigms, or social practices (“If you want to know this, you must do this”) (Wilber, 2002b). On the other hand, Wilber (2002b, 2002c) seems to suggest that enactment serves as a type of action-orienting guideline for reflexively considering the efficacy and significance of injunctions and unfoldment within one’s own community, and also in other communities—across zones, as it were, in terms of intercultural discernment and participation. Here enactment is a mode of taking action as a result of reflecting upon the effects of a practice—whether that be within one’s own lifeworld or in a cross-cultural space guided by a metapractical integral lens. Put differently, one enacts because of what one sees enacted in relation to intercultural potentials of unfoldment that arise in and through the discernment and effective application of such injunctions. Thus, a meta-pragmatic justification and corresponding injunctions emerge with this mode of enactment. Furthermore, nonexclusion, enactment, and unfoldment together afford an explanatory guideline, which is also a hermeneutical orientation, that can shape and cultivate integral methods to identify, evaluate, and directly appropriate zone-specific views, methods, and injunctions of other communities for the sake of realizing and participating in the emergence of what we might call intercultural habits of evolution.11 While Wilber heuristically differentiates these three principles, they are presumed as mutually constitutive within Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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the AQAL model, and through our own reflexive application help us identify, regulate, evaluate, and unfold intercultural holons in the Kosmos. It is worth reiterating the integral presupposition that these principles— and all phenomena for that matter—show up in interior and exterior, as well as individual and collective, expressions and modes. Wilber’s description of Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP) is worth citing at length here: We inhabit these eight spaces, these zones, these lifeworlds, as practical realities. Each of these zones is not just a perspective, but an action, an injunction, a concrete set of actions in a real world zone. Each injunction brings forth or discloses the phenomena that are apprehended through the various perspectives. It is not that perspectives come first and actions or injunctions come later; they simultaneously co-arise (actually, tetra-arise). “Perspectives” simply locate the perceiving holon in AQAL space…The basic point is simply that these 8 fundamental perspectives also involve 8 fundamental methodologies. You can not only take a view, you can act from it…. These methodologies taken together are referred to as Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP). (Wilber, 2006, p. 34) I argue that this heuristic articulation of IMP, which can be described as having a view through and a view from, a method and perspective, respectively, along with the triadic hermeneutic of religious realization and principles of nonexclusion, enactment, and unfoldment, together point to a novel orienting feature in Wilber’s work (2000, 2006). This feature is at once a hermeneutical, soteriological, and metapragmatic endeavor that forms a bridge between theory and practice for the purpose of intercultural evolution. Put differently, the eight-zone approach, Integral Enlightenment, the triadic hermeneutic of religious realization, and the principles of nonexclusion, unfoldment, and enactment considered together demonstrate a metapragmatic psychospiritual approach to evolution in Wilber’s phase 4 and 5 writings. What follows is a brief explanation of why I employ the meta prefix to pragmatic and how this relates to Wilber’s psychospiritual approach to evolution. On the one hand, I am drawing distinctly from Zachary Stein’s (in press; 2010) insights mentioned above, where Wilber is posited as a metatheorist continuing a salient historical trajectory of American pragmatists such as James Mark Baldwin and Charles S. Peirce. Moreover, Peirce and Baldwin were pragmatists whose discourses served an explicitly normative function via metatheorizing; that is, Stein observes, Peirce and Baldwin endeavored to bring forth a system of knowledge that served a discourse-regulating function, one that could synthesize different disciplinary findings and methods via an overarching or meta view accounting for the conditions of humanity and life, thereby providing directionality to humanity as a whole. I extend Stein’s insights—in light of Wilber’s triadic hermeneutic of religious realization, Integral Enlightenment, and three metapractical principles of nonexclusion, unfoldment, and enactment analyzed herein—to argue that Wilber’s meta orientation is moving primarily towards an emphasis on practice or application, as a departure from theorizing. Therefore, I simply use the term pragmatic in the substantive instead of theory to emphasize this departure as a significant turning point, as it were, in the normative directionality of Wilber’s corpus; metapragmatic over metatheoretical. On the other hand, the phrase psychospiritual approach points to Wilber’s strong emphasis on psychological growth and mystical states of consciousness in terms of what was conveyed earlier as Integral Enlightenment via fullness and freedom.12 Let us return via “hermeneutic circularity” (Lawrence, 1992) to Wilber’s triadic hermeneutic of religious realization. With the triadic hermeneutic of religious realization considered metapractically, we can begin to identify significant injunctions, experiences, and community confirmations for unfolding and enacting our own integral versions of religiosity based on the conviction of realizing directly (UL) what we endeavor 36

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to establish as habits or trends in consciousness toward emerging views, actions, and modes of intercultural engagement. Hypothetically speaking, exercising such metapraxis in light of the triadic hermeneutic of religious realization can enable us to: discern how significant contemplative strands are operative in a religious community, engage with their zone-specific lifeworlds ethnographically to grasp the insider dimensions of practice and agency, and identify and appropriate generalizable features for the purpose of intercultural evolution.13 I will return to this metapragmatic approach and its implications for our productive engagement with the future of religion, mysticism, and evolution in the concluding section of this article.

Fantastic Questions and Constructive Departures Critically speaking, there are many questions that need to be raised about how we actually enact our lifeworlds to facilitate evolutionary unfoldment beyond what we currently grasp at our cognitive heights of understanding and integral depths of spiritual awakening. Interpretive gaps aside, my general argument is that the overtly psychospiritual ethos and orientation of Wilber’s work behooves us to bring critical attention to contemplative practices espoused by the AQAL model, which are explicitly guided by a metapractical sensibility reaching toward the unprecedented potentials of evolving consciousness and culture. Here it is not so much about theorizing about significant relationships across disciplines or cultures as it is finding actual ways to put our vision or map into practice via radical experimental collaborative inquiries and methods. Thus, we can endeavor to develop a method of integral metapraxis directed by intercultural or superholonic experiments, insights, and modes of collaboration, all of which serve as a foundation to generate new injunctions. Consider, for instance, Wilber’s (2006, p. 18) observation that state-stage cultivation of freedom ascending and descending “lubricates” processes of structural development. What if we imagined contemplative modalities that could afford something more, way more in terms of the potentials of unfoldment via religious realization, agency, and enactment? More precisely, what might we discover by investigating the practices, experiences, and intersubjective configurations involved in the unfolding of “unordinary states” (Wilber, 2006, p. 94) of consciousness in relation to culture, transformation, and emergence? And how might we grapple ethnographically with allegedly real and sacred phenomena that startle and confound altogether our presuppositions and concepts of development, mystical states, and linear evolution—revealing stunning possibilities inherent in the Kosmos? What if we engaged the unordinary and paranormal states of the consciousness of mystics, considered and appropriated via integral metapraxis, as an entry point to explore the relations between contemplative practice, psychophysical unfolding, and the potentials of intercultural evolution? With those questions in mind I turn to Jeffrey Kripal’s dialectic of consciousness and culture. I suggest that his approach—especially in light of Wilber’s metapragmatic psychospiritual approach to evolution—offers a unique way to analyze and understand the striking potentials glimpsed in and through the extraordinary, unordinary, or superordinary states of mystics, contemplative adepts, and in some cases, ordinary people.

Altered States of Consciousness and Culture Jeffrey Kripal is a profound voice in the academic study of religion, whose reconsideration and ethnographic study of the sacred, mythical, magical, and paranormal dimensions of religiosity, I believe, can serve to illuminate and guide our own endeavors to bring integral discourse to the field of religious studies and public life. Kripal draws from a host of disciplines, subdisciplines, and methods—from the history of religions, critical theory and comparative mysticism, to psychoanalysis, philosophy and ethnography—all in a robust attempt to make sense and significance of the sacred as it shows up in a host of religious worlds, hybrid communities, and individuals. Moreover, his identification and analyses of universals via his comparative approach to the mystical (1998, 2001), his deliberate and stylistic attention to historical detail and contextualization (2004, 2010), and his compelling, radical, and nuanced reading of impossible, fantastic, and hybrid religious Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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phenomena and events (2010), together demonstrate an approach that is resonant with many of the principles of Wilber’s corpus. Methodologically speaking, I see Kripal’s dialectic of consciousness and culture as an orienting theoretical lens with which to conduct, as it were, an ethnography of the paranormal; that is, as a means to explore firsthand how data such as transformative ritual injunctions, mystical modes of knowing, community enactments, and self-understandings interact to disclose the “living phenomenology” (Ponty, 1944) of the miraculous and sacred in the lifeworld of religious communities and figures. With that said, given the scope of this article I can only do minimal justice to describing and applying substantive features of Kripal’s work as they speak to Wilber’s approach analyzed herein. A key function of the dialectic is to confirm that there is no way to explain paranormal phenomena and events adequately, in part because such data are just what their name implies—unusual, out of the ordinary, confounding—and in part because the conditions in which the paranormal occurs are usually marked by discontinuities, the implications of which make causal explanatory analysis and pragmatic endeavors of ritual appropriation virtually impossible. In this regard, Kripal (2010) likes to say that he has no doubt that certain mystical, fantastic, and miraculous experiences occur, that some of the amazing events recorded in so many ways in the history of religions happen, that the astonishing visions and visitations of others and interdimensional beings are real; but, and this is the critical point, what these experiences mean is a totally different story, exponentially more difficult to confirm, evaluate, and thus enact. In pursuing the meaning of such data, as William James (1912) puts it, we are “forever fringed by a more” (p. 34). Yet this more escaping our empirical gaze, eclipsing our cognitive certainty, is the central subject of Kripal’s recent works, for these “really real” (Geertz 1973) fantastic dimensions of religious realization offer an untapped reservoir of potential insight and revelation, whose implications point beyond our wildest imaginings as a species (2010).14 We will explore some concrete examples of Kripal’s treatment of the paranormal and sacred in a moment. I suggest that this embrace of and critical engagement with the inexplicable yet irreducibly real nature of paranormal and sacred phenomena has great implications for mysticism, psychology, and even human evolution. Therefore, beyond classifying paranormal phenomena as a species of “unordinary states,” or identifying these strange phenomena in terms of how they relate to particular state-stages, which Wilber has aptly done (2000, 2006), it may do us well to make such impossible potentials key foci in our metapragmatic psychospiritual engagement with the living currents of the sacred manifesting in communities, both in and transcending time and space. This calls for a reconsideration of our fundamental presumptions about what’s possible and what it means to be religiously or mystically informed adepts of evolution, if you will. With that said, it is worth reproducing Kripal’s treatment of the dialectic of consciousness and culture. Following is his most succinct and comprehensive articulation of the dialectic in light of popular culture: I think that what we have here, what we are, is a nondual system of Consciousness and Culture evolving itself in loop after loop; that Consciousness needs Culture to know itself as and in us, just as Culture needs Consciousness to exist at all; and that it is just as foolish to erase the universal (Consciousness) for the local (Culture) as it is to erase the local (Culture) for the universal (Consciousness)…. So here is my conclusion stated in its clearest terms: the Human as Two (and One) is the neuroanatomical, cognitive, and spiritual bedrock of the paranormal and its fantastic both-and, physical-mythical, masterful-mental, real-unreal expressions in popular culture. (Kripal, 2011, pp. 332-333)

I do not have enough space to unpack the different layers of this rich and elegant statement, which was developed via three years of research, ethnography, and the production of two books (Kripal, 2010, 2011). For our purposes here I will interpret aspects of this passage by way of “redescription” (Hatcher, 1998) and 38

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comparative analysis in light of Wilber’s work presented earlier. This will entail a brief analysis of two key figures Kripal treats in illuminating how the paranormal has been framed and studied in ways relevant to our inquiry here. Before moving forward, the above passage makes it clear that Kripal’s approach to paranormal phenomena and religion, which is located at the intersection of consciousness and culture, calls for a “bothand” scholarly orientation (Kripal 2010, 2011) insofar as the subject of study reveals an in-between existential phenomenological status (Jackson, 1998), a tetra-arising Kosmic address (Wilber 2006), and a simultaneously real and confounding ontological origin and nature, all of which call for a tremendously subtle, critical, and open-ended engagement with the data under consideration. I now turn to explore Frederic W.H. Myers, one of Kripal’s (2010) key figures of paranormal study in Authors of the Impossible and Mutants and Mystics, who is a relevant case study here given both his historical significance and what I see as his integral approach to the sacred and paranormal. Myers is considered a pioneering researcher in the field of altered states of consciousness and the body through his empirical study of all things related to supernatural, esoteric, psychic, and evolutionary phenomena. A huge figure around the turn of the 20th century, Myers is credited with coining the term telepathy in 1882 and was one of the founders of the London Society for Psychical Research (SPR). He was also a friend of William James, who would later become a key member of the SPR in the United States, and as such had tremendous influence in shaping the empirical investigations of the paranormal and psychical dimensions of human experience, which had become key foci of scholarly attention during his lifetime (Kripal, 2010). To give a simple example of his strong interest in the paranormal, before the SPR was formed Myers had attended 367 séances! Thus, despite what Kripal describes as his “classical” and even conservative disposition as a social figure, he demonstrated a relentless interest in fantastic subjects such as the existence of life after death and supernatural powers, although he believed such powers were not outside of nature but implicit in the very evolutionary-cum-spiritual potentials of manifestation. At any rate, Myers and SPR would devote decades of research and rigorous analysis focused on investigating all kinds of ostensibly credible reports submitted by a plethora of informants, which disclosed insight into such topics as survival beyond bodily death and miraculous incidents. History aside, for Myers these manifestations and patterns of the paranormal served as illuminating case studies in his formulation of the concept of telepathy, which he defined as a mode of communication between two or more people that does not depend on any “known” channels of the senses. The phenomenon of telepathy as Myers defined it showed up rampantly in public and popular culture at the time, and so became a central subject of Myers’ thought and SPR initiatives, documentation, and analysis. Further, in gathering and analyzing data from as many fields of inquiry as possible—from psychology, to Darwinian evolution, to philosophy and religion—Myers developed a compelling notion about human experience and the spiritual evolutionary potentials of man. One way he framed this was through his concept of the “imaginal” (Kripal, 2010, pp. 82-83). His fundamental understanding here, which overlaps with other areas of his written work, was that there exists a complex causal interplay between evolutionary, symbolic, mythic, and transcendent dimensions of reality which, though filtered and enacted through human embodiment, hint at emerging capacities latent in nature and humanity, capacities unearthed through proper investigation of the “subliminal” and transcendent recesses of consciousness, both beyond and enveloping time and space. Telepathy was a key concept for investigating such emerging capacities at the mysterious intersection between the magical and evolutionary potentials of humanity in and through the body, potentials that Myers (1889) was convinced point to the unfolding of “faculties newly dawning, and of a destiny greater than we can know…modifiable in directions as unthinkable to me as my eyesight would have been to the oyster” (p. 6). Kripal (2010) writes: What Myers intended to communicate here was the idea that the human imagination under certain very specific conditions can take on extraordinary or supernormal capacities that represent hints of a more highly evolved human nature. In his own Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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more technical terms, such altered states of consciousness were “perversions” that represented “(a) tendency to lie at the further point of the evolutionary progress of a species than has yet been reached.” (p. 83) On a metapractical note, it is precisely the deliberate methodical interest in these “perversions” or altered states of consciousness which are vital foci in the formulation of Kripal’s own dialectic as well as his general methodological reconsideration of the sacred and paranormal within the Western religious landscape over the past two centuries. In Authors of the Impossible, along with Meyers, Kripal (2010) treats three other seminal figures in his study of the paranormal and sacred: namely Charles Fort, Jacques Vallee, and Bertrand Méheust. I suggest that each of these persons demonstrates unique but very similar commitments to studying altered states of consciousness using phenomenological (UL), empirical (UR), and scientific methods (UR), while considering how their findings are significant to culture (LL) and society (LR) in light of what is possible when evolutionary, psychological, and mystical paradigms are fused. Here we see an experimental approach—at once scholarly, empirical, and focused on mystical and paranormal phenomena—that resonates quite significantly with the many key integral concepts explored herein. Kripal’s analysis and evaluation of the phenomenon of aliens is worth redescribing briefly here, for it is an instantiation of his radically open and nuanced study of the impossible. Consider his treatment (Kripal, 2011) of Whitley Strieber, a renowned writer of science fiction and horror literature. Although he doubts himself in terms of the actual nature of his multidimensional and paranormal experiences, Strieber (Kripal, 2011, p. 75) claims to have had numerous (numinous) encounters with aliens, although he refuses to refer to them as such, preferring to call them “grays” or “the visitors,” likely from the unfathomable future, or from an inconceivable superstructure whose conscious intelligence operates in ways that surpass our human condition and modes of apprehension altogether.15 At a certain point in his life these alien encounters became regular events for Strieber (Kripal, 2011, p. 297), the intensity of which would permanently rearrange his conceptions and presumptions about life and the possibilities of the multidimensional universe in which we live.16 Strieber describes in vivid detail these alien encounters that, among other strange things, display strong erotic elements, both sublimated and at times involving raw sexually invasive experiences, particularly with a female other whom Strieber (1987) speaks about in depth. What compels Kripal to take seriously such figures as Strieber is that, like many of the figures he studies, Strieber understands the liminal and paradoxical truth-fiction status of his experiences in terms of their meaning and implications in light of the larger sociocultural environment (Kripal, 2011, p. 293). To be sure, the descriptions Strieber offers are outrageous in the most confounding sense of the word—only if taken seriously, of course. In fact, I suggest that Kripal himself, and also Strieber for that matter, would not hesitate to welcome a critical stance toward the majority of such paranormal claims. In fact, I venture to assert that this is a hallmark of Kripal’s philosophical position on such phenomena; namely, that so much of what occurs in terms of the paranormal and sacred, and the interpretations that ensue, are shaped and colored by a pre-trans fallacy (Wilber, 2000) mode of interpretation. In this regard, Kripal (2011) is quick to emphasize that figures like Strieber are compelling subjects of inquiry precisely because of their critical, mature, seasoned, and even skeptical approaches to their own experiences and perspectives on the paranormal and sacred. For instance, Kripal lists Strieber’s qualifications as someone who has studied extensively: the contemplative traditions of South Asia, the Gnostic communities of the West, modern psychoanalytic theories, along with evolutionary and quantum physical approaches—all for the purpose of investigating as comprehensively and responsibly as possible the nature and implications of his own abduction experiences, the phenomenon as a whole, and how such findings relate to our deepest understandings of reality. It is typical, even a symptom of the rampant, though subtle and nuanced, reductionism of our day, Kripal might say, to dismiss the encounters of someone like Strieber as fabrications of the mind, or even as 40

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arising in a purely internal, altered state of consciousness located, say, in the subtle state-stage (UL) and realm (UR) (Wilber, 2006). One way Strieber interprets such phenomena as alien others is to posit them as representations of an evolutionary leap from a kind of future that is already manifest as a “super dimension” of sorts, one that somehow inversely relates to humanity—to Strieber and many others for that matter—in a distorted though no less real manner; that is, since we do not have the proper range of perception and sensitivity in our psychophysical forms of complexification and vibratory frequency, if you will, we cannot discern and relate to these alien others as they might actually be, or as they can be. That these others, these “visitors from elsewhere,” appear and intervene in human consciousness marks a kind of evolutionary phenomenological pattern instantiating emergent potentials in the transhuman lifeworld, if you will. The way Strieber accounts for his own encounters in this critical and existentially open truth-fiction way becomes necessary to sustaining the inquiry itself and, in Wilber’s terms, fostering the conditions in which unfoldment and enactment of such data can happen; they are as sacred in the deepest sense of the word as they are absurd in what we—and here by “we” I mean postmodern rational researchers—verify to be the most accurate constructions of history, relevant public discourses of religious legitimation, and cutting-edge psychosocial endeavors. These kinds of hybrid, radically in-depth and nuanced hermeneutic approaches to confounding phenomena are present in all of Kripal’s (2007, 2010) ethnographic case studies of prominent figures like Myers and Strieber. Without going into more detail, the general point is that if we take the subjective experiences and approaches of individuals like Myers or Strieber to heart, which is exactly what Kripal does, we necessarily are forced to confront unbelievable data, our own cutting edge limitations; and thus open to impossible potentials of being in the world that may very well offer glimpses into our own Kosmic decoding-as-praxis and metapraxis in order to set the stage for enacting and actualizing evolutionary emergence.17 So where does all this leave us? For me, as a scholar of religion, contemplative practitioner, and integrally informed person, I would like to carry forward such ethnographic studies of the in-between dimensions of religious lifeworlds, where the inexplicable and confounding data of religious realization and enactment unfold. For it may very well be that in the unfolding immediacy of paranormal events, we can discover not just how these phenomena relate to emic self-understandings and enactments of the sacred, but how they speak reflexively to the most interesting, vital, and alarming intercultural, global, and spiritual issues that are relevant to us as human beings in the world. On a normative note, then, it would do us well at once to contextualize, compare, and engage dialogically with the intense and distinct currents and agencies of sacred communities and individuals beyond those fitting neatly into one Great Tradition or another, no matter how seemingly incommensurate with our paradigms they may be. In this regard, Kripal’s dialectic of consciousness and culture point us to the domain of collective practices (LL) in order to investigate properly how certain possibilities of unfoldment can be realized and enacted interculturally toward actualizing the untapped evolutionary potentials of the Kosmos. As such, perhaps we will discover experiences and practices that shape and vitalize our emerging lifeworlds, whose unfoldings are as mythical as they are real in nature, whose injunctions, unfoldment, and enactments are as new as they are deep in the veins of the spiritual potentials evinced via fantastic case studies of the irreducible more (James), of the imaginal (Myers), the really real (Geertz), the impossible (Kripal), and the unfoldment of unprecedented Kosmic grooves (Wilber 2006).

Conclusion: Altered States of Consciousness and Culture In this time of much change and the compounding of complexity, we need to use capacities that we never knew we had—or ones rarely used or even lost, perhaps, since childhood or the childhood of the race. We might refer to these capacities as evolutionary accelerators. They serve to propel us from beneath the surface crust of sleepy consciousness and our own human nature and biology. They serve, too, to help us get beyond the shuttering of our local cultural trance so as to have the courage and capacJournal of Integral Theory and Practice

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ity to nurture the forms of the possible human and the possible society. For there is no question but that we are patterned and coded with potentials few of which we ever learn to use. It is as if we had in our body and mind a vast orchestral range of a million keys, and we have learned to play but a small fraction. The journey to discover what these missing keys are and how they can be used is what my life is all about. – Jean Houston (1996, p. 32) If physics and evolution are our best models for everything that is in the physical world (and I have no doubt that they are), and if mystical experiences are real events that really engage this physical world (and I have no doubt they are and do), then how on earth could mystical events not be related to physics and evolution? But this, of course, calls for a very different kind of religion (and science). Not the end of religion, mind you, but a different way of being religious, for sure. – Peter Bebergal and Jeffrey Kripal (2012) It is my hope that we realize that even our most sophisticated models, theoretical breakthroughs, and mystical experiences are far from explaining the vibrant, powerful, and confounding nature and potentials we can witness in certain unfolding phenomena in the sacred lifeworlds of individuals and communities.18 In this way the cultivation of unordinary states of consciousness and the development of psychophysical stages can be seen as mutually constitutive to experiencing, unfolding, and enacting the sacred and paranormal potentialities in our integral community lifeworlds. Moreover, such an approach—which in practice comes to life more in terms of dialectics than zones, operative fusions than differentiations, both-and than either-or frames and injunctions—entails that every disciplinary endeavor, hermeneutic, action-orienting understanding, and practice be seen as undergirded and vitalized by an irreducibly mythic interplay between consciousness and culture.19 On a very speculative note, I suggest that transcending the cognitive line as the primary evolutionary driver of the Kosmos, as it were, is itself a prominent agency that speaks through Wilber’s corpus in terms of his metapragmatic psychospiritual approach. Consider, then, the following hypothesis: the operational differentiation between states of consciousness and structure stages of development, between the interiors and exteriors of the universe, between quadrants and zones, may be necessary and viable for current modes of integral thought and practice at second tier; however, what we will need in the future is a fantastic fusion—in practice and enactment—the implications of which will deconstruct and transform how we fundamentally theorize and unfold human potentiality as “integral insiders.” Here such dichotomies as development and states of awakening are metapractically and experimentally merged via a dialectic, whereby the fusion of these zones (integral alchemy) become the constitutive entry point for considering, practicing, and enacting what is possible in terms of our embodied evolutionary horizons of being and becoming. Spiritually speaking, then: Kripal’s dialectic; Wilber’s triadic hermeneutic of experience, metapragmatic principles, and psychospiritual approach; Myers’ imaginal powers actualized in and through myth, symbol, and evolutionary embodiment; and Strieber’s “visitors” together point to possibilities that we would do well to explore—in both a critical and radical spirit of existential openness, empirical investigation, and, most importantly, strenuous contemplative practice guided by emerging integral injunctions, methods, and modes of community inquiry and enactment. Put differently, the application of Wilber’s metapragmatic psychospiritual approach and Kripal’s dialectic together can begin to deconstruct, reconstruct, and super-vitalize our own integral paradigms, self-understandings, and evaluations of what it means to live and unfold the life process beyond the presently conceivable hori-zones of our being in the world. I believe what Wilber (2006) calls “transrational contemplative development” (p. 276) will be vital to the future of religion, even as things beyond what we can now conceive take precedence over our best current models and methods. 42

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Acknowledgements Many thanks to Ken Wilber and Jeffrey Kripal for their invaluable work in the study of religion and all things relevant to our unfolding humanity and divinity. Deep thanks also to Dustin DiPerna, Ben Williams, and many others for their ongoing inspiration as post-postmodern devotees of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and for always bringing depth, courage, and care to how they show up in life for the well-being and development of all.

NOTES I employ first-person plural pronouns below to identify integral readers as the primary audience of this article, and also to show that I am someone influenced in real time by the unfolding discourse, practice, individuals, and community formations associated with Wilber’s work. What especially interests me in exploring Kripal’s scholarship is the possibility of deepening and challenging the integral self-understandings of human potentiality, states of consciousness and culture, and evolutionary emergence in terms of the AQAL model. I hope to generate discussions and considerations of what can emerge when Integral Theory is radically receptive to the implications of such methods as Kripal’s dialectic in ways that do as much to challenge our structural presumptions about everything—particularly states of consciousness and stages of development in relation to evolution—as they throw light upon the exciting potentials of transformation through our conjectures and meta-applications of integral discourse from within. Note that I have not been able to find anywhere in Wilber’s work online or in Integral Spirituality any explicit investigation of the relationship between “unordinary” and mystical states of consciousness and psychophysical stages of development, on the one hand, with and his triadic hermeneutic of religious realization and three metapractical principles of nonexclusion, unfoldment, and enactment. 2 Please note that the terms metapractical and metapragmatic are used interchangeably. “Unfoldment” here refers to Wilber’s specific treatment analyzed above, while “evolution” refers more broadly to the underlying teleology of Wilber’s corpus. 3 By “impossible potential,” I mean the following: On the one hand, impossible refers essentially to the miracle of the life process itself in every given moment. Here all things—immanent and transcendent, simple and complex, ordinary and outstanding—are experienced as a wondrous, mysterious, and miraculous outpouring of the Kosmos in immediacy. On the other hand, things are seen as impossible potentials in the light of time and space as unfolding and evolving—be it in reference to the past, the present, or the future as we hermeneutically conceive such phenomena and events in terms of our presumptions of what is possible and what exists or can exist. For example, if we imagine the trajectory of creation, say, at the time and from the point of view of a dinosaur, our 21st-century sociocultural landscape would be considered an impossible potentiality, that is, something neither remotely fathomable by dinosaur consideration; not to mention the impossibility of dinosaur consideration itself! Indeed such an impossible potential— namely post-industrial intercultural life in the 21st century—to the reptilian point of view of a dinosaur, as it were, will have been seen as even beyond miraculous insofar as it is unfathomable. Likewise, the implications of our studies of the sacred and paranormal speak to a pursuit of impossible potentials, especially in cases where the miraculous and paranormal are experienced and enacted in sacred communities and individual mystics. Just as our current world was unfathomable and impossible to the reptilian imagination, yet no less present in potentia, by virtue of what we can historically verify today, so too, I believe, certain events that unfold in religious worlds speak to or disclose insight into evolutionary possibilities of the future, or perhaps beyond time. 4 Please note that I am not articulating these concepts for the sake of mere description. Rather, I am making an interpretive argument and bringing together concisely these core features of Wilber’s work because in so doing his corpus comes to life with suggestions, nuances, and a provocative flavor or pragmatic and evolutionary emphasis. 5 The reader is encouraged to read Wilber’s elaboration and expansion of states and stages in “Waves, Streams, States, and Self—Further Considerations for an Integral Theory of Consciousness” (http://www.kenwilber.com/Writings/PDF/ 1

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WavesStreamsStatesSelf_GENERAL_2000.pdf). 6 In part, I am adopting Daniel P. Brown’s notion of “basis of operation.” 7 I have added “correcting” as it is not mentioned in Wilber (2000, 2006) explicitly, but implied. A semantic caveat is worth mentioning here: given Wilber’s pervasive focus on contemplative or mystical experience arising in a variety of religious contexts—from Buddha, to Jesus, to St. Theresa of Avilla, to Ralph Waldo Emerson—I call this a triadic hermeneutic of “religious” realization. This emphasis on religiosity makes sense in that it narrows down the implicit scope of this article in alignment with Wilber’s own enduring appreciation and engagement with the contemplative dimensions of human experience in religious contexts, which he categorizes under the “Great Traditions.” 8 Dustin DiPerna, adopting Daniel P. Brown’s terms (2006), differentiates state-stages as vantage points on the subjective side of awareness and state-realms on the objective side of awareness. These conceptions are also influenced by Brown’s articulation of the “mind’” and “event” perspectives, respectively. 9 The terms awakening, abiding, and realization are used interchangeably to refer to stabilization of subjective identity in the respective state of consciousness in question (in this case casual). 10 I follow Jackson (2006) in Minima Ethnographia in which he “assign(s) priority to lifeworld (lebenswelt) over worldview (weltanschauung) in which the relationship between the one and many arises in practical contexts…” (p. 5). In this context, what I refer to as the “lifeworld zone” is both a suggestive and rhetorical move, in that I endeavor to give primacy to the living conditions where contemplative practice, mystical experience, and paranormal phenomena are enacted and unfold, while integrating Wilber’s “map” (2002b) of the eight zones of IMP. 11 I think it is valid to make a distinction between “method” and “injunction,” with the latter referring to more concrete domain-specific practices, such as, for instance, specific contemplative techniques (upayas in Sanskrit) in the case of a spiritual community or distinct mountain-climbing methods; while the former refers more abstractly to what discipline or sub-discipline a host of injunctions fall under, such as a method we might call “causal realizing,” or, more generally, existential anthropology. There are also many variations and possibilities of naming holonic configurations according to categories or zones, such as discipline, sub-discipline, field, domain, and so on. Differentiating method, injunction, and view makes sense for the purpose of making non-arbitrary classifications that can enact different meanings and bring forth powerful implications. 12 Finally, evolution is positioned grammatically in the dative for obvious teleological reasons (e.g., consider the subtitle of Sex Ecology, Spirituality, The Spirit of Evolution). Evolutionarily speaking, Integral Enlightenment, which is demonstrated in the human body, as it were, is posited as a microcosmic replication and enactment of how the universe as a whole develops and unfolds. I do not have the space to unpack how Wilber’s treatment of scientific theory and practice inform his hermeneutical orientation and psychospiritual approach analyzed herein, nor can I do justice to a fundamental assumption that accompanies this article: namely that evolution, as conceived and agreed upon by contemporary scientific communities, is largely accepted and incorporated by Wilber in terms of theorizing on the UR and LR, on the one hand, and that many of these scientific insights are carried into his treatment of methods associated with cultural studies (LL) and phenomenological studies (UL). With that said, Wilber correlates key research and findings of evolutionary theories to the process of development and spiritual awakening—in such a way that microcosm and macrocosm co-mingle and unfold as the face of Spirit evolving in and through time, space, and form. 13 I speak of discerning and regulating “modes” or the “how” of ritual practice and not the practices themselves, the “what” or “surface features” (Wilber, 2000) insofar as they will always differ given the particularities of context and language structure, not to mention motives and history. 14 Kripal further observes (2010) that much of these data associated with the mystical and paranormal dimensions of religiosity have been repressed in the academy, seen as the exaggerated stuff of popular culture with little relevance to the serious study of religion. 15 Strieber also speaks about a superstructure of other beings at once existing in consciousness and overseeing the processes of human unfolding in light of a larger inconceivable transhuman totality. For these alien others we resemble more an untamed self-destructive human race gravely in need of guidance and support rather than the most evolved 44

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species in the physical Kosmos. 16 It should be noted that Streiber’s description of these regular incidents were retrieved through hypnosis, therapy, and extensive critical reflection practices via writing. 17 The history of religion is filled with instances of the paranormal or miraculous, especially in the context of South Asian Hindu and Buddhist Tantric traditions. It is worth noting Kripal’s observations (2001, 2004) that paranormal events tend to occur in extreme and transgressive situations of shock and liminality, often induced by devastating tragedy, near death encounters, bodily austerity, indulgence, and drug-induced states. However, in Tantric and yogic religious contexts, transformative rituals and contemplative exercises often play a deliberate role in the cultivation of religious realizations and paranormal attainments. This can be traced to the premodern text traditions of India and Tibet, some of which contain philosophical treatises that address a range of paranormal and occult topics from divine modes of knowing, alchemical transformations of the body and yogic manipulations of the elements, to gnoseological conceptions of an omnipotent divine monistic consciousness, and esoteric transmissions of cosmic energy from guru to student. Consider, for instance, the yoga sutras where, through the proper application of a sequence of meditative absorption practices (samyama), an adept can naturally manipulate the physical elements or manifest objects with his or her mind. A medieval Tantric text states that adepts of yoga can switch physical forms through mutual meditative immersion on each other’s body! These contexts where paranormal states are represented as intentionally and methodically cultivated through injunctions, experiences, and enactments would be a fascinating departure to take our considerations of impossible potentialities in the transcultural lifeworld of practice and metapraxis an embodied step further. 18 To reiterate: I have not been able to find in Wilber’s work any ethnographically or philosophically “thick” (Geertz, 1973) investigation of the relationship between “unordinary states,” mystical states, and psychophysical stages and modes of development in light of evolutionary potentiality. However, of course, his writings about the UL and UR zones in terms of interior and exterior processes of complexification and growth are a complementary and fruitful point of departure for our constructive endeavors to foresee ways to unfold the Kosmos from the ground up. 19 I suspect, from my own perspective as a scholar of religion and contemplative practitioner, that the cognitive biases and presuppositions pervading integral discourse may be suffocating our embodied potentials. In future writings, I plan to raise questions about the fundamental presuppositions of Integral Theory, particularly the methodological privileging of cognition and theory over the lifeworld. I am reminded of Jackson’s (2006) existential phenomenological anthropological critique of modern and post modern approaches to analyzing and understanding indigenous cultures. He writes: “(T)he error is to focus on fixed and finite meanings, usually of a conceptual kind, and thereby overlook the action of meaning-making” (2006, p. 23). In this line of critique, Jackson might suggest that such categorical differentiations as the UL and UR, interiors and exteriors, states and stages, realm cultivation and identity awakening, not to mention lines and stages of structural development, all expose and point to an anthropomorphic orientation—particularly related to notions of “basic structure” presumed as integral to human experience and developmental processes (Wilber, 2003, p. 91; 2006, p. 283) and even the quadrants themselves—which may become less salient and true in the future, as it were, because of integral ethnographic practices, whose findings respectfully deconstruct and evolve how we live in sync with “conscious evolution.” Nevertheless, I am very sympathetic with Wilber’s approach to everything as such, for its value is immeasurable both as a true “signpost on the edge of history” (Stein, in press) and a story of extraordinarily real life implications. However, I do question the degree of reflexivity around the inevitably limited and hermeneutically circular (Lawrence, 1999) nature of the AQAL endeavor; such reflexivity can serve to open the integral worldspace to receptivity from others, affording deeper semantic potentials generated in and through intersubjective engagement with “alterities” (Gadamer, 1989) of religious others. Put differently, a lack of critical and open-tocritique reflective engagement with our own integral practices and theory blinds us from being receptive to the living expressions of other kinds of religious thought and practice, which are otherwise beyond the range of knowledge and action-orienting understandings that touch the interior edge and feeling of integral discourse and agency itself. Consider Wilber’s (2006) basic consensus with developmental findings that the cognitive line is a “necessary but not sufficient line” for development (pp. 82-84). Although I suggest Wilber’s work implies that the primacy of Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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cognition may be transcended, nevertheless the cognitive bias prevalent in integral discourse today is widespread. In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, this cognitive bias seems more exclusive in contrast to his more recent work, which suggests an increasing emphasis on social practice. Wilber (2000) writes: “Worldspaces are disclosed/created by cognitive transformations in the context of background injunctions or social practices” (p. 282). Such an observation, of course, merely reiterates the point just mentioned: namely, that Integral Theory is dominated by an anthropocentric discourse in which there is a fusion of psychological, mystical, and scientific sensibilities of thought and practice. This anthropomorphic center of gravity, if not reflexively addressed, may blind us from disclosing the potentials of intercultural evolution and enactment. This can eclipse the range of possibilities that, for instance, radical scientific and or spiritual technologies disclose. Wilber’s earlier approach has been characterized as “psychology as religion” (Parsons, 1992 p. 13). Although I would argue that this classification of Wilber’s corpus does not nearly account for it as a whole, particularly in terms of the evolutionary, mystical, and meta-pragmatic features of his thought, nevertheless, an implication of this observation insofar as its partly true is the following: in becoming aware of our basic presumptions and modes of knowing and doing as the very cause of seeming incommensurability with those alterities—that is, lifeworlds that do not resonate with our current psychological, evolutionary, and mystical myths and modes of discourse—we may open up new horizons for our unfolding being in the world. I am reminded of William Parson’s (1999) Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling, an exceptional work of historical and comparative scholarship on some modern roots of the formation and articulation of what he calls a “psychoanalytic theory [I would add, enactment] of [modern] unchurched mysticism.” This takes as its point of theoretical departure a historical reconstruction and analysis of the famous Freud-Rolland debates about the mystical. I situate Parsons fundamentally as a “universalist” (Lawrence, 1999) with an uncompromising historical rigor, interested in understanding and engaging mystical modes of knowing, experience, and potentiality on their own terms, as much as this is possible, and developing and applying his historical evaluation of mysticism to navigating current sociocultural modes of religiosity. Historically speaking, Parsons (1999) identifies three “general orientations” of psychoanalytic theories about mysticism: 1) classic, or what Parsons calls the “received” view, which reduces the mystical to pathology; 2) adaptive, a view which recognizes and applies the therapeutic and healing aspects of mysticism; and 3) transformative, under which, incidentally, Wilber’s earlier work is categorized (p. 13). Naturally, these three elements overlap and the lines blur, disclosing evaluative classifications more fluid and circular than oppositional and linear. For instance, Parsons identifies Freud as classic-adaptive, and not merely classic, whereas Rolland is seen as adaptive-transformative. Moreover, Parsons articulates a fourth general orientation referred to as the dialogical, which is about engaging a plurality of mystical orientations, modes of knowing, and potentialities that can be explored critically, anthropologically, and constructively in interdisciplinary spaces. The result of his historical and comparative approach to the mystical is nicely implied in the following strikingly pointed and rhetorical passage: Are mystical traditions to be seen as speaking a mythical and symbolic language that contains psychological truths (which are more precisely articulated in psychoanalytic metapsychology), providing transformation and healing insofar as those truths—in conjunction with the personality of healers and introspective techniques—engage conflicts in a culturally appropriate and hence therapeutically effective manner? Or is it the case that the transformative techniques and religious ideation associated with mystical traditions speak to a realm of subjectivity wholly alien to, and perhaps incommensurate with, forms of subjectivity mapped by extant forms of metapsychology? If so, how might one conduct a dialogue to bridge these differences? (Parsons, 1999, p. 13) It would serve us well, then, to realize that we may be at the cutting edge of the Kosmos as psychologically and cognitively self-understood, if you will; but in terms of the contemplative depths of other religio-spiritual cultures and the potentials of unfoldment as yet charted, there may be more than a lot to learn beyond our current integral interpretations and appropriations of the Great Traditions (not to mention smaller communities that have not entered Western hermeneutic registers). With that said, I suggest that Wilber’s metapragmatic psychospiritual approach is patently compatible with all of the above radical considerations of mysticism and religiosity that may very well elide our gaze. 46

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REFERENCES Bebergal, P., & Kripal, J. (2012). The mystical arts of pop culture. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from http:// bombsite.com/articles/6393. Geertz, C. (1973). Interpretation of cultures. New York, NY: Basic Books. Gadamer, H-G. (1989). Truth and method (J. Weinsheimer & D. Marshall, Trans.). New York, NY: Crossroad Press. Houston, J. (1996). A mythic life: Learning to live our greater story. New York, NY: Harper Collins. Jackson, M. (2005). Existential anthropology: Events, exigencies and effects. New York, NY: Berghahn Books. Jackson, M. (1998). Minima ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the anthropological project. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. James, W. (1912). Essays in radical empiricism (Vol. 2). New York, NY: Longmans, Green & Co. James, W. (1929). The varieties of religious realization: A study in human nature. New York, NY: Random House. Lawrence, D.P. (1999). Rediscovering God with transcendental argument: A contemporary interpretation of monistic Kashmiri Shaiva Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Kasulis, P.T. (1992). Philosophy as metapraxis. In F.E. Reynolds & D. Tracy (Eds.), Myth and philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Kripal, J. (2001). Roads of excess, palaces of wisdom: Eroticism and reflexivity in the study of mysticism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kripal, J. (2007). Esalen: America and the religion of no religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kripal, J. (2010). Authors of the impossible: The paranormal and the sacred. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kripal, J. (2011). Mutants and mystics: Science fiction, superhero comics, and the paranormal. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Myers, F.W.H. (1885). Automatic writing—II. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 3, 1-63. Myers, F.W.H. (1889). Review of Janet’s Automatisme

Psychologique. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 6, 186-198. Myers, F.W.H. (1903). Human personality and its survival of bodily death. London: Longmans, Green, Co. Parsons, W. (1999). The enigma of oceanic feeling: Revisioning the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Sells, M. (1994). Mystical languages of unsaying. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sharf, R. (1995). Buddhist modernism and the rhetoric of meditative experience. Numen, 42, 228-283. Stein, Z. (in press). Between philosophy and prophecy. In S. Esbjörn-Hargens (Ed.), True but partial: Essential critiques of Integral Theory. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Stein, Z. (2010). On the normative function of metatheoretical endeavors. Integral Review. Retrieved on April 20, 2012, from http://integral-review.org/ back_issues/backissue12_Vol6No3/metatheoryissue_index.asp. Streiber, W. (1987). Communion: A true story. New York, NY: Harper Collins. Wilber, K. (2000). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2002a). Excerpt B: Waves, streams, states, and self—Further considerations for an integral theory of consciousness. Retrieved May 12, 2012, from http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/ kosmos/excerptB/intro.cfm. Wilber, K. (2002b). Excerpt B: The many ways we touch: Three principles helpful for any integrative approach. Retrieved May 12, 2012, from http:// wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptB/intro.cfm. Wilber, K. (2002c). Excerpt D: The look of a feeling: The importance of post/structuralism. Retrieved May 12, 2012, from http://wilber.shambhala.com/ html/books/kosmos/excerptB/intro.cfm. Wilber, K. (2002d). Excerpt G: Toward a comprehensive theory of subtle energies. Retrieved May 12, 2012, from http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/ books/kosmos/excerptB/intro.cfm. Wilber, K. (2006). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world. Boston, MA: Integral Books. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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MARK G. SCHMANKO, M.A., M.T.S., holds Master of Arts degrees in Religion from Harvard University and Naropa University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Kean University. Mark is an adjunct faculty member at John F. Kennedy University in the Integral Studies department, and works for Digital Network Group’s (LLC) Kinetic Potential Scholars initiative, which offers transformative mentoring programs and online services for underprivileged students. Mark’s creative passion and scholarly training are fueled by the study of South Asian philosophy and culture, with an emphasis on comparative mysticism, the American counterculture movement, intersubjectivity, and anthropology. Mark’s goal is to develop sophisticated interdisciplinary paradigms that can articulate, challenge, innovate, and engage powerful modes of religiosity in light of today’s public landscape, a landscape that has practically divorced itself from all considerations and injunctions of the sacred.

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OPENING SPACE FOR TRANSLINEAGE PRACTICE

Some Ontological Speculations Bruce Alderman

ABSTRACT This article makes speculative gestures toward the integral facilitation of a translineage religious orientation. I focus on translineage religious practice for two reasons: 1) it is becoming an increasingly common option in postmodern spiritual culture; and 2) for those who do pursue a trans-lineage path seriously and with rigor, it may be the field where the incommensurability between faith traditions, with their potentially conflicting truth claims, soteriological ends, and conceptions of ultimate reality, may be felt most acutely and personally by practitioners. In developing an integral approach capable of non-reductively accommodating and fostering multiple religious enactments, particularly in the context of a robust translineage spirituality, I argue that it is imperative that we explore both the implicit ontological commitments of Integral Theory, and the promise of emergent ontological models that are being forged in the crucible of interfaith and intercultural dialogue and engagement. To this end, I introduce concepts from recent works in comparative and constructive theology, as well as speculative realist and deconstructive philosophy, and consider the contributions these perspectives might make to an Integral framework for translineage spiritual practice. KEY WORDS enaction; Integral Theory; multiplicity; ontology; spirituality; theology

I

ntegral spirituality invites multiple possible realizations: 1. The development of integrally informed schools of thought within existing religious traditions, which may encourage greater balance and scope of vision and practice than have been previously realized, while also providing opportunities for traditions to reciprocally and uniquely inform, or even transform, integral thought itself (an AQAL Christianity, and a Christianity-inflected Integral) 2. On the philosophical level, and in its role as a meta-system, the facilitation of robust and transformative interfaith dialogue among traditions through the provision of a shared meta-language (an encounter among autonomous paths that may or may not involve actively “borrowing” from each other, or practicing across traditional boundaries) 3. The emergence of a new global, integral, or world spirituality as a complete path in itself 4. The cultivation of a sensibility that would allow practitioners to skillfully embrace and navigate within multiple spiritual worldspaces simultaneously, as they learn to surf their vertiginous crests rather than being dashed by the waves of incommensurability (i.e., a translineage practice, or what Marc Gafni [2011a] calls “dual citizenship”)

Correspondence: Bruce Alderman, 1416-C Del Rio Circle, Concord, CA 94518. E-mail: [email protected]. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 2012, 7(2), pp. 49–71

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In a previous article (Alderman, 2011), I discussed two of these possibilities (the emergence of a new integral religion and the development of an integral post-metaphysical model of interfaith relations). In this article, I would like to focus on the fourth possibility: making some speculative gestures toward the facilitation of a translineage religious orientation. Although I expect the thoughts I develop here would apply equally to several of the scenarios listed above, I have elected to focus on translineage religious practice for two reasons. First, it is becoming an increasingly common option in postmodern spiritual culture, frequently at the expense of depth of vision or commitment as spiritual consumers drift rootlessly from one practice and teacher to another (Gafni, 2011a). And second, for those who do pursue a translineage path with rigor, it may be the field where the incommensurability between faith traditions, with their potentially conflicting truth claims, soteriological ends, and conceptions of ultimate reality, may be felt most acutely and personally by practitioners.1 While the first point suggests that such an inquiry is indeed timely and an emerging cultural need (as more individuals move into a worldcentric orientation), the second poses a challenge and invitation, particularly for integral practitioners who see shortcomings in a too-easy perennialist inclusivism and are seeking an approach that does justice to the plurality and precious particularity of the world’s many wisdom traditions. Until relatively recently, Integral Theory did, indeed, espouse a version of the perennial philosophy, and thus arguably also endorsed a form of universalist religious inclusivism. In this view, each of the world’s many religious paths is seen as orienting more or less successfully or completely toward the same metaphysical ultimate and the same final realization (in potential if not in actual practice). As I have argued (Alderman, 2011), however, and as I will further develop here, the post-metaphysical, enactive turn in Integral Theory represents a subtle but profound shift in orientation, one which, I maintain, invites and supports a non-relativist, deep or integral pluralism, capable of non-reductively holding and honoring the rich multiplicity of humanity’s many religious truths and worldviews. Specifically, I believe that the post-metaphysical turn in Wilber’s (2002, 2006) work supports proceeding on post-metaphysical and metaphysical levels simultaneously. Post-metaphysically, the Integral model embraces metaphysical pluralism, viewing metaphysical systems as enactive operators that play a role in the enactment of particular, ontologically rich worldspaces. And metaphysically, Integral Theory advocates the adoption of facilitative metaphysical models, such as the Three Faces of Spirit (Wilber, 2006), which invite deepened appreciation and integration of the major perspectives on divine reality available in the world’s major religious traditions. As I will discuss in greater detail below, both Wilber’s (2006) post-metaphysical and Jorge Ferrer’s (2008) participatory models of enaction already go a long way toward establishing a framework for translineage practice. Each enables us to understand our various traditions—with their particular practices, visions, beliefs, and so on—as unique means of spiritual enactment, or as I will describe later, as “generative enclosures.” There is work yet to do, however. Although Wilber (2000) first introduced a post-metaphysical orientation more than a decade ago, in the footnotes of Integral Psychology and in a few scattered essays (Wilber, 2001, 2002), I believe we have yet to unearth or trace out some of the deep implications of this turn for Integral Theory as a whole. In particular, the ontological implications of this turn are, I believe, still unrecognized or underappreciated. Sean Esbjörn-Hargens (2010) recently made some very important, and pioneering, steps toward articulating an ontological model consonant with Integral Theory’s pluralist epistemology, and I offer this article in the hope of further contributing to this effort.2 As discussed below, an implicit or explicit commitment to the metaphysics of the One—a monistic ontology—frequently has underlain, and supported, various problematic forms of religious inclusivism (whether traditional or perennial philosophical) and even, arguably, informs John Hick’s model of religious pluralism (Griffin, 2005). So, if we are interested in developing an integral approach capable of non-reductively accommodating and fostering multiple religious enactments, particularly in the context of a robust translineage spirituality, it is imperative that we explore both the implicit ontological commitments of Integral Theory to date, and the promise of the 50

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emergent participatory and multiplistic-relational ontologies that are being forged in the crucible of interfaith and intercultural dialogue and engagement. To this end, and for the purposes of this article, I would like to bring Integral Theory into conversation with several post-postmodern philosophers and theologians whom I believe have much to contribute in this area. In particular, I intend a polyphonic performance—one in which a collection of disparate voices, in parallel and contrapuntal movements, will help us to reflect on a suite of themes relevant to an integral, translineage spiritual practice. The major themes to be explored here include the post-postmodern rehabilitation of ontology; the relevance of the metaphysical reflections on the Many and the One for conceptualizing the relation of religious worlds and worldviews; participatory and post-metaphysical models of the enactment of spiritual realities; and several recent multiplistic, relational, and nondual ontologies that may give us the subtle conceptual resources necessary to hold multiple religious orientations concurrently. After I lay these perspectives out alongside each other, I will attempt to bring them in closer relation through the related concepts of generative enclosure and disenclosure, in the interest of articulating an integral pluralist approach capable of honoring both the interdependence and precious particularity of each of our religious practice traditions.

Rehabilitating Ontology after Postmodernism Whether in contemporary philosophy (Badiou, 2005; Bhaskar, 2008; Bryant, 2011; Deleuze, 1994; Harman, 2009, 2011; Latour, 2005; Meillassoux, 2008; Nancy, 2000), phenomenology (Gendlin, in press; Levin, 1988), religious studies (Ferrer, 2008; Panikkar, 1993; Griffin, 2005; Keller and Schneider, 2010), or transpersonal or integral studies (Esbjörn-Hargens, 2010; Ferrer, 2002, 2008; Morrison, 2007; Roy, 2006), an increasing number of theorists across multiple disciplines have been attempting to think beyond the ontic-shy, epistemological cul-de-sac of cultural and linguistic relativism that has marked much postmodern theorizing. As Ferrer (2008) notes, the postmodern linguistic turn has been particularly enervating for the field of religious studies, as religious truth claims have come to be regarded as little more than language games. “Apart from certain confessional or theological works,” Ferrer (2008) writes, “current academic thinking on religion displays an intense skepticism toward any metaphysical referent or transcendental signifier in religious discourse. Postmetaphysical thinking, in short, deprives religious truth of any ontological significance beyond language” (p. 24). While the strategies for moving beyond the postmodern bind adopted by the thinkers listed above vary significantly, there is broad consensus across these disciplines that the positivist and postmodern bracketing, if not outright banishment, of serious discussion or speculation about ontological, extra-linguistic, or nonempirical dimensions of reality is no longer necessary, and has become, particularly in its more stringent forms, limiting and counterproductive for the advancement of human knowledge and well-being. Before I turn to the reflections of Ferrer and Keller on this issue, I would like to review several distinctions offered by Joel Morrison (2007) that I have found to be clarifying: the polar distinctions between ontic and epistemic, and ontology and epistemology, respectively. These distinctions will be useful for the light they shed on the current epistemological cul-de-sac of the postmodern linguistic turn, but also because they will help to contextualize the Integral project—and this article—in relation to postmodern ontological skepticism and several recent philosophical movements that argue for the revaluation of ontological inquiry. As Figure 1 illustrates, the four terms under consideration can be applied self-referentially to each other—using the Taoist insight into the identity of opposites—to illuminate both the epistemic nature of ontology, and the ontic nature of epistemology. The relation of these terms to each other can be most easily understood, as Morrison (2007) points out, by recalling “that ‘ology’ itself refers to a field of study, or knowledge, the real world of the epistemic, and that the ‘ic’ points out a real aspect or feature of reality [i.e., ontic]” (p. 552). In other words, ontology and epistemology are relative forms of knowledge, or polar distinctions drawn within the domain of the epistemic, while the epistemic and ontic domains are polar aspects of the real, Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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LO G Y

EP

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ST

O EM

EPISTE -MIC

O

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ONTIC

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Figure 1. Ontic-epistemic polarity. From Morrison (2007); used with permission.

the former transcending and including the latter (since knowledge is both embodied and real, regardless of its domain of focus or its representational clarity or acumen). These distinctions are quite relevant for Ferrer’s (2008) participatory project. In particular, the recognition of the ontic nature of epistemology plays an important role in the pragmatist/participatory strategy he has identified as essential for moving beyond the linguistic turn in religious studies. As noted above, the current trend in religious studies to view religious categories and knowledge claims primarily as linguistic performances has come at a heavy ontological cost, at times fostering, as Ferrer (2008) puts it, “a linguistic idealism hardly distinguishable from nihilism” (p. 17). To move past this, and to begin to reclaim the ontological integrity of religious knowledge, Ferrer (2008) follows pragmatists such as Peirce and Royce in viewing language itself as ontic—as a performance of the real: Rather than conceiving semantics in terms of epistemology and demanding that our languages impossibly represent a wholly nonlinguistic reality, participatory thought considers that Peirce and Royce made the right move by attaching semiotics not primarily to epistemology but to ontology. Communicative acts and semiotic exchanges take place, first and foremost, in the sphere of the real, the ontological, the realm of signifying bodies and events upon which the subtlety of human cognition and language may supervene. (pp. 17-18) Using Morrison’s distinctions above, we might say that semiotic exchanges take place in the ontic, rather than the ontological, but Ferrer’s meaning is clear: if semiosis goes all the way down, as Peirce (1991) maintains, as a feature of reality at all levels, then language becomes not simply a representational mapping of the real world without any ontological depth of its own, but a living performance of, and thus also a means of transformative, participatory engagement with, that world in its ontic fullness. The map, as Morrison (2007) stresses, is a part or expression of the territory, and as such, has the power to act creatively in and on it. This point is directly relevant to the enactive core that informs both Wilber’s and Ferrer’s approaches, so I will return to a fuller discussion of it in the next major section of this article. For now, I would like to 52

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briefly use these distinctions to illuminate certain important issues and tensions within Wilber’s Integral model, particularly with respect to the post-metaphysical turn in his theory and its emphasis on the primacy of perspective. Taking the time to do this will, I hope, be instructive for two reasons: it will help integrally contextualize the ontological focus in this article, and it may also help to clarify, and address, several recent criticisms of Integral Theory as appearing to endorse epistemic absolutism (Morrison, 2007) or as committing the “epistemic fallacy” (Bhaskar, 2008; Roy, 2011). Wilber’s quadrant map, which identifies and contextualizes four major perspectives (subjective, objective, intersubjective, and interobjective) available to human beings, has proven to be quite a powerful epistemological tool. Not only has it helped practitioners take broader, more integral approaches to the interrelated domains of their lives, it has helped identify and guard against various forms of quadrant absolutism (which occur when one perspective or domain of knowledge is privileged above all others). To a great extent, it has accomplished this simply through clearly demonstrating the ubiquity, and equal importance, of each of these major perspectives. But while the Integral approach has been effective in identifying and countering various forms of absolutism within the epistemic domain, several critics maintain that it commits another error: it privileges the epistemic to the exclusion of the ontic, or else it conflates the two, and therefore commits another, more general form of absolutism, which Speculative Realist and Object Oriented philosophers would call the “epistemic fallacy” (Bhaskar, 2008; Bryant, 2011). Regarding this latter error, Bryant (2011) writes: A critique of the epistemic fallacy and how it operates in philosophy does not amount to the claim that epistemology or questions of the nature of inquiry and knowledge are a fallacy. What the epistemic fallacy identifies is the fallacy of reducing ontological questions to epistemological questions, or conflating questions of how we know with questions of what beings are. In short, the epistemic fallacy occurs wherever being is reduced to our access to being. Thus, for example, wherever beings are reduced to our impressions or sensations of being, wherever being is reduced to our talk about being, wherever being is reduced to discourses about being, wherever being is reduced to signs through which being is manifest, the epistemic fallacy has been committed. (p. 60) To clarify, then, we could distinguish between two forms of absolutism: epistemological (or quadrant) absolutism, which is the absolutizing or unjustifiable privileging of one perspective or knowledge domain over all others that Integral Theory has so powerfully addressed; and epistemic absolutism, which entails either the reduction of ontological questions to epistemological ones, or the banishment of ontological thinking altogether from accepted modes of discourse, as is found among more extreme proponents of the linguistic turn critiqued by Ferrer (2008) above. Does Integral Theory commit the epistemic fallacy? When Wilber (2006) writes, in Integral Spirituality, that “each thing is a perspective before it is anything else,” this might appear to be the case. It suggests that the being of an object is identical with one’s mode of access to it. But as Morrison (2007) notes in a related discussion on the problem of epistemic absolutism, while Wilber does sometimes say that everything is a perspective before it is anything else, he frequently balances such statements with the (ontological) observations that everything is holonic, and that perspectives are always already embodied (in individuals and cultures). These statements should help mitigate concerns that Wilber is continuing the banishment of ontological thinking that Ferrer (2008) and Bryant (2011) critique among certain postmodern philosophers. From an epistemological perspective, I believe it is indeed appropriate to argue that things are perspectives before they are anything else, including things such as holons or bodies. Known things presuppose knowers, means of knowing, or modes of access. But this is quite different from making an ontological claim. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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Ontologically, such a statement would seem to imply a universe of free-floating, disembodied perspectives— a very un-integral “‘I’ without an ‘It’,” as Morrison (2007, p. 570) puts it. Thus, if we cannot accept this claim from an integral perspective as a viable ontological truth, we would seem to be left then with two options: 1) accept the epistemological limitations upon our possible knowledge of the world that this claim implies and abandon ontological talk altogether, or 2) take the metaphysical step of positing ontological givens apart from perspectives (such as holons, which ontically embody perspectives). While the latter move might make some post-metaphysically inclined readers uneasy, I believe it is both justifiable and necessary, particularly if we are interested in avoiding the epistemic fallacy. Can it be done without falling into the forms of metaphysical absolutism that post-metaphysics aims to avoid? I believe it can be. For, if, with Bryant (2011) and the Object Oriented ontologists, we can recognize the error and inadequacy of conflating the being of things with our mode of access to them; and if, in reflecting on Morrison’s (2007) distinctions above, we are able to acknowledge ontology and epistemology as relative fields of knowledge within the real domain of the epistemic, then we can take up ontological reflection again as a worthy, if admittedly speculative, endeavor. We can pose ontological questions—“What must be the case, what must I transcendentally deduce as given, for this world to be as it is and to function as it does?”—alongside the familiar epistemological questions that engage and exercise us as Integral practitioners, without concern that doing so necessarily entails indulgence in the forms of absolutizing thought that post-metaphysics aims to redress.3 Such, at least, is the spirit in which I am approaching this article. Acknowledging at the outset the speculative nature of this exercise, I hope nevertheless that such an inquiry into the ontology of a translineage religious orientation will be fruitful and generative of insight for fellow practitioners. Let us turn now to the next step in this journey.

The One and the Many One of the central concerns of first philosophy, of fundamental ontology, is the question of the relation of the One and the Many. Which is primary, if any? Like a single note sounding again and again, this question has been posed across multiple cultures and times, and we have answered it multiply.4 The fact that the question is universal, but its solutions have been many, is suggestive: while this question is fundamental to human thought, its power may lie elsewhere than in the promise of a final answer, a final privileging of the Many or the One. In eluding easy resolution, the question is generative: it calls us ever deeper into the mystery of being, of our being-together. How we hold it, then—how we engage with it, and what light we draw from it in our living, thinking, and practice—matters, for our responses to its solicitations, individually and collectively, play out in our relationships and institutions, both secular and sacred. In the next two sections of this article, I will consider several recent offerings in the fractal unfolding of this call and response. Each of these voices is responding, in his or her own way, to problems posed by previous answers to the question of the Many and the One: whether the hegemonic and colonizing tendencies of monist ontologies, for instance, or the relativistic and nihilistic tendencies of pluralist ones. In this effort, each is attempting especially to think beyond deconstruction; to chart paths through and well past the postmodern resistance to presence and ontology; to pronounce the integrity of being anew. These reflections will be relevant for translineage spiritual practitioners for several reasons. Our view of the relation between the Many and the One, for instance, is inseparable from our perception of our relation to the divine, and the divine’s relation to the world. When we are born into or adopt a spiritual tradition, we typically inherit along with it an often quite complex set of ontological commitments. Significant, and sometimes quite disturbing or anguishing, tension or confusion can arise when we choose to embrace and practice across multiple traditions and find ourselves confronted with seemingly incommensurable depictions of the 54

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divine nature, or divergent valuations of the plurality of creation. Identifying the deep ontological presuppositions that inform our traditions’ cosmological or theological positions will not be likely, in itself, to resolve the tension, but it can invite an unfolding inquiry into the heart of that tension that itself will be generative and transformative. Similarly, when we practice across lineages, we may encounter resistance in one or more of these traditions to our doing so. I have been warned on more than one occasion against attempting to graft a sheep’s head onto a yak’s body! And there is good sense in this—to avoid watering down or distorting a tradition, or to avoid being dashed by waves of incommensurability—but if we have decided, against all “sensible” advice, to take a translineage path anyway, to inhabit different worlds concurrently, or to allow a new one to grow from their mingling, then we may be aided in our efforts by some of the visionary models of being and knowing explored herein. Related to the above, and as I posited at the beginning of this article, the common interreligious orientations of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism may each be found to imply, and to presuppose, an ontology which reinforces its position and its modes of knowing and valuation. I do not believe there is a deterministic causal relation between one’s ontology and one’s view of other religions, but I have found that any particular articulation of an interreligious orientation will be found to imply certain ontological commitments, and thus ontological inquiry can be helpful in opening and transforming limiting perspectives. The “problem” of interreligious orientation is typically posed in the context of interfaith dialogue, of course, but it is clearly relevant for translineage practitioners. On an individual level, how do we hold and interface with our chosen traditions? How might such an inquiry help further differentiate and individuate them in our lives, as uniquely flowering, wild ecologies? And how might it deepen their interrelations, their folds and imbrications? We will explore several such possibilities in the coming pages.

Participatory Enaction In recent writings, Jorge Ferrer (2008, 2009) has advocated a participatory model of spiritual enaction as a new paradigm for moving religious studies beyond the impasses of dominant trends in postmodern interreligious scholarship, which tend either to view religious worlds as fully cultural-linguistic constructions, or as incomplete views of a single metaphysical reality. Rejecting both strategies as undermining of the integrity of religious worldviews, he recommends the adoption of a participatory, enactive model of spiritual knowing, and a pluralistic, ontologically “thick” orientation toward spiritual truths. Drawing on the enactive model of cognition developed by Francisco Varela (1991) and Humberto Maturana (1987), and situating it within a participatory sensibility which has informed various premodern and modern philosophies, the participatoryenactive approach denies the Kantian dualism of framework and uninterpreted reality, instead regarding spiritual experiences and other events as ontologically rich enactments or emergences, indelibly shaped but not wholly determined by, or reducible to, our linguistic categories or cognitive frameworks. In this view, spiritual worlds are co-created realities, called forth out of the open, creatively responsive mystery of Being. This model is similar, in some regards, to A.H. Almaas’ (2004) notion of the Logoi of Teachings, according to which the various spiritual philosophies and traditions of the world—with their unique realms of experience and soteriological possibilities—are understood, not simply as human constructions, but as the unique flowers of our creative participation with Being. Here, Almaas seems to preserve a sense of spiritual paths as creative revelations, not only of Being, but by Being: what emerges is not entirely up to “us.” An enactive, and therefore participatory, co-creative, understanding also informs the latest phase of Wilber’s work, of course. While “Wilber-5” is often identified as the post-metaphysical phase of Integral Theory, this is a misleading designation if this is taken to indicate that Integral Theory is averse to ontological thinking or speculation, or that it considers all religious (or other) truth claims to be claims about language Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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or “merely subjective” experience (a charge that Ferrer [2011] has, inappropriately, leveled against Wilber’s work). Wilber-5 involves, among other things, the integration of post-metaphysical and enactive orientations—where enactments are, indeed, ontologically “thick,” body-and-world transforming acts or events.5 Where Wilber’s approach differs from Ferrer’s is primarily in his AQAL framing (and extension) of enaction: bringing more specificity and clarity to the various modes and stages of enaction available to human beings. Returning to Ferrer’s model: in positing that religious worlds are the “products” of human engagement and interaction with a creative spiritual power or mystery, Ferrer (2009) aims thereby to preserve unity in the midst of the pluralistic profusion of religious worlds. Rather than seeing religious worlds and spiritual ultimates as pre-existing, isolated islands or entities, he asks us to view these worlds as relatively independent, emergent realities called forth by human engagement with an undetermined (meaning multiply determinable, not simply indeterminate) spiritual creativity, in and with which we all collectively participate. While Ferrer (2008, 2009) argues for the necessary acknowledgement of the vital role of human cognition in the manifestation of spiritual realities, it is important to frame it in such a way as to mitigate the latent potential for anthropocentrism that might be invited by such an orientation. One way of approaching this, which is already implicit in the enactive approach adopted by both Wilber and Ferrer, is to stress that, while spiritual worlds are, in part, human enactments, this does not entail the subordination of Being to human consciousness. In other words, Being is not simply a product of human beings: rather, humans have their worlds only in and through and with the creativity of Being. Humans are wholly Being’s doing, and humans are the doing of Being, but humans do not exhaust or define Being’s creative effulgence.

The Principle of Irreduction In translineage practice, then, participatory enaction, or integral tetra-enaction, invites us to see spiritual realities, experiences, and soteriological possibilities in enactive terms—as participatory co-creations. And as enactions, our spiritual realities and worlds are both continuous with the tradition(s) in which we practice, as well as discontinuous (i.e., each enaction is a new, creative emergence out of the mystery). This does not necessarily mark a break with tradition, however; rather, it sees tradition itself as embodying Being’s newness, as the simultaneously continuous and discontinuous flow and irruption of Being’s creative power, as every “event,” every actuality, is. To unpack this a bit, and to better trace out the implications of this notion for a translineage orientation to spiritual practice, I would like to briefly introduce a concept from Bruno Latour’s philosophy that has been helpful to me in clarifying my views on this topic. The view I will ultimately develop in this article is not a Latourian one, but as I hope to demonstrate, the concept has direct bearing on the notion of the dis/continuity of enaction—as well as the related ontological questions of the One and the Many, of Wholeness and Particularity—that I contend are relevant for developing a robust and supple translineage orientation. The concept I would like to creatively employ is Latour’s (1988) principle of irreduction. In short, the principle states that 1) no object, no actor or event or actuality, is ultimately reducible to any other; and concurrently, that 2) it is nevertheless always possible to perform, or enact, such reductive analyses, with the knowledge that such reductions come at a cost and will always, by definition, entail a loss in the form of distortion or oversimplification (Harman, 2009). Latour’s central insight, in other words, is into the irreducible particularity of every actuality or actual occasion. Here is how he describes the first dawning of this insight: I knew nothing, then, of what I am writing now but simply repeated to myself: “Nothing can be reduced to anything else, nothing can be deduced from anything else, everything may be allied to everything else.” This was like an exorcism that defeated demons one by one. It was a wintry sky, and a very blue. I no longer needed to prop it up with a cosmology, put it in a picture, render it in writing, measure it in 56

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a meteorological article, or place it on a Titan to prevent it falling on my head ... It and me, them and us, we mutually defined ourselves. And for the first time in my life I saw things unreduced and set free. (as cited in Harman, 2009, p. 13) While Latour, to my knowledge, never makes such a connection, I hear in this poetic passage the same flavor of “suchness,” the same celebration of the simple, causally liberated being of things, that saturates Zen poetry or art. On philosophical and ethical levels, I see the recognition of irreducible particularity of actual occasions as an important way of safeguarding the integrity and even autonomy of emergent realities. It accomplishes this 1) by protecting objects or entities from philosophical undermining or overmining, and 2) by guarding against a lurking human will-to-power that might inform an enactive paradigm which is entertained without such recognition. I will address the first point in some depth before turning to the second. To begin, undermining and overmining are philosophical strategies that seek to explain the appearance or manifestation of ordinary objects through metaphysical appeals to more real underlying or transcendent forms or processes (Harman, 2011). Specifically, an undermining approach suggests, reductively, that objects are simply surface appearances, and that their true reality is located in their underlying atomic or molecular components, for instance, or in some deeper structure. By contrast, an overmining approach denies that individual objects or entities really exist, locating reality instead in transcendent processes, dynamic fields, laws, and so on. Both strategies effectively put ordinary objects or entities “under erasure,” undermining their reality in favor of some preferred metaphysical strata of being. Latour’s epiphany, then, represents a radical breaking with both of these (very common) forms of “elsewhere philosophy,” allowing us to see objects with a renewed innocence, “unreduced and set free” (Harman, 2009). In Object Oriented Philosophy, particularly in Harman’s (2009, 2011) post-Heideggerian framing of it, this Latourian irreducibility of things is understood in substantialist terms, with each particular object being defined by an utterly withdrawn, non-relational core or substance. In this understanding, which Harman (2009, 2011) develops out of Heidegger’s reflections on the ontological status of “tool-beings” such as hammers, each emergent object retains an essential interiority cut off from all relation to any other objects. In my own thought, however, while I appreciate and want to preserve this insight into the irreducible integrity of things, I would like to do so without appealing, as Harman does, to wholly withdrawn substances or thingsin-themselves. To this end, I have found another concept by Joel Morrison (2007) to be useful: his principle of nondual rationalism, which holds that “infinite divisibility equals indivisibility.” As Morrison (2007) puts it: “Infinite divisibility necessitates that there can be no fundamental or absolute division because there will always be a deeper level of divisibility, and hence, with infinite divisibility the absolute is fundamentally indivisible” (p. 86). To relate this to Latour’s principle of irreduction, I propose a corollary principle, that infinite reducibility equals irreducibility. To put this succinctly: rather than viewing the irreducible particularity of things as related to Harman’s withdrawn substance (i.e., island-like thing-in-itselfness, wholly divorced from all relationship), we can, following Morrison’s principle, discover it in the infinite potential for reducibility itself. There is support for the infinite scope of reducibility in Harman’s (2011) object ontology: [Contrary to Heidegger’s contention,] the hammer as a real tool-being is not located in the basement of the universe at all, since a layer of constituent pieces swarms beneath it, another layer beneath that one, and so forth. Instead of saying that the regress into constituent objects is indefinite, I would go so far as to call it infinite, in spite of the ban found in Kant’s Antinomies on ruling either for or against an infinite regress of pieces. After all, to be real means to have a multitude of qualities, both real Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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and perceived. And given that an object must inherently be a unity, its multitude of qualities can only arise from the plurality of its pieces. Thus there is no object without pieces, and an infinite regress occurs. Despite the easy and widespread mockery of the infinite regress, there are only two alternatives, and both are even worse. Instead of the infinite regress we can have a finite regress, in which one ultimate element is the material of everything larger. Or we can have no regress at all, in which there is no depth behind what appears to the human mind. Both options have already been critiqued as undermining and overmining, respectively. And if the infinite regress is often mocked as a theory of “turtles all the way down,” the finite regress merely worships a final Almighty Turtle, while the theory of no regress champions a world resting on a turtle shell without a turtle. (p. 113) With the positing of infinite depth of objects or constitutive relations—turtles all the way down, reminiscent of Wilber’s holonic model—there is clearly no final reduction possible. Where I possibly differ from Harman is in my rejection of the need to posit a withdrawn substance, since I believe Morrison’s principle of nondual rationalism can deliver the particularity and integrity of objects that Harman is seeking. Infinite divisibility, as Morrison (2007) argues, amounts to its opposite: indivisibility in and as the absence of any final divisibility; or as I contend, irreducibility in and as the absence of any final reducibility.  My suggestion, in other words, is to hold reducibility and irreducibility at once. In this view, each particular object or entity, as a unique site of the bodying forth of the whole, is infinitely reducible, there being no end to the possible constitutive relations or compositional elements we can trace out. At the same time, each particular, in eluding any final reduction, is also at once absolutely unique and wholly irreducible. In an interreligious or translineage spiritual context, this notion has at least two interesting implications: 1) It scuttles easy, perennial philosophical, cross-tradition equations of religious concepts or categories, since, while such comparisons can be made—and can indeed be helpful and fruitful—the absolute particularity and integrity of spiritual realities ensures that no such comparison will ever be adequate to capture the fullness of any emergent reality; and 2) this resistance to ultimate reduction suggests, also, that spiritual—or any other—realities cannot be ultimately or finally reduced to any other particular parts or processes, using any of the reductive categories of choice, whether cultural or biological or psychological. Even tetra-enaction, while a useful and powerful concept, cannot finally exhaust or reductively account for the mystery of any particular emergent.  Thus, to relate this back to the concept of participatory enaction, and the concern with the will-to-power that might be masked in an overly anthropocentric interpretation of it: the principle of irreduction, in the reading I have offered here, dashes the pretension that humans, or human practices, can serve in themselves as ultimate explanatory causes of any particular reality, spiritual or not. We are participants, yes, but in a creative mystery that exceeds and eludes any such final reduction. Lastly, to return to my observation at the beginning of this section that spiritual enactions are both continuous and discontinuous: the continuity of spiritual enactions lies in their infinite reducibility, the unending lines of constitutive or compositional relation that can be traced out from each, unique bodying forth of the whole; and the discontinuity lies in the absolute particularity, the irreducibility of each emergent reality. In being what it is, irreducibly, everything is inviolable, an utter concreteness. If we like, we can view this as an extension—a further democratization—of Marc Gafni’s (2011b) notion of the Unique Self. Everything, every enaction, every bodying forth, is, in the sense I have indicated above, a unique self. This suggests, if we are attentive, a curious entangling of the Many and the One. To help unfold and develop this insight, I will turn now to explore several concepts that are emerging in the field of constructive theology.

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Nondual Ontological Pluralism In a previous article (Alderman, 2011), I introduced several recent attempts to move theology beyond the shortcomings and aporias of modern and postmodern theories of interfaith relations, from Ferrer’s (2007) participatory enaction, to S. Mark Heim’s (2001) trinitarian pluralistic inclusivism, to Griffin’s (2005) deep pluralism, to Raimon Panikkar’s (1990) radical pluralism. To this list should be added the recent work of a group of authors who might be referred to, collectively, as the polydox theologians. A recent, representative text for this movement in constructive theology, Polydoxy (Keller & Schneider, 2011), presents a wide-ranging series of essays which center, to varying degrees, around three intertwined threads: multiplicity, unknowing or evolutionary open-endedness, and relation, each of which co-implicates the others. This triune set of perspectives lends itself readily to a trinitarian analysis, and several authors take up that task, but the threads are held loosely enough to allow for other articulations as well. In name, polydoxy is a theology of multiplicity, seeing in multiplicity, not an obscuration or a scattering or division of divinity, but divinity itself or divinity’s affirmation—a divine manifold. In spirit, polydoxy is a theology of relation. As Keller and Schneider (2011) write, “Relationality is the connective tissue that makes multiplicity coherent, and it is the depth that makes our relations, all of them, strange and unknowable, even, or especially, in intimacy” (p. 29). In practice, as the previous quote also suggests, polydoxy is aligned, in part, with the traditions of apophasis and revelation—here, finding spiritual sustenance in the posture of unknowing, of ongoing openness to the surprises of relation and evolutionary emergence. Rather than presenting a singular theological model or theory, such as we find in the works of Ferrer, Heim, or Panikkar, polydoxy enacts a mode of thinking—a holographically unfolding/enfolding logic which demonstrates . . .the fold, the pli, which distinguishes multiplicity from mere plurality. That enfolded and unfolding relationality suggests not a relation between many separate ones but between singularities, events of becoming folded together, intersecting, entangled as multiples. It is such connectivity that allows, indeed implies (implicatio), the becoming coherence of polydoxy. (Keller & Schneider, 2011, p. 21) How this shows up in the text is as a rich multiplex of divergent and convergent perspectives and themes, circling and crystallizing around the three, co-implicate attractors of multiplicity, unknowing, and relation. In this, the text succeeds in its goal, which is to enact an integral field of difference without erasing multiplicity or subsuming it in a single narrative. While polydoxy is a professedly Christian theological exercise, I believe both its sophisticated mode of execution and its triune—one could say, nondual—onto-epistemology make the text relevant to anyone more broadly interested in the challenges of interfaith relations or an integral, translineage spirituality. In particular, I find the themes of multiplicity, unknowing, and relation quite consonant with an integral, evolutionary understanding; for me, these terms highlight, in fact, three of the implicit strengths of the Integral model: its embrace of epistemological and ontological pluralism, its evolutionary open-endedness, and its co-pronouncement of relation and difference (tetra-enaction). The use of these three terms by the polydox authors to generate multiple compelling cases for a robust religious pluralism thus should be of interest to integral practitioners interested in formulating models of interfaith relations and translineage practice. I do not have space in this article to review the many offerings in Polydoxy (Keller & Schneider, 2011), so I will focus for now on two perspectives that I believe are of special relevance: John Thatamanil’s trinitarian model of interfaith relations, and Jean-Luc Nancy’s being singular plural.

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The Trinity as Generative Locus In “God as Ground, Contingency, and Relation,” John Thatamanil (2011) presents a variation on the triune theme around which the essays in Polydoxy are organized. Following the recent trinitarian interfaith models of Raimon Panikkar (1973, 1993) and especially S. Mark Heim (1995), in which the three persons of God are correlated with various representations of the divine nature across multiple religious traditions, Thatamanil (2011) argues that the sacred Trinity provides Christians with the symbolic and ontological resources for conceptualizing a multiplistic theology capable of accommodating diverse, and even seemingly incommensurate, religious orientations. As Thatamanil (2011) notes, the eminent theologian and post-Nicene church father, Gregory of Nyssa, very early on recognized the trinitarian model of divine multiplicity as a “middle way” between the Jewish monistic and pagan pluralistic theologies of the ancient world.6 More recent trinitarian models, including Thatamanil’s, thus build on and extend this understanding, highlighting its implicit relevance for theories of religious diversity. But while Thatamanil (2011) regards a trinitarian approach to comparative theology and interfaith relations as potentially quite fruitful, he finds that most trinitarian proposals to date suffer from a number of shortcomings. In particular, he identifies six problems which undermine the potential of this approach to move Christian comparative theology beyond the hegemonic inclusivism and relativistic pluralism that many interfaith scholars have critiqued (Griffin, 2005; Heim, 1995; Panikkar, 1990). Rather than listing the problems independently, since they are all interrelated, I will briefly summarize Thatamanil’s (2011) critique as follows: In positing pre-formulated trinitarian models, which are developed exclusively out of the resources of the Christian tradition and usually prior to dialogue with other traditions, most of these theologians misrepresent other traditions by assuming a one-to-one correspondence between non-Christian conceptions of ultimate reality and one of the facets of the Christian Trinity, and also by treating other traditions monolithically, failing to recognize the diversity of perspectives present within these other traditions. One result of such an approach, and this is the sixth problem he identifies, is that Christianity emerges as inherently superior to other traditions, since only the Christian trinitarian model is imagined to include all dimensions of ultimate reality. But while Christianity might indeed be superior to other traditions in some respects, a trinitarian approach framed in these terms would appear to implicitly, and unfairly, stack the deck in Christianity’s favor from the outset. To deal with these problems, Thatamanil (2011) proposes approaching the Trinity, not as a pre-established metaphysical model to which other religions are then related, or into which other religions are simply subsumed, but rather as a suggestive and symbolic “locus for interreligious conversation” (p. 325). In other words, the triune intuition of divine multiplicity within Christianity can be interpreted as providing both ontological grounds for theological diversity and a generative context for comparative theology and interlineage engagement. As Thatamanil (2011) writes: The work of interreligious dialogue is religiously important because it is a way of gathering up differences for the sake of integral vision. If we are to understand how these mysteries might be marked by mutual interpenetration, we must take up interreligious dialogue. Interreligious dialogue cannot be motivated by the proximate work of peacemaking alone but must be seen as vital to the quest for right orientation. We cannot move fully into the life of the trinitarian God apart from a deeper movement into communion with our non-Christian neighbors. (p. 343) To this end, Thatamanil (2011) suggests adopting a trinity of core ontological terms which he derives, in part, from comparative exploration of three prominent religious traditions: Hinduism, Christianity, and Buddhism. The terms he recommends—ground, contingency, and relation—can indeed be identified with elements of 60

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the Christian Trinity, but importantly, not in equal measure or depth. Thus, he appeals to Advaita Hinduism to elucidate the richness of the term ground or Being; to Christianity and Judaism to unpack the profound theological implications of contingency or particularity; and to Madhyamaka Buddhism to plumb the religious and philosophical depths of relation or radical interdependence. I do not have the space here to review these terms in detail, but I would like to comment on a few points that are especially relevant to our discussion. First, similar to Wilber’s (2006) triune model of Spirit based on three primordial perspectives (I, We, and It; or the First, Second, and Third Faces of God), Thatamanil’s model is also based on three ontological or experiential universals: being, contingency or particularity, and relation. Being names “the sheer mystery that there is anything at all” (Thatamanil, 2011, p. 332), and in theological contexts is often conceived as the unchanging ground of existence. Contingency points to the radical particularity or singularity of things, and also suggests within both Jewish and Christian religious contexts that creation is not merely an illusory expression or appearance within changeless being but a novel emergence that adds to and enriches God or Being. This is a theological relative of the principle of irreduction I discussed above, and is also consonant with an evolutionary understanding of spirituality. Relation is the truth that no “thing” stands alone; everything is what it is only in radical interrelationship with everything else. As experiential constants, we can expect being, contingency, and relation to show up, in various ways and with different emphases, across multiple religious traditions; and this, Thatamanil (2011) argues, is exactly what we find. But because they are differently emphasized, both within any given tradition’s multiple historical lineages as well as across religious boundaries, they can and do frequently lead to intra- and interreligious tensions and apparent contradictions. In relation to the latter, Thatamanil (2011) writes: The tension between these three mysteries notwithstanding, spiritual life lived in relation to these mysteries need not result in outright contradiction or incommensurability. This assertion is made in the key of faith and not ratiocination which must come later. By way of that latter work of reflection, theologians can and must give an account of the perichoresis of these three mysteries. If reality and divinity bear this trinitarian structure—if ground, contingency, and relation are distinct but not separate—then one would expect that any robust and historically deep tradition can find resources to orient persons to these three dimensions of the Real even if any given strand of a religious tradition typically errs in one direction or the other. (p. 342) Thus, if these terms are recognized not only as experiential constants or homeomorphically equivalent themes arising within multiple religious and philosophical traditions, but also as mutually entailing or interdependent aspects of reality, then the tension between both the terms and the traditions which differently emphasize them is transformed from one of opposition to one of complementarity.7 As complementary ontological concepts, each of these terms names an irreducible aspect of the mystery of reality (Thatamanil, 2011). Taken together, each can help guard against imbalances or theological errors that might arise when any of these aspects is privileged or taken alone—whether that be a dualistic depiction of the divine as a wholly unrelated, transcendent Other (which Tillich identifies as the self-contradictory notion of an infinite being among beings); or the devaluation of the relative world of form, where relation divorced from contingency and/or ground slides into relativism or nihilism. Interreligious encounter and translineage practice then become generative contexts for exploring the multiple dimensions and unplumbed depths of our own being, and for challenging and balancing excesses that might arise from our undue, unconscious privileging of one aspect of reality to the exclusion of others. As I noted above, Thatamanil’s (2011) approach suggestively parallels Wilber’s (2006) notion of the Three Faces of God. Although the perspectives emphasized in both of these approaches do not correspond to Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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each other in a strictly one-to-one fashion, I would suggest that, with a little creative translation, we might be able to relate them as depicted in Figure 2. As Latour (1988) argues, such translation between systems or disciplines necessarily entails a degree of loss or distortion, but it can also be generative of insight. In this case, the three terms Thatamanil recommends would appear to exceed the perspectives usually associated with each of the Three Faces. For instance, while Being might be closely associated with a first-person, UpperLeft quadrant perspective, it cannot be exclusively confined to that quadrant; Relation involves not only the second-person Lower-Left quadrant but also the Lower-Right; Contingency can be identified with the individual, third-person realities of the Upper-Right, but the particularity it names also includes the Upper-Left as Unique Self; and so on. The three terms themselves, as third-person ontological concepts rather than personperspectives, cannot replace the Three Faces, especially for integral spiritual practitioners, but held alongside the perspectival model, they can call forth or enact theological and experiential riches that might otherwise be missed if one were using the Three Faces approach alone. And both Wilber’s and Thatamanil’s triune models, in naming irreducible aspects of experience that transcend the boundaries of lineage both within and across religious traditions, allow translineage practitioners to enact integral fields of difference by embracing important intra- and interlineage tensions as generative and complementary rather than simply contradictory. I will return to this suggestion toward the end of this article. For now, I would like to introduce another thinker who will help us reflect more deeply on two of the terms discussed above: contingency and relation, or the nonduality of the Many and the One.

Being

(First Face)

Relation

(Second Face)

Contingency (Third Face)

Figure 2. Integral ontological trinity.

Being Singular Plural “A singular being,” Jean-Luc Nancy (2000) writes, “is a contradiction in terms.” In the introduction to Being Singular Plural, Nancy, whose work informs the thinking of several of the polydox authors, announces his intention to rethink ontology “by giving the ‘singular plural of Being’ as its foundation” (p. xv). In juxtaposing the three terms, being singular plural, as he does, he means to communicate their absolute co-immediacy, without remainder, and without any suggestion of the priority of one over the other. Being-one is only ever being-with-many. What he wants to avoid, then, are the metaphysical models that posit the pre-existence of Being—where an original One is then dispersed into the Many, or an original Many is subsequently gathered 62

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up into One. For Nancy, there is no pre-existence, no state other than being singular plural, which itself, in every “plurisingular” instance, is the origin. Here is how Nancy (2000) puts it: Being singular plural means the essence of Being is only as coessence. In turn, coessence, or being-with (being-with-many), designates the essence of the co-, or even more so, the co- (the cum) itself in the position or guise of an essence. In fact, coessentiality cannot consist in an assemblage of essences, where the essence of this assemblage as such remains to be determined. In relation to such an assemblage, the assembled essences would become [mere] accidents. Coessentiality signifies the essential sharing of essentiality, sharing in the guise of assembling, as it were. This could also be put in the following way: if Being is being-with, then it is, in its being-with, the “with” that constitutes Being... Therefore, it is not the case that the “with” is an addition to some prior Being; instead, the “with” is at the heart of Being. (pp. 30-31) In pronouncing “with” to be the essence of Being, in other words, Nancy distances himself from metaphysical narratives which posit a process of rupture or unification of originary being, but also from narratives which would posit a simple dialectical swinging between oneness and multiplicity. Being is immediately and nondually co-being, co-essence, singular plural. In this understanding, one is always already more-than-one. A one without a second would be less than one, an improper or deficient one. As Morrison (2007), following Buckminster Fuller, expresses this: “Unity [i.e., a unit, a singularity] is plural and at minimum two.” In speaking of the singular plural of being, Nancy has found a way to give voice, as I hear him, to tetraenaction as ever-present origin. But in speaking this way, he asks us to think the four quadrants at once, to appreciate their radical co-implication. There are not individuals over here and collectives over there. There is the being singular plural of every blooming object or occasion. This view has bearing on, and nicely echoes, the comments I made earlier about individual things, or enactions, being irreducible instantiations of (indeterminate) wholeness. As Nancy writes (2000): The singular is primarily each one and, therefore, also with and among all the others. The singular is a plural. It also undoubtedly offers the property of indivisibility, but it is not indivisible the way substance is indivisible. It is, instead, indivisible in each instant [au coup par coup], within the event of its singularization. It is indivisible like any instant is indivisible, which is to say that it is infinitely divisible, or punctually indivisible. Moreover, it is not indivisible like any particular is indivisible, but on the condition of pars pro toto: the singular is each time for the whole, in its place and in light of it. (p. 32) Nancy (2000) does not translate this “for the whole” in terms of community—for him, the term has been problematically reified, becoming more often than not an eclipsing whole—but he nevertheless finds, in the plural singular of our being-together, that the language of “it” slides ineluctably, and affirmatively, toward the language of “we” (p. 33). In the plurisingularity and irreducible particularity of tetra-enaction, our respective faith traditions and practice lineages are thus, in their co-essentiality, collegially one (by one), one-with-another.

Generative Dis/Enclosure Before bringing this inquiry to a close, I would like to gather several of the themes I have explored in this article together under the tabernacle provided by a pair of terms: generative (en)closure and dis-enclosure. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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The first term, generative (en)closure, is one I have been developing in the context of my reflections on ontology, embodiment, and integral enaction. Its complementary term, dis-enclosure, is a Nancian concept that I discovered while working on this article. The relation of the term, generative (en)closure, to autopoietic theory should be clear: An autopoietic system, meaning a “self-making system,” exhibits a definitive closure and circularity in its pattern of organization. While “(en)closure” can be read as a noun, signifying a fixed structure or a static condition, I prefer a more active or processual inflection: enclosure as the “act of enclosing.” Here, the term is perhaps close to what Eugene Gendlin means by body-constituting, in that both (en)closure and body-constituting are generative. Gendlin (in press) explains, Body-constituting is a generative body-environment process (without the here-there split)... Everyone agrees that the body is made of environmental stuff, but it was assumed to be separate from the environment, merely perceiving and moving in it. But if we consider the body’s formation as a body process, then the body is environmental interaction from the start. The body is identical with its environment in one body-constituting process. (p. 6) But body-constituting is generative not only in the formation and maintenance of the body; it is active as well in the ongoing differentiation of the environment and the generation of objects. In the process of bodyconstituting, the body will develop processes that become active only when certain intermittent aspects of the environment are present. When these elements are not present, however, the body nevertheless continues to imply them, and this ongoing implication is generative both of difference within the body and within the environment. As Gendlin (in press) explains: Certain processes become differentiated; they occur just with certain parts of the environment. This generates specific environmental objects... For example, sugar, water, and light appear and are incorporated only sometimes. Then the body-constituting with these ‘objects’ becomes separated from the rest of the process (if the organism didn’t die in their absence). Then the body has separate processes just for these parts of the environment. The moment they re-appear, just these processes resume. So we call these differentiated parts of the environment ‘objects’. But to think this we need to say that when something implied doesn’t occur, the body continues to imply it. Until something meets that implying (‘carries it forward’, we say), the body continues to imply what was implied and didn’t occur. If part of what was implied did occur, then only the part that did not occur continues to be implied. This ‘reiterated implying’ is a basic concept. It explains how objects in the environment become differentiated. (pp. 6-7) Gendlin’s account is thus quite close to what I mean by generative (en)closure: this active enclosure, this enfolding and implication, is generative of other bodies and forms (i.e., enactive, in a single process of bodyworld flowering or co-constitution). But the term, (en)closure, is suggestive of more than just the body, which is why I have introduced the term here. It evokes images of sheltering and sustaining structures—of tabernacles and dwellings and temples. What kind of enclosure is a temple? What does it imply? The link here to Gendlinian body-constitution is illuminating: the body is a temple, and the temple is a body that (ongoingly) implies a world. We can similarly see cultures, traditions, teachings, communities of believers in this light: (en)closures which, in and by their 64

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closure, are generative, enactive of difference. Holy days and retreats are generative (en)closures in time. And the sacred objects or realities of a tradition are, in some sense, not simply timeless metaphysical universals, but creative re-enactments (Faber, 2011)—both continuous with the past (ongoingly implied within the body of a tradition) and newly emergent or enacted (creatively re-enacted by each generation of practitioners). To couch these thoughts in terms of the thinkers who have accompanied us through this article: With Ferrer, I see the generative (en)closures of our traditions, churches, and lineages, whether singly or multiply held, each as uniquely embodied means of participatory enaction—as creative expressions of our invocational engagement with spiritual power or mystery. With Latour, I see each generative (en)closure as the rounding of particularity, utterly and liberatingly concrete, both irreducible and always-reducible or -relatable, and I recognize that every difference charges us with an ethical imperative. With the polydox theologians, I see in every generative (en)closure of body and tradition the folding and unfolding of the relational pli, which situates us in multiplicities, imbricates us in complementarities, and implicates us in the unknowing of our evolutionary becoming. With Nancy, I see in the generative (en)closure of any particular tradition the singular plural of its being, the “with” that is constitutive of its presence, where its singular presence is always already co-presence, the declaration of the impossibility (and the utter poverty) of the “Only One.” And with Wilber, I see generative (en)closure as a holon—already plurisingular, the body of tetra-enaction—which, as a holon, can never be mistaken for a (non-holonic) foundation or ultimate, thus releasing it to the ongoing invitation of the divine’s becoming. Which brings us to the second term, dis-enclosure, since “release” implies the rupture or interruption of closure. What is en-closed, of course, must one day be un-enclosed. What is en-closed, as an en-folding, is also always already an opening. Dis-enclosure is the marker of the generativity of death in the evolutionary unfolding of our being-together. The gifts of death are many, as Michael Dowd (2009) reminds us: it not only seeds and clears the way for new form, as in the kenosis of a supernova; it is generatively enfolded into the very form(s) we take—in the daily dis/enclosure of cells which is our living. As Nancy (2008) uses the term, dis-enclosure means both opening or emptying—the opening of a closed space, and the kenosis or auto-deconstruction of a worldview or a form. While Nancy (2008) employs the term primarily in the context of an analysis of the modern deconstruction and secularization of Christian culture as the temporal fulfillment of Christianity’s identification with the self-emptying God, the term finds broader application in the writings of the polydox theologians (Betcher, 2011; Rivera, 2011). For the purposes of this article, I will focus in particular on Sharon Betcher’s (2011) use of the term, which she recognizes as implicitly illuminating the field of the multiple, and which she relates to notions of empathic vulnerability and intercorporeal generosity or obligation. Regarding the former, Betcher (2011) argues that Nancy’s dis-enclosure, in describing the auto-deconstruction of totalizing worldviews, implies or discloses a vision of multiplicity. For the end of totalization is a confrontation with Being’s ungrasped excess, or Being’s final ungraspability; the coming due of a particular world’s IOU to the Kosmos (Wilber, 1995). In revealing and violating the closure of the given world, disenclosure discloses existence as vulnerable worlds-in-becoming. As Nancy (2000) might remind us, a world is always already a world-alongside-other-worlds. And dis-enclosure, as both an opening-of and an openingto, is a confrontation and emptying of a world into a world, turning on the fulcrum of the plurisingular “with” of Being. Regarding the relation of dis-enclosure to empathy and generosity, Betcher (2011) suggests that trauma or suffering, as the dis-enclosure or rupture of the apparent sovereignty of the body or the self, is an opening that discloses our interdependence —our vulnerability to, and need for, others. It is an opening that still offers a form of shelter, however, in that it may induct us into a life of care and mutual obligation. Citing several examples of individuals whose disability and chronic suffering had inspired them to new forms of engagement with the world, Betcher (2011) points beneath the endemic alienation and closure of the self-sufficient, postJournal of Integral Theory and Practice

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modern ego, to the intercorporeal entanglement of our bodies which announces itself in empathy and suffering. It is in these pre-reflective responses that we come to an appreciation of (the need for, the co-implication of) manifold others in the very fold or enclosure of our being: Because “pluralism is not enough” (according to Keller), I suggest that the pli of Spirit, that “many-one,” signals a fertile “fold” (i.e., pli or pleat) of difference within immanence itself so as to generate ligatures or obligations. The work of religion within this scene will be that of growing corporeal generosity into a social muscle. Consequently, [my recommended approach] develops the spiritual prosthesis of the practiced vow—the “yoke” or “yoga”—of corporeal generosity to creaturely need within the inter-religious milieu of today’s global cities. (Betcher, 2011, p. 91) Betcher (2011) identifies in this pre-conceptual being-given-over to others, this intercorporeal generosity, not a particular virtue but the founding of virtue: the sub-representational condition of our very embodied and social inter-existence. When gathered up into conscious living, however, intercorporeal generosity becomes grounds for a “yoga, or practice, of the open”—a practice of friendship growing from (recognition of) intercorporeal “ligatures of obligation” in which obligation itself is the “sphere of what I [the sovereign ego] did not constitute” (p. 104): When one assumes the practice of a spiritual path setting out from the locus of this great open field, then one might experience the beggar or the CEO, like pain, to become one’s spiritual teacher. Everything and everyone provides an opening to the practice of generosity, of sympathy at the cellular level. The yoga or obligation of neighbor-love is born of this, develops this generosity as a social muscle. (Betcher, 2011, p. 104) This is not a practice of sovereignty, of self-making evolutionary subjects, then; it is a practice of vulnerability, of being a “patient of life” (Betcher, 2011, p. 102). But then again, these two are not-two. Dis-enclosure is, in other words, the contradictory vulnerability of each and every (en)closure as inviolable particular. Each particular, in its particularity, bleeds into the implicit—into the field of that which it did not constitute, but which it ongoingly implies in its rounded particularity.

Discussion How might we relate these thoughts on generative (en)closure and dis-enclosure to integral translineage spiritual practice? I have not inquired with others, but I suspect that many members of the integral community have experienced a profound dis-enclosure in their spiritual lives: the self-emptying or deconstruction of their religion of origin. It is at once a rupture and a crisis of self-sufficiency—There are so many other views out there! How can I have missed this? How can I continue to ignore it?—and, perhaps, also an evolutionary step in our traditions themselves. What was special, and native, in the original sacred preserve, bleeds out and finds fulfillment in the concrete, in that “great open” manifold which exceeds and interrupts our boundaries. For Betcher (2011), this violation of religious self-sufficiency, this irruption of vulnerability to otherness that illuminates our interdependency, tills the ground for the growth of a fertile inter-religiosity—where, in the polyphonic field of the postmodern city, each tradition is called again to “remember itself as a practice” (p. 92), as a way of living well among ways of living well. In practicing across traditional boundaries, in whatever translineage mélange we have gathered and cultivated, we are of course very likely transgressing the boundaries, breaking the “closure,” of one or all of 66

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our chosen traditions, most of which have not—until recently—attempted to think outside the enclosure of their own self-sufficiency. As interspiritual practitioners, can we find ways to both validate and defend the transgressive audacity of an interlineage practice, and to honor and preserve the integrity and precious particularity that each lineage rightly seeks to enforce? In my reflections throughout this article, I have attempted to practice and communicate this by thinking both dis-enclosure and generative (en)closure at once, in the contradictory identity of the empty and the full, the many and the one. Nancy’s (2008) dis-enclosure, together with his being singular plural, invite us to think our multiplicity, to live and celebrate Being as a being-with that eludes totalization or finalization. In demanding acknowledgement of presence as co-presence, it calls us to recognize that each tradition is in some sense subject to that which exceeds it, and is already infiltrated by an otherness that indebts it to the open, both in terms of its relation to other traditions and to its own future. It reminds us, in other words, that each tradition is always already an interdependent arising and an evolutionary becoming. But a spirituality which only emphasizes openness or relation is in danger of sliding into lifeless diffusion or enervating relativism, and thus requires that we find ways to protect the uniqueness or integrity of our traditions. As I have argued above, I believe we find this not only in Nancy’s (2000) being singular plural, but in Latour’s (1988) principle of irreduction. Each relative tradition, in its radical and irreducible particularity, presents us with a unique and irreplaceable manifestation of the fullness of Being. When seen as generative (en)closures, each religious tradition becomes a unique tabernacle of Spirit capable of calling forth or enacting precious and inimitable spiritual fruits and soteriological horizons. Thus, while practitioners from multiple traditions may, indeed, describe similar spiritual states and experiences that transgress the boundaries of lineage, revealing a profound oneness in and through the many, the principles of irreduction and participatory enactment call us also to acknowledge and honor the irreducible and irreplaceable particularity of the spiritual visions and transformations afforded by each genuine practice tradition, not as limitations but as manifestations of the co-creative bounty of Spirit. From my perspective, translineage practice is not especially an issue or problem. It is simply what we are doing, as citizens of an emergent, transcultural society, and somehow it works itself out! But from another perspective, it is indeed a challenge, particularly if we want to travel deeply on our chosen paths, with integral and integrous8 attention to the demands of each, and to avoid the materialistic and frequently narcissistic default position of postmodern culture: the spiritual consumerism of the global marketplace. If we take this challenge seriously, if we are interested in pursuing an integral, translineage spirituality with rigor and humility, playfulness and finesse, then we are challenged to find new ways of thinking and praxis responsive to this task—where a translineage orientation becomes a praxis-field itself. My reflections in this article are admittedly open-ended and speculative, but I do not see this as a drawback: I believe speculation is what is called for in this domain. Speculation is not idle; it is generative and opening. It invites us to open what has been prematurely foreclosed—our taken-for-granted ontologies and epistemologies—and to begin to imagine being anew. In my inquiry into my own translineage orientation, I have explored not only the visions of knowing and being implicit in my chosen traditions, but in Integral Theory as well. In its role as an epistemological meta-system, Integral Theory does not require commitment to any particular ontology—part of its role is, after all, to map the unfolding of various ontologies and epistemologies, the play of the Many and the One, over time and across cultures. But in practice, I believe it does have ontological commitments—in theory, to nonduality, which is a commitment I share. In language and presentation, however, integral non-duality, sourced for years in a perennial philosophical orientation, tends at times to slide over into a privileging of the language of the One. For example, enlightenment—for all traditions—is defined equally as the experience of “oneness.” Integral Theory itself, as a theory of everything, becomes the “one theory” for all. And Spirit, defined and described as a transcendent and formless emptiness, elusive of any definition, nevertheless in its Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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very abstract universality, may tilt us in our language and thinking, again, toward an implicit privileging of the logic and the metaphysics of the One. In naming these tendencies, I am naming my own implication in each such move. This is, indeed, how I have often held and applied Integral Theory in my thought and speech as a translineage practitioner. But in naming these tendencies to slide habitually into some form of monism, I do not intend to indict the language or the logic of oneness; only its unconscious privileging, and its potential reduction of the integral promise to a narrow inclusivism. In the nondual and multiplistic approaches I have explored here, I hope to have introduced and given voice to a few additional modes of speaking and thinking that will serve as resources for integral practitioners interested in further unfolding and enacting this implicit promise, and in fostering a visionary light capable of nurturing the rare and wild fields of our growing translineage practices.

NOTES For an excellent discussion of this topic, I recommend watching “Swami Abhishiktananda: An Interview with Raimon Panikkar” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOMcDuHh31g). In the interview, Panikkar lovingly and movingly describes the lifelong struggle of his good friend, Father Henri Le Saux (aka Abhishiktananada), to concurrently walk his chosen Christian and Hindu paths faithfully and with integrity. 2 Integral Theory’s most well-known model of epistemological pluralism is Wilber’s (1995, 2007) four-quadrant map, which identifies four fundamental perspectives available to sentient beings (I, It, We, Its) and correlates them with various disciplines, modes of enactment, and phenomenal worlds. In Wilber’s more recent work, these perspectives have been subdivided into eight primordial perspectives, forming the basis for a radically non-reductive approach to human knowledge production: Integral Methodological Pluralism, which represents Wilber’s (2006) most sophisticated model of epistemological pluralism to date. 3 For examples of representative ontic categories or mechanisms we may thus transcendentally deduce, see Wilber’s (2002) discussion of involutionary givens, Bonnitta Roy and Jean Trudel’s (2006, 2011) explication of onto-logics, or Joel Morrison’s (2007) discussion of formative protocols. 4 As a perennial philosophical concern, the relation of the One and the Many has been explored, sometimes with great richness and sophistication, in ancient Greek, Indian, and Chinese thought, and by various ancient and modern Christian trinitarian theologians, to name a few of the most prominent examples. 5 Wilber (2002) provides a detailed discussion of the epistemological and ontological implications of his tetra-enactive model in “Excerpt A” to the second volume of his Kosmos Trilogy (forthcoming). 6 Swami Abhishiktananda (2007) similarly argues that a trinitarian understanding is properly a nondual one, transcending and including theological ontologies of the Many and the One. 7 In his writings on intra- and interreligious dialogue, Panikkar (1999) has introduced the notion of homeomorphic equivalence. In simple terms, Panikkar suggests that, when we dialogue across radically different hermeneutic frameworks, we should be careful to avoid translating terms indigenous to one tradition into terms familiar to our own (i.e., equating God with terms such as Brahman or emptiness), as such an exercise almost always entails significant loss or distortion of meaning. Therefore, instead of looking for a one-to-one correspondence in terms of content across traditions (something we are never likely to find), Panikkar recommends seeking out functional correlations among their respective beliefs, symbols, or concepts. Recognizing the homologous functions of key elements of different traditions, discovering them in deep dialogue through a process Panikkar calls topological transformation, we allow for the possibility of meaningful interreligious contact and transformative encounter, while taking care yet to respect and preserve the real conceptual differences that exist among religions or cultures (instead of ignoring or whitewashing them in our efforts to promote interreligious harmony). 8 Although the word integrous, meaning “marked by integrity,” is not found in most American dictionaries and is listed 1

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as rare or obsolete in the Oxford English Dictionary, I believe it is a worthy word to resurrect, especially within integral spiritual practice communities.

REFERENCES Abhishiktananda (2006). Swami Abhishiktananda: Essential writings (S. Du Boulay, Ed.). Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Alderman, B. (2011). Kingdom come: Beyond inclusivism and pluralism, an integral post-metaphysical invitation. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 6(3), 14-31. Almaas, A.H. (2004). The inner journey home: The soul’s realization of the unity of reality. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Badiou, A. (2005). Being and event (O. Feltham, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum. Betcher, S.V. (2011). Take my yoga upon you: A spiritual plea for the global city. In C. Keller & L.C. Schneider (Eds.), Polydoxy: Theology of multiplicity and relation (pp. 57-80). New York: Routledge. Bhaskar, R. (2008). A realist theory of science. New York, NY: Routledge. Bortoft, H. (1996). The wholeness of nature: Goethe’s way toward a science of conscious participation in nature. Herndon, VA: Lindisfarne Books. Bruteau, B. (1991). Eucharistic ecology and ecological spirituality. Cross Currents, 40, 499-514. Bryant, L. (2011). The democracy of objects. Ann Arbor, MI: MPublishing. Deleuze, Gilles. (1994). Difference and repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Dowd, M. (2009). Thank God for evolution: How the marriage of science and religion will transform your life and our world. New York: Viking. Esbjörn-Hargens, S. (2010). An ontology of climate change: Integral pluralism and the enactment of environmental phenomena. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 5(1), 183-201. Faber, R. (2011). The sense of peace: A paradoxology of divine multiplicity. In C. Keller & L.C. Schneider (Eds.), Polydoxy: Theology of multiplicity and relation (pp. 36-56). New York, NY: Routledge. Ferrer, J.N. (2002). Revisioning transpersonal theory: A participatory vision of human spirituality. Al-

bany, NY: SUNY Press. Ferrer, J.N., & Sherman, J.H. (Eds.). (2008). The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Ferrer, J.N. (2009). The plurality of religions and the spirit of pluralism: A participatory vision of the future of religion. The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 28(1), 139-151. Ferrer, J.N. (2011). Participation, metaphysics, and enlightenment: Reflections on Ken Wilber’s recent work. Transpersonal Psychology Review, 14(2), 3-24. Gafni, M., & Murphy, M. (2011a). A passport for dual citizenship with Michael Murphy and Marc Gafni [video]. Retrieved May 11, 2012, from http:// www.ievolve.org/2011/08/a-passport-for-dualcitizenship-with-michael-murphy-marc-gafni/. Gafni, M. (2011b). The evolutionary emergent of unique self: A new chapter in Integral Theory. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 6(1), 1-36. Gendlin, E.T. (in press). Implicit precision. In Z. Radman (Ed.) Knowing without thinking: The theory of the background in philosophy of mind. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Grandy, D. (2001). The otherness of light: Einstein and Levinas. Postmodern Culture, 12(1). Retrieved March 1, 2011, from http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/ issue.901/12.1grandy.html. Griffin, D.R. (2005). Deep religious pluralism. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. Harman, G. (2009). Prince of networks: Bruno Latour and metaphysics. Melbourne, Australia: Re.Press. Harman, G. (2011). The quadruple object. Winchester, United Kingdom: Zero Books. Heim, S.M. (1995). Salvations: Truth and difference in religion. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Heim, S.M. (2001). The depth of the riches. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Keller, C., & Schneider, L.C. (2011). Polydoxy: Theology of multiplicity and relation. New York, NY: Routledge. Kleinberg-Levin, D.M. (2009). Before the voice of reason: Echoes of responsibility in Merleau-Ponty’s Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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ecology and Levinas’ ethics. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Latour, B. (1988). The pasteurization of France (A. Sheridan & J. Law, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Latour, B., Harman, G., & Erdélyi, P. (2011). The prince and the wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE. Hants, United Kingdom: Zero Books. Levin, D.M. (1988). The opening of vision: Nihilism and the postmodern situation. New York: Routledge. Levin, D.M. (1989). The listening self: Personal growth, social change and the closure of metaphysics. New York: Routledge. Morrison, J.D. (2007). SpinbitZ: Interface philosophy, mathematics and nondual rational-empiricism. Retrieved February 27, 2012, from http://www. spinbitz.net/. Nancy, J. (2000). Being singular plural (R.D. Richardson & A.E. O’Byrne, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford Unity Press. Nancy, J. (2008). Dis-enclosure: The deconstruction of Christianity (B. Bergo, G. Malenfant, & M. Smith, Trans.). New York: Fordham University. Maturana, H., & Varela, F.J. (1987). The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding. Boston, MA: New Science Library. Meillassoux, Q. (2008). After finitude: An essay on the necessity of contingency. New York: Continuum. Panikkar, R. (1973). The trinity and the religious experience of man. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Panikkar, R. (1990). The pluralism of truth. World Faiths Insight, 26, 7-16. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from http://www.dhdi.free.fr/recherches/horizonsinterculturels/articles/panikkarpluralism.pdf. Panikkar, R. (1993). The cosmotheandric experience. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Panikkar, R. (1999). The intra-religious dialogue. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Peirce, C.S. (1991). Peirce on signs: Writings on semiotic (J. Hoopes, Ed.). Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Rivera, M. (2011). Glory: The first passion of theology? In C. Keller & L.C. Schneider (Eds.), Polydoxy: 70

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Theology of multiplicity and relation (pp. 167185). New York, NY: Routledge. Roy, B. (2006). A process model of integral theory. Integral Review, 3, 118-152. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from http://integral-review.org/back_issues/backissue3/index.htm. Roy, B. (2011). Report from Critical Realism Integral Theory Symposium. Retrieved March 2, 2012, from http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/report-from-critical-realism-integraltheory-symposium. Roy, B., & Trudel, J. (2011, August). Leading the 21st century: The conception-aware, object-oriented organization. Integral Leadership Review. Retrieved February 27, 2012, from http://integralleadershipreview.com/3199-leading-the-21stcentury-the-conception-aware-object-orientedorganization. Skolimowski, H. (1994). The participatory mind: A new theory of knowledge and of the universe. New York, NY: Arkana. Thatamanil, John J. (2011). God as ground, contingency, and relation: Trinity, polydoxy and religious diversity. In C. Keller & L.C. Schneider (Eds.), Polydoxy: Theology of multiplicity and relation (pp. 238-257). New York, NY: Routledge. Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2000). Integral psychology: Consciousness, spirit, psychology, therapy. Boston: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2001). On the nature of a post-metaphysical spirituality. Retrieved March 3, 2012, from http:// wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/habermas/index.cfm/. Wilber, K. (2002). Excerpt A: An Integral age at the leading edge. Retrieved March 3, 2012, from http:// wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptA/notes-3.cfm. Wilber, K. (2006). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world. Boston, MA: Integral Books.

TRANSLINEAGE PRACTICE

BRUCE ALDERMAN, M.A., is adjunct faculty in the School of Holistic Studies at John F. Kennedy University (JFKU). He received his master’s degree in Integral Psychology, with an emphasis on Transpersonal Counseling Psychology, from JFKU in 2005. He teaches Paradigms of Consciousness; Fundamentals of Transpersonal Psychology; Fundamentals of Psychology; Integral Spirituality; Living Systems Theory; and Ethics and Compassion, and has served as a thesis and final integrative project advisor. Prior to working at JFKU, he worked and studied abroad for several years, including teaching courses on creative writing and inquiry at the Rajghat Besant School, a Krishnamurti school in Varanasi, India. His current areas of interest include Integral Theory and practice, transpersonal psychology, integral postmetaphysical spirituality, the time-space-knowledge vision, transformative arts, dream yoga, and interfaith dialogue. When he is not teaching or spending time with his family, he moderates an online discussion forum dedicated to Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality (http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/).

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ABSTRACT Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory insists that valid knowledge must be derived from paradigms: sets of injunctions and social practices that lead to replicable experiences. In this article, I examine Wilber’s claims that the theory still includes the essentials of premodern traditions, because the essentials of those traditions consist of a phenomenological core of practices leading to mystical experience. Drawing on the works of Robert Sharf and Wilhelm Halbfass and on close readings of primary texts, this article argues that mystical paradigms of replicable experience are not in fact the essentials of these traditions—neither for the majority of practitioners nor even for their revered teachers or masters. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of this point for constructive integral work. KEY WORDS Integral Theory; modernism; mysticism; religion; Ken Wilber

T

he ambitious and important project of Integral Theory weaves together ideas from a wide array of historical and disciplinary traditions. Ken Wilber (2002a) speaks of an “integral wave” that “includes the essentials of the first-tier waves (traditional to modern to postmodern)...” This promise to include the essentials of the major streams of human consciousness in different times and places contributes a great deal to the appeal of Wilber’s thought. To include the essentials of so many different worldviews is not an easy task, when they at least appear to disagree with each other on so much. In any attempt to do so, the key question must be: What are the essentials? Wilber has identified the essentials, or core, of premodern traditions with their mystical paradigms— the parts of the traditions that contain practices leading to verifiable spiritual experiences. These paradigms are the elements of the traditions that can be included through Wilber’s Integral Methodological Pluralism, according to which only paradigms of injunction and experience count as valid knowledge and what remains is meaningless metaphysics. It is because the core of the traditions is in paradigms of experience that Wilber claims that his theory, in which only paradigms leading to experience are included, has included them. My argument in this article will be that these mystical paradigms are not at the core of any major premodern tradition, and that this fact has significant implications for Wilber’s methodological approach.

Wilber’s Approach to Integrating Paradigms I will start by summarizing the approach Wilber takes to traditional, modern, and premodern worldviews in the most recent phase of his writing, known as “Wilber-5.” Wilber first described four phases of his intellectual development in The Eye of Spirit (Wilber, 1997), calling them “Wilber-1” through “Wilber-4”; readers later identified a fifth, which Wilber has agreed exists (Wilber, n.d., for example). I aim here to derive my interpretation of Wilber from Wilber-5 sources when possible, turning to Wilber-4 writings only when they provide a level of detail that Wilber-5 does not, and when I do not think that they disagree with the Wilber-5 writings—as Wilber himself does, for example when he states in Integral Spirituality that “I won’t elaborate further on these 4 meanings. They are pursued at length in Integral Psychology” (Wilber, 2006a, p. 102). In Correspondence: Amod Lele, c/o Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 946 Ninth Street, Unit E, Santa Monica, CA 90403. E-mail: [email protected]. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 2012, 7(2), pp. 72–87

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Wilber-5 writings, consisting primarily of Integral Spirituality (Wilber, 2006a) and a series of online excerpts from an upcoming work (Wilber, 2002a, 2002b), Wilber adopts an approach called Integral Methodological Pluralism. Here, modern and postmodern standards of knowledge and verification get priority and pride of place: the verification methods for the existence of these structures of consciousness can no longer involve merely asserting their existence because tradition says so; nor basing their existence merely on introspection or meditation (or other allegedly culturetranscending claims and assertions). They will, at the least, involve some version of both modernity’s demand for objective evidence and postmodernity’s demand for intersubjective grounding—without which you are presenting, in the first instance, merely a given myth (or given mythology; myths are truth claims without adequate evidence—which are the types of claims modernity fought valiantly to overcome, because they are all-too-often empirical falsehoods housing imperialistic power) or, in the second instance, the myth of the given... (Wilber, 2006a, p. 234) What provides an adequate combination of objective evidence and intersubjective grounding, in Wilber’s eyes? According to Wilber’s guiding principle of enactment, what properly satisfies these epistemological demands is a paradigm, “a practice to bring forth a set of experiences”; for Wilber, “phenomena are enacted and brought forth by injunctions, paradigms, or social practices (‘if you want to know this, you must do this’)” (Wilber, 2002a). This concept of a paradigm is central to Integral Methodological Pluralism; it not only helps identify which theories are considered higher and more integral than others, but also defines what gets included in his theory at all. According to Wilber’s principle of unfoldment, which is closely related to the principle of enactment, what makes Copernicus’ astronomical theory superior to, and more integral than, Ptolemy’s—and relativity theory in turn superior to Copernicus’—is that Copernicus’ theory can explain Ptolemy’s observations as well as Copernicus’ own, and relativity theory in turn can explain Ptolemy’s, Copernicus’, and more besides. Much of the theories of Copernicus and Ptolemy are discarded, but the experiences that gave rise to them, and the social practices or injunctions that gave rise to those experiences, are preserved. Wilber honors the fact that “if you are standing on the earth and watching the planets move, the Ptolemaic map is phenomenologically 100% accurate: you will see exactly what Ptolemy said you will see; he had a legitimate paradigm—or a practice to bring forth a series of experiences—and an accurate map to match it” (Wilber, 2002a). What about theories that are not based on paradigms? Those, Wilber refers to as “metaphysics,” and he regularly uses the term as a pejorative. Metaphysics is “assertions without evidence,” “assertions without meaning” (Wilber, 2006a, p. 258), and the implication is theorists would be better off not incorporating meaningless metaphysics into a mature theory. “No injunction, no meaning, no reality. Just metaphysical power plays in an age that is no longer capable of being impressed by such....” (Wilber, 2006a, p. 269). Now many modernists accept an epistemological demand similar to these: what does not come out of replicable experience may be discarded. But such a view has posed a problem. As Wilber (2006a, pp. 181190) notes with regret, modern epistemological demands have often led quickly to the rejection of the premodern great wisdom traditions—of anything that could be classed as “religion.” For, to many, it has seemed that these traditions just cannot meet these demands; religion is “metaphysics” in just this sense.1 Therefore, they have dismissed the traditions in their entirety. Wilber (2006a) views this dismissal as a disaster: in correctly spotting the immaturity of the notion of a mythic God—or the mythic level of the spiritual line—they threw out not just the mythic level of spiritual intelliJournal of Integral Theory and Practice

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gence but the entire line of spiritual intelligence. So upset were they with the mythic level, they tossed the baby of the spiritual line with the bathwater of its mythic level of development. (p. 183) What did those who rejected “religion” get wrong? Two things. First, they neglected the crucial role that myth plays in human development. Myth is required for the early stages of human development, more generally but around the spiritual line of development in particular, and it needs to be honored and respected for playing this crucial role (Wilber, 2006a, pp. 192-193). Human beings, both as individuals and in their social history, have proceeded through stages: most relevant to our purposes here is amber altitude, the mythical stage where conservative religious tradition lies; orange altitude, the stage of scientism and capitalism; green altitude, the stage of postmodernism and ecology; and teal and turquoise altitudes, the stages that integrate those that came before (Wilber, 2006a, pp. 66-69). The early stages are not going away, and myth is needed for healthy human development through those stages (Wilber, 2006a, pp. 192-193). Still, myth is ultimately itself just metaphysics, for “myths are truth claims without adequate evidence...” (Wilber, 2006a, p. 234). Myths will continue to play a critical role in the modern and postmodern world, and they must be honored and cherished for that role. But, qua metaphysics, they are not actually to be included in an integral theory. Leaving out myth from the theory (while honoring it) is an acceptable result for Wilber at least partially because, in his view, myth and metaphysics are not at the core of premodern traditions. He can still include their essentials, because, he argues, the essentials of the traditions are not their myths and metaphysical systems, but are in fact themselves based on paradigms, on replicable experiences derived from injunctions. For that reason, their essentials are fully compatible with the post/modern epistemology expressed in the enactment principle: Modernist epistemologies subjected them to the demand for evidence, and because the premodern traditions were ill-prepared for this onslaught, they did not meet this challenge with a direct elucidation of the one area of their teachings that could have met the challenge: the phenomenological core of their contemplative traditions, which offered all the verifiable evidence one could want within a remarkably modern paradigm (contemplation was always a modern epistemology ahead of its time in a premodern world). (Wilber, 2006a, p. 43) By phenomenological, Wilber means relating to or deriving from the inner felt experience of an individual subject: I can experience my own “I” from the inside, in this moment, as the felt experience of being a subject of my present experience, a 1st person having a 1st-person experience. If I do so, the results include such things as introspection, meditation, phenomenology, contemplation, and so on (all simply summarized as phenomenology in fig. 1.3). (Wilber, 2006a, p. 36)

The “phenomenological core” of the traditions, in turn, refers to the kinds of interior spiritual experiences described by William James and Evelyn Underhill. Underhill, in particular, “focused on the phenomenological stages of the spiritual path...” (Wilber, 2006a, p. 96). Wilber notes that the variety of experiences described by Underhill is somewhat narrower than those described by James, because Underhill was interested particularly in experiences that can be achieved by training, as in the methods described in the previous paragraph (like meditation). These trained experiences typically occur in stages: 74

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the stages of felt experiences and conscious events in the “I” space, as apprehended and seen from within, as it unfolds over time under the discipline of spiritual practice (or meditative states training). These are things that you can see from your prayer cushion or your meditation mat over time. (Wilber, 2006a, p. 96) It is these experiences described by Underhill, trained experiences like those provided by meditation, that stand up best to the modern and postmodern demands. What makes mystical traditions modern, in Wilber’s eyes, is that the phenomena they enact are replicable. Like physics and other natural sciences, these traditions propose a set of social practices and injunctions, and promise that anyone who takes up those practices will experience the phenomena they describe (Wilber, 2002a). So Wilber has no reservations including the core of the premodern traditions because their core is a paradigm: that set of injunctions and social practices designed to result in spiritual or mystical experiences. And it is my objective in this article to argue that this paradigm is not, in fact, at the traditions’ core. Let me be clear: I do not intend to challenge Wilber’s comparative description of mystical experience. We may assume, for the sake of argument at least, that the injunctions of certain practices, such as Dzogchen meditation and hesychastic prayer, produce replicable experiences of the sort that Wilber describes.2 We may assume further the comparative conclusion, found in Transformations of Consciousness (Wilber et al., 1986) and regularly cited in Wilber’s later work, that there are strong phenomenological similarities across the states of experience described in South Asian (Buddhist and “Hindu”) and Orthodox Christian traditions. What I am questioning is something else: the assertion that those phenomenological inner experiences constitute the core of those traditions, let alone of other premodern traditions. This, I think, is demonstrably false. (If we do not wish to use the language of true and false, we could say that when it comes to an understanding of the history of wisdom traditions, the idea that they have phenomenology at their core is at a relatively low level or stage of understanding.) The claim I am advancing here, that inner experience is not at the core of the traditions, is not my own discovery or invention. It comes from prominent secondary work in the field of religious studies, which has been confirmed by my own study of various primary sources. But this existing research is not well reflected in Integral Theory as it currently stands. The idea that mystical experience stood as a common core to traditions was widely believed among religious-studies scholars in the early and mid-20th centuries, and has since been widely criticized. Wilber is aware of one strand of this critique, the epistemological critique of Steven Katz (1978), and has offered a thoughtful disputation of it (Wilber, 2000, pp. 627-632, n. 16). I am writing here not about Katz’s critique but about another, more historical, strand of criticism which points to the relative marginality of phenomenological experience to the great traditions—certainly among the majority of practitioners, but even among their exemplars and revered masters.

Historical Method The claims I make in this article are primarily historical—although, given the nature of Wilber’s approach as described above, they have major constructive theoretical implications. Therefore, questions of historiography, of method in historical study, are essential to my arguments. Wilber’s most recent and extended discussion of historiography comes from a 2006 online “sidebar” to the novel Boomeritis, entitled “Who ate Captain Cook?” (Wilber, 2006b). The discussion is not placed in his own voice but that of Carla Fuentes, one of the “Integral Center” speakers who give the lectures that make up most of Boomeritis (Wilber, 2002c, pp. 44-45). The sidebar similarly consists mostly of a long lecture with which the characters generally nod their head and agree, and the content of the lectures in the book and sidebar is generally consistent with Wilber’s own outlook at that time, so I think it is safe to discuss the views of “Fuentes” as if they are Wilber’s own. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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The sidebar discusses the debate between the anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Gananath Obeyesekere over the encounter of Captain James Cook with native inhabitants of Hawai’i. Wilber characterizes their approaches as “green” and “orange,” respectively—Sahlins privileging interpretation over fact, Obeyesekere privileging fact over interpretation. An integral (teal or turquoise altitude) approach would give proper respect to both. For Wilber, the problem with an orange altitude approach, which attempts to be based purely on the facts of the matter, is that it neglects the necessary interpretive element in history, so that “orange [altitude] simply smuggles its formal-rational interpretations into its presentation of the facts” (Wilber, 2006b). I agree with the general method Wilber takes here: facts and interpretations are both important. As Wilber also notes, they are not independent of each other; they must inform each other. For what makes a good interpretation? When he talks about a focus on interpretation, Wilber makes a distinction between pluralism and genealogy, preferring the latter but noting that there can also be good and bad kinds of genealogy. And what makes a good genealogy? He offers a helpful direct definition: “‘Good’ genealogy, rather, consists of an attempt to hermeneutically understand the worldview of any group of people in terms that they themselves would agree with” (Wilber, 2006b). The question then becomes: How can one establish what this group would agree with? In a contemporary society, one can often simply go in and ask the residents. In pre-20th-century history, however, all the people involved are dead. So how can we tell what they would agree with? Our best way of telling that is usually going to be inferred from what they actually said, as best we can reconstruct that. We are often unable to reconstruct it very well, but interpretation requires that we take our best shot—and that means paying close attention to the sources available. I discuss these points because my own approach in the substantive sections of this article is based on a close attention to details of historical fact: of what was said in the relevant texts and sources that a responsible historian may take to represent major figures in the premodern traditions. I do not mean to say that “the facts speak for themselves,” but rather to agree with Wilber that our own hermeneutic process of interpretation needs to be based on the facts. There are some points where the textual records do not explicitly tell us what was going on inside people’s heads one way or another (e.g., did Jesus have a peak experience?), but there are better and worse ways to approach these silences in the texts, given Wilber’s own injunction to try to reconstruct worldviews as those who held them would likely agree with. Especially, we need to recognize that their interiors are not ours. Indeed, in the Obeyesekere-Sahlins debate, the specific difficulty Wilber finds with Obeyesekere’s approach—the one that focuses on facts and neglects interpretations—is that it thereby reads Obeyesekere’s own worldview (orange altitude) onto that of the Hawaiian natives (red altitude) (Wilber, 2006b). On the interpretive side, projecting our own worldview onto others is exactly the historiographical mistake we want to avoid. This point has at least two important implications. First, our own mystical practices and experiences, whatever their role in our own lives, must take a back seat when we are talking about history. The fact that you had an experience provoked by meditative techniques—even if you were taught those techniques by a teacher who claims to be in the lineage of the Buddha!—does not necessarily mean that the Buddha himself had that experience, not as long as we treat the Buddha as a historical person, a man who existed as a physical human being in the way that you and I do. The decision whether to interpret the Buddha as having had that experience is a decision that needs to be grounded in proper historical evidence, which is to say evidence about him, not about us. Similarly, we should be wary of taking members of the living tradition as a historical source. A living Tibetan Buddhist master may well help your understanding of ancient Buddhism by giving you ways of thinking about the tradition’s ideas that you had not thought of before (to say nothing of teaching you valuable meditative practices that will help you here and now). But the Tibetan Buddhism of today is not the 76

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Tibetan Buddhism of a thousand years ago, let alone the Indian Buddhism of a thousand years before that. For example, it is a commonplace belief among many Mahāyāna Buddhists today that the historical Buddha preached the Mahāyāna sutras; but examination of the sutras’ language and context makes it pretty clear that he did not.3 To understand what historical people thought, we have to turn to what we know of what they said of themselves, and our best source for that is the texts preserved in some manner from as close to their own time as possible, whether through oral recitation (like the Pali Canon) or writing.4

Experiences, Injunctions, and the Core of Christianity With these methodological points in mind, let us now assess the claim that phenomenological experience is at the core of the premodern traditions. This claim would clearly be false if “core” meant that it was something central to the lives of a majority of the traditions’ adherents, or to their understanding of their own tradition. Robert Sharf points out that even in Buddhist tradition—which, as we will see, is considerably more amenable to a mystical interpretation than most—historical and ethnographic reports show that most practitioners do not meditate or seek mystical experiences, and have not done so for most of the tradition’s history. In most non-modernized Buddhist temples, meditation texts are taken less as guides to be followed than as sacred talismans full of magical power (Sharf, 1995, pp. 241-243). Historically, it was highly unusual for non-monks to meditate; as far as we know, the idea of a “meditation center” is so recent that the term used for such centers in Sri Lanka (bhāvanā madhyasthāna) is a literal Sanskrit translation of the English term “meditation center” (Gombrich, 1983; Sharf, 1995, p. 257). It goes further: in Asian Buddhist societies, meditation was and is rare not only among laypeople but among monks as well. The vast majority of Theravāda monks consider their vocation to be ganthadhura (teaching) rather than vipassanādhura (meditation). And even vipassanādhura monks typically insist that the practice of moral restraint (sīla), as expressed in the monastic rule (vinaya), is more essential to the Buddhist path than is meditation (Sharf, 1995, pp. 241-243). The same is largely true of Zen monks in Japan (Sharf, 1995, p. 249). Even in Tibet, whose tradition has put somewhat more emphasis on meditation than others, still “virtually all Tibetan Buddhists... occupy the greater part of their time in ritual assemblies, monastic administration, academic study, the production of religious texts and implements, and various kinds of menial labor” (Gyatso, 1999). For the majority of Buddhists, in short, meditation is peripheral to their experience of Buddhism. It would not be hard to make a similar case about most other traditions; mysticism has always been a minority approach. But I believe Wilber has anticipated this part of the critique, or something like it. He notes that “70% of the world’s population has not yet stably made it to worldcentric, postconventional levels of development” (Wilber, 2006a, p. 179); and at the lower levels of development inhabited by this 70%, the non-mystical elements of tradition, especially myth, are vitally important. (Wilber, 2006a, pp. 191-194). He can understand the non-mystical majority as being at these lower levels. As I understand it, when Wilber claims mystical paradigms are at the core of the traditions, he is not making the clearly false claim that most Christians or Buddhists themselves practiced hesychastic prayer or vipassanā meditation, or that they derived their understanding of tradition from the experiences which resulted. The claim that the experiences are the core must mean something else. Before I explore what that something else is, however, let us pause for a moment and consider the significance of the claim Wilber makes that by including the mystical paradigms that lead to inner experience, one has included the essentials of the premodern traditions. When one makes such a claim, one is issuing a challenge, throwing down a gauntlet, to the majority of the tradition’s members, who have not been involved in those mystical paradigms, and in many cases not even considered them very important. One is saying that the majority of practitioners in a given tradition have missed the essentials—which is surely to say, missed the point—of their own tradition. That is a very strong claim to be making. I see nothing inherently wrong Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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with making such a claim, and have indeed defended that approach before; it is the time-honored strategy of Martin Luther or the author of the Lotus Sūtra (see Lele, 2010). All the same, when one does make such a dramatic argumentative move, I think, it places the burden of proof squarely on oneself. If you are prepared to claim that you know what the essentials of a tradition really are and the vast majority of its own practitioners do not, then you had best be well prepared to defend that claim against all comers. With that point in mind, let us examine Wilber’s reasons for identifying mystical paradigms as the traditions’ essentials. I think his clearest statement on the subject comes from his longest and most detailed work to date, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.5 He explains the experiential element of the traditions as follows: [A]lthough all of the contemplative traditions aim at going within and beyond reason, they all start with reason, start with the notion that truth is to be established by evidence, that truth is the result of experimental methods, that truth is to be tested in the laboratory of personal experience, that these truths are open to all who wish to try the experiment and thus disclose for themselves the truth or falsity of the spiritual claims—and that dogmas or given beliefs are precisely what hinder the emergence of deeper truths and wider visions. (Wilber, 2000, p. 273)

The mystical element of the traditions, in Wilber’s view, is experientially based, and it is this element that he identifies with “the world’s greatest yogis, saints and sages”; he gives examples when he refers to “their teachings (such as those of Buddha, Christ, Padmasambhava, Rumi, and Chih-i)...” (Wilber, 2000, p. 273). This, it seems, is the way in which phenomenological experience constitutes the traditions’ core: their founders and great masters derived their spiritual claims from experiences which they pursued through an experimental method, and they claimed this method to be replicable and available to anyone who wished to try it. So even if most people who are part of the traditions have nothing to do with mystical paradigms themselves, the people whom they revere did so. As far as I can tell, it is in this respect that, for Wilber, the mystical paradigms are at the core of the traditions. So we may then ask: how appropriate is this interpretation of the great teachers? Is it a characterization that they themselves would agree with, as Wilber’s methodological injunctions require? As noted in the methods section, we should bear in mind that, just as we learn more about our own interiors from inner contemplation than from historical records, so we learn more about historical figures from historical records than from inner contemplation; and what we are concerned with here are the historical figures. First, note that there are significant numbers of esteemed sages, such as Confucius, to whom mystical experiences have rarely been attributed, and others for whom any relevant experiences were said to arise only spontaneously, not through a paradigm. In the Hebrew Bible, for example, God is said to have spoken to Abraham and Moses; one could perhaps count this as a mystical experience (though not an experience of any sort of oneness; God remains wholly other to them). There is nothing in these texts, however, to indicate that this experience derived from any paradigm or injunctions whatsoever. God’s voice comes to Abraham and Moses all of a sudden (Genesis 12:1, Exodus 3). The sacred text provides no way to replicate this experience, to get God to talk to you the way he talked to Abraham and Moses. So we should remember that there are many important wisdom teachers who were clearly not following mystical paradigms. Let us turn next to those esteemed teachers who are more commonly interpreted in mystical ways—especially, to teachers that Wilber himself lists as examples. Of these, a particularly illustrative example is Christ, or Jesus of Nazareth. In what sense does Jesus Christ fit the description above, of a man claiming truth is to be established by the evidence of experience? Wilber (2000) claims that Jesus had a “causal-level realization (I and the Father are One)” (p. 362). To the best of our knowledge, is this an interpretation Jesus would agree with? And if so, did he believe this realization to be replicable by others? 78

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The Jesus quote “I and the Father are One” is found in the New Testament at John 10:34. We may note first that the book of John is the last of the four Gospels to be written, more than 40 years after Jesus’ death (Rensberger, 1993). In comparison to the other Gospels, its concerns are more theological than historical, raising many questions about its accuracy as an account of Jesus’s actual life. So there may be some doubt as to whether Jesus really said this. But let us suppose for the sake of argument that John represents an accurate record of Jesus’s life (as Wilber appears to take it), so that Jesus actually did say this. On what grounds then are we to believe that Jesus derived this claim from a mystical experience of the sort that could be achieved through a replicable practice? I have found no reference claiming Jesus had such experiences or states in the Gospels, in secondary scholarship explaining them, or in works on the historical Jesus; and Wilber does not provide any either. It is Paul, not Christ, who is described as deriving his worldview from a vision on the road to Damascus. The facts do not tell us that Jesus had such an experience. Now to be fair, the facts alone also do not tell us that he did not have such an experience. So one could try to build an interpretation that reads Jesus’ claim as coming from such an experience. But one would need to justify that interpretation against the many other potential interpretations that allow themselves here. As the historical criticism points out, Jesus may not have preached that he was one with God at all. If he did preach this idea, it is at least possible that he simply did not believe it, as is the case with some charismatic cult leaders today. If he did believe it, he may have absorbed the idea from earlier Jewish sources and believed it because he acknowledged their authority. Or—and I suggest that if we really hope to include the essentials of Christianity then we need to at least consider this idea, even if we ultimately rule it out—he could have actually been the only begotten son of God, and known that he was uniquely one with the Father because he was omniscient, and therefore knew that sort of thing along with everything else under the sun. None of these ideas are necessarily true—indeed several of them are mutually exclusive—but without more historical evidence, of the sort on which Wilber has agreed interpretation should be based, we cannot give a priori credence to the idea that Jesus claimed to be one with the Father because he experienced mystical states. Could such evidence be provided? On this point it is instructive to turn to the writings of Raimon Panikkar, a 20th-century Catholic mystic whose work Wilber cites as a good example of a highly developed Christian thinker (Wilber, 2006a, p. 199). Panikkar, with references to the New Testament, writes of “the mysticism of Jesus the Christ” and “the mystical experience of Jesus the Christ,” with particular emphasis on the “I and the Father are One” quote (Panikkar, 2004). But even Panikkar does not speak of Jesus as deriving this idea from meditation, prayer, or any similar replicable practice. And beyond that, he makes it clear that he intends his interpretation as a work of theology, not of history: My comments may still be valid even if the historical Jesus did not pronounce the words cited literally, or were not the second person of the Trinity. In any case, I maintain that he is a prototype of the human condition. It should be clear, at this point, that if I speak of an experience and meeting with Christ, it is not a question of evoking or imagining the past but rather of a meeting with someone alive. (Panikkar, 2004, p. 83)

Such a method, I think, is a fine way to approach one’s own Christian spirituality. It is not a sufficient way to approach the historical Jesus, which is fine, for that was not Panikkar’s main intent. But if we are to speak of the essentials of Christianity in a way that privileges elements of Christianity not believed or practiced by the majority of Christians, and if we are to base such a claim about the essentials on claims about Jesus himself, and especially if we are trying to understand the historical Jesus in terms he would himself agree with, then we cannot use Panikkar’s claims for that purpose. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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Even if it were possible to find a way to claim that Jesus derived his claim about oneness from a mystical experience, one would be on shaky ground by claiming that the experience was replicable, “open to all who wish to try the experiment.” The claim would be absurd if—as the vast majority of Christian theology has had it—Jesus were God’s only son.6 If Jesus is the son of God and the rest of humanity of is not, then there is not even the remote possibility of replicating his divine realizations. In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Wilber attempts to refute this mainstream (amber altitude) theological view by implying that Jesus himself did not believe he was God’s only son in this way. He does so continuing to refer to the Gospel of John. According to Wilber (2000), when authorities stoned Jesus for claiming to be God, his reply, lost on a primitive crowd, was that “we are all sons (and daughters) of God...” (p. 362). But that is not quite what Jesus says in the text. His opponents, from a conservative Jewish sect, have just told him it is blasphemy for him, as a man, to claim to be God. In response: Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods”’? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside—what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?...” (John 10:34-36, New International Version)

Jesus is referring in the first quote to the Hebrew Psalm 82:6, and there is significant debate over whom the word translated as “gods” (elohim) refers to, but it does not appear to be the whole of humanity. Mark Smith (2008) claims that it “presents a scene of the gods meeting together in divine council” (p. 130), noting that early Hebrew traditions were in fact polytheistic. Jesus, for his part, uses the quote to demonstrate that in his opponents’ own worldview, multiple beings—and given the context here, he is probably thinking of this as meaning the Hebrew prophets—can be referred to as gods. But what Jesus does not say is that every human being is the child of God, and indeed in this passage he specifically refers to his own status as one “set apart” from everyone else. So Wilber’s (2000) next comment, that “Jesus never made a single remark suggesting that he alone had or could have this Realization...” (p. 363), is unjustified. It is even less justified in the light of John 3:16 and John 3:18, where Jesus specifically describes himself as the “only begotten” (monogenous in Greek) son of God. We can of course question the historical accuracy of John, as I have just done above; it may well be that he did not claim to be the son of God at all. But then we have just as much reason to question the idea that Jesus claimed he was one with the Father in the first place. Based on the scripture that Wilber himself takes as his source of historical evidence, if Jesus had had any sort of realization, he indeed believed it to be reserved for him alone; and moreover we have no reason to believe that such a realization came out of an enacted experience in the first place.

The Role of Meditative Practice for Asian Masters Perhaps we have been dealing only with the particular context of Western or Christian monotheism? Surely at least the Asian traditions, with their long history of meditation, are based on experiences derived from replicable meditative practice? Recent scholarship, especially the works of Robert Sharf and Wilhelm Halbfass, has seriously disputed this claim as well. The idea that phenomenological experience is central to Asian traditions turns out in many respects to be a modern one, far removed from the writings of most revered yogis and saints and sages. Robert Sharf (1995) notes: the key Japanese terms for “experience”—keiken and taiken—are rarely attested 80

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in premodern Japanese texts. Their contemporary currency dates to the early Meiji [i.e. the late 19th century], when they were adopted to render Western philosophical terms for which there was no ready Japanese equivalent. One searches in vain for a premodern Chinese or Japanese equivalent to the phenomenological notion of experience. (p. 249) Sharf (1995) adds that even the terms satori and kenshō—so often understood now as denoting immediate causal or nondual experience—do not have any reference in premodern literature to any phenomenological experience, but merely to “full comprehension and appreciation of central Buddhist tenets such as emptiness, Buddha-nature, or dependent origination” (p. 249). Indeed, earlier Chinese Ch’an teachers often argue against their being reduced to phenomenology (Sharf, 1995). South Asian thought has overall been more concerned with psychology and consciousness than has East Asian. But even there, experience has been significantly less important than one might now believe. Śaṅkara, the central figure of Advaita (nondual) Vedānta and one of the world’s most influential nondualist thinkers, never speaks of his own meditative experiences. When he uses the Sanskrit word most frequently translated as “experience”—anubhava—he is referring not to special meditative or mystical states, but simply to everyday worldly experience from which one can draw inferences. And the reason he gives to follow his views—beyond exposing the logical flaws in competing views—is not experiment but the authority of the sacred Upaniṣads. In Śaṅkara’s view, even the Upaniṣads themselves are not based on “experience,” for he accepts the Mīmāṃsā tradition’s view that the Upaniṣads are apauruṣeya, authorless (Halbfass, 1988, p. 387). Even modern Vedānta is not necessarily derived from phenomenological experience. About the works of Ramana Maharṣi, a follower of Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta whom Wilber cites as “India’s greatest modern sage,” Halbfass (1988) notes that “There are virtually no expressions of personal experiences or feelings in these teachings...” (p. 384). And indeeed, even in Wilber’s own section on Ramana in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (2000, pp. 313-317), the long quotes from Ramana do not recount his own experiences, nor do they give us injunctions for meditation or contemplative prayer. It would seem more likely that Ramana instead followed Śaṅkara and based his teachings on the authority of scripture and tradition. Indian Buddhism has many meditation texts that do speak of the experiences available to meditators, such as Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga—but these texts’ authors do not claim to have had any such experience themselves, nor do they claim that one is to believe them because meditators can try meditation out and find out for themselves. Rather, Buddhaghosa specifically says his work is based on the teachings of others: “I shall expound the comforting Path of Purification, pure in expositions, relying on the teaching of the dwellers in the Great Monastery [Anurādhapura, where he lived]...” (Sharf, 1995, p. 239). Far from starting with “the notion... that dogmas or given beliefs are precisely what hinder the emergence of deeper truths and wider visions,” Buddhaghosa himself tells us that he starts from those very “dogmas” and “given beliefs” as his source for discussing “deeper truths and wider visions.” In the work of Chih-i, whom Wilber cites above as another example of a yogi or sage writing from personal experience, “we never hear examples drawn from Chih-i’s experience as a meditation instructor” (McRae, 1994, p. 349).7 And if we were tempted to presume that Chih-i restrained from using his own experience simply because Buddhists were explicitly forbidden from boasting about their accomplishments (Sharf, 1995, p. 236), we might also note that even later Tiantai commentators mentioned by Sharf (1995, p. 272, n. 1) claim that “Chih-i did not attain a particularly high spiritual rank during his lifetime.” It seems likely, then, that Chih-i—like Buddhaghosa—based his legitimacy on his fidelity to past tradition, not on personal experience. Similar things could be said about many other figures in several traditions whom Wilber names as great yogis, saints, or sages. One might perhaps ask why these authors would bother going to such lengths to describe these experiJournal of Integral Theory and Practice

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ences if they had not actually had them themselves. To which we can respond: well, William James did, and he admits never having had them. James wrote one of the more influential discussions of religious experience while specifically saying he had not had such experience himself: “Whether my treatment of mystical states will shed more light or darkness, I do not know, for my own constitution shuts me out from their enjoyment almost entirely, and I can speak of them only at second hand” (James, 1929, p. 299). And if the modern James would go to this great effort to catalogue experiences he never had, how much more so the premoderns, who put such great faith in the accomplishments of their scriptures and predecessors? One more point about whether Indian and Buddhist masters derived their teachings from replicable experience: some of them, such as the great Buddhist thinker Candrakīrti, specifically urge their followers not to do this. Unlike premodern Japanese, Sanskrit does have a word (anubhava) with a semantic range similar to the English word experience. But Candrakīrti tells us this very experience (anubhava) may be false just because it is experience (anubhavatvāt), like the way that someone with an optical defect perceives things that are not there.8 The Vaiṣṇava (“Hindu”) teacher Rāmānuja goes further and says that not only ordinary perception, but even yogic perception, cannot provide access to the ultimate brahman: Nor again, perception based on Yoga; for although such perception—which springs from intense imagination—implies a vivid presentation of things, it is, after all, nothing more than a reproduction of objects perceived previously, and does not therefore rank as an instrument of knowledge... (Halbfass, 1988, p. 393) When esteemed teachers not only avoid mentions of their personal experience but specifically tell their followers not to base their knowledge on such experience, we would seem to have pretty clear evidence that paradigms of replicable experience were not at the core of most premodern wisdom traditions even for the great masters, let alone the majority. And that, in turn, means that if what one includes of the traditions is their replicable paradigms, then one has not included their essentials. I do not mean to overstate these points. It is not that premodern mystical sources never referred to personal meditative experience. Janet Gyatso (1999), in response to Sharf, has demonstrated that several classical Tibetan texts do just that. However, the rest of this section should make clear that these texts are unusual in Buddhist and “Hindu” tradition, and they are not particularly mainstream in Christianity either, let alone Judaism; they could be taken perhaps as essential to Tibetan Buddhism or to a few other subtraditions, but not to much else.9 There is one very important master, however, who stands out as an apparent exception to what I have said so far. After all, don’t the stories say that the Buddha himself become awakened by meditating under the bo tree? And is he not also recorded as saying that others should replicate his experiment by trying the same practices for themselves? Before we examine the case of the Buddha in detail, let us note that even if the Buddha turns out to be such an exception, what that exception would prove is limited. The Buddha would still only be one of the great masters who founded the traditions. Wilber would then have included the essentials of the Buddha’s teaching but not of many significant later Buddhists, let alone of the great masters of other traditions. At the very most, he would have included only the essentials of Buddhism, not of other traditions, and even that only on the assumption that the essentials of Buddhism should be identified with that first historical teacher—an assumption many would dispute. But with those caveats in mind, let us look at what the Buddha is attested to have said. So far, our best source for the historical Buddha is the early sutta texts, collectively known in Pali as the Nikāyas and often referred to as the Āgamas in their Chinese translation. These texts exist in a “remarkably uniform” form in India and China, and are accepted as authoritative by all surviving Buddhist traditions (Gethin, 1998, p. 44). Now 82

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all that this means is that these texts have been historically accepted as to some extent authoritative across different Buddhist traditions, as the Bible has been for different traditions of Christianity. Some scholars, such as Richard Salomon, are now beginning to examine alternative sources and find traces of the disputes that led to this authoritative set of texts, as biblical scholars have done for over a century. But this study is still in its infancy; there has not yet been any sort of systematic study to pick the words of the historical Buddha out of the text, as there has been for the historical Jesus. For the moment, at least, if we want to know what the Buddha said or thought, the Nikāya texts are the best we have to go on.10 One such text is regularly singled out as an example of the Buddha’s commitment to experimental science, to the view of Buddhism as privileging experience over dogma. I speak of the Kālāma Sutta, frequently cited online as “the Buddha’s charter of free inquiry.” Here the Buddha is famously quoted as follows: Kālāmas, do not go by reports, nor by traditional lineage, nor by rumor, nor by agreement with sacred texts, nor by logical reasoning (takkahetu), nor by logical inference (nayahetu), nor by reflection on appearances, nor by delighting in speculation, nor by the appearance of plausibility, nor because you think “the monk is our teacher.”11 Kālāmas, when you yourselves know “these things are unvirtuous, these things are blameworthy, these things are criticized by the wise, these things when taken up and accomplished lead to harm and suffering,” then, Kālāmas, you should give them up. (Aṅguttara Nikāya, i.189; author’s personal translation)

Soon afterwards in the Sutta, he repeats this passage, changing the last sentence to its converse: “Kālāmas, when you yourselves know ‘these things are virtuous, these things are blameless, these things are praised by the wise, these things when taken up and accomplished lead to benefit and happiness,’ then, Kālāmas, you should take them up” (Aṅguttara Nikāya, i.191). At first glance, these passages may look just like Wilber’s account of the traditional masters, that they start with the claim that truth is to be tested by evidence against dogmas and given beliefs. But here too there is more than meets the eye, especially when one looks at the context of other, less widely quoted parts of the Sutta. As Bhikkhu Bodhi (1998) has noted, the Kālāmas to whom this speech is addressed have heard many teachers from different traditions who have said widely different things, so they are not sure whom to follow. They approached him as uncommitted people asking for advice about their doubts, not as committed Buddhists who had taken refuge in him. At the end of the Sutta, they take refuge in him and accept him as their teacher. Then, it becomes reasonable to place in his authority the saddhā (trust, confidence) which is praised throughout Buddhist literature. And why do they accept him as his teacher? Not because of any sort of meditative or mystical practice, which is nowhere mentioned in the text. The Kālāma Sutta consists largely of the Buddha simply talking to the Kālāmas. Immediately after the remarks quoted above, he starts asking them Socratic questions (“So what do you think, Kālāmas? When greed arises in a person, is it for benefit or for harm?”), to which they offer answers that would seem obvious to a reader (“harm” in this case). When they have answered these questions, the Buddha explains: “Thus, Kālāmas, we said:” and repeats the passage. The reason he has told them to rely on what they themselves know is that it turns out these elements of his teaching already make sense to them. After that, he gives them a monologue about what good results that come from his teaching, whether or not there is an afterlife, and they agree with him, repeat back what he says, and take refuge in him. There are no experiments here, just a recognition that they already agree with the Buddha on an intuitive level. So even in the case of the Buddha, it is not quite right to describe a premodern tradition based on injunctions from which one can derive experiences. And the Buddha’s case comes far closer to such a view than does the case of the majority of premodern teachers (including many of the ones Wilber cites). For most such Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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teachers, as for their traditions, truth is not a matter of experiment; it typically has much more to do with the authority of the tradition that has come before.

Future Directions If my argument to this point is correct, then the sort of paradigm Wilber describes—the approach that takes truth to be established by experiment, starts with experience and provides others with the injunctions to replicate the experience for themselves—is simply not the core or essentials of the majority of the great wisdom traditions, Western or Asian. It not only is peripheral to the lives of the majority of believers and practitioners of those traditions, it is peripheral to the writings and sayings of most of the traditions’ masters and teachers, from Christ to Chih-i. So far this claim has been entirely historical. But like Wilber, I am primarily interested not in history but in building constructive philosophical theory. What then are the constructive implications of this historical claim? Recall what it means, for Wilber, to include the essentials of a worldview. Copernicus included the essentials of Ptolemy by discarding Ptolemy’s theory while still including Ptolemy’s experiences and the injunctions that allow them to be replicated. In the same way, Wilber has claimed to include the essentials of the premodern traditions by discarding myth and metaphysical theory while still including mystical experiences and the injunctions that allow them to be replicated. Keep the paradigmatic baby, throw out the mythical bathwater. But we have seen here that the experiential paradigms of the traditions are not their core, neither in terms of being widely practiced nor in terms of being advocated or even experienced by many of the great masters. What that means is that Wilber has not actually included the core of the traditions. But more even than that, it means he cannot include the core of the traditions, so long as his method requires including only enacted paradigms. The majority of the traditions are not expressed in terms of injunctions, of “if you want to know this, you must do this”; enacted paradigms are not at their heart. What is at their heart? I would argue that each tradition, and often each part of each tradition, has different essentials. One cannot include Jainism in one’s theory in the same way that one includes Confucianism. But there are certain categories beyond Wilberian paradigms into which many of those essentials might be classed. One might find untrained experiences like Moses’ or Paul’s, which come unbidden and cannot be replicated through injunctions. One might find metaphysical arguments like Anselm’s, which allow one to find the existence of God in the same deductive way that one can find that the sum of three consecutive integers is divisible by 3. One might find injunctions that are not part of a paradigm because they are not intended to provide knowledge or experience. (Much of Judaism consists of such injunctions. Some of them can turn out to have happy results—A.J. Jacobs (2008) found several such when he set out to follow all of the Hebrew Bible literally, but he had no inkling that these results would happen when he started; the book and the living tradition did not tell him.) Or one might find knowledge passed on by testimony of authorities held to be trustworthy without recourse to experience—what can pejoratively be called “dogma,” but is held in high esteem by many of the masters Wilber cites. These elements—spontaneous unparadigmatic experiences, metaphysical argument, injunctions not aimed at knowledge, knowledge from authority—may show up in different proportions within a tradition. But each is generally practiced by at least some people in every tradition; in every tradition, great masters have held each one to be at least as important as mystical paradigms; and none of them counts as a paradigm in Wilber’s sense, except possibly the metaphysical argument, which in Wilber’s view would run into its own methodological problems very quickly. If my arguments are taken seriously, I can see two ways for Integral Theory to proceed productively from here. First, it could “bite the bullet” and simply stop claiming to have included the essentials of the 84

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traditions. It would acknowledge that the paradigm that it includes from the traditions is a small part of most of them, historically not that important or influential. It would then continue marching straightforwardly in the direction Wilber’s thought has generally taken from Romantic Wilber-1 to post/modernist Wilber-5, now admitting that it leaves out and dismisses the majority of the premodern traditions because it takes within itself only the most advanced part, the mystical paradigms. It would leave the past behind and no longer claim to be integrating it, focusing instead on the worldviews that it expects to matter most in the future, honoring the (non-mystical) bulk of past tradition only for its role as a stage humans must pass through on the way to healthy development. This would be a consistent and honest route, but it would rule out the rhetorical appeal of Integral Theory’s current claim to have included the essentials of every worldview or every wave. I will admit that it is also not the route I hope Wilber would take. An alternative approach—an approach that actually did manage to include the essentials of the premodern traditions—would be significantly more complex, and require a major reworking and rethinking of the methodological tenets of Integral Theory. It would not, of course, mean incorporating every idea in every tradition—that is not possible, since many such ideas contradict each other. But the process of deciding what to leave in and what to leave out would need to be based on something more complex than the enactment principle (supersede by leaving in the experiences and leaving out the theories). There is not space to pursue here in any depth what this complex process would involve. I would suggest two key elements in particular. First, one could not include the traditions as a single group, for their differences matter. If one cannot reduce the essence of the traditions to mystical experience, then it will quickly become clear that the essentials of Jainism, whatever they may be, are dramatically different from the essentials of Confucianism. As a second key component, I would suggest that the knowledge passed on through received authority and tradition should not be dismissed as meaningless metaphysics, but taken on as a starting point for future revision. In some respects, the approaches of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1996) and Alasdair MacIntyre (1990) take on this approach in very different ways from each other, ways that are very well informed by the challenges of the modern and postmodern worlds while still leaving a central place for received tradition. Indeed, Wilber (2002b) himself draws on Gadamer’s understanding of intersubjectivity as grounded in tradition; but in Gadamer’s (and MacIntyre’s) work at least, that tradition is not necessarily based on paradigms of experience. I note too that at one point Wilber treats “merely asserting their existence because tradition says so” as parallel to “basing their existence merely on introspection or meditation (or other allegedly culture-transcending claims and assertions)” (Wilber, 2006b, 234); here the authority of tradition seems to be integrated into a larger whole, just as meditation is. I have sketched only the very barest outline of one potential alternative approach here. Such an attempt to provide an alternative approach in two paragraphs will necessarily be full of holes. To do it justice would require another article at the least—more likely many books. But that is as it should be. My intent in this article was never to get to the end of a conversation, but rather its beginning.

NOTES An example is A.J. Ayer (1970). For this reason, it is not necessary for me to speak in this article of my own personal mystical experiences, which I am not comfortable relaying in a public forum. My claims are about the historic traditions and their members. While I do examine the question of the experiences had by exemplars of the traditions, that question must be settled by historical evidence, not by the inner experiences of myself, Wilber, or any other modern, for the simple reason that we cannot assume our experiences were theirs.

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According to the noted Buddhism scholar Paul Harrison (1987), “As far as most Buddhist scholars nowadays are concerned, the Mahāyāna was a movement which originated in India some 300 or 400 years after the death of Gautama [the presumed historical Buddha]” (p. 67). Over the course of my doctoral and later studies in Buddhism, I have yet to encounter a scholar writing in the past century, using the methods of historiography, who gives any credence to the idea that the Mahāyāna sutras were preached by the historical Buddha himself. The language and style of the earliest Mahāyāna texts are much closer to the Indian literature hundreds of years after the historical Buddha’s lifetime than to texts roughly contemporary with him (Warder, 2000, pp. 4-5). The Mahāyāna sutras also demonstrate a much greater knowledge of south India than north India where the Buddha lived, strongly suggesting they were composed far away from him (Warder, 2000, pp. 335-337). 4 Texts are not the only sources available to us for history, and in some cases it is worth paying attention to alternative sources like archaeology and epigraphy. Much of Gregory Schopen’s (1997) work has been devoted to this point. But Schopen aims largely at establishing the general nature of popular practice, and my focus here will be on establishing the worldviews of the great teachers, about which these alternative sources can usually tell us relatively little. 5 Sex, Ecology, Spirituality is an earlier, “Wilber-4” work. My understanding is, however, that Wilber retains much of this same approach in the Wilber-5 phase. 6 Since 381 CE, the claim that Jesus is the only son of God has been a standard portion of the Nicene Creed, the most well known and regularly recited profession of faith in the Catholic, Orthodox, and some mainline Protestant churches. Since, as noted, the claim also occurs in the Bible, it is widely accepted in evangelical Protestant churches as well. It has therefore been mainstream throughout the vast majority of the Christian tradition. That is not to say it is the best interpretation of Christ or Christianity, only that alternative interpretations, whatever their merits, are nevertheless eccentric and marginal. 7 Scholars now usually refer to this thinker as Zhiyi, according to the now-preferred Pinyin transliteration of Chinese. I will continue to use the older Wade-Giles spelling of Chih-i since Wilber, Sharf, and McRae all do so. 8 For a translation of this passage in context, see Sprung (1979, p. 51). 9 By “subtradition” I mean only “portion of a larger tradition”; I am not implying that Tibetan Buddhism has or should have any lower status than the rest of Buddhism. 10 It is worth noting again that people following in the Buddha’s lineage 2,500 years after the Buddha himself are not the best record of what the Buddha himself thought and taught, for a lot can happen to change things in those 2,500 years. 11 The Kālāmas, according to the text, were a group of people living in the town of Kesaputta; the speech is addressed to them. 3

REFERENCES Ayer, A.J. (1970). Language, truth and logic (second ed.). New York, NY: Dover. Bodhi, B. (1998). A look at the Kalama Sutta. Retrieved May 14, 2012, from www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/ authors/bodhi/bps-essay_09.html Gadamer, H.-G. (1996). Truth and method. New York, NY: Continuum. Gethin, R. (1998). The foundations of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gombrich, R.F. (1983). From monastery to meditation centre: Lay meditation in modern Sri Lanka. In P. Denwood & A. Piatigorsky (Eds.), Buddhist 86

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studies: ancient and modern (pp. 20-34). London: Curzon Press. Gyatso, J. (1999). Healing burns with fire: The facilitations of experience in Tibetan Buddhism. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 67(1), 113147. Halbfass, W. (1988). India and Europe: An essay in understanding. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Harrison, P. (1987). Who gets to ride in the great vehicle? Self-image and identity among followers of the early Mahāyāna. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 10(2), 67-89. Jacobs, A. J. (2008). The year of living biblically: One man’s humble quest to follow the Bible as literally as possible. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

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James, W. (1929). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. New York, NY: Random House. Katz, S.T. (1978). Language, epistemology and mysticism. In S.T. Katz (Ed.), Mysticism and philosophical analysis (pp. 22-74). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lele, A. (2010). Anti-Protestant presuppositions in the study of Buddhism. Retrieved May 14, 2012, from http://loveofallwisdom.com/2010/05/antiprotestant-presuppositions-in-the-study-of-buddhism/. MacIntyre, A. (1990). Three rival versions of moral enquiry: Encyclopaedia, genealogy and tradition. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. McRae, J. (1994). Encounter dialogue and the transformation of the spiritual path in Ch’an. In R.E. Buswell, Jr., & R.M. Gimello (Eds.), Paths to liberation: The mārga and its transformations in Buddhist thought (pp. 339-370). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Panikkar, R. (2004). Christophany: The fullness of man (A. DiLascia, Trans.). Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Rensberger, D. K. (1993). The gospel according to John: Introduction. In W.A. Meeks et al. (Eds.), The HarperCollins study Bible: New Revised Standard Version (pp. 2011-2013). London: HarperCollins. Schopen, G. (1997). Bones, stones, and Buddhist monks: Collected papers on the archaeology, epigraphy, and texts of monastic Buddhism in India. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Sharf, R. (1995). Buddhist modernism and the rhetoric of meditative experience. Numen, 42, 228-283. Smith, M. (2008). God in translation. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck.

Sprung, M. (1979). Lucid exposition of the middle way: The essential chapters from the Prasannapadā of Candrakīrti. Boulder, CO: Prajñā Press. Warder, A.K. (2000). Indian Buddhism. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Wilber, K. (n.d.). Reply to Edwards. Retrieved January 30, 2012, from www.integralworld.net/wilber. html Wilber, K. (1997). The eye of spirit: An integral vision for a world gone slightly mad. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2000). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution (second ed.). Boston: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2002a). Excerpt B: The many ways we touch: Three principles helpful for any integrative approach. Retrieved February 11, 2012, from http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptB/intro.cfm. Wilber, K. (2002b). Excerpt C: The ways we are in this together: Intersubjectivity and interobjectivity in the holonic Kosmos. Retrieved May 18, 2012, from http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/ kosmos/excerptC/intro-1.cfm. Wilber, K. (2002c). Boomeritis: A novel that will set you free. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2006a). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world. Boston, MA: Integral Books. Wilber, K. (2006b). Sidebar A: Who ate Captain Cook? Integral historiography in a postmodern age. Retrieved April 16, 2012, from http://www.kenwilber.com/Writings/PDF/A-Who%20Ate%20Captain%20Cook.pdf. Wilber, K., Engler, J., & Brown, D.P. (1986). Transformations of consciousness: conventional and contemplative perspectives on development. Boston, MA: Shambhala.

AMOD LELE, Ph.D., received his degree in religious studies from Harvard University, focusing on South Asian Buddhism, with a dissertation on Śāntideva. He has taught as a visiting assistant professor at Colorado College and Stonehill College, and as a teaching assistant at Harvard University and Cornell University. He is now employed as an educational technologist at Boston University. He has written refereed publications on topics ranging from Buddhist philosophy to Indian politics, and has lived in India and Thailand. His weekly updated scholarly blog, Love of All Wisdom (loveofallwisdom.com), is an attempt to build a unified work that integrates the ideas of different philosophical traditions. His work to date has focused primarily on integrating the Indian Buddhist, classical Greek, and modern Western traditions; he is currently interested in learning more from Chinese and Japanese traditions and from Christian and Muslim thought. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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On Birthing an Integral Anthropology Karen De Looze

ABSTRACT This article celebrates the creative impulse of culture. I explore the history of the discipline that has concerned itself with the theme of culture all along, anthropology, using Integral Theory as a guide. I investigate how anthropological perspectives on culture complement each other, while learning from the abusive encounters anthropologists have had with “the other.” The relativist discourse that has marked postcolonial anthropology is reviewed, since it represents a potent turning point in scholarly approaches to culture. I then stage a dance between insights that arise with the birthing of an “integral anthropology,” and innovative responses to postmodern challenges that are emerging within anthropology. The article concludes with a discussion of anthropologists’ ability to facilitate the adaptability of groups of people to changing global circumstances, cherishing cultural meaning as expressive ornaments of the collective learning process. KEY WORDS ancestry; anthropology; construct; creativity; shadow

E

arly anthropology’s association with colonization and religious imperialism is a painful recollection to many anthropologists.1 As a result, the whole concept of “universal” became perceived as a danger to the discipline and its morale, and was replaced with the “charity” of 20th-century particularistic anthropology (Pinxten & Orye, 1997). To survive both internal and external critiques on the role anthropology played in history, the relativist zeitgeist in anthropology sought recourse in an ideology of “no claims.” It accentuated ethnography, giving a voice to the “native” at last. However, since with relativism it was not always clear how to engage in a transformative dialogue between one’s own and the encountered culture, anthropology has often been accused of merely telling stories. How do we make these stories matter? Beyond being a reflection of possibility (another modality of thought), can we invite the ethnographic voice to impact us? Timothy Ingold (2008) urges us to include a nomothetic inquiry in our anthropological endeavor, aside from the idiographic interest that is prevalent today: while ethnography is a crucial component of the discipline, anthropology should retain a commitment to arrive at general dispositions and theoretical statements. I have an image before my mind’s eye: I see anthropology as a balloon, drifting in the sky. Layers of clouds, substantiated by a meta-communication of “no-truth,” blur the sight of the geographical basis from where it took off, and where it is heading. This image symbolizes an excessive “presentism”: anthropological theorizing being disconnected from the history of perspectives and ideas and, therefore, naïve (Salzman, 2001). Yet, the balloon also serves as a cocoon that provides safety for anthropology to recuperate from trauma and gain strength to prepare its rebirth. The fuel of the balloon is a sacrificial fire that is gradually burning down the karma of anthropology’s original sin: its uneasy associations with imperialism and colonialism. As tantric yoga suggests, the digestive “fuelling fire” or “jathara agni” at one point or another can launch the mental-spiritual fire or “bhuta agni” of mindfulness (Svoboda, 1993). Clouds consist of a porous matter, and when we get close enough to see this reality, we break through the illusion of their solidity. We realize that

Correspondence: Karen De Looze, Krijgskundestraat 33, 1160 Brussels, Belgium. E-mail: [email protected]. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 2012, 7(2), pp. 88–111

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the identification of anthropology with relativism has been a transitory phase. The cocoon opens up to new horizons as the sunlight, here used as a symbol for higher inspiration, can shine on the cocoon. When the porosity of the clouds receives more attention than their capacity to veil, we enter the territory of the murky edge (Gendlin, 2009). How can we tune into what desires to emerge, right now, at this point in anthropology’s history? The sunbeams appearing through the clouds also throw new light on the ground from which the balloon took off: anthropology gets reconsidered in the fierce light of the discipline’s higher inspiration. This article serves three purposes: 1.  Bringing into focus the porosity of the clouds. After having situated anthropology in history, my aim is to foster the process through which the layers of clouds gently lose “density” and no longer veil our balloon. I do this by re-veiling certain shadow aspects that play a significant role in anthropology, to consequently focus on the many entries for transcendence that are currently emerging from within the discipline. 2.  Appreciating the landscape. We can then see the beauty of the ancestral landscape. Part of this process is the act of discernment: looking for and after the seeds that have survived “winter,” and that are ready to blossom. Much like an aghori2 would (Parry, 2004), I take in as much as is possible of anthropology’s past, and digest and transmute it to design a yantra3, or geometric form (Svoboda, 1993), that is a blueprint of an integral structure as brought forward by Integral Theory. 3.  Sunbathe. Lastly, when a new yantra has been established that embraces all of anthropology’s ancestry, and when new openings are acknowledged that offer breakthroughs in the present, my purpose is to engage in a “focusing” inquiry and be present with the current of potentiality that we are sunbathing in (Gendlin, 2009). I welcome this intertwined threefold movement as sacred, a word I use to refer to the process of “breaking open.” Where an ascending past-to-present current and a descending future-to-present current—a past and a future memory—intersect, a creative friction takes place that “electrifies” the sky with sparks of creative energy. As B.L. Ettinger (2012) inspired me when she used the term “freedom fissure” in a talk, this friction opens the way to more freedom and more fullness. It is a breaking open that translates in a renewed appreciation of both ancestral as present wisdom, and that welcomes the unknown. Robert Pirsig (1991) refers to the “pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality” that can be “evoked” or sensed into as “Dynamic Quality.” When the process of “presencing” (Scharmer, 2009) intensifies, what is alive at the murky edge can become conceptualized, habituated, and defined even, and becomes “Static Quality” (Pirsig, 1991). In Integral Spirituality, Wilber (2006) clarifies the word spiritual to mean at least four different things: 1) the highest levels of consciousness in any of the developmental lines; 2) a separate line of development; 3) an extraordinary peak experience or state; or 4) a particular attitude. In this article, I use the word spiritual to refer to those more denominative qualities and expressions that reflect the, for now, highest levels of consciousness in our approach to and study of culture. The attitude that I aim to foster is openness toward the experience of being grounded in not-yet-knowing that is respectful of contributions from the past, while at the same time comfortable at the edge of development. The practice that this article engages in circumambulates anthropology, re-discovering it again and again as part of a practice of karma-yoga, while opening up to it as yet “transcendental” dimensions. The language I use is at times esoteric, so as to evoke a scenario of initiation. In line with Mircea Eliade’s Homo Religiosus (beyond Emile Durkheim’s [1995] dichotomy), I am interested in the way the transcendent manifests in this world and sanctifies it (Rennie, 2007). My aim is to look at the sacred and the spiritual not as separate areas of study, but as dynamic and static qualities in the midst of the “worldly” discipline that is anthropology. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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This leaves me to say a word about how I use the concept of “shadow” in this article. Recalling the image I “painted” before, the clouds of the balloon that I visualized represent (an attachment to) “anthropology’s shadow.” This shadow blurs the sight of a future-in-present or imminent current that we can tune into from the murky edge (Gendlin, 2009) and renders unwieldy the sacred movement of expansion of identification. Pointing to a “collective shadow” of anthropology as a discipline, I wish to bring to attention those fragments of the collective unconscious that are projected onto other groups: the cultural groups anthropologists research. As depicted in detail by René Girard (1989) in The Scapegoat, an out-group is often blamed for difficulties of an in-group. Projections may also originate in trauma that is the result of group-level ideologies and their enactments that are expressed as a shadow component, analogous to what Griselda Pollock (2006) has called “post-Holocaust subjectivity.” Maurice Bloch, who researched the individual and social digestion of traumatic collective memory, discovered a striking overlap between autobiographical memory and social and/or historical memory: social memory can be experienced autobiographically even when an event was not experienced by the subject directly (Bloch, 1998). When such trauma thrives in the unconscious of many members of the group (e.g., the uncanny reminder of the Holocaust), as a trauma both to the perpetrator and the perpetrated, it may get extrapolated onto another group, as in the romanticization of other cultures, or, on the other side of the spectrum, the denial of the Holocaust (Vidal-Naquet, 1992). Something similar may be going on where it concerns the trauma of having collaborated with the forces of colonization and imperialism. I will come back to the intricacies of this shadow when discussing the postmodern phase in anthropology later on in this article. Having “set the scene,” I will now give a general overview of the areas that I will cover in this article.

Overview of This Article In this article, I first browse the history of anthropology and investigate premodern, modern, and postmodern phases of the discipline. I make use of the buddhi part of my mind to “separate the sheep from the goats” as I lay out this overview, and present the preliminaries to the formation of the discipline of Integral Anthropology.4 I hereby focus on the cross-fertilization of premodern, modern, and postmodern insights as well as on the riches that emerge when we combine the specializations of several anthropological schools. I then discuss some shadow elements of postmodern epistemology as it is inscribed as a discourse in anthropology. Honoring the regenerative qualities of this phase, I consequently name some of the challenges of postmodern anthropology and offer some of the innovative answers that have arisen from within the discipline. In the latter part of this article, I invite you as a reader to feel into the potential that is tangibly present as you engage with the open space in which I have rearranged the geometrical forms of theory. What perspectives on culture are we invited to articulate and embody? I wish to evoke images of what could be called the “spiritual leading edge” in anthropology’s way of describing culture that may coincide with experiences of the sacred dynamic impulse that is alive “within culture.” If postmodern ethnography intends to evoke in the minds of both reader and writer an “emergent fantasy of a possible world of commonsense reality” (Tyler & Strathern, in Strathern, 2004, p. 11), it is my vow to start fantasizing.

Anthropology’s Ancestry Below I offer a guided tour of the ancestral anthropological landscape, making use of a map that uses three lenses: premodern, modern, and postmodern.5 I review anthropology’s origins, benefitting from “perspective distance” (Salzman, 2001): a relative detachment obtained by grace of the passing of time. Celebrating the contributions made by our ancestors, while wary of shortcomings, I tap into a natural curiosity about how the different pieces of history might make up a yantra of an integral anthropology in the making. 90

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1. Premodern The first explorations in “anthropology”—there was no delineated field yet—were idiosyncratic observations of medieval travelers (e.g., Herodotus in the 5th century B.C., Al-Beruni in the 11th, and Marco Polo in the 13th century) that would later be digested by scholars in the Renaissance (Ahmed, 1984; Rowe, 1965). The general importance of this period for anthropology was the introduction of a perspective distance (Salzman, 2001), this time obtained through travel in space. It became clear that there were different ways of organizing society “out there.” Yet, in premodern times, one’s own society was considered to be more evolved or civilized, with an ethnocentric arrogance these travelers were often aware of. As Herodotus says (as cited in Rowe, 1965, p. 2): “If it were proposed to all nations to choose which of all customs seemed best, each, after examination, would place its own first, so strongly is each persuaded that its own are by far the best...” Yet, they had no answer to this observation than resorting to misanthropy. Pietro Martire (as cited in Rowe, 1965), a 15th-century scholar, states: “[It] teaches us how absurdly the human race is sunk in its own blindness, and how much we are all mistaken” (p. 10). These “anthropologists-avant-la-lettre” kept travel diaries, and, although methodology meant nothing at this time, these diaries would become foundational to the first systematic studies in anthropology.

2. Modern I distinguish two phases to modern times. The first goes from the 17th to the late 19th century and has Edward Burnett Tylor, James Frazer, and Lewis Henry Morgan as its exemplary authors. The second goes from the late 19th century to the 1950s. Key authors are Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, A.L. Kroeber, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. The first phase, which built on the data gathered by the early travelers just described, is often called the phase of “armchair anthropology”: anthropologists leaned on data sets gathered by foregoers and went through them from the safety of their homes. British Victorian influence marked the emergence of anthropological theorizing that focused on kinship structures, technology, and social institutions. Methods at this time were tightly interwoven with those of biology and the natural sciences (Poggie et al., 1992).6 Anthropologists created inventories of human society, much like natural scientists created encyclopedias of fauna and flora. These inventories categorized cultures on a “ladder” going from savage to civilized, or, from magic, to religion, to science (Long & Chakov, 2012). As a result of the zeitgeist that surrounded the technological revolution in Europe, characteristic of the early modern period in anthropology was the pervasive application of an underlying idea of “social progress” (Long & Chakov, 2012; Salzman, 2001). Hereby one’s own culture was inevitably placed on the highest rank of the ladder of progress without much self-reflection or scrutiny.7 “Acquaintance with the physical laws of the world, and the accompanying power of adapting nature to man’s own ends, are on the whole, lowest among savages, mean among barbarians, and highest among modern educated nations” (Tylor, as cited in Moore, 2004, p. 13). “Not surprisingly,” writes Moore (2004, p. 14), “Tylor’s ‘physical laws’ are the principles of Western science; alternative epistemologies are merely errorfilled remnants of pre-scientific barbarism.” We could say that the reflexive insight, although misanthropic, of certain early travelers was exchanged for an ethnocentric “believed belief” (Stroeken, 2008) in the superiority of one’s own cultural background. The black box of power-knowledge had not yet been cracked open. The question arises how indexes of progress and evolution could have been held more critically (Salzman, 2001). Johannes Fabian (1983) would later critique the way 19th-century evolutionism related travel to distant places as a travel to distant times, through a mechanism of linking physical (and cultural) difference to a difference in time. He called this “the denial of coevalness” (Fabian, 1983). In the 20th century, B.M. Fagan (as cited in Salzman, 2001) would bravely pursue the idea of evolution, but introduce the possibility of it being multilinear. Evolutionary anthropologists started to show interest in the multiplicity of forms that exist at the level Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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of individual societies that were admitted to complement general evolutionary characteristics (e.g., Sahlins, as cited in Salzman, 2001). On average, however, with postmodernity, attention would shift to non-evaluative social and cultural transformation over time within one society only. In this sense it is noteworthy that in early modern anthropology, there was a theory of sociocultural growth that all cultures were thought to partake in. Postcolonial anthropology, in an urge to avoid abusive versions and enactments of this idea, would later ignore this option and discard it. After all, in this phase anthropologists had helped create an idea of the other as primitive, which would legitimize the manipulation and control of the encountered world through a project of “civilization” (Lewis, 1973). The generally crude categories used at this time were unable to reflect the nuances and paradoxes that societies and cultures are rich, nuanced tapestries. The complexity of there being different lines and levels of development in societies and societies having unique specializations had not yet been accounted for. An interior perspective on the cultures studied was absent. Moreover, little attention was given to society consisting of people with different psychographs—maybe because the validity of an individual’s agency would not be taken into account structurally before anthropology had hit postmodernity. At this time, after all, ethnocentric values were dominant.8 That the concept of evolution and its application on self and other had not been approached with the intellectual scrutiny that is characteristic at a mental-rational stage of development, we can derive from Boas’ critique on the works of Morgan and Tylor as “untested” and “untestable” (Moore, 2004). “As soon as we admit that the hypothesis of a uniform evolution has to be proved before it can be accepted, the whole structure loses its foundation” (Boas, as cited in Moore, 2004, p. 40). Not surprisingly, it was also Boas who would argue for the collection of primary field data in anthropology (Poggie et al., 1992). This methodological shift is one of the characteristics that marked the entry into the second phase of the modern wave in anthropology. This second phase was marked by an increased influence of the American Anthropological School that caught up with the former Victorian lead. This transition inserted “the gusto” of enlightenment into anthropological discourse. In accordance with Boas’ request to gather primary data, field research and participant observation—so characteristic of anthropology today—were introduced (Malinowski, 1922). Malinowski proposed anthropologists to live among natives’ in full immersion, while he stressed the importance of gathering objective evidence. Hence, the accent remained on the observation pole of “participant observation,” postponing reciprocal or interactive scenarios until postmodern times (Richards, 2010). It is in this phase in the history of anthropology that Wilhelm Dilthey sought to establish, aside from these methodological innovations, an epistemological basis unique to the social sciences. Dilthey’s theory was built on the fundamental distinction between animal and man that he perceived to be language (Dilthey, 2001; Rickman, 1979). Accentuating a nature-culture distinction, he helped emancipate anthropology by proposing an alternative to it, mimicking what was going on in the natural sciences. Anthropologists started to give attention to the (Left-Hand quadrant) relationship between societal influences and individuals’ mental structures (e.g., Benedict, 1934; Lévi-Strauss, 1963). I see the enterprise of giving anthropology an independent academic character influenced by a mentalrational center of gravity. Anthropology as an “adult” discipline was literally founded on the idea that human beings are rational, which was thought to set them apart from animals and nature. Dualities, signifiers of a polarized mental-thinking structure, started to dominate the earlier, more “vital” impulses, and gave way to the arising discussion of opposites: nature-culture, individual-society, and so on (Lévi-Strauss, 1963).

3. Postmodern The main limitation of late-modern anthropology was that it predominantly used a “looking at” lens. G.E. Marcus and Michael Fischer (1986) would problematize this approach, referring to a crisis of representation, stating that there is no culture-neutral reference point from where to engage in pure objective research. The ethnographer too is “situated.” For the first time in anthropological history, the subjectivity of the researcher 92

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was taken seriously as a factor influencing research results, and authors were encouraged to presence their own voice when writing. Hence, while participant observation remained central, the accent shifted from observation to participation. This was a natural continuance of a trend that had set in after World War II, from the 1950s onwards: emic approaches that aim to understand culture from the inside out were praised over etic approaches that deal with exterior perspectives on culture. “Looking as” became a crucial facet of the anthropological method and the use of interpretative and hermeneutic approaches increased. With Clifford Geertz (1973), anthropology deepened its relationship with linguistics (Geertz, 1973). Post-Dilthey, Geertz urged anthropologists to study culture in all its diversity of ritual, story, and belief “as a text.” The role of the anthropologist became to provide a “thick description” of a culture. Postmodern anthropology holds that such a “text” is contextual and that therefore cultures are relative to one another. In early stages, it often happened that this relativism was taken to the extreme and peoples were asked to “devise boundaries for themselves—and to live in accordance with their ‘authentic’ cultures” (Rapport & Overing, 2000, p. 101). This was part of a renewed approach of national governments to deal with local cultures (Rapport & Overing, 2000). Increasingly, as referred to by Bruno Latour’s (1993) notion of “symmetric anthropology,” Western culture and modernity were included as subjects of anthropological curiosity. Very telling was S.N. Eisenstadt’s (2000) concept of “multiple modernities” that contributed the idea that the “modern” does not oppose “local.” Evermore complex perspectives of what constitutes culture proved necessary, reflected by the mobility of people and culture. Juxtapositions of center and periphery, rural and cosmopolitan, local and global were questioned. As Marshall Sahlins writes (1999): “In spanning the historic divide between traditional and modern, the developmental distance between center and periphery, and the structural opposition of townsmen and tribesmen, the translocal community deceives a considerable body of enlightened Western social science” (p. xx). Jorge Luis Borges’ concept of “heterotopia” (Foucault, 1994) and Ferguson and Gupta’s “transnationalism” (Ferguson & Gupta, 2002) questioned the associations that were hitherto presupposed between cultures and the nation state, and Geertz’s focus on the emergence of independent states got transcended in favor of more “fluid” models that reflected the rise of worldcentric approaches. Hybridity became trendy as a term that expresses cultural blending (Bhabha, 1994). Multi-sited research (Marcus, 1998) gained popularity and studies were increasingly short-term. The idea of an extended, local fieldwork that Malinowski had introduced died a slow death. Gradually, the modern distinction between a “high” and “low” culture was left behind. Arjun Appadurai (1990) proposed, with the concept of “mediascapes,” that observations made during leisure as well as the study of daily media could be accounted for as a valid source of fieldwork data.9 In a way, it was not just anthropologists’ perception of culture that changed. It coincided with a boom of places where cultures intersect all the time (e.g., airports), which led to an “anthropology of non-places” (Augé, 1995). Postmodern anthropology is full of creative twists and turns that significantly impact the depths, widths, and complexities with which cultures are researched. However, the postmodern tide, particularly its early versions that tended to see “cultures” as “incommensurable islands,” also came with a shadow form— the societal impact of which is still noticeable in today’s right-wing cultural discourse. The embarrassment anthropologists experienced when looking back at colonial times with late-modern realizations that other cultures are logical and rational, and products of their own history fueled feelings of guilt that accumulated in remorse toward anything asserted hierarchically in the field. When out of balance, this guilt built momentum and calcified in the consciousness of the postmodern subject as a conflict between one’s own culture and the romantic idealization of other cultures. The modern-day certainty that other cultures are bound to disappear seemed to have survived the shift to postmodern times, much like a karmic seed that has been planted still runs its course until its “charge” dissipates. Yet, contrary to perceptions in modern times, it was perceived as a process to be counteracted rather than hastened. Also, “globalization” rather than “social evolution” was identified as the cause behind cultures disappearing. The anthropologist re-emerged as a documentarian of Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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cultures on the verge of being destroyed, this time not by the high point of cultural evolution represented by “the West” and its colonizing forces, but by McDonald’s pop culture.10 The idea of vanishing cultures (Magubane, 1998; Parsell, 2002) resembles the “salvage ethnography” of early modern anthropology that aimed to document the languages and customs of conquered peoples (Gruber, 1970). Before the emergence of a “symmetric anthropology” (Latour, 1993), the Euro-American influence was often (implicitly) thought of as acultural and therefore extra powerful. Anthropology’s shadow thus showed up as a repression of the anthropologists’ own culture, ironically at the same time that the individual researcher’s subjectivity had just come into the picture. The unexpected result of wanting to do justice to other cultures, however, with a self-directed attachment to this action that was infused with feelings of guilt, caused the theme of oppression to become so much of an obsession that it became a force of oppression itself. Ironically, once again remember Fabian (1983)— “the other” was denied coevalness. This time in the hope that authentic culture would be “preserved,” the other was situated in the past (e.g., Braroe, 1975), devoid of agency. I quote Sahlins (1999): Even the left-critical arguments of dependency and capitalist hegemony could come to equally dim views of the historical capacities of indigenous peoples and the vitalities of their cultures. In too many narratives of Western domination, the indigenous victims appear as neo-historyless peoples: their own agency disappears, more or less with their culture, the moment Europeans irrupt on the scene. (p. ii) Later theorists would question the positioning of culture vis-à-vis globalization forces and focus on the agency of people in encountering globalization, without denying the reality of the challenge posed by its forces.11 Many anthropologists started to accentuate the creativity of culture in (en)countering and assimilating “foreign” elements. “Culture is not disappearing,” Sahlins (1999, p. xx) states, and Rik Pinxten (1999), in his book with the provocative title Cultures Die Slowly, brought the message that cultural differences might instead increase. Recalling discussions on “truth and reconciliation,” this is an area where I feel it is particularly important to include awareness of our (collective) subjectivity and shadow as we engage in theorizing. Another risk that came with an exaggerated relativism was that people either failed to take a stand visà-vis real-world problems, or did so without justifying their position (Pinxten & Orye, 1997). “[The ‘all is political’ attitude is] often concealing very personal needs under that heading, such as self-satisfaction and social approbation for ‘political correctness’” (Erickson, 1995, p. 187). The idiosyncrasy of premodern anthropology revived, as pluralistic stages of consciousness became infected with preconventional, egocentric stages of consciousness (Wilber, 2003). In postmodern times the perspective on the “I/eye” of the researcher remained in and of itself a highly subjective undertaking that the Integral model can help to identify and alleviate by offering a second- and third-person perspective on researchers’ subjectivity. In the meantime, attempts from within anthropology to move beyond relativism flourished, too, often with an accent on a revaluation of comparative studies (Ingold, 2008). (Some researchers have argued, however, that the paradigm shift they proposed would need to be accompanied by the burial of “anthropology” as the discipline’s header in favor of, for example, comparative culture sciences [Pinxten and Orye, 1997] or intercultural philosophy [Van Binsbergen, 2003].) I find the upcoming “comparative relativism” (Bruun et al., 2011) particularly promising. In this seeming contradictio in terminis, comparison refers to the need to investigate how different contexts measure up, whereas relativism warns that these contexts may be established around incomparable or incommensurable traits.12 Abstract notions such as, for example, pluralism, relativism, and universalism, but also comparativisms, can thus be enacted in many different ways (Peel, 1987; Strathern, 2004). It is for this reason that I now turn to the importance of including “enactments” in analysis, using as an example the enactment of the theory of social evolution. But first, I will offer a small reminder of why I am doing so. 94

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Floating in a Relativist Bardo Reflecting on both the potentials and the downsides of the relativistic phase in anthropology, the image of a balloon drifting in a limbo state appeared before my mind’s eye. There is no easy means to get in touch with the earth, nor is there an easy route to transcendence. The immaculate opportunity to float in any direction can be immobilizing—all options being equally possible and valid. Yet, the wind will blow and the sun will shine. If there is such a thing as a collective shadow that is being worked out in anthropology, we may wonder how to best integrate it and, on the proactive side, how it can inform us of what we find important to take into account in the future. An integral anthropology would—like the tantric aghori ascetic—swallow the poison of social development, eat the postmodern anthropology forbidden fruit, and transform and purify it all at once.

Relationship to Knowledge and Relationship to Culture I have outlined the idea that social evolution became taboo in anthropological theorizing, considering that it was identified as a culprit for imperialism. The idea was treated as if it inherently implied the pollution of attachment to a selective framing thereof, as well as the enactment of that framing in an exploitative fashion.13 Yet, it is a very particular expansion of this idea into a theory that was in place in early modern anthropology and that arose in a particular spatiotemporal setting. This theory presumed a monotonous single-line hierarchy, neglected the internal diversification of cultures, and did not discern the impact of vested interests and power struggles on theory formation. Yet, the interpretation given by early anthropologists is not the only possible way in which we can understand social evolution. More nuanced approaches, stressing the multiplicity of lines involved (Fagan, 1999; Gardner, 1983) or the importance of self-inquiry as the basis of development (Rahnema & Bawtree, 1997; Sen, 1999), would embrace the idea of social evolution while questioning the “missionary complex.” If self-inquiry, to give just one example, would have been considered vital to social evolution, this theory might in fact have argued against colonization rather than justify it. An integral analysis may help us highlight interactions between knowledge as Upper-Right (UR) quadrant content and the other components that make up a full AQAL constellation. It helps situate both the birthing as well as the enactment of such knowledge in a particular sociopolitical and historical context, involving individuals with unique dispositions. As Annemarie Mol (2002) asserts, knowing is a practice, too, which raises the question of how knowledge is known, as well as how knowledge is enacted.14 We may wonder how much complexity can be invited into a “thinking space,” in terms of different functions of the mind being perceived as well as the different streams of thought they carry, including a perspective on a certain stake the ego may have in accentuating one “stream” over another. Moreover, how is knowledge done, and lived? Edgar Morin (as cited in Montuori, 2008) asks whether we can develop “a method that does not ‘mutilate,’ that does not fragment and abstract, that does not do violence to life” (p. xiii). One way to cover a minimal degree of complexity may be to consider a series of AQAL constellations in a fractal fashion.15 Although this may go on ad infinitum, I propose that one take into account three levels: first order (the AQAL constellation in which knowledge arose), second order (the AQAL constellation in which knowledge is held, interpreted, and enacted), and third order (the AQAL-constellation of enactment itself). In the case of social evolution, such a review may help us see that it cannot in any straightforward way be held culpable for colonization and imperialism. Such a realization may bring the responsibility of our history back to us (as those who embody and act out these ideas), helping us “own” our past and be able to authentically mourn. At the same time, taking into account “a social ecology of being and knowledge” (Montuori, 2008) may provide insight into how certain engagements with this idea might lead to more beneficial results. Can we bring the same level of AQAL awareness with which we held the idea of social evolution to culture as a subject of study? Starting from the mid-1950s, anthropology has considered language as the nonbiological foundation of culture. If culture follows the order of meaning and can be studied as a text, then how Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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do we relate to this text? During my field research, I discovered that in clinical settings in India, fragments of culture-as-a-text are often used in “ethical publicity” (Cohen, as cited in Simpson, 2004). Ethical publicity means that people connect the publicity of, in this case, certain biotechnologies, to religious or cultural meaning, with the aim of inscribing it in a local context. In this process, cultural meaning is narrowed down, commodified as it were: bits and pieces of culture-as-meaning can be isolated from an overall culture context and re-interpreted to suit a “sales” purpose. Ironically, opponents of the same biotechnology will often find in the same sources arguments to legitimize a decline, a procedure that I refer to as “ethical resistance.” The technology may or may not be desirable, however, and is probably so under certain circumstances and not under others, but this discussion does raise the question what culture is and how “knowing culture” is enacted as a means to justify a course of action. On a personal level, this insight made me wonder whether there would be another way to relate to culture than as chunks of meaning that can be polarized and opposed to one another, within one culture or in situations of cultural contact. What if in this very clinical situation, there would be a way to facilitate the group process whereby culture would offer the opportunity for increased harmony and understanding in the collective rather than “pose a problem?” This, I consider, is in part a question of what culture is taken to be, but also of how we relate to and enact our understanding of culture, even of how culture becomes in enactment, and, the level of uncertainty we are willing to hold space for. I also propose an anthropology of culture that has as an object of study the culture concept, its presence, and its meaning in different (cultural) contexts. Postmodern anthropology’s self-reflexivity would then extend from individual researchers to anthropology as a discipline, the concepts it uses, and why. I would like to offer some provisional insight into the works of some anthropologists who have conceived of culture beyond the current take that sees it as a semiotic web (De Saussure, 1972) or a text (Geertz, 1973). One feature of a structure of meaning, a feature that I also recognize in the way culture is used in ethical publicity, is that it is thought that the subject has full access to it (Visker, 1994). What if there is a part of culture that decenters and subjectivizes us, that is not part of the structure of meaning, but that is, rather, a “meaningful” (Visker, 1994)?16 A meaningful that belongs to the realm of the (collective) unconsciousness, or a meaningful that is transrational? A pre-meaning and a trans-meaning, if you will? A magic of the “we,” in which we are embedded, that transcends the ability of any individual to grasp it? Parts of culture we have become possessed by? Parts of culture that have become so automatized that they went silent, as an unrecoverable background of cultural content (Strathern, 2004)?17 Or the “other” silent that I introduce here: the transcendent, the tangibly present but not-yet-vocalized. In silence may lie the uncompromised fullness of the creative impulse that originates in Being-ness. As R.A. Masters (2007) puts it: “Listening to silence is not the same as listening to the mere absence of sound.… Silence does speak” (p. 48). Or, inspired by Libbrecht (2003), is it possible to see “conceptual emptiness,” at the same time, as an “energetic fullness?” All of these possibilities require a more dynamic perspective on culture. Could it be the sacred divination or descent of collective potentialities into actualities? What if culture is determined at least in part by these concepts (i.e., a learning process)? S.N. Balagangadhara (1994) writes that a particular culture can be characterized “in a non-trivial manner” by the configuration of learning processes, aside from contents to describe these. Coming home in a new culture, as I experienced during fieldwork, involves a meta-learning: a learning how to learn and produce knowledge. Culture is then not merely a reflection of content being taught, or a context in which one is taught; culture phenomena are themselves learning processes (Pinxten & Orye, 1997). Balagangadhara (1994), naming the anthropologist bias to accentuate worldviews, argues that in India the problem “how to live” is solved not by referring to meaning that is free from paradox (cf. Nisbett, 2003), but by developing in its members a performative ability. This led Balagangadhara to take a more performative perspective on culture as well. Of course, not only the culture concept deserves a full and multi-layered integral analysis.18 I will now look at what an integral anthropology might look like. 96

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Foundations of Integral Anthropology I have offered the metaphor of particularistic anthropology floating as a balloon in a stream of air that gradually becomes electrified by the friction caused by ascending and descending currents of historic overview and inspiration. Could an integral perspective help build the antahkarana for anthropology as a discipline?19 Later I will wonder what unique contributions could come from anthropology to the integral community in turn. Anthropology could stand among the other disciplines that have an integral clone present in an inter- and transdisciplinary research environment. The deepening of each discipline, making use of an integral frame, would help refine Integral Theory in turn. In envisioning the cross-fertilizing interaction between anthropology and the AQAL model, I visualize anthropology as a feminine snake wrapped around and dancing with what I hold in this article to be the masculine “skeleton” (the Integral model). The skeleton flexes with the movement of the snake, like the “rubber” bones of a well-trained yogi do, but the dance of the masculine and feminine will be clumsy as the steps are not yet automatized. Who guides and who leads at every singular moment remains a game, open for exploration. A new relationship is in the making.

From Egocentric, to Ethnocentric, to Worldcentric: Stages In the history of anthropology, we see a transition from idiosyncratic relationships to culture in premodern times, to ethnocentric values and inspirations in modern anthropology, to postmodern versions of worldcentric understanding and engagement. In simplified terms, anthropology evolved from studying the behavior and racial traits of individual people, to the study of local societies and nation-states, then to the meshworks of cosmopolitan culture. As discussed below, approaches today are emerging that handle the role of culture in the Kosmos (Stroeken, 2011b). The gifts of premodernity, modernity, and postmodernity, however, remain accessible when proper care is taken to include these elements into a “new way of being.” Latour (1993), for example, includes the modern separation in his writings, but at the same time argues for the use of premodern categories to conceptualize technological hybrids, while remaining reflexive of how this distinction is in turn a construct, an acknowledgment earned in postmodern times (Thalos, 1995). The distinction between premodern, modern, and postmodern phases in anthropology is also related to the prioritizing of different quadrant perspectives that an integral anthropology would take care to integrate.

Four Quadrants In anthropology, every time period accentuates one quadrant as a prevailing, though not exclusive, orientation. This quadrant often offers an “entry perspective” to the other three. Early modern approaches focused largely on (an external perspective of the) the Lower-Right (LR) quadrant, accentuating technology and social institutions, rendering Integral Methodological Pluralism’s zone-8 perspective (of the collective exterior) of particular interest. In late modern times, the anthropological gaze shifted to focus on culture as a structured system of symbols and meaning (a zone-4 perspective of the collective interior). The topic of concern was how cultural differences affect personality and thinking structures, as exemplified by Benedict’s Culture and Personality School and Levi-Strauss’ structuralism (a zone-2 perspective of the individual interior). In the meantime, Gregory Bateson (1972) would, as an anthropologist, excel in the study of the world as a series of systems that arrive at homeostasis by finding a balance between competition and dependency. While Bateson would, in a way, strive to find a meta-pattern, Maturana and Varela (1987) introduced attention for autopoiesis (applied to social systems) to anthropology. Hence zone 7, an internal perspective on a collective exterior, was embraced as a significant focus of anthropology’s attention. Also in postmodern anthropology, the inner dimension of the Lower-Left (LL) quadrant (zone 3) is addressed, as well as the self-reflexivity of the researcher in the Upper-Left (UL) quadrant (zone 1). This is now followed by a renewed interest in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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Upper-Right quadrant (which was also a much-frequented perspective in anthropology’s prenatal period, where behavior of natives and racial traits were heavily discussed, which offered a zone-6 perspective on the individual exterior), with the movement of “thinking through things” (Henare et al., 2007) that focuses on zone 5. It is exciting to think that this may be the kickoff for another circling of the quadrants that will deepen our access to the intricacies of each and every quadrant, as well as our understanding of the way in which the quadrants tetra-arise. Of course, intersecting with time periods, there are also quadrant distinctions that result from orientations that are school-specific rather than time related. I will tackle this topic next.

Providing a Home to a Multitude of Schools Strathern (2004) describes how the self-reflexivity of the subject is overestimated in postmodernity to the extent that we fail to recognize that researchers’ ideas are mediated by anthropological schools of thought, predecessors, and colleagues.20 On the other hand, these schools are rather loose and informal intellectual associations (Salzman, 2001). I will browse through some of the most central schools and representative researchers here—drawing from Salzman (2001) and Murphy (2012) and his students21 as resources—sparing an in-depth overview of the schools for a future occasion: 1.  Historicism (LR/LL). This school developed out of the dissatisfaction with unilineal theories of social evolution. One sub-school is interested in the process of culture change and development (diffusionism, G.E. Smith). A second one, historical particularism, sees society as a collective representation of its own unique historical past and aims to understand it on its own terms (F. Boas, R. Lowie). 2.  Culture and personality (R. Benedict, M. Mead, E. Sapir) (UL/LL). This school is inspired to uncover a national character or personality types that are a result of a cultures’ socialization patterns. 3.  Functionalism (B. Malinowski, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, M. Fortes) (LR). This school accentuates institutions and social relations. While the accent lies on the LR quadrant, Malinowski has it that social institutions are in place to meet individuals’ psychological needs (UL), whereas RadcliffeBrown speaks in terms of biological needs (UR). 4.  Cultural Materialism (M. Harris, L. White, R. Ferguson) (LR). This approach posits that human social life is motivated by an urge to keep material problems in check and that culture is shaped by technology and economics. 5.  Structuralism (C. Lévi-Strauss) (UL). French structuralism uncovers peoples’ deep conceptual thinking structures in terms of linguistic binary opposites. 6.  Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology (C. Geertz, V. Turner, M. Douglas) (LL). This school studies peoples’ interpretations of their surroundings that form a shared system of meaning. 7.  Reflexive and Critical Approaches (G. Marcus, M. J. Fischer) (UL). The cultural world is seen as socially constructed and arbitrary. 8.  Evolutionists and Sociobiologists (D. Sperber) (UR). Social behavior is seen as the result of evolutionary processes. 9.  Processual Theory (F. Barth; M. Gluckman) (UR). Focuses on acts of individuals, emphasizing strategic, pragmatic action over normative rule. 98

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Now that we have surveyed some of the more prominent schools in anthropology it is worth considering that each developed as an answer to a partial problem within the discipline of anthropology (Pinxten & Orye, 1997). Let us now take a look at how they fit together (based on Salzman, 2001). Critiques to the functionalist school voice that it reifies social institutions and cannot cater for social change. In processual theory, to the contrary, the goal is to explain social forms and their generative character as the cumulative effect of individual activities. The culture and personality school contributes the understanding that culture is more than an aggregate of actions: it is an integrated whole that is consistent. The structuralist school connects cultural meaning to universal cognitive structures, while symbolic and interpretative anthropology looks at culture, as a collective symbolic system, from the inside out. Whereas this school is very descriptive, the sociobiologist school attempts to explain culture. However, it does so by referring to biological, psychological, or environmental causes. Historical particularism instead points to historical factors; the cultural materialism school to material causes. The reflexive school brings to our awareness the subjectivity of the researcher. It is this awareness, on researcher biographies, that provides us with important information to situate different perspectives and help us transcend fights about which school holds the right perspective. Continuing the formation of our yantra, I will continue with looking at the “I,” “We,” and “It” of the methodology anthropologists use.

The I, We, and It of the Anthropological Method To claim we can only interpret culture, and this merely in our own cultural terms, is to treat other cultures as impermeable entities. It moreover places ethnographers in the position of interpreters never really affected by the other culture. Then again, causal explanations overestimate the authors’ capacity to free themselves from their academic culture. – Koen Stroeken (2011a, p. 370) Returning to the premodern to modern to postmodern sequence, we see that methods started with encyclopedic categorizing, inspired by the objectifying methods of natural scientists, followed by etic-style (i.e., looked at from the outside) to emic-style (i.e., looked at from the inside) participant observation, hermeneutics, and phenomenological approaches. Jackson (1996) has emphasized a phenomenological and existential approach, proposing the study o researchers’ experiences as primary data. Yet, he also accentuates the intersubjective component of the ethnographic relationship. “… [I]t resonates with the manner in which many non-Western peoples tend to emphasize identity as ‘mutually arising’”—as relational and variable—rather than assign ontological primacy to the individual persons or objects that are implicit in any intersubjective nexus (Jackson, 1998, p. 7). To Pinxten, who is inspired by Bourdieu’s (1981) “habitus” concept, this intersubjective sphere is dialogical, an approach that may help mediate universalism-particularism opposition (Pinxten & Orye, 1997). Another option is to make use of the “Dutch method” (i.e., after immersion in a different culture, apply the newly gained perspective to engage in ethnography of one’s own culture, its assumptions and customs). Postmodern anthropology included the researcher’s subjectivity in one’s analysis, yet it engaged in such an endeavor in a subjective manner. One anticipated contribution of an integral anthropology would be to provide more of a third-person perspective on researcher subjectivity. The AQAL model might help locate key entries: a developmental positioning of researchers that records their biographical data, cultural, and socioeconomic background. Another sign that we may only just have walked our first baby steps in the revealing of our researcher identity is that researchers have multiple voices, too (Mizzi, 2010): I learned that narrative voices could be situated in continual conflict, contradiction, silence, construction, destruction, confusion, and invariably complexity. As a result, Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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each voice contributed to the story that I was telling and, at the same time, noticeably layered, countered, and/or competed against each other. (…) Navigating through these voices can be emotional work, and yet, can lead to a richer inquiry into how phenomena cross time and space. Apart from enjoying the riches of an internal dialogical inquiry and how that may inform research, another way to resolve the mystery of multiple researcher voices might be to investigate their relationship to states of consciousness (cf. Braud & Anderson, 1998). Anthropologists, of the sub-disciplines “anthropology of consciousness” (represented by researchers like Mircea Eliade, Carlos Castaneda, and Erika Bourguignon) and “transpersonal anthropology” (Laughlin, 1994) in particular, have long grappled with the study of a variety of consciousness states (e.g., possession states, altered states). Celebrating the potential of “liminality” (Turner, 1995; Van Gennep, 1960), ethnographers have been familiar with using culture shock as a state experience that informs one’s getting to know a culture. It accentuates the limits of assumptions one was unwary to hold. Going home often leads to an “inverse culture shock” that may inform the researcher even more about both the home and the visited culture that he or she now has a privileged access to. The Dutch anthropological method indeed takes maximum advantage of this psychological transition. Other state-inducing methodologies may be encouraged, either in research participants, for example with Iain Edgar’s (2004) “imagework,” or in researchers, as with Rosemarie Anderson’s (as cited in Braud & Anderson, 1998) intuitive inquiry. There is much to say about components of an integral method for anthropology. Such a methodology would care to combine positivist, subjectivist, and interactive approaches, looked at from both an internal and an external perspective. Also, it would celebrate an integral inquiry of the researcher-subject as well as an integral methodology with which to relate to the researched subject/object, encouraging an overall research method that is whole and inclusive (Braud & Anderson, 1998).

Challenges to Anthropology Today In this section, I will investigate three major crises of postmodern anthropology and some significant answers that have arisen in response. These three major crises voiced in postmodern anthropology are: 1. Since Dilthey and Lévi-Strauss, anthropology divided humanity not into biological races but into symbolic cultures. The “racist of the new age” identifies himself as a defender of pluralism, while finger-pointing the cosmopolitan trying to eradicate culture difference (Visker, 1994) 2. Cultural anthropological discourse tends to reproduce binaries 3. The question of what it means to have ‘culture’ and be ‘human’ is lost in an overload of ethnographic detail These three crises have led to: 1. A reconsideration of the relationship between human unity and diversity, part and whole 2. A reconsideration of the relationship between the natural sciences and social sciences 3. The rise of innovative top-down approaches to complement bottom-up research22 I will discuss all three crises in one united text, considering that the topics are intertwined and that authors often contribute to all areas at once. Since Dilthey and Lévi-Strauss, a central concern for anthropology has been the tension between opposites: the nature/culture opposition provided anthropology’s foundation and, even, raison d’être, while a 100

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vital concern to anthropologists has been how parts relate to a whole (e.g., Bourdieu, 1981). The latter was different from the question of how cause relates to effect, which is central to the natural sciences. Recently, the relationship between part and whole has been studied from a meta-perspective that deals with both as generic categories. A considerable margin is allowed for the synthesis of opposites to be both complete and partial, which for me signifies an increased comfort in anthropology with paradox and uncertainty. This might exemplify a shift into transrational approaches. The discussion of the relationship between part and whole involves a (re)consideration of the concept of culture. Pinxten and Orye (1997) propose to look at culture not merely as the content of a learning process, as was commonly done in the modern era in anthropology, nor as merely the context in which learning processes are situated, as in postmodern times in which more attention has been given to the “learning subject.” By looking at culture as a learning process, they avoid reductionism by including a focus on culture as a highly complex evolutionary product worth studying on its own terms (Pinxten & Orye, 1997; Pirsig, 1991). At the same time, we are urged not to overlook the explanatory power of components. Manuel De Landa’s (2006) assemblage theory introduces the concept of “scale.” Assemblages consist of less complex components or constituents and no ultimate level can be singled out for optimal analysis. De Landa thus challenges the paradigm that analysis is best directed to the individual or “society as a whole” level, bringing further nuance to Pinxten’s foreplay. There are multiple levels appropriate for analysis, each offering a unique perspective on a phenomenon of interest.23 Strathern states, “To be able to conceive of persons as more than atomistic individuals but less than subscribers to a holistic community of shared meanings would be of immediate interest for comparative analysis” (p. 53). In other words, society is not just a sum of individual actors, nor does it have a monad that has an agency of its own (Wilber, 2006). Rather than speaking in terms of parts and wholes, according to Strathern, we might be facing a reality where the world is always both one and multiple in enactment; at once container and what is contained, and wherein elements are partially connected. Strathern (2004) thus calls anthropologists to hold the tension between the part and whole without trying to resolve it. Could nature and culture too be connected in a similar fashion? Morin (as cited in Montuori 2008) has pointed out that the human/nature or two-culture way of thinking “is not disjunctive (either/or), but connects, without the Hegelian assumption that the dialectic will always lead to a new synthesis” (p. xxii). The connection between the natural and social sciences may consist of bringing in the relative (interpretation) into the realm of the natural sciences, giving attention to researchers’ subjectivity and self-reflexivity while welcoming back the universal (explanation) as a factor to be dealt with in the social sciences. The natural sciences and the social sciences would then have the capacity to both interpret and explain. Stroeken (2011a) finds that both the natural and social sciences assume the necessity of a separation between nature and culture, whereby the universal is territory of the natural sciences and the particular is the area of the social. De Castro (1998), leaning on Amerindian distinctions, challenges the Western naturalist ontology by turning these associations upside down, linking culture to the universal and nature to the particular. De Castro’s perspectivism takes into account that the way humans look at animals and other subjectivities in the world is distinct from the way in which these animals and beings see themselves. It is also different from the way these beings and animals see humans in turn (De Castro, 1998).24 His contribution allows anthropology not only to broaden its scope to include multiple epistemologies, but also multiple ontologies. As part of this new freedom, anthropologists embarked on a new adventure of “thinking through things” (Henare et al., 2007). “Things” are approached heuristically,25 rather than taken for granted as a universal reality on which a layer of culture is hovering: “meanings are not ‘carried’ by things but identical to them” (Henare et al., 2007, pp. 3-4). Mol imagines a praxiographic approach, proposing to never isolate objects from the practices in which they are enacted. “Ontology-in-practice,” Mol says (2002), “is multiple” (p. 157). Yet, she accentuates that multiple does not mean fragmented. A multiplicity makes up a “patchwork singularity, … [a] composite realJournal of Integral Theory and Practice

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ity that is also a judgment about what to do” (Mol, 2002, p. 72). The axis of practice to Mol (2002) is another way to creatively tackle the tension between the social sciences and the natural sciences, and move beyond epistemological quarrels: “The difference that matters, then, is not the one between the social and natural sciences, or between classes of objects and the sciences that refer to them… Instead, the axis of difference needing further exploration is between versions of objects and the (science-related) practices in which they are enacted” (p. 159). So far we have been inserting an “uncertainty principle” into what we thought was a natural order of things. Stroeken (2011a) wonders whether a kind of universality is possible that is proper to the realm of culture. As an entry into this topic he recapitulates the premodern anthropological question: how can we respond to seeming recurrences across cultures (e.g., sacrificial rituals, witchcraft concepts)? Stroeken does not settle for the early modern explanatory options of diffusionism and unilinealism, and asks whether meaning could be universal. Responding to sociobiologist theorizing, he argues that natural selection has limited relevance as a cause that determines meaning. Cognitivist explanations reduce social phenomena to psychological dispositions, psychological dispositions to biological mechanisms, and social practices to the individual bodies performing them (Stroeken, 2011a).26 What if, beyond natural selection, there is a second environment our brain is plugged into that decenters the human consciousness? “Fundamentally, we are dealing with two worlds of matter: the natural one of probabilities and the cultural one of determined selections” (Stroeken, 2011b, p. 20). To Stroeken, culture is then not something artificial that corrupts our perception and reasoning, as is often thought. It is “culturally selected” as the only world humans can be conscious of. Cultural selection requires a part-to-whole reference, “just as neural cues need an enveloping sea of consciousness or memory bank” (Stroeken, 2011b, p. 27). The effects of cultural selection on our universe can only be meaningfully accounted for, asserts Stroeken, if we include the potentialities in every event rather than limit ourselves to its one actuality in this world that we are currently aware of. Meaning in this universe is discerned from the meanings in all possible universes. It is selected by the synchronizing environment in which we are enveloped, which exists next to many other selections of (alternative) meanings that do not synchronize with our environment (Stroeken, 2011b). Culture then essentially coincides with such synchronization. Mediating nature-culture, Stroeken introduces a culture in the singular that determines what all cultures in plural can variedly engage in. This way he brings us back to the problem that started this discussion: whereas the banner of “a universal human being” led to atrocities, the mistake has been to, as a reaction, conceal what unites humans (Stroeken, 2011b). “The repressed (once again) returns with a vengeance,” Stroeken writes (2011b, p. 9). Cultures can then be seen as modes of a singular culture, much like states of consciousness are modalities of a consciousness that “has no plural” (Stroeken, 2011b).

Embracing the Unknown History has not reached a stagnant end, nor is it triumphantly marching toward the radiant future. It is being catapulted into an unknown adventure. – Edgar Morin (as cited in Montuori, 2008, p. vii) What inspires me for this section is the question whether we can reclaim “a language of discovery” (Montuori, 2008) for anthropology, and by extension, for culture. Looking at culture from the murky edge in anthropology, we see that there is something about culture(s) that is necessarily and positively diverse, bewildering the imagination and constantly breaking open our most familiar concepts to alternative dreams. My fascination has always been with the paradox and diversity that exists within a single culture, as well as those aspects of culture that escape the eye but that are as real as scriptures, behaviors, artifacts, or rituals that are generally taken to make up the body of culture. In situations of intercultural contact “under pressure,” I have often embraced the reality of the challenge it poses, yet refused to see culture as an obstacle. The challenge, I believe, 102

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is where the play starts. Often, in such situations, statements of cultural meaning are played out against one another (a game whereby only one party can win). Rather than buying into such cultural commoditization, we may re-emerge as hosts for each other’s gifts—as wit(h)nesses (Ettinger, 2006) of transformations that are experienced collectively, as part of an evolving humanity. I have considered this as part of a larger learning process of transcultural groups to come up with adequate yet artful answers to real-life challenges that are a win-for-all. Here again, it is not about “who is right” but about how we allow each cultural group’s unique gifts to matter. We can then see intercultural challenges as an invitation to embrace more of what is available to human beings and thus gain freedom vis-à-vis the assumptions we have imposed on ourselves that limit our movement in the dance of life. On the level of trans-culture, the process of collective learning goes on and new culture is constantly created, as “clothing” that co-arises with the complex and collective insights gained. We are invited to celebrate the singularity of humanity as well as the infinite variety that human cultures reveal. This is in fact a striking idea: that more unity may coincide with more diversity rather than unity and diversity being mutually exclusive. Unity then lies not in an interpretation but in an access or liaison to a possibility. Human beings having access to an increasing spectrum of experiences may have favored the specialization of certain skills more than others. In a world where cooperation is an asset, this is a straightforward blessing. In situations of global action, contributions of cultural expertise may “light up,” not in a relativistic manner that would have them merge, but as contributions to the gathered skill set of humanity that are enacted in the proper context. Such contributions may build on age-old cultural wisdom of a particular heritage, not because there is an attachment to a particular contributor or contribution, but because this element of “static culture” is recognized as a meaningful response: meaning plus something “extra” that allows a functional fit. Authenticity is then not a mimicking of historical enactments of “tradition” but a creative expression of the aliveness of a collective at a given moment, a direct reflection and expression of an internal collective learning process. This perspective celebrates the re-enactment of culture as radically new and transformative every time it is enacted in the present. Everyday life is aestheticized, the importance of processes enforced, and a forward reading of a world “in the making” (Jackson, 1996) fostered while the unknown potential of culture that may newly emerge via learning processes is acknowledged, too. By looking at the needs and opportunities inherent in the moment, we can relate to cultural contents in a way that celebrates the present moment. This way, I believe we can foster our species’ adaptability to the changing needs and circumstances of humanity in the cosmos. One might say that I here invite a causal state-stage or, alternatively, a construct-aware perspective on culture, which I see as the spiritual cutting edge in culture studies. Such a perspective is aware that the way we bring forward and interpret culture, and connect it to our experience is, at least in part, a construct. At the same time, all is recognized as “split off from the underlying, cohesive, non-dual truth” (Cook-Greuter, as cited in Brown, 2010).

Feeling into a Contact Dance Having harvested these insights that will help us work toward establishing an integral anthropology, I here reverse the inquiry and discuss what lessons from anthropology might be useful for the integral community. A first contribution that brings home travel lessons is that we are inspired to use concepts not to categorize, but to break open the areas where the mind tends to be rigid; to challenge structures where they have become fixated and dead, and not receiving the deserved attention of questioning. I feel this is particularly important vis-à-vis adult developmental psychology.27 Can we speak about development in such a way that transcends limitations, rather than enforce new ones? Such a beneficial use of knowledge is facilitated when we manage to hold analytic investigations of aspects of the integral skeleton with an integral consciousness. We are invited to take into consideration the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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attitudes with which we form, approach, and enact knowledge. After all, as we saw when using the example of the theory of social evolution, it is important to maintain a full (and preferably fractal) AQAL awareness, avoiding consciousness to be narrowed down to self-identify with one of its elements. With Strathern (2004) we may wonder whether we can hold the tension between part and whole, maybe like a “dialectic zone” that helps us adjust our approach from moment to moment. Such an approach requires a constant rebalancing of what is partially interconnected, welcoming the creative energy of the unresolved. Anthropology’s character and strength lies in the openness it shows when meeting something that is foreign to the “self.” As such, it fosters a curious disposition towards what is not known yet and a subsequent game of disclosure, finding ways to relate to and enact these new elements. I suggest that this anthropological play will be crucial to Integral Theory, as it will discover its brothers and sisters and be launched to embrace new ways of expressing integral consciousness as we objectify this stage and become synchronous with the next. Awareness of alternatives in turn facilitates our ability to detach from our own assumptions and thus foster our all progressive walk through stages of development. Inspired by S.N. Balagangadhara (1994), we may be wary of those applications of an integral frame that aim to counteract the (phantom) pain of “worldview fragmentation” by proposing new certainties.28 The challenge we face might not be to create and articulate a holistic worldview. Rather, the challenge may be to work toward an organic balance that inscribes meshworks of meaning forever in the reality of changing contexts, without remaining fixated or clinging to a structure that may veil opportunities that are inherent to every moment. As Stroeken (2011a) points out, anthropology’s contribution lies in the reflexivity that comes with classifying approaches as cosmologies among a wider range, so that it becomes impossible for takes on reality to preclude this reflexivity. Integral Theory may, for example, gain more freedom from its epistemological and ontological assumptions as a result of what is emerging at the cutting edge of anthropology. Can we embrace “the inescapable dimension of uncertainty” and view it “as an opportunity for creativity and the development of new perspectives, rather than primarily a source of anxiety” (Chambers, as cited in Montuori, 2008, p. xxv)? If we are able to embrace the unknown and welcome doubt into anthropological and integral self-reflexivity, the question to ask becomes whether the practices that derive from knowing enact one of multiple versions of “goodness” (Mol, 2002). This would allow the Integral approach to morph from a meaning-structure inhabiting our minds “down” to infuse our everyday lives: our embodiment and being-inthe-world that is always already (r)evolutionary.

Conclusion The unwinding of the protective layer that limits relativistic anthropology’s capacity to take part in explanatory science is supported by situating the anthropological endeavor in larger schemata. Looking at anthropology’s development over centuries, and acknowledging its growing pains as part of collective shifts of consciousness in science and society, a space can open up in which healing of the postmodern shadow can occur. Moreover, it may provide space for a discussion on what could be the role of anthropology, as it may want to partake in the global awakening of consciousness. In the second part of this article, I investigated how the pieces of the puzzle, provided by anthropology’s history and the existence of a multitude of methods and schools, complement, rather than contradict, one another. I have offered the dance between anthropology and the Integral framework as one possible way to generate a creative pattern or yantra that may be used to evoke a new phase in anthropology. I also pointed out the importance of the (quality of the) movement in space with which the dance is performed. This space allows us to see that anthropology and culture consist of constructs we may or may not have full access to. I have furthermore portrayed this space as a zone of ethical responsibility. Relating to postmodern crises in anthropology, recent approaches ask us not to resolve tensions between polarities but to hold them in a dialectic embrace that welcomes paradox and uncertainty. The embrace 104

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of the unknown may well provide the necessary openness for creativity to occur. By focusing on the murky edge in anthropology, we see that culture too may consist of a process of tuning into potentialities and bringing these down through processes of collective learning. This perspective celebrates the creative potential that is invited when groups of people unite. When two yantras like integral studies and anthropology look to embody a third form, certain “extra” elements that do not interlink evaporate (referring here to shadow aspects in anthropology that have become redundant). When a third yantra is built, it fosters the capacity to tune into what is “pushing” to emerge as elements host one another to sit with and digest a topic (Brown et al., 2005). That is, we tune into the tangibly present, not-yet-vocalized that can descend into this new yantra. Like a child I got to start laying out the puzzle. And while doing that, I feel like Alice in Wonderland, often falling deep into the rabbit hole of the fractal structure of reality. Yet, after Lyotard (1984), I dare to have a Big Story: I am in love. I am in love with the source of inspiration that flows through me and touches each of my cells with divine joy. This is the Big Heart that welcomes all of anthropology’s ancestry and all of humanity to show up, while Big Mind synthesizes all parts into a constructive whole. It is my wish to invite you to this adventure that has only just begun.

Acknowledgments Many thanks to Sean Esbjörn-Hargens for his help with the initial draft of this article. Sean taught me at least as much about how to embody being a researcher in artful and skillful ways as he offered crucial insights on how to take this topic to new depths. Major thanks also to Nick Hedlund-De Witt for inspiring weekly conversations, and for being supportive in all possible ways. To Dustin Diperna and Mark Schmanko, for weaving the web in which I find myself able to contribute. To Andrew Venezia, for being you.

NOTES Readers uninterested in visual imagery may want to skip this section and proceed directly to the Overview of This Article section (p. 98). It is written in such a fashion that you can pick up the thread immediately. Should you have questions about the imagery used throughout the article, about my understanding of the “collective shadow,” or the way in which I approach the spiritual and sacred, you may refer back to this preface. 2 The aghori, tantric yogis handle the polluted and dangerous through consumption. They are embodiments of Shiva, who is famous for his blue throat. He drank the poison that was freed through the churning of the world ocean of milk, transmuting it to the benefit of humanity (Parry, 2004; Svoboda, 1993). The churning I see as an image for the quality of discernment that we will call on to separate the sheep from the goats when reflecting on the benefits and downsides of past and present anthropological perspectives. 3 A yantra is a mystical diagram meant to control and contain the energy put into it in ritual (Svoboda, 1993). 4 “Buddhi” stands for the higher mind: the mind that is engaging with reality through intuitive discernment (Murthy, 2004). With “separating the sheep from the goats,” I refer to the activity of discerning the constructive elements from elements of distraction. The latter I do not see as the but rather as “alter-constructive.” They require an unlearning or unwinding that clears the space for transformed or new knowing. Yet this space will be qualitatively different after unlearning, as compared to a space wherein the former learning never took place. 5 Anthropology as we know it today is often acknowledged to be established as a result of imperialist greed (Eriksen & Nielsen, 2001). Yet, it is good to be aware that the discussion on when exactly “anthropology” started as a discipline has a stake that shows certain parallels with “truth and reconciliation” as it is being worked out in South Africa and in various forms in Rwanda, as well as the efforts made in Holocaust studies (Vidal-Naquet, 1992). Including awareness of the fragility of human knowledge and the vulnerability of scholarship to the shadow is an important contribution 1

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that I aim to make with this article. After all, colonialism and imperialism extend beyond the associations with early anthropology both historically (up to the present day) and geographically. I have opted to use the “tripod” of premodern, modern, and postmodern because of its frequent use not only in Integral Theory but also in anthropology. Yet, problematized by social theorists at the same time, I hope that you will take these categories lightly. Language offers an insight and a certain perspective on life, rather than that it coincides with it or can fully capture the nuance life is naturally infused with. The three categories gently refer to “phases,” and it is good to acknowledge that there are subphases to each of the three generic time periods, depending on how intricately one can afford to look at them. Moreover, we may need to include the diversity of individual researchers, conforming to, enacting, or diverging from the zeitgeist, if we want to get a full picture of anthropology’s past. 6 A noteworthy exception is Evans-Pritchard, who resisted this trend of fitting social observations in a natural law or generalization (Poggie et al., 1992). 7 The patterns of primitive societies were thought to be living fossils (Moore, 2004). The only variation on unilinealism was diffusionism that gave attention to how cultural traits might have spread across the globe from one common source. 8 I use all developmental terms in the footprints of how Wilber (2006) presents them in Integral Spirituality. It is important to keep in mind, however, that a group’s center of gravity has no direct connection to an individual’s center of gravity. As Wilber says (2006), groups don’t have a monad and the influence of one individual on a group’s center of gravity can be enormous. Hence, it may not be surprising that it is often a few anthropologists that are able to influence an entire group consciousness, especially in these early phases of anthropology. Moreover, it is often valuable to include with the general center of gravity the stage above and below that may be frequented at peak moments and moments of regression, respectively. 9 Edgar Morin has created an openness not only to study popular culture and the impact it has on others, but also on the impact it has on the researcher. Morin thereby not only integrates the subjectivity of a researcher in research, but also the researcher’s more general being-in-the-world as it is affected by the contingency of life beyond the particularities of a research setting (Montuori, 2008). 10 This is not without parallels to the way in which the extinction of species is held. The language used is that “cultures need to be preserved” (Parsell, 2002), which along the lines of premodern anthropology links the culture of “the other” to “nature,” while it is feared that the own culture would eradicate both nature and “nature-friendly culture.” Collective arrogance turned into collective fear of power (i.e., repressed arrogance), and the question now rises how to move toward a middle path. 11 I should here include also the downsides of developmental discourse that at times resembles imperialist discourse (Rahnema & Bawtree, 1997). 12 Again, the paradox is embraced as fruitful. Two poles are allowed in the same space without resolving the tension between them for once and for all. 13 And indeed, as was pointed out to me, the (leading) agents of imperialism were most often not academics. 14 Ernest Gellner (1988) describes, for example, how ecological stages of society reflect different kinds of “common cognition” and procedures of knowledge generation. Knowledge, according to Gellner, evolves from norm-loaded in hunting and gathering societies, sought through ritual, over explicit affirmations and injunctions in agrarian societies to referential knowledge based on empirical fact in industrial and post-industrial societies (Salzman, 2001). What would post-referential knowledge look like? 15 A fractal approach tends to invite us to talk in doubles. For example: how do we think about thinking; how do we do doing? 16 We can understand this as follows: if the subject of one stage becomes the object of the next (Kegan, 1982), there is, at the level of being of the (trans-)subject, an order that the subject does not have access to as objectifiable meaning. This may be one side of what the “meaningful” in culture consists of. The other half of it may be cultural knowing or cultural knowledge that has been automatized to the level that it is performed, known or felt implicitly and cannot—or 106

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only seldomly so—be retrieved by self-reflexive consciousness. 17 As we will see later, Strathern (2004) too proposes, with the concept of “partial connectedness,” another way to relate to culture than as chunks of meaning that can be polarized and opposed to one another. 18 As this section showed, it is important to hold this structure of Integral Anthropology in an integral embrace. This Russian doll model is necessary to maintain integral ethics, so that no one element of the AQAL model gets overprivileged and thus the systems approach to knowledge narrowed down. 19 The antahkarana is the name given in Hindu and theosophical philosophy to the part of the mind that connects the concrete mind or manas with the soul. The antahkarana thus stands for the abstract part of the mind that is devoid of emotional distraction. It is known for clear-sighting, and the straight direction with which it penetrates to the highest truths (Bailey, 2006). 20 Geographical location may be of importance, too: the American anthropological tradition tends to stress biological universals, while the European schools give more weight to cultural particulars, generally speaking. 21 The students whose texts I have consulted are: D. Smith, J. Scruggs, J. Berry, C.T. Lewis, P. Kelly, X. Chao, A. Scruggs, L. Lawrence, K. Mcghee-Snow, E. Porth, K. Neutzling, J. Edwards, H. Long, K. Chakov, C. Buzney, J. Marcoux, R. Briggs, J. Meyer, S. Hudson, C. Smith, M. Laughlin, and S. Hemmerstedt. 22 By “top-down” I refer to those approaches that aim to offer sound theories that are applicable to human beings as a general category. I will look at theories that do not just aim to discover traits of culture and traits that are present across culture, but dare to fathom what “having a culture” means in cosmic evolution. 23 Pluralities are not only acknowledged as vertical but also as horizontal: components always exist in multitudinous formations (De Landa, 2006). 24 This way I feel that De Castro allows a more 3-D visualization of how perspectives interact with one another. 25 An ethnography of things, it is hoped, may lead to new perspectives on our analytical assumptions of what count as “things.” The heuristic approach to things seeks to animate the option that our assumptions may be inappropriate and different from other people’s understandings of it. It is the goal of this approach to point toward the absolute productivity of non-definition—toward a new impulse within anthropology to move beyond the development of ever more nuanced filters through which to pass phenomena, through to engagement with things as conduits for concept production. Neither definition nor negative definition will suffice. To speak of absolute productivity in this sense is to suggest an openness of method that treating things as meanings dictates, contrasted here with the strategic foreclosures of elevating his principle to the level of a theoretical dictum. (Henare et al., 2007, p. 7) Rather than explaining “religion,” for example, cognitivists look at certain isolated practices that the Standard Model of religion considers religious (Stroeken, 2011a). It is good to remember Talal Asad’s (2003) critique that the image we have of religion in post-enlightenment Euro-American societies is itself culturally bound and historically recent. 27 Often I have heard, for example, an easygoing association being made between culture and a mythical or amber stage of development. I do not wish to deny the tremendous power of a healthy expression of amber altitude, uniting people and having a magic of its own, and, what is important in this context, imaginal potency. Yet, I hope to invite a progressive grounding in action of the knowledge that culture can originate in, have elements from, be perceived from, and practiced from virtually every stage of consciousness, since not all stages have received as much attention and interest. This is a natural result from culture, as a Lower-Left quadrant phenomenon, being independent from a single stage of consciousness. In practice, however, culture often tends to be equated with its more ethnocentric or even fundamentalist version, limiting the rich options we have available to us as human beings for individual and collective expression and learning. It is for this reason that I have aimed to address this tension in this article. 28 Balagangadhara (1994) challenges the idea that all people and cultures need a worldview in order to be successful and navigate themselves in the world, as well as the assumption that a fragmented or even wrong worldview is an indicator for an unhappy life of an individual. 26

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Parsell, D. (2002). Explorer Wade Davis on vanishing cultures. Retrieved May 5, 2012, from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/ news/2002/06/0627_020628_wadedavis.html. Peel, J.D.Y. (1987). History, culture and the comparative method: A West African puzzle. In L. Holy (Ed.), Comparative anthropology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Pinxten, R. (1999). Cultures die slowly: On intercultural communication. Antwerpen: Houtekiet Pinxten, R. & Orye, L.
(1997). Weten door vergelijken.
[Knowing by comparing]. In R. Pinxten, T. Venckeleers, & W. Verbeke (Eds.), Cultuur in vergelijkend perspectief [Culture in comparative perspective] (pp. 1-48). Antwerpen: Pelckmans. Pirsig, R.M. (1991). Lila: An inquiry into morals. New York, NY: Random House. Poggie, J.J., DeWalt, B.R., & Dressler, W.W. (1992). Introduction. In J.J. Poggie, B.R. DeWalt, and W.W. Dressler (Eds.), Anthropological research: Process and application (pp. 3-16). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Pollock, G. (2006). Introduction. Femininity: Aporia or sexual difference? In B.L. Ettinger (Ed.), The matrixial borderspace (pp. 1-38). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rahnema, M., & Bawtree, V. (Eds.). (1997). The postdevelopment reader. London: Zed Books. Rapport, N., & Overing, J. (2000). Social and cultural anthropology: The key concepts. New York, NY: Routledge. Rennie, B.S. (2007). Mircea Eliade and the perception of the sacred in the profane: Intention, reduction and cognitive theory. Temenos, 43(1), 183-208. Richards, R. (2010). Changes in anthropology fieldwork over time. Retrieved April 24, 2012, from http:// rebekahrichards.suite101.com/changes-in-anthropology-fieldwork-over-time-a195889. Rickman, H.P. (1979). Wilhelm Dilthey: Pioneer of the human studies. Berkeley, CA: University of California. Rowe, J.H. (1965). The Renaissance foundations of anthropology. American Anthropologist, 67, 1-20. Sahlins, M. (1999). What is anthropological enlightenment? Some lessons of the twentieth century. Annual Review of Anthropology, 28, i-xxiii. 110

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Salzman, P.C. (2001). Understanding culture: An introduction to anthropological theory. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press Inc. Scharmer, O. (2009). Theory U: Leading from the future as it emerges. San Francisco, CA: BK Business. Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simpson, R. (2004). Impossible gifts: Bodies, Buddhism and bioethics in contemporary Sri Lanka. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 10(4), 839-859. Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Oxford: Blackwell. Strathern, M. (2004). Partial connections. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Stroeken, K. (2008). Believed belief: Science/religion versus Sukuma magic. Social Analysis, 52(1), 144-165. Stroeken, K. (2011a). Questioning cognitive and interpretive takes on ritual. Anthropological Theory, 11(3), 355-372. Stroeken, K. (2011b). Why consciousness has no plural. In D. Aerts et al. (Eds.), Worldviews, science and us: Interdisciplinary perspectives on worlds, cultures and society (pp. 5-30). Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. Svoboda, R.E. (1993). Aghora II: Kundalini. Albuquerque, NM: Brotherhood of Life. Thalos, M. (1995). The disorder of things: Metaphysical foundations of the disunity of science [book review]. Philosophy of Science, 62(2), 351-353. Turner, V. (1995). The ritual process: Structure and antistructure. Chicago, IL: Aldine Transaction. Tylor, E.B. (1896). Anthropology: An introduction to the study of man and civilization. New York, NY: D. Appleton and Co. Van Binsbergen, W.M.J. (2003). Intercultural encounters: African and anthropological lessons towards a philosophy of interculturality. Berlin: LIT. Van Gennep, A. (1960). The rites of passage. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Vidal-Naquet, P. (1992). Assassins of memory: Essays on the denial of the Holocaust. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Visker, R. (1994). Transcultural vibrations. Ethical Perspectives, 1(2), 89-100.

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Wilber, Ken. (2003). Boomeritis: A novel that will set you free. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2006). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern

world. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Winther Braroe, N. (1975). Indian & white: Self-Image and interaction in a Canadian plains community. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

KAREN DE LOOZE, Ph.D.(c), is affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Center Leo Apostel, Brussels Free University in Belgium. Her doctoral work focuses on clinical encounters that involve the application of a definition of brain death and a practice of cadaveric organ donation in different contexts in India. With this study she makes converse perspectives from the fields of bioethics and medical anthropology. Karen has a background in pedagogy, social and cultural anthropology, and cultures and development studies. Her particular interest to combine developmental and cultural approaches, while maintaining sensitivity to typological diversity, originates in her bridging these three areas of study. Karen is currently working on a new project of “culture coaching” that aims to increase the adaptability of collectives to changing circumstances, by welcoming the “pro-active” of/in culture. With this project, she applies the insights she gathered while doing field research in a variety of different countries with her passion for coaching that she discovered as a student at Integral Coaching Canada.

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PERSPECTIVISM IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION William E. Paden The following plenary address was delivered on May 31, 2011, at the Twelfth National Symposium of the Brazilian Association for the History of Religions at the University of Juiz de Fora.1 The thematic focus of the symposium, “Experiences and Interpretations of the Sacred: Interfaces between Academic and Religious Knowledge,” is germane to the recent inquiry into the relationship between the discipline of religious studies and its institutional precedents in the current Brazilian educational milieu (social anthropology, philosophy of religion, and theology). The rationale for including this piece, which is not explicitly an integrally informed work of scholarship, is twofold. First, the plenary address itself is ethnographically significant as an intellectual and cultural event exemplifying the changing landscape of the study of religion in contemporary Brazilian universities, which are participating in a broader global trend: the emergence and development of the systematic study of religion independent of or in tandem with traditional theological curricula. This trend, which admits notable cross-cultural parallels and discontinuities, can be generally characterized as a liberalizing of educational institutions that are beginning to register the pedagogical importance of religious studies beyond the ambit of classical theological education or the common subsumption of the study of religion under the methodologies and course offerings of sociology, anthropology, or history departments.2 These global sociocultural processes invite critical context-specific and comparative scholarship on the part of future scholars of Integral Religious Studies. The second reason for including this piece is more content-driven. The plenary address focuses on navigating the methodological pluralism inherent in the study of religion—a desideratum for scholars of religion attempting to reconcile the secular study of religion with more theological and experiential approaches—with a method termed perspectivism. Paden’s approach, dubbed methodological perspectivism, is remarkably akin to the animating hermeneutic of Integral Theory: Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP). For example, Paden’s notion of the non-reductionistic uses and applications of perspectives or “frames” is coextensive with Ken Wilber’s notion of nonexclusion, the first principle of IMP.3 Also, Paden’s aperspectival approach to religious studies parallels Wilber’s insight that different paradigms elicit different content, and that these often contradictory findings can be harmoniously appreciated as corresponding to different aspects of a given phenomenon, and deemed accurate within the delimited parameters of that paradigm. Finally, Paden’s articulation of “reflexive framing” can be considered congruous with the third principle of IMP, enactment.4 Although Paden chooses to remain neutral to the emic claims of religious traditions, including their soteriologies and phenomenologies of awakening, and does not directly address the dimensions of verticality of perspectives elucidated in the IMP principle of unfoldment, his scholastic oeuvre can be recognized as an ally in the transdisciplinary project of integral thought and practice. Paden’s talk, in addition to his latest scholarship on panhuman patterns of religious behavior and new modalities of comparativism, are welcome gestures forward from the exclusively culture-specific discourse prevalent in postmodern approaches to religious studies. – Ben Williams

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he phenomenon of perspective lies at the heart of the study of religion. To study religion necessarily means studying the multiple and even opposite ways that subject matter is framed and thus created. Tonight I offer some reflections on that. I’ll address the theme in three parts. First, methodological perspective; second, institutional perspective; and third, comparative perspective. The first deals with the phenomenon of coexisting or multiple frameworks. The second discusses how disciplinary institutions in the study of religion frame the way religion is defined as subject matter. And the final discussion will briefly consider the notion of comparative perspective—a frame I consider indispensable to the study of religion. But first, a few introductory and general remarks. Perspective is of course a commonsense term, and in the simple sense just means a point of view. But when it factors into the study of religions, things quickly become complex; for the actual object of study changes as the perspectival frames change. Are we using a wide-angle lens aimed at capturing very general features? Or are we using a microscopic lens on religious practices in a particular, embedded context? Are we describing the views of religious insiders—or forming judgments as outsiders? Are we being empirical or speculative? It seems that any theory, any concept, any posing of a question, generates one landscape rather than another. Moreover, in the study of religion there are many terms that are analogous or complementary to the idea of perspective. These terms include: discourses, paradigms, narratives, language games, knowledge practices, epistemes, prototypes, frames of reference. And we also speak about tropes, schemas, models, agendas, maps, themes, and of course, theories. It is through such filters that some piece of religion is selected for description or explanation. And each of these parallel terms even brings a kind of conceptual agenda of its own. Sometimes the history of theories, or of the so-called “second order canon” of religious studies, is addressed in special, often required, courses on “approaches to religion.” The reading lists in such classes, as they evolve year after year, become a revealing indicator or barometer of how the field of religious studies thinks of itself, and how it continues to imagine or re-invent its ancestry. In North America, for example, these courses would include both classical and contemporary theories of religion. They might begin with figures like David Hume, Max Müller, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, the early anthropologists, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, and Mircea Eliade, and perhaps even Clifford Geertz, Peter Berger, and Robert Bellah. Studies would then move on to selections from the spectrum of poststructuralist, postcolonialist, and feminist theory, as well as the post-postmodern Rational Choice theories and cognitivist or evolutionary approaches. Such courses are designed to showcase our intellectual resources, yet they sometimes have very different plotlines. For example, is it a story of the contrast between outdated master narratives giving way to a postcolonial approach? Or is the course presented as a toolbox of methods, where different concepts are shown to be useful for dealing with or showing different aspects of religion? Is it an exercise in studying the historical locatedness or embeddedness of all thinking about religion, and thus finding a way through the forest of otherwise disjunctive discourses? Is it a story of the historical progress of the human mind in coming to an increasingly fuller and better understanding of religion? Whatever else it is, the history of the study of religion is an exemplification of the phenomenon of framing. To that idea I now turn. In relation to the theme of this symposium, the study of framing should be a helpful model for addressing issues of communicative interface among religious studies scholars.

I. Methodological Perspectivism

The Phenomenon of Framing and Reflexive Framing “Framing” is a metaphor for perspective. It is one useful way of thinking about it. Whereas the word perspective is a somewhat passive term, framing is verbal, more active. To frame is to construct, to arrange, but also to enclose, to delimit, to omit. In other words, to frame something is to impose specific shape on that Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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something—but framing also functions as a means of excluding what is outside the frame. For example, we see that double function in ritual framing. The term framing is used in many other areas of life, showing its huge variety of features and nuances, all suggestive for the study of religion. I will quickly mention a few: •

• •

•

• •

In politics, rhetoric, and media studies one speaks of “framing the debate.” This means that the words chosen to present an issue (freedom-fighter—or terrorist?) are designed to influence or manipulate how the audience will think about it In the vocabulary of criminal law, to frame means to contrive or manufacture evidence against an innocent person so that a verdict of guilty is assured In social psychology, frame analysis shows how everyday social experience is structured and given meaning by an inevitable sequence of framings, from moment to moment Builders speak of “framing up” a new house following a certain functional design. Once the frame is built, the details fall into place but are limited to the structure of the frame In the arts, framing is what arranges one kind of aesthetic experience rather than another In the sciences, hypotheses and instrumentations frame how empirical evidence will be gathered and adjudicated

In the broadest sense, then, all frames, whether technical and theoretical, or existential and personal, whether they are imaginary or evidence-tested, are actions and instruments by which some aspect of the world, some kind of “evidence,” comes into view. It comes into view through the distinctive shape of the frame. Now, obviously none of these frames, none of these scannings of the world, constitutes the whole of the world. None is complete or final. Even the grandest scientific and religious theories of everything will ultimately be selections, delimitations, exclusionary, constrained by limitations of language, location, and human finitude.

Problems with Framing As suggested, framing brings potential problems with regard to academic interface that need to be exposed and clarified. The first problem of framing is overextension—forcing the frame to include more than it is built for, making it apply beyond its natural limits. Surely this is partly because framing is a disciplinary discourse, that is, targeted for discourse-specific audiences, and consequently can have something of a colonizing, territorial nature, driven by social partisanship. Here, frames, especially in the form of new theories, become commodities, having social value, social currency, with links to in-group rhetoric, approval, and power. This does not make them wrong; but it does explain the urge to self-importance, exaggeration, and occasional triumphalism. The frame easily becomes bloated, hypertrophied, greedy. In the Nietzschean sense here, interpretation is driven by will, passion, and value. One might speak of a certain “fever” of interpretation, a certain elevated tone that a commitment to the frame strives to sustain. The second problem is omission. This is a variation on the first problem. If the frame is colonizing, this normally means that all real alternatives outside the frame are neglected or suppressed. Discourses and phenomena that cannot be useful within the frame in effect become invisible. In terms of optical metaphors, framed seeing can create “blind spots.” A third problem follows, especially in the realm of theory: Stereotyping what is outside the frame. For 114

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example: other discourses. For any frame is a choice amidst others and in academia is often defended by discrediting others. This is done through essentializing, caricaturing, labeling, and using polarizing terms. The figures and theories outside the frame then become cardboard-like, even cartoonish. They may be dispelled with accusatory mantras like “sui generis” or “Enlightenment project.” The many contemporary approaches to the study of religion—for example, the empirical, historical, phenomenological, and post-structuralist—all embody some of these issues with framing.

The Need for Reflexive Framing The problems of framing might be addressed in three ways: cleaner definition of a frame’s limits, recognition of the “aspectival” nature of religion, and acknowledgment of the mutually constitutive nature of frames and their objects. First, reflexive framing means acknowledging the limited purposes of one’s frame. This involves distinguishing the frame’s scope—no matter how broad or supposedly holistic—from levels of analysis that lie outside it. It means stipulating what the frame is doing and not doing. It means to accept the partiality of one’s project, to stick to one’s data and frame-based evidences. It means to see that one’s frame does not encompass “the meaning of it all,” or, in our present field, the “meaning of religion.” It means to suspend or restrain the hegemonizing, reductionistic, generalizing fever. A good classical example of methodological bracketing and framing is William James’ (1902) approach in his classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience. He says that just “for the purposes of these lectures” he will choose one meaning of the term religion in which he wishes to interest his audience, namely the personal, experiential meaning. Admittedly, he says, this is a “narrow view” and a “fraction” of the topic. He asks his audience then to accept what he calls his stipulated, “arbitrary” definition of the subject, in full awareness of the aspects of religion he is not going to deal with. Mircea Eliade, however controversial he may be today, at least rather famously made a self-conscious choice of level of observation in studying religious phenomena. Religion should be studied by all disciplines, he says, but his choice was to describe it as a religious system of behavior. Second, we need to acknowledge that religion is aspectival. With a subject like religion, one deals with pieces, features, partial views, aspects, not wholes—even where the so-called aspects are themselves combinations of features. Most contributions to the study of religion are books addressing such combinations (for example, male sacrificial cults, hybridity in new religious movements, or the orality of myth). In looking at the range of perspectives on religion, what strikes many of us is not that some are right and some are wrong, but that each corresponds to a different aspect or configuration of the topic. This is why so-called explanations of “religion” are often so unsatisfactory. They fail to see that “religion” is not an object, but a word that points to an endless number of possible objects, any one of which might require a different explanation. Finally, a third factor in what I am calling reflexive framing is acknowledgment of the circularity between a frame and its object. Imagine the different theories of religion that could be generated if any one of the following were taken as the prototypal religious “object” to be explained: social charity, world renunciation, orgiastic possession trances, encountering aliens from other planets, a suicide bomber, or an origins myth. Likewise, theories go about picking only those objects that illustrate and confirm their idea. Now, because of the difference between prototypal objects, different interpretations of religion are rarely, if ever, interpretations of the same thing (for the theories are then “about” something different). Genuine theoretic debate occurs when scholars are unequivocally analyzing the same object, the same data. And that may not even be theoretically possible insofar as the object of explanation is already differentially construed, contextualized, or defined according to the terms of the one doing the explaining. So, these are a few thoughts on methodological perspectivism, by way of the notion of framing. The strength of framing is that it is attention-directing; its liability is what it omits or distorts. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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II. Framing Religion as a Subject Matter: Disciplinary Contexts I turn now to my second application of perspectivism. So far I have been using the word religion as though it were a subject matter. This is because my own institutional background frames it this way. We are familiar with the idea that academic departments and degree programs frame, embed, and transmit knowledge. As environments they create the stage for discourse about whether or how religion is special subject matter. Thus, we can speak of institutional framing. Now, to start with, consider the possible difference in how religion is construed within a religion department or program as compared with non-religion departments. The overall academic goals, social contexts, and training will differ. For a department of religion has a dedicated subject matter, by definition, like music history, economics, or political science. The purpose of such departments is to investigate a particular topic, a particular feature of culture. These are “subject matter” departments. In the type of North American department I have been in, public and secular, the approach to religion is programmatically multidimensional. This is particularly clear at the undergraduate level. There, students who concentrate in religious studies are required to take courses 1) introducing the academic study of religion; 2) studying the history of diverse religious traditions, typically including both Asian and biblical cultures; 3) engaging cross-cultural themes in religion like ritual, myth, and mysticism; and 4) reviewing the history of theories of religion. Thus, students are taught to investigate the histories, self-representations, and practices of particular traditions, but also to investigate the many theories that explain and compare religious phenomena. This then forms a kind of shared academic culture, where the different parts of the system—historical, comparative, and theoretical—belong together and begin to shed light on each other, and culminate in the student’s final project and departmental seminar for religion majors. Now, in contrast, as far as I know, that programmatic-ness about the topic of religion is absent in departments that do not specialize in religion. There, one researches parts of religious history that make explanatory sense within those other disciplinary fields. The secular religion departments of the United States are rooted in a particular history of social and educational values. Especially at the undergraduate degree level, they are connected with the goals of liberal arts education, particularly in the humanities. Those goals include: understanding human variety, both domestic and global, as a means toward fostering deprovincialization, but also toward understanding forms of human meaning and expression, such as religion, or in the case of the art department, art. The secular religion departments have thus tried to distinguish themselves from seminary or theological models of education. In short, between the polarity of science and theology, a middle academic way or space was being institutionalized and framed. This was legitimized by the U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1963 that advocated the objective study of comparative religion as part of public, secular education. University curriculums divide the world into academic subject matters. Thus, for many secular, nonconfessional university departments, religion is not a theoretically essentialized entity, but simply a term pointing to a range of cultural behavior among others, others such as art or economics. The area “religion” is stipulated as something to be studied—without preconceived explanations, and without the assumption of airtight boundaries. What is that area, in the case of religion? Simply put, the distinctive “religious” feature of culture is behaviors and beliefs about interactions with gods. “Gods” here may serve as shorthand for spiritual or superhuman beings, thus including ancestors and spirits, and of course the gods, bodhisattvas, and saints of the historical faiths. Religious traditions would be those based on such gods and that act out that belief through periodic rites and practices. There is nothing esoteric here. This very broad “subject matter” frame, or “subject matter approach to religion,” as I am calling it here, does not mean religion has become an essentialized entity. It does not mean that religion is a privileged category in some value-oriented sense. It does not mean that religion is necessarily based on a transcendent 116

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reality or that gods exist independently. It does not mean that religion is a good thing or bad thing per se. Nor is it, I think, a particularly colonialist, ideological, or gendered use of the term. Moreover, the notion of religious “traditions” does not dictate that such groups are always homogeneous, tightly bounded, or based only on elite orthodoxies. And whatever the word religion meant historically, or what it may mean 50 years from now, the idea that gods and their cultures are the subject matter of religious studies in a modern university context seems to me like a reasonable heuristic framework. Religion here is obviously multidimensional, to be explored from every angle, which is why there are hundreds of scholarly sections and subsections representing specialties in the academies of religion. Moreover, as a topic, the academic study of religion is not defined by a single method, a single science. And this is why aspectivalism, so to speak, and reflexive framing should be natural parts of the discourse. Again, none of this implies that religion is a separate form of culture. Rather, to pursue questions about religion is to immediately discover that its features are intertwined with every form of culture and behavior, and embedded in diverse and often changing social values. At the same time, along with the research that pursues the place of religion in other fields, thus often delimiting the subject matter to being only an object of a particular science, there are two traditional features intrinsic to the study of religion per se that we should not neglect and that are part of any programmatic model. The first is the descriptive understanding of the religious insider’s own world of practices and the second is cross-cultural or comparative perspective on the recurrent forms of religious life. I’ll say something briefly about the first, and then address the second in the last section. The study of “lived religion” is in a way our first, if not primary, subject matter or data. As Emile Durkheim put it, religious worlds have a life of their own. Like any form of culture, whether courtship, culinary arts, sport or politics, religious worlds have their special protocols, coded languages, and other internal reference systems. Thus, religious behaviors act out mythic paradigms and other forms of sacred observance; they engage in ritualization and sacramentalization and through these form networks of temporal/spatial rhythms. The study of religion, then, includes the study of religious life as a way, or dimension of a way, that humans inhabit their worlds. This is why the notion of verstehen, or “understanding,” plays an essential role for the historian of religion. It is also why the study of theologies and religious philosophies plays a role in understanding religious worldviews. In those genres, one can study what is real, true, or sacred in the voices of the insider’s own universe. In such descriptive, phenomenological space, there can take place a certain interface between academic and religious understanding, between secular and religious knowledge. It is a space, for example, where the outsider’s analytic use of the term sacrality and its religious value for insiders take on a certain parallelism, correspondence, or complementarity. For when justly carried out, the practice of describing religious worlds and the practice of explaining them should have elements of congruity.

III. Reflections on Comparative Perspective What about comparative or cross-cultural perspective? For the founders of the science of religion this was the exciting new possibility as the Western world discovered what lay beyond. Indeed, a panoramic, global view of the many recurring themes and variations of religious life is probably what most people mean by “perspective” in thinking about religion. For surely there are recurring patterns among the thousands of religious worlds. The global view can even point to the idea that religious worldmaking is one of humanity’s shared preoccupations, and thus normal or natural to the species. Now, as the theme of this speech is “perspective,” I cannot avoid these questions that have occupied me for half a century. For studying the history of religions is not just about individual histories, but also about figuring out what we can learn from the coexistence of all of them. Without cross-cultural perspective, the subject matter of religious studies would only lie scattered Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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about in isolated cases. As well, it would be impossible to see what is different about religious phenomena unless one could see common points in relation to which things could be seen as different. In the classical years, the identification of patterns such as kinds of sacred space and sacred time, kinds of ritual, and the archetypal function of mythic paradigms added a vocabulary to this pursuit. If there is to be a science of religion, if religion is to be a subject matter, then some degree of systematic consideration of its shared or widespread features would seem to be essential. And yet, as we all know, generalizations at the cross-cultural level have been seriously challenged, primarily because they have seemed to ignore cultural context. The idea of comparability, in postmodern terms, has been replaced by the idea of incomparability. Such skepticism comes from two critical points: The first is the supposed incomparability of cultures, since a supposedly common theme may have different meanings in different cultural contexts. The second problem is that the very categories we would use to compare with, including our notions of religion, are themselves embedded in our own culturally distinctive worldviews. It would seem that we are in an age of radical difference and discontinuity. But comparative perspective can be re-framed in many ways, and there are surely signs that this has been going on. The influential work of Jonathan Z. Smith (1978, 2004) is but one case in point. In the methodological sense, comparison needs more controlled framing, that is, by comparing selected features or functions rather than “whole” entities, cultures, or phenomena. Not all pilgrimages are the “same,” but points of resemblance or common features can be found. Carefully selected resemblances or analogies regarding mythic and ritual behaviors does not mean that the examples are identical. In other words, a comparative pattern can pick out one point of resemblance that is of interpretive interest and still leave untouched all other meanings and contexts. For example, there are some resemblances between Jewish and Hindu protocols regarding rules of purity. As well, sometimes the point of resemblance is very general: Apples and oranges differ in many ways, but they are both examples of the genus fruit, many of whose characteristics they share. Likewise with religious traditions, which, on a resemblance basis, share many of the generic features of myth, ritual, and sacrality—not necessarily in terms of cultural content, but more in terms of the human behaviors that produce and sustain them. I will now briefly describe some of the new developments that bear on such comparative perspective, that is, the attempt to get behind cultural units of comparison to common human or species-based patterns of social behavior. Walter Burkert’s published Gifford Lectures, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions (1996), opened the door to this way of framing religious data in relation to evolved human dispositions such as gift-giving, reciprocity, communicative signaling, and status deference. He did this in a way that blended phenomenological and biological levels. Since then there has been an explosion of cross-disciplinary research on evolutionary bases and patterns of religious life, and I find this a potentially interesting direction to explore. Isn’t the study of religion, in modern contexts, ultimately aimed at the study of human nature? I suspect that just as biblical worldviews and histories have influenced the study of religion, so evolutionary perspectives and horizons will play some of that same role. For the study of religion has always been correlated with the worldview of its time. If framed carefully, the science of religion can benefit from connection with some of the “deep history” of humanity described by the evolutionary sciences. Let me illustrate. The idea here is that religious behaviors can be shown to improvise upon evolved human patterns of behavior and sociality. Consider human groups. Presumably group life is an enduring trait of our species and includes many features that become parts of religious traditions. Thus, human groups mark their individuals with signs of belonging to the in-group; human groups maintain and transmit collective memories of their imagined histories; human groups regulate violations of the group norms and reward mutuality; human groups perform periodic rites and practices that maintain their worldview and social order; and human groups invest their representative objects, persons and institutions with status, prestige and sacrality. Religious traditions, because they are group based, play out all of these patterned behaviors, often lavishly, sometimes 118

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pathologically, but with endless and innovative, distinctive cultural styles. This, I take it, is part of culture’s own biodiversity. Consider also common human dispositions for social communication, which also form many features of religion. Biologists know that humans engage in behaviors like reciprocal exchange, signaling techniques, stereotypic displays, altruism and cooperation, submission and status dominance. Would the history of religion, with its pronounced examples of these features, including the extensive and often nuanced ways communication with gods takes place, be an excellent source for amplifying our understanding of these patterns? Are there new ways of framing patterns in comparative religion here? In any case, the methodology of careful framing should still apply, as it would to any level of theorizing. This means: bracketing of metaphysical and other foundationalist explanations that lie outside the immediate evidence, focusing on aspects rather than whole cultural or psychological entities, and acknowledging the mutual coexistence of scales and levels of observation. The wide-angle lens on shared species-level patterns—our understanding of which is itself still evolving—is after all one lens among others. So those are some of my thoughts on perspectivism this evening. To summarize: I have tried to apply the idea of perspective in three domains: the dynamics of framing; the institutional framing of religion as a subject matter; and then, with your indulgence, some ideas about reframing comparative perspective. I hope it is clear that, in my view, perspectivism is not a grand theory asserting that every view is equally valid. I have not taken it in that direction. Rather, my purpose has been more modest: namely, to contemplate how perspectival thinking may provide helpful metaphors for negotiating how we collectively practice our vocation as scholars of religion.

NOTES I have chosen to retain the oral format of this presentation rather than convert the lecture into a research article. Global transformations in the study of religion are documented in the book Religious Studies: A Global View (Alles, 2008) as well as the scholarly journals Pantheon (2011; Vol. 6, No. 1) and Religion (2011; Vol. 41, No. 2), whose articles are revised and expanded versions of papers presented at the Twentieth World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions that took place in Toronto, Canada, in 2010. 3 For Wilber’s articulation of these principles, see Excerpt B of the Kosmos Trilogy, Part II, at http://wilber.shambhala. com/html/books/kosmos/excerptB/part2.cfm. 4 This understanding of the IMP principle of enactment is described more explicitly in Interpreting the Sacred: Ways of Viewing Religion (Paden, 2003): “to each interpreter the object seen ineluctably corresponds to a meaningful datum or category in the viewer’s world” (p. 127). The Portuguese translation of this monograph, Interpretando o Sagrado, and its reception by Brazilian scholars of religion was likely instrumental in Paden’s invitation to present his plenary address. 1 2

REFERENCES Alles, G. (Ed.). (2008). Religious studies: A global view. New York, NY: Routledge. Burkert, W. (1996). Creation of the sacred: Tracks of biology in early religions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James, W. (1902). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. London: Longmans,

Green, and Co. Paden, W.E. (2003). Interpreting the sacred: Ways of viewing religion. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Smith, J.Z. (1978). Map is not territory: Studies in the history of religions. Chicago, IL: Universitya of Chicago Press. Smith, J.Z. (2004). Relating religion: Essays in the study of religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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THE PARTICIPATORY TURN

Book Review

Bruce Alderman

Reviewed: Ferrer, J.N., & Sherman, J.H. (Eds.). (2008). The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Integral and participatory approaches to religious studies arguably share a number of core questions and concerns. How might we chart paths through and beyond the cultural-linguistic paradigm that prevails in the Western academic study of religion? How might we foster visionary, meta-paradigmatic approaches that honor the gifts of premodern, modern, and postmodern forms of religious belief and praxis, and that integrally engage and affirm the diversity of theoretical orientations and academic disciplines that have emerged within the field to date? Can we develop culturally sensitive and philosophically robust approaches to the challenge of religious diversity that neither promote hegemonic inclusivism nor slide into depthless relativism? Can we cultivate and train a generation of religious scholar-practitioners capable of navigating within both metaphysical and post-metaphysical spaces with equal facility and finesse? Readers who find the above questions to be relevant and engaging will find much to reward them in Jorge Ferrer and Jacob Sherman’s (2008) landmark text, The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies. Consisting of an introduction, which provides a scholarly and erudite survey of current challenges and movements within the field of religious studies; three theoretical essays, which outline a number of the important historical and philosophical dimensions of the participatory paradigm; and eight theological essays, which both review and enact a participatory approach within their respective traditions (Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, and Western esoteric, among others), the anthology provides much food for thought for religious scholars and practitioners alike. Of particular interest to integral practitioners, I believe, will be the nuanced discussions of the pragmatic and enactive turns within religious studies, the participatory-enactive model of religious pluralism outlined by Ferrer (2008) and several other authors, and a genealogical survey of the participatory paradigm, which spans thinkers well familiar within the integral corpus: from Plato and Plotinus, to Meister Eckhart, to Schelling and Peirce, to name a few. One of the central aims of this text, which is multiply realized by its contributing authors, is the articulation and enactment of a participatory approach to religion that recognizes and acknowledges the role of language and culture in the mediation of religious knowledge, without reductively concluding (as some modern religious scholars do) that linguistic and cultural factors ontologically exhaust religious phenomena. Such reductionist approaches tend to overlook the irreducible complexity of religious phenomena, which include many non-linguistic factors, such as somatic, affective, energetic, contemplative, and imaginal modes of knowledge and experience. However, Ferrer and Sherman are equally interested in avoiding the perennialist universalism or inclusivism common in transpersonal circles, which hold that, at depth, there is a singular spiritual experience which all mystics or religionists ultimately access, but which then gets variously interpreted or explained according to cultural or other conditioning factors. Participatory scholars are attempting, Correspondence: Bruce Alderman, 1416-C Del Rio Circle, Concord, CA 94518. E-mail: [email protected]. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 2012, 7(2), pp. 120–126

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in other words, to navigate a path between the Myth of the Framework, which in its strong constructivist form regards religious phenomena as primarily linguistic or cultural creations; and the Myth of the Given, which posits a pre-given, underlying metaphysical reality or spiritual dimension that is available to be uncovered and experienced by all. Drawing on a diverse range of influences (from Francisco Varela’s enactive model of cognition, to postmodern and feminist critical thought, to post-metaphysical and neo-pragmatist inquiries into the nature of truth, to postcolonial revaluations of emic, experiential, and extra-linguistic sources of knowledge), Ferrer and Sherman thus propose a participatory-enactive model of spiritual knowing and a pluralistic, ontologically “thick” orientation toward spiritual truths. More specifically, in terms of their individual contributions to the text, Ferrer (2008) outlines a participatory model of religious enactment that is capable of non-reductively accounting for the plurality of religious worlds and forms of salvation described by the world’s major (and minor) religious traditions, and Sherman (2008) situates the participatory-enactive paradigm within a broad historical stream of participatory models that helps readers to contextualize and better understand both the venerable roots and the novel promise of this approach. As mentioned above, and as Wilber (2000, 2006) also does in his recent work, Ferrer (2002, 2008) adopts an enactive epistemology to aid him in the development of a broadly integrative, radically pluralist orientation. For readers not familiar with this approach, the enactive paradigm is a biological model of embodied cognition that was first articulated by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch (1991) in The Embodied Mind. In the context of their discussion of the possible interface of cognitive scientific and Buddhist epistemologies, the notion of enactive, embodied cognition was proposed as a “middle way” between representationism (the Myth of the Given) and strong constructivism (the Myth of the Framework). According to this view, the representationist perspective is naïve and no longer can be sustained. Our concepts do not simply represent observer-independent, self-existing objects, unrelated to our activity in the world; our categories do not objectively reflect what is already there. On the other hand, however, the enactive paradigm also rejects the strong constructivist idea that reality is entirely an intersubjective creation, or that it is wholly determined by our linguistic or cultural conditioning. From an enactive point of view, then, the world for any organism is best understood not as a pre-given reality which the observer passively and more or less accurately reflects, but as an emergent domain of distinctions enacted by the organism’s unique history of sensorimotor involvement with its wider environment. Within the context of religious experience, Ferrer (2008) argues, an enactive approach suggests that religious phenomena are neither metaphysical givens nor cultural-linguistic constructions, but rather are creatively emergent, ontologically thick enactments, ineluctably shaped but not wholly determined by, or reducible to, our linguistic categories or cognitive frameworks. More specifically, Ferrer contends that distinct religious worlds and soteriological horizons are enacted through disciplined and spontaneous engagement of religious practitioners with a non-determined spiritual power or reality, such that emergent religious phenomena and spiritual realizations must be regarded as both constructed and revealed. This move accomplishes two ends at once: 1) it rescues religious phenomena from metaphysical erasure by reductive approaches that seek to explain religion wholly in linguistic or other non-religious terms; and 2) it allows for the justification of a robust religious pluralism, since the plurality of religious worldspaces and soteriological ends is a logical consequence of a participatory view which regards all of reality as creatively and interdependently emergent. Regarding the latter end, while Ferrer (2008) indeed holds that there are multiple religious worlds and forms of realization, he stresses that this does not lead to a flatland relativism in which there can be no basis for comparison or evaluative critique among traditions. To illustrate his position, he suggests the metaphor of an ocean with many shores: genuine religious paths converge in a common expanse, but this expanse is bounded by multiple distinctive landscapes and ecologies. What is the common ocean or expanse? Ferrer (2008) argues for a pragmatic rather than a metaphysical meeting point: the overcoming of selfishness and Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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limiting perspectives. Various traditions can be compared and evaluated for the degree to which they help practitioners realize these or related practical ends, for instance, without having to presuppose that spiritual experience or realization in each tradition involves engagement or enactment of the same spiritual realities. Integrally informed readers may find Ferrer’s model of enactment to be less developed or sophisticated than Wilber’s (2002, 2006), in some respects, but I believe they will nevertheless appreciate his creative use of the model to address the thorny problems of religious diversity and conflicting religious truth claims. Integral religious scholars and practitioners may also appreciate his compelling critique of many common models of interreligious ranking, as he points out that comparative theologians have frequently used quite similar comparative criteria to come up with disparate and incommensurable rankings of metaphysical systems. Is a personal or theistic approach superior, for instance, or an impersonal, non-theistic one? He argues that, in a participatory context, the comparative ranking of such metaphysical factors is no longer tenable, since a single underlying metaphysical substrate is no longer presupposed. Such a conclusion is compatible, as well, with the post-metaphysical, enactive framing of Integral Theory, particularly since mystical states are no longer hierarchically arranged and the quadrant model (which supports and informs the notion of the Three Faces of Spirit) posits the co-emergence of personal and impersonal, first- and third-person, perspectives on reality (Wilber, 2006). For readers interested in a fuller discussion of the relation of Ferrer’s work to Wilber’s post-metaphysical spirituality, please see my article, “Opening Space for Translineage Practice” (pp. 57-79), in this issue Ferrer’s participatory-enactive model is helpfully contextualized, as I noted above, by an essay by Jacob Sherman (2008) that traces a genealogy of participatory approaches from Plato to the present day. The overview is quite instructive, and should help readers to better appreciate both the evolution of participatory thinking over the centuries, and the close historical relationship between participatory and integral lineages (since many of the same thinkers are cited as integral pioneers) (McIntosh, 2007; Wilber, 1995). In a broad overview, Sherman (2008) identifies three major phases of participatory thinking, from Plato’s methexis or formal participation, in which all objects are participant in, and suffused with, the divine, timeless forms; to Thomas Aquinas’ existential participation, which sees the dynamic act of being (esse) as simultaneously each being’s most intimate core, distinct from its formal being (essentia), and as an active (ever-renewing) participatory gift of the divine; to Eckhart’s or Schelling’s creative participation, which recognizes creativity not as an exclusive property of the divine, but as properly belonging to each creature as well, such that human creativity is itself inseparable from (though not necessarily equal with) the creative, generative power of divinity. Here, then, are the foundations of the evolutionary forms of spirituality now gaining popularity, where the human and divine are co-participant in, and co-implicated in, the evolution of the cosmos (Cohen, 2011; McIntosh, 2007; Skolimowski, 1995; Wilber, 2006). Ferrer’s participatory-enactive paradigm is a further extension or development of creative participation, although as Sherman points out, these three forms of participation are not mutually exclusive and may be employed, in different measure and to different ends, by various participatory philosophers. In “Participation, Complexity, and the Study of Religion,” the second theoretical essay in the volume, Sean Kelly (2008) reflects on the contributions that Edgar Morin’s complexity theory can make to participatory thought. Of particular interest to integral readers may be the useful, clarifying distinctions and recursive relations he draws between embedded and enactive forms of participation (oikos and autos in Morin’s work). While Kelly’s initial discussion of these distinctions will likely be familiar to integrally informed readers— embedded and enactive participation are reminiscent of communion and agency in holonic theory—his explanation of their complex, generative co-implication in the process Morin describes as auto-eco-reorganization is insightful, and nicely illustrates the complexity of tetra-enactive processes. (The tetra-enactive dimensions of auto-eco-reorganization become apparent when Kelly points out that, for Morin, these dialogical and recursive relations include subjective and cultural as well as objective and systemic features of the world.1) 122

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Kelly notes the similarity of Morin’s model to Wilber’s, in fact, but also stresses their difference with regard to the role that holarchy plays within their respective systems. Morin accepts the existence of hierarchical or holarchical patterns of organization, but argues that the move from systems to complexity thinking involves, among other things, the recognition that a whole is not only greater, but in important respects also less, than the sum of its parts (Kelly, 2008). The whole is exceeded by its parts in several important ways (i.e., the parts possess withdrawn qualities or potentials that are not presently included in the “order” of the integrating organism, and retain the potential for autonomous activation), and to some extent the health of the whole depends on the presence of these relatively autonomous agents.2 Thus, an adequate description of living systems requires the inclusion, Kelly (2008) argues, of hierarchic, heterarchic, and anarchic patterns of organization together, in complex (complementary and antagonistic) interrelation. Each of these organizational patterns can be further correlated with the concepts of mono-centrism, poly-centrism, and a-centrism, respectively. A model which privileges holarchy is likely to miss or downplay this complexity, and following its own auto-logic (the logic of autopoietic or systemic closure) may lead in religious or political contexts to various forms of monistic inclusivism. Wilber is, of course, quite aware of the potential to misuse hierarchical thinking, and is careful to distinguish between healthy and dominator hierarchies. Kelly suggests, however, that a focus on healthy hierarchy is not sufficient to address this particular issue. Hierarchy in any form, when relied upon as a privileged or primary organizational metaphor, has the potential to over-privilege systemic closure or mono-centrism. Thus, following Morin, and relating these ideas to the field of religious studies, Kelly argues that a complexity view—which holds hierarchy/mono-centrism, heterarchy/poly-centrism, and anarchy/a-centrism in interdependent relation—can provide participatory religious scholars with the conceptual resources to adopt a similarly complex, non-reductionistic stance in relation to the perennial religious antagonisms such as those among monotheistic, polytheistic, and non-theistic traditions, or among universalist and relativist religious orientations. Regarding the latter, and in agreement with Ferrer (2008), Kelly suggests that perennialist/ universalist approaches, in their celebration of oneness, tend to emphasize the closed auto-logic of enactive participation. And relativist/pluralist orientations, in their prizing of alterity, conversely stress open eco-logic and embedded participation. But from a participatory view, which recognizes enactment and embedment as not only dialogically but recursively related (enactment is embedded, and embedment is enactive), these antagonisms are not problems to be resolved ultimately in the direction of one pole or the other. They are creative and generative tensions in perichoretic play. In the second half of The Participatory Turn, eight religious scholar-practitioners contribute essays that explore a participatory approach within the context of a variety of religious and philosophical orientations, from Judaism to Christianity, Islam, Western esotericism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the philosophical work of Henri Bergson. For the purposes of this review, I will highlight only a few which I believe may be of interest to readers of this issue, but each essay demonstrates a participatory sensibility in action, and many offer resources from within the represented traditions that can help deepen, expand, and refine participatory understanding. In “Esoteric Paradigms and Participatory Spirituality in the Teachings of Mikhaël Aïvanhov,” Lee Irwin (2008) discusses the participatory and enactive dimensions of the spiritual life and practice of the Bulgarian-French mystic, Mikhaël Aïvanhov. The chapter is of note particularly for its introductory discussion of the problem of metaphysics in postmodern, humanistic, and transpersonal approaches to religious studies, and for its insightful reflections on the scope and promise of a participatory metaphysical orientation. With my own interest in interreligious dialogue, comparative theology, and translineage practice, I especially appreciated his remarks on the problematic or overly limiting orientations toward metaphysics commonly exhibited by both “insider” and “outsider” approaches to the study of religion. Irwin argues, in short, that proponents of insider approaches to religion tend to absolutize their particular metaphysical perspectives, and consequently Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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end up advocating either exclusivist or inclusivist interreligious orientations; whereas proponents of humanistic or postmodern, outsider approaches are often dismissive of metaphysical claims altogether, choosing instead to explain religion in non-metaphysical terms (e.g., as a linguistic, cultural, or biological activity), and to bracket out or deny many of a tradition’s core ontological beliefs (p. 199). A participatory approach, Irwin suggests, offers a middle path between these extremes—allowing for a tradition’s ontological claims to be taken seriously, within a participatory-enactive framing, while also avoiding the problematic metaphysical closure of many insider or even universalist/transpersonal approaches to the study of religion. Regarding Aïvanhov himself, Irwin presents him as an exemplar of a participatory approach. This portion of the essay, however, was less compelling for me. I am not very familiar with Aïvanhov’s teachings, but from Irwin’s descriptions, his participatory orientation strikes me as a modernist form of esoteric metaphysics similar to that found in theosophical or other early 20th-century movements. It is participatory to the extent that it encourages practitioners to creatively engage with and strive to embody spiritual truths in a multi-dimensional way (involving spirit, mind, heart, and body), but its epistemology appears to be essentially ontotheological or committed to the metaphysics of presence. As such, it does not exemplify the post-postmodern, enactive sensibility that characterizes either Wilber’s (2006) post-metaphysical project or Ferrer’s (2008) participatory one. It certainly can be re-interpreted from either point of view, and it may be fruitful to do so, but it does not appear to embody such an understanding in its own teachings. In “Connecting Inner and Outer Transformation,” Buddhist teacher Donald Rothberg (2008) presents an integrative, participatory model of Buddhism that equally engages personal and social dimensions of spiritual practice. Suggesting that the complex challenges of our age demand the development of new religious approaches that honor and integrate subjective, objective, and intersubjective domains of experience, Rothberg reviews several examples of the fissures between spiritual and social approaches that have predominated in the past, and then introduces a matrix model of spiritual practice he developed to help his own students and colleagues better integrate these fundamental orientations. In particular, he suggests a nine-field matrix based on three fundamental perspectives (individual, relational, and collective), which are visualized as mutually interactive and interpenetrating domains. For instance, one can take an individual approach to individual practice (meditation), or a relational approach to individual development (psychotherapeutic practice), or an individual or relational approach to exploring collective conditioning (analyzing the impact of sexism on individual or community spiritual life), or even a collective approach to relational reconciliation or healing (through broad institutional programs or reforms), and so on. For readers knowledgeable of Integral Theory, these recommendations will likely sound strongly reminiscent of aspects of the Integral model. Rothberg (2008) mentions Wilber’s work in his essay, but does not appear to directly give him credit for any of the above concepts.3 I highlight this essay here primarily for its consonance with Integral Theory, and more particularly for the insight it might give spiritual practitioners into a richly recursive application of Wilber’s quadrant distinctions to generate overlapping and mutually informing and supporting fields of inquiry and practice. Many of the other essays in the text either take a participatory approach to, or reveal participatory sensibilities and resources already present within, traditional religious paths—from unfolding a Kabbalistic understanding of our participatory, co-creative involvement in the evolution of the cosmos (Lancaster, “Engaging with the Mind of God”); to exploring the participatory dimensions of the Christ-event (Barnhart, “One Spirit, One Body”); to demonstrating how the Bhagavad Gita has been diversely employed in the participatoryenactive unfolding of distinctive spiritual visions and emancipatory horizons (McDermott, “Participation Comes of Age”). G. William Barnard’s (2008) “Pulsating with Life” is the only essay in this section of the text that deals with an explicitly philosophical topic: Bergson’s notion of durée. While Barnard (2008) does not regard Bergson’s philosophy as compatible in all respects with a participatory orientation, he suggests that the subtle temporal concept of durée, which conceives of time as an unfolding/enfolding movement similar 124

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to Whitehead’s (2007) “creative advance of nature,” can be used by participatory theorists to support a coherent, persuasive vision of the world in which everything and everyone is understood to possess individual integrity, a world in which particularity, difference, uniqueness, and pluralism are central and deeply valued, while it simultaneously affirms that an underlying continuity, interconnection, and unity also exist and are equally crucial. (p. 344) Importantly for a participatory approach, the nature of durée, in its dynamic and decidedly musical enfolding/ unfolding movement, necessarily implies that each participatory enactment or event will be subtly or significantly different—a unique unfolding of novelty in continuity, consonant with Ferrer’s (2008) metaphor of spiritual experience or realization as an ocean with many shores. While not all of the essays in this volume are equally compelling or successful, especially in terms of expressing or embodying a post-postmodern, participatory-enactive approach to religion and mysticism, the text as a whole serves as an excellent introduction to participatory thinking past and present; and with its many references alone, it provides students and scholars alike with a richly representative selection of the promising work currently being done in the field of religious studies. The professional and theoretical differences between Wilber and Ferrer notwithstanding, I can recommend The Participatory Turn to integral religious scholars and students as worthy of appreciative and serious engagement, and stand in hope of future collaborative inquiry among practitioners in both of these communities.4

NOTES Wilber (2006) argues that Morin’s approach is monological and subject to subtle reductionism, entirely missing the distinctive injunctions of the paradigms he includes. Kelly’s discussion of each of these fields as enactive suggests, however, at least in Kelly’s reading of Morin, an acknowledgment of injunction. 2 For a detailed discussion, see also Levi Bryant’s (2011) recent book, The Democracy of Objects. 3 Rothberg (2008) also cites Jürgen Habermas’ work, so his model may have been more directly influenced by Habermas than Wilber. Nevertheless, the strong resemblance of his model to Wilber’s quadrant map does seem, to this reader, to call for greater acknowledgement of the degree of overlap than is provided. 4 Given the strong criticisms Ferrer (2011) has leveled at Wilber, it is curious that this text concludes with an essay that introduces a system (i.e., Rothberg’s practice matrix) that is similar to Wilber’s AQAL model. 1

REFERENCES Barnard, G.W. (2008). Pulsating with life: The paradoxical intuitions of Henri Bergson. In J.N. Ferrer & J.H. Sherman (Eds.), The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies (pp. 321348). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Barnhart, B. (2008). One spirit, one body: Jesus’ participatory revolution. In J.N. Ferrer & J.H. Sherman (Eds.), The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies (pp. 265-291). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Bryant, L. (2011). The democracy of objects. Ann Arbor, MI: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library. Cohen, A. (2011). Evolutionary enlightenment: A new path to spiritual awakening. New York, NY: SelectBooks, Inc. Ferrer, J.N., & Sherman, J.H. (Eds.). (2008). The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Ferrer, J.N. (2008). Spiritual knowing as participatory enaction: An answer to the question of religious pluralism. In J.N. Ferrer & J.H. Sherman (Eds.), The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

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religious studies (pp. 135-169). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Ferrer, J.N. (2011). Participation, metaphysics, and enlightenment: Reflections on Ken Wilber’s recent work. Transpersonal Psychology Review, 14(2), 3-24. Irwin, L. (2008). Esoteric paradigms and participatory spirituality in the teachings of Mikhaël Aïvanhov. In J.N. Ferrer & J.H. Sherman (Eds.), The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies (pp. 197-224). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Kelly, S. (2008). Participation, complexity, and the study of religion. In J.N. Ferrer & J.H. Sherman (Eds.), The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies (pp. 113-133). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Lancaster, B.L. (2008). Engaging with the mind of God: The participatory path of Jewish mysticism. In J.N. Ferrer & J.H. Sherman (Eds.), The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies (pp. 173-195). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. McDermott, R. (2008). Participation comes of age: Owen Barfield and the Bhagavad Gita. In J.N. Ferrer & J.H. Sherman (Eds.), The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies (pp. 293-319). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. McIntosh, S. (2007). Integral consciousness and the future of evolution. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House.

Rothberg, D. (2008). Connecting inner and outer transformation: Toward an extended model of Buddhist practice. In J.N. Ferrer & J.H. Sherman (Eds.), The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies (pp. 349-370). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Sherman, J.H. (2008). A genealogy of participation. In J.N. Ferrer & J.H. Sherman (Eds.), The participatory turn: Spirituality, mysticism, religious studies (pp. 81-112). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Skolimowski, H. (1995). The participatory mind: A new theory of knowledge and of the universe. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Whitehead, A.N. (2007). The concept of nature. New York, NY: Cosimo Classics. Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2000). Integral psychology: Consciousness, spirit, psychology, therapy. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Wilber, K. (2002). Excerpt A: An Integral age at the leading edge. Retrieved May 20, 2012, from http:// wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptA/notes-3.cfm Wilber, K. (2006). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world. Boston, MA: Integral Books.

BRUCE ALDERMAN, M.A., is adjunct faculty in the School of Holistic Studies at John F. Kennedy University (JFKU). He received his master’s degree in Integral Psychology, with an emphasis on Transpersonal Counseling Psychology, from JFKU in 2005. He teaches Paradigms of Consciousness; Fundamentals of Transpersonal Psychology; Fundamentals of Psychology; Integral Spirituality; Living Systems Theory; and Ethics and Compassion, and has served as a thesis and final integrative project advisor. Prior to working at JFKU, he worked and studied abroad for several years, including teaching courses on creative writing and inquiry at the Rajghat Besant School, a Krishnamurti school in Varanasi, India. His current areas of interest include Integral Theory and practice, transpersonal psychology, integral post-metaphysical spirituality, the time-space-knowledge vision, transformative arts, dream yoga, and interfaith dialogue. When he is not teaching or spending time with his family, he moderates an online discussion forum dedicated to Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality (http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/).

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Vol. 7, No. 2

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INTEGRAL THEORY and PRACTICE

A Postdisciplinary Discourse for Global Action

Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

June 2012 Volume 7 Number 2

Integral Religious Studies

Editorial Executive Editor’s Note – Sean Esbjörn-Hargens Guest Editors’ Introduction: Integral Religious Studies – Dustin DiPerna, Mark Schmanko, and Ben Williams Articles Integral Religious Studies in a Developmental Context – Dustin DiPerna

June 2012

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Neither God nor Goddess: Why Women Need an Archetype of the Self – Sarah Nicholson

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The Outskirts of Integral Theory: Visions of the Sacred and the Paranormal in the Oeuvre of Jeffrey Kripal – Mark G. Schmanko

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Opening Space for Translineage Practice: Some Ontological Speculations  – Bruce Alderman

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Beyond Enacted Experiences  – Amod Lele

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Playing at the Murky Edge: On Birthing an Integral Anthropology  – Karen De Looze

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Perspective Perspectivism in the Study of Religion – William E. Paden, with an Introduction by Ben Williams

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