From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri May 14 2004 - 21:51:12 BST
Hi David S:
> Platt wrote:
> >Again, I don't think irrational thinking belongs in the fourth level,
> >Wilber notwithstanding. As for Wilber's 'post-rational thinking," that'
> >s just pie-in-the-sky stuff where we all sit in a circle, hold hands and
> >sing Kum By Ya to celebrate a New Age religion, no different in spirit
> >that "Jesus loves me, yes I know, because the bible (or in Wilber's
> >case, mystic meditation) tells me so."
> Let me try to but in hear and defend Wilber. First of all, let's get
> straight what we mean by "irrationality"; properly speaking,
> irrationality is not a possiblity until one has already reached, become
> habituated in, and mastered rational cognition--perspectival reason,
> capable of abstract, logical thinking, forming conceptual rules etc.;
> also, a rational person is capable of reading a story
> allegorically/symbollically. that is, they can read between the lines.
> now, someone who a rational being at the intellectual level deems a
> person who is still stuck in literalism "irrational" is correct only in a
> relative sense. it is more correct to say that the latter person is
> pre-rational...they have simply not yet evolved to that level of
> cognition. likewise, the rational person himself never totally cuts his
> ties to the lower levels, and, as we all know, has fits of irrationality
> (but not pre-rationality, because he has already transcended that level).
>
> However, and most importantly, someone at the
> rational/symbolic/intellectual level is at an even greater danger than
> someone on the lower levels because he can act against them. Pirsig goes
> into great detail about this, when he rips on nasty, lefty intellectuals
> who castigate anything social, communal, traditional, normal, etc. so we
> might want to call this, as Wilber does, a pathology of rationality; and
> furthermore, that the more levels on which you move, the more ways you
> can get sick...so irrationally is REALLY about one level trying to
> dominate the other levels. So Platt, I was trying to show how the
> important difference between pre-rational and irrational gets around your
> quip that "irrationality" does not belong on the 4th level. it's not the
> primitive tribesman's fault that he can't do long division, it is merely
> that the selection pressures forming his consciousness don't push for
> that, nor should they. also, i want to point out how the lower levels
> are not "stupid," merely at a lower of development.
Can you clarify whether you think irrationality belongs in the fourth level
or not? First, you seem to be arguing that it does because the difference
between rational and irrational is simply a matter of degree, that it's
"relative." But then you say irrationality is "really about one level
trying to dominate the other levels," and I'm not sure whether you're
talking about Wilber's infinite levels of consciousness or Pirsig's four
levels or morality. (Let us not confuse Wilber's with Pirsig's levels.)
> Platt also wrote:
> As for Wilber's 'post-rational thinking," that' s
> >just pie-in-the-sky stuff where we all sit in a circle, hold hands and
> >sing Kum By Ya to celebrate a New Age religion, no different in spirit
> >that "Jesus loves me, yes I know, because the bible (or in Wilber's
> >case, mystic meditation) tells me so."
> as for your remark about wilber's post-rational thinking being a new age
> swan song, your critique is not even levelled at the correct level of
> experience. you meant to direct your diatribe at wilber's higher levels
> of experience, psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual mysticism. these are
> what he calls "trans-rational" levels, where it's about direct experience
> (DQ for us), not about any abstraction or systematic reasoning, but
> beyond all such concepts.
I stand corrected.
> this is the usual criticism of wilber, and it is deployed
> for the same reason that wilber's books are still misplaced in the "new
> age", "self-help" sections at bookstores. anyone who has read wilber
> even somewhat critically will be familiar with his frequent and
> devastating attack on the frivility and vacuity of New Age
> theorists...who sit in circles...singing kumbaya (ironically, the humor
> in your comment tastes alot like the way he rips on them!). but beneath
> all this is your obvious skepticism in the validity of mysticism. why,
> on what grounds? see, the rational level becomes very hostile to levels
> either above or below, which is one of the reasons we're stuck in a rut
> in Iraq right now.... but i just wanted to get one point straight: it's
> not about "rationality vs. irrationaly", but "pre-rationality,
> rationality, and transrationality", with each of those levels having
> healhty and unhealthy manifestations. thanks.
When Wilber goes "transrational" is when I apply the New Age label. The
following passage from his book, "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality" illustrates
why his books end up in the New Age section of bookstores:
" . . . See how Spirt pours through each and every opening in the turmoil,
and bestows new splendor on the setting Sun and its glorious Earth and all
its radiant inhabitants. See the Kosmos dance in Emptiness; see the play of
light in all creatures great and small; see finite worlds sing and rejoice
in the play of the very Divine, floating on a Glory that renders each
transparent, flooded by a Joy that refuses time or terror, the undoes the
madness of the loveless self and buries it in splendor. . . . Let the
ecstasy overflow and outshine the loveless self, driven mad with the
torments of its self-embracing ways, hugging mightily samsara's spokes of
endless agony, and sing instead triumphantly with Saint Catherine, 'My
being is God, not by simple participation, but by a true transformation of
my Being. My me is God!' And let the joy sing with Dame Julian, 'See! I am
God. See! I am in all things! See! I do all things!' And let the joy shout
with Hakuin, 'This very body is the Body of the Buddha! And this very land
the Pure Land!. And this earth becomes a blessed being and every I becomes
God, and every We becomes God's sincerest worship, and every It becomes
God's most gracious temple." (Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, 522-23)
As I typed this passage I kept thinking of the terrorists yelling "God is
Great!" as they were slicing the neck and separating the head of a
screaming Nick Berg. And you still wonder why we are in Iraq?
Best,
Platt
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