RAQUEL: Okay, so here we are. Hello and good Valentine's Day for everyone. We are sending much love to the war sites in the world, mainly now, Gaza and Ukraine. We want that this love may make the minds of the people which need to take decisions a little bit more sound.
So hello, Ken
and happy Valentine's Day and also thank you very much for this opportunity to
be here with you giving this message on the 14th of February every year. It's a real message of love and remembrance
that love exists and love is true and our friendship throughout the years show
that love exists. Therefore we send this love to everyone that listens or that
reads this interview, which as always I created through the questions posed by
the International Integral Community. You know that.
Here we are
with this man that has been the creator of the Integral Theory and has written
more than 25 books translated to most of the most important languages of the
planet.
KEN:
35 books now.
RAQUEL: 35 now, my goodness!!! Wow. I have to update my numbers then. Congratulations
Ken on those 35 books !!!
KEN: Thank you.
RAQUEL: It's a great production of the most advanced
thoughts, because you are a thought leader in this world. And it's wonderful
that you are still with us and still writing, which is beautiful.
KEN:
So, thank you. My latest book's called "Finding Radical Wholeness".
RAQUEL: That's the last question, Ken, because we want to know about that. There is a
person who wants to also know about that. If you agree, we start with the first
question, now.
1) Do you know the Austrian Tradition of
Economics? This question is because this tradition has an evolutionary
perspective of social processes that would match very well with the Integral
Vision?
KEN:
Yes, I studied it briefly as I have done with most worldwide systems of
thought. And I have incorporated some of its essential elements into my system.
Whatever system I study, I generally take something from it and incorporate it
into my integral meta theory, just because that's how I think. And also that's
the claim of Integral Meta Theory: it has looked at most of the world
Philosophies or Systems of thinking or Economics or Politics or Sociology or Psychology
and has found a framework that incorporates the essentials of all of them. And
that's the claim that I made. And so I have done that. And I liked it. I mean,
I thought it was a very impressive Economic's Theory.
RAQUEL: So you integrate these ideas on your own to
make it more whole precisely, right? Very interesting. According to how the
Economy in the world goes now, where do you think that the worldwide Economy is
going as it's pretending to be global and therefore more sustainable and
egalitarian. Do you think that we will
get there?
KEN:
Well, that's the hope. And of course, given the fact that the world is
driven by a set of factors or forces or pressures or inclinations, and that
does include arrows, which is a transcend and include drive, the evolutionary
force.
Evolution has
been the main predominant thought system of the modern and postmodern world. Darwin, of course, is credited with
introducing it. But much of present day economic theory doesn't come from Darwin,
because we have, well, the Mutation
and Natural Selection are not nearly
enough to account for the vast diversity and the probabilities that those would
arise through just Natural Selection
and Random Mutation. So most, at
least 50% of modern evolutionary theorists included another force that's
operating in the world, like a real force, like Gravity or Electromagnetism or
Light and so on. But it's a real force. And it's what I call "arrows".
And the most widely used term for it in Evolutionary
Theory is: self-organization. The
world is driven by a force which is self-organized. That's why if you just look
at the overall sweep of Evolution, you go from quarks to subatomic particles to
atoms to molecules to single cell animals and plants to multi-cellular animals
and plants and then up the entire tree
of life. Each and every one of those different stages transcends or goes
beyond the previous stage. And yet it includes in its totality the previous
stage.
So when you
go from atoms to molecules, molecules all contain atoms. But it goes beyond
simple atoms because a molecule is much bigger and more complex and it generally
contains hundreds of atoms. So when molecules come together and we get another
transcend and include, then we get living cells and cells include molecules but
they transcend them because first of all they have life. They're alive and they
reproduce. And so when we go from single celled animals to multi-cellular
animals, the same thing. Many cells come together and are included in a multi-cellular
animal but the multi-cellular animal also transcends the individual cells
because it's multi-cellular.
RAQUEL: Regarding Economics, sorry Ken because I want
to clarify this, do you mean that we're going to transcend what we are having
now and we are going to finally arrive to some kind of a more real globalized
Economy that will be useful for everyone and more equitable?
KEN:
Well, it's already happening if you look at Artificial Intelligence, for
example. It's explosively moving forward and evolving and both transcends and
includes all the previous Artificial Intelligence. Then when they introduce the
so-called Machine Learning or Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence started to write its
own programming. That's so complex that we don't even know what it's doing. So if AI machine breaks down, we can't go in
and fix it because we don't even know what it did to create itself. It's a
master revolutionary leap forward and it's already happening all around the
world.
This is all
non-Darwinian driven because Darwin didn't have any understanding of
self-organization. He thought it was just random mutations and Natural Selection. And that's not nearly
enough to account for the evolutionary drive and its vast, vast sophistication.
I mean, even the number of changes in a complex animal structure!!! The number of changes required to produce a
horse is one to ten with 300,000 zeros. It's just out of this world. And
there's no way, I mean, we get random mutations, most of which by the way are
deathly lethal, they're not some great advance or something. They're lethal.
And to get 10 to the 300,000 mutations is just impossible by any sort of actual
process. It doesn't work.
That's why there are two aspects to evolutionary
theory. There's the What of
evolutionary theory, which is the actual stages that Evolution has gone through
and nobody disagrees with this. This is why it's common to hear an evolutionary
biologist say: "Evolution is just completely accepted and nobody disagrees
with it". He's talking about the "what" of Evolution. This Evolution
did go from quarks to subatomic particles, neutrons, photons, electrons to
atoms to molecules to multi-molecular molecules to single living cells to multi-cellular
creatures to the whole tree of life going from fish to amphibians to reptiles
to primates to complex primates to human beings. And nobody doubts that
sequence. Every evolutionary biologist in the world agrees with that general
sequence. The what of evolution is not doubted at all.
It's the Why of Evolution that has so much
controversy and why so many biologists have introduced the third notion of a
complex self-organization that drives the series of what's. So it drives us to
atoms to molecules to single-cellular animals to multi-cellular animals to
amphibians to fish to reptiles to mammals and primates and humans. That's all
driven by a self-organizing arrows. And that's an absolutely crucial component
of Integral Theory is an arrow to transcending
and including force. And most but not
all of Evolutionary biologists accept this self-organizing force. Not as many accept this "Why" of Evolution. Not as many Evolutionary
biologists accept this "Why"
as they accept the "What".
Because virtually 100% of them accept the "What".
RAQUEL: Let's hope that we really do arrive to the
integration of this "What"
and "Why" in Economics.
KEN:
And as I said, it's already happening in Artificial Intelligence. I
mean, you see this self-incredible self-organization in AI. And that's why we're
already getting this deep Machine Learning
and self-programming with AI actually programs itself in ways that are so
complex, we don't even know what it's doing. That shows how extraordinary evolutionary drives are.
RAQUEL: Let's go with the second question, Ken, if
you find it acceptable.
2) Would you say that we're experiencing a
regression in values? Are we sacrificing
the most universal democratic values by another more egocentric only based in
economic interest?
KEN:
Well, that varies if you look at different subsets of evolutionary unfolding.
If you look at Universities, if you look at Economics, if you look at
Technology. If you look at Religion,
there are several places where we're seeing regression. One of them, for
example, is there's a fair amount of regressive tendencies in Universities
where that never was the case. I mean, Universities were founded mostly by
religious spiritual orders 100 to 200 years ago. But when they were first founded,
they really were centers of learning and Education. And they weren't very
regressive. But recent Universities, and specially the well-known, the Ivy
League and the prestigious Universities, they're undergoing a significant
regression. And you see that in their culture and when they bring in certain
speakers. If the speaker is anywhere near conservative, the students rebel
against them and refuse to let them speak. And it's just really horrible. And
it's especially bad because we look to Universities as the leading edge of our
thinking. And the leading edge of our thinking is going backward. It's
necessarily horrible. And then there are little pockets of exceptions. So there
are, for example, an increasing number of integral disciplines. So we have
Integral Psychology, Integral Sociology, Integral Philosophy, Integral
Medicine. Many things.
Those are
starting to show up because we still have this inherent drive. The arrows. And
there's an inherent drive to transcend and include. And so we not only have a
lot of disciplines like Biochemistry -the integration of Biology and Chemistry,
which is quite highly accepted. And you also have Humanities where you have
fairly integrated and integral and systemic integral endeavors. So I've always
been encouraged by the at least small pockets of Integral thinking that is
going on in Universities. If we look at our religions, they also tend to be a
little bit regressive. And by to regress in Religion, it's only necessary that
you accept the typical mythic, literal version of Religion. So the entire Bible
is a mythic document and it's actually the stage that has been called "Mythic Literal" because it's taken
to be that Jesus Christ is the literal son of the literal biological son of the
literal soul creator, biological creator of the higher Universe. Well, that's
all "Mythic Literal Stage of Development".
That's the thought of a five to seven year old. And so all you have to do is
just accept the Bible in a literal manner and you're regressing. So that's not
good. And Technology, we don't see that much regression because we do see the
progressive move of Deep Machine Learning
and so on. So Technology is continuing to advance and quite rapidly.
RAQUEL: And do you find that Technology and Values
are really evolving parallel, because I
don't.
KEN:
I know. Technology is also tending to advance with AI and some of these
other areas. We're seeing a progression in those and a general progression in Technology
itself. So we can see some places where
there's an advance, a genuine full fledged advance or Evolution of the
discipline and other disciplines and yet in other areas like Universities, we
see a regressive tendency and I would say if we just look at culture in the
United States that there's something of a very modest regressive tendency in
our culture at large. And that goes for the culture in Europe as well. But I
don't see that being massive. But what we call Woke Culture(*) is a regressive move. And that's why
there are so many jokes about Wokeism.
And we do tend to see them jokeable. I mean they're worth making fun of because
Wokeism is just idiotic. It's just completely stupid. And by stupid I mean
regressive, intellectually regressive.
RAQUEL: And so this comes very good with the third
question then.
3) Would you say Trump is Orange or Turquoise. How
do you envision his situation right now at the American politics scenario?
KEN:
He's Orange. He's not Turquoise. But Orange is anti-Woke because
it itself is anti-orange, it's anti-rational. It doesn't believe in
rationality. And that's where you get a lot of the jokes about Wokeism. Is it denies objectivity? It
denies rationality? It doesn't say that there's even such a thing as subjective
truth. It just doesn't exist for Wokeism.
And that in itself is hysterical. So I mean is it objectively true that there
is no objective truth? That's what Wokeism
claims. So it's just one buffoonery after another that we get from the Woke crowd.
RAQUEL: So tell me, tell us about Trump. How do you
envision his future on the future of America with Trump?
(*) WOKE, was originally a term to alert of racial
prejudice and discrimination that has now being extended to gender and sexual
orientation.
KEN: Well, if you look at just the Woke part of him, because he's
definitely anti-Woke, almost every
word out of his mouth is some non-politically correct statement. He's just
completely anti-Woke. And so from
just that narrow perspective, he's going to move us forward because he's
progressive in a true sense, even though his politics is fairly conservative.
But it's not the Woke version. So
it's a positive move. He does have that degree of small amount of positive
progressive anti-Wokeism. And that's
good. And I think that's what America sort of realized when they went from an anti-Woke Trump to a very Woke Joe Biden. I mean Joe Biden is a
politically correct senile idiot.
And Thomas
Sowell, who's very very bright, very smart political thinker, he's just
devastated by his political correctness and his Wokeism. And he's exactly right. I'm a huge fan of Thomas Sowell
and Charles Murray and other public intellectuals that are very anti-Woke. I'm impressed by both of
those thinkers, Thomas Sowell and Murray. And I'm glad they have the
acceptance, the general acceptance that they do. They're both very prolific
YouTubers. I see a lot of YouTube productions by both Charles Murray and Thomas
Sowell. And Thomas Sowell is 90s now. He's still going absolutely strong. He's
just brilliant. And he has been since he was in his 20s. I first became a big
fan of Thomas Sowell when he was like 25 because he was just right on the money
about everything he said. And I was always impressed by that.
RAQUEL:
4) What is the influence of philosophical
mistakes made by the global Academic mainstream on the contemporary
Russian-Ukrainian war?
KEN:
Well, they're not integral. And that's the main complaint I have about
any major discipline. If there's something wrong with it is that it's not yet
integral. And so it ends up reinforcing locus and politically correct thinking
and therefore all the disasters of the Modern
intellectual and the Postmodern
intellectual. And they're just not Integral. And there's no excuse for that
today because not only does every major discipline we have add something
important to our overall world perspective that you can't give an excuse for
not including what they offer. The only way to do that is through an Integral Framework. And so there's just
no excuse in today's world for not having an integral view. And yet if you look
at all the mistakes in our intellectual thinking, all of them are almost versions
of not integral, not inclusive, not comprehensive. And that's just a disaster.
RAQUEL: Yes, and yet the Academic World
is still not wanting to understand and embrace Integral Thinking. And I don't
understand that either.
KEN:
Exactly. It's like as much as I make room for virtually all sorts of
disciplines, I can't make room for that one specifically. Does that one says, how do you make room for something that says I
don't want to make room with anything? You add me or what? It's just no room
for somebody that won't want to make room.
RAQUEL: Absolutely ridiculous.
KEN:
It is. It is.
RAQUEL:
5) Why don't you present yourself as a leader in
your own Integral Community? And also are you integral or a sage?
KEN:
Okay. Well, when I started writing, I wrote my first book when I was 23:
"Spectrum of Consciousness".
And that sort of introduced me to most of writing, intellectual writing
community, at least in America. So I would just bump into everybody from
Fritjof Capra, to Stan Groff. I mean, all of those people. And what all of them
would do is they'd write one book like Fritjof Capra wrote: "The Tao of
Physics". And then they would have to go on the road and give talks about
their book. Now that's almost all that they did. And so they wouldn't write
anything more or if they did, it would be 10 or 20 years from their first book
until they'd write their second book, which many of them would. So Fritjof
Capra wrote a second book and a third.
But they were all like 10 years apart. And what they were doing during that
time was assuming leadership for the brands that they had written about. So
when Fritjof Capra wrote "The Tao of
Physics", which by the way is an entirely misplaced theory, because what
he's trying to say is that Modern Quantum Physics proves Mysticism. It says
that Quantum Physics means the mind is one with everything that it's aware of,
actually creating it by collapsing the quantum the wave packet in every atom. That
makes the electron take an actual position in space and time. And so the mind creates
that which we then proceed with. And
that's just categorically wrong. He just gave talk after talk on what Quantum Mechanics
is showing us that the world is a unified reality, a mystic loop oneness because
of Quantum Mechanics. And that's just not the case at all. So I was always a
little suspicious of all of my friends that I was getting to know who always
went out and assumed leadership of the field that they had written in. I just
couldn't. I was always going: " I don't want to make that big mistake".
So I'm kind of avoiding that.
RAQUEL: I have never liked that either. You have
never liked to be a guru at all. I know that.
KEN:
Yes, and even more, what I was
writing, I believe time has shown that what I was writing was correct. The Integral
Approach is a true reality. It's actually there. It exists. And it continues to
spit out more truths. And so I at least would have not gotten that part right
if I had gone on the road teaching it all the time. I also found that after I'd
written a book, I could do one of two things. I could go on the road and spit
it out and give talk after talk after talk about what a great theory it was. Or
I could write another book. Right. Because I will constantly have new ideas
showing up. And I found that if I went out and talked about my old book, I
didn't have time to write a new book.
So I would
have never gotten to 35 books if I had done that. And then they translated into
over 34 languages. And that in itself is kind of impressive. Because usually if
a book sells the magic number the publishers use is they'll say, "oh, it's gotten translated to 17
languages". And 17 is already a big number to be translated into. But I've
been translated into 34!! I mean, God!!!
RAQUEL: So it's great. Absolutely. Congratulations!!!
It's real major welcome into the world. Because then people of all those 34
languages are going to know about Integral. So it's really a wealth piece, you
know, to the Integral.
KEN: I knew I had arrived when I got translated into blind Croatian. So there's like eight blind Croatians. I sold like four of those to eight people. Then I knew I had arrived. . So I was always tickled about that.
RAQUEL: Absolutely. Very good. Ken. The person of this question would like to also
know if you consider yourself either an Integral or a Sage. I see that you're both. I would think to
myself that you're an Integral Sage. What
would you say?
KEN:
Yeah. Remember, I have differentiated between the stages of Growing Up and the stages of Waking Up. And Waking up has stages like: yogi, sage, non-dual realizer. And Growing
Up has stages like: archaic, magic, the rational, pluralistic, integral,
and then all of their tiers. I'm always kind of hesitant to categorize myself
because anytime I say something higher, it looks like I'm bragging.
RAQUEL: Well, you can permit yourself to brag. I tell
you that if I know a person in the world that can brag, that is you, Ken. To
me, you are a "sage", which is an Integral and even higher stages, I
would say. Am I wrong?
KEN:
Well, I could agree with something like that. I'm clearly in Growing Up in a Third stage of
development. In Waking Up, I have had
at least a dozen major Satori-like experiences,
which is the highest Non-Dual
awareness that can be achieved by any of the world's mystical traditions. I've
particularly practiced an enormous amount of Zen Buddhism. I've done like 15
years of Zen and then 20 years of Tibetan Buddhism, Vajrayana. But I've also
practiced to some degree most of the major mystical traditions of the world's
spiritual systems. So I've practiced Vedanta Hinduism and Contemplative Taoism,
Christian Mysticism, Jewish, Kabbalah. I've done several years of each of
those. And once you get a breakthrough Satori, for example, in Zen, then it's
much easier to experience Christian
mystical states, for example. Yes. Because you've already had a major
breakthrough into those areas of awareness. So that makes it easier for me to understand
Vedanta Hinduism and Contemplative Taoism and Christian Mysticism and so on. So
I'll essentially buy what you're saying.
RAQUEL: Yeah. That's a great thing. And I understand
that you don't want to be categorized or you don't like to categorize yourself
because it's true that whenever a person is a sage in higher integral levels,
you don't want to categorize yourself because you are beyond definitions,
beyond categorizations and beyond identifications. So thank you very much for
the answers.
6) In case that the Metaphysic postulate
presenting Existence as an evolutionary
impulse that goes always forward taking us toward improvement all the time
would not exist, what aspects of the Integral Theory would fall apart?
KEN:
Well, almost all of the Integral
Framework undergoes a development or an evolutionary aspect. So all Four Quadrants
have various levels and all those levels have developed or evolved over time.
The levels themselves of which there are nine to 12 that I've outlined in the Upper Right Quadrant, the Lower Right Quadrant, the Lower Left Quadrant and the Upper Left Quadrant. These levels
themselves, as levels, don't display Evolution, just as a level. As so, it's a
stage in the evolutionary process, but just the stage in itself is something
like Concrete Operational Thinking,
which is the structure of the Mythic Stage
of Development or Formal Operational
Thinking, which is the structure of the Orange
or Rational Stage of Development.
Each of those
are stages in an overall evolutionary unfolding. If you took that evolutionary
development away from them, the framework would cripple. It would be then a pretty
bad overall Integral Theory, because the real one includes Evolution and so
many of its components, simply because the data is what points toward it. It's
an objective reality. It's actually occurring all the time. And why is it
occurring?
Remember, we
have a What of Evolution and a Why of Evolution. And nobody doubts
the stages of the What. And those
stages of the What of Evolution are
my stages of development that I present, as I say, nine to 12 or so in all the Quadrants. And that's the What of Evolution. And that's very
important. Then the Why of Evolution
talks about what's driving that evolutionary unfolding, because natural
selection and random mutation just aren't enough to do it. So as we've got like
300,000 mutation, all changes. That's the Why
Evolution keeps this extraordinary unfolding all around us.
RAQUEL: I remember, Ken, when I was at the beginning
of the Integral, let's say movement, which I had read three or four of your
books , and I was already very in love with Integral Theory, I had the
opportunity to compile a book with 23 beautiful souls who accepted to talk
about the Four Quadrants and write
about their own vision of them. Three of them talked about the Upper Left Quadrant. Four of them about
the Upper Right and so on. It was very,
very beautiful. I did the introduction of the book as I was editing it.
Then it was
very funny because Kairós, (which in Spain is the one that has mainly published
all your books -with David Gonzalez Raga as your translator in Spain-, as you
very well know), asked me: "well,
what's the title we are going to put to this book? And I said: "Integral Evolution". And the
man from Kairós said: oh, no, you know that's
Darwin and that may lead to a confusion. And I said, no, no, no, it's much more
than that !!!
KEN:
Yeah, it's more than that !!!
RAQUEL: He was not very content with me putting that
name of "Integral Evolution".
And yet for me, it was very, very clear that it had to be that one. So you're so
right Ken and I love that you say this now because it gives me the confirmation
that I was right in putting that title, defending that the book would be called
"Integral Evolution".
KEN:
Yes. Yes. Thank you. That's a very good point. And if you look at any of
the really superior, great evolutionary biologists, like let's say Stuart
Kaufman, he flat out says "Evolution is driven by a combination of natural
selection that's self organized". And that's nowhere near what Darwin
said. Darwin had troubles figuring out: " oh, why does this go forward so
much?" And he would respond: "
I don't know". I mean, he actually wrote: "I don't know". And he
didn't know.
RAQUEL: Because he was a naturalist, not a mystic. He
was not a mystic, not a spiritualist, which would have helped him a lot to see
it in a more Integral way. He was just a naturalist, a biologist. Integral Theory has brought the Consciousness
of Integral Evolution, which comes
from the four corners of Reality.
KEN:
Absolutely. And when evolutionary ideas were first starting to be
understood, what they all really focused on was the What of Evolution. Because you go back and you find the fossil
records and you find something called a Cambrian
Explosion, which is a period where in the fossil records, thousands of
animal forms sprung into existence. It was in this very short period of time. Why
nobody knew, nobody could figure out? It's
still part of the big mystery of Evolution. Why did this Cambrian period occur?
And it's where most of the theories of self-organization or self-transcendence
have something to say. It's in this period when it happened. That's what most
of these self-organization theories are trying to explain. Where on Earth did
this Cambrian Explosion came from?
Well, it wasn't just natural mutations!!! One or two natural mutations every
century is just not going to do it. We
need 100,000 to explain it!!!
RAQUEL: Yes. It's
a real force. it's real and it's there. It
works through and it's called self-organization.
7) Do you have a nuance response to the Gaza
crisis and how we can practice Integral Ethics by taking both sides? And given
the circumstances of the world, what can Integral teach us about non-violence?
KEN:
I think you do have to be a little bit careful to differentiate the
degree of evolutionary development that both sides have. Because there, what we
find is that a lot of Liberals just
get freaked out anytime you have a positive endorsement of Israel because they
see Palestinians as oppressed and put down and viciously attacked by Israel.
But that it is that Palestinians,
their cultural center of gravity is
largely Amber. Whereas Israel's
cultural center of gravity is more Orange and verging on Green. So that's why Israel will do
things like it'll take particular times of the day when it won't bomb Palestine
and it'll just absolutely cease that kind of activity. Whereas Palestine just
doesn't, the Palestinians don't do that kind of thing. They're very much more
aggressive. And though I reckon that Israel is responsible for some terrible,
aggressive atrocities. Nevertheless, I'm
not just simply saying Israel is all good and Palestine is all bad. But Israel
does take certain rational steps of de-escalating the types of attacks that
they would do. Whereas Palestine "historically"
has a fair amount of actual terrorist
acts. And these are real terrorist
attacks on Israel citizens. And I mean the October 6th, October 7th attack
was a very real terrorist attack. And then Israel of course responded with its
own aggressive, intense, super aggressive response. So I mean about the only
thing that you can say would even the sides up is they're both show an intense capacity for aggression. And that's just
unfortunate. But that is the nature. But if you look at the types of
aggression, you'll find Palestine engaging in a true terrorist aggression.
Whereas Israel will do aggressive attacks. But they're rarely in the form of an
actual terrorist attack. So the only thing that they have in common is a very
aggressive orientation. And that's very unfortunate. But that's the case. As I
see it anyway.
RAQUEL: Yeah. Well, you know sometimes we can see it
in the way that the Palestine's needed to have a country and they have never had
the opportunity to have such a thing. Their area of living was given to them,
as it was taken off, let's say separated and given a piece for them- which was
really never like theirs- because they were subdued all the time.
KEN:
They never supported One State Policy.
In other words, making Palestine a State along with Israel, which is often
called a Two State Policy. Israel
has always wanted Palestine to have their own State. Israel has been in favor
of that almost from the beginning. Palestine
has never wanted to give Israel a Statehood. Palestine has never wanted a Two State Policy. They've always just
wanted to have their State, but they wanted to take Israel's away from it. And
they're the main political force in the area, fighting a Two State Solution, not Israel, Palestine. And that's a problem!!!
RAQUEL: That's very subjected to discussion because I
tell you I don't agree, but that's just the way I think about the facts.
KEN:
I know. I can see.
RAQUEL: I liked what
you said, when we had this interview about the Gaza and Israel situation
that you were so nice to give us. There,
you presented something which I just agree and that you have somehow confirmed
now, which is that both of them need Psychotherapy.
It is so absolutely necessary, because
it's true that they are both in lower
stages of Consciousness. And therefore, both of them need to really take Psychotherapy
to get this violent drive out of their system and be more in the loving
positiveness and sharing attitude. So anyway, let's go with the following
question, which it has to do with the Atman project.
8) In "The Atman Project" you
described the Psychic Stage. The
name "psychic stage" seems to accurately describe some aspects
of the structural development (for instance: Feeling Bio-fields). What is your
current understanding of what you used to call "The Psychic Stage" before?
KEN: Well, I now call it the Indigo ParaMind. And that is the next major stage after Turquoise vision. What you start to get
in all of Third stage, Third Tier, is
marked by the fact that several of the major Third Tier stages have a mystical component, or component of Waking Up that sort of goes with that Growing Up. And that's a novel
occurrence because mostly you can be at any stage of Waking up in a different stage of Growing Up.
In other TIERS, if you're at a certain stage of Growing Up, you're not usually at a
particular stage of Waking Up. But in
THIRD TIER, you do.
So you have
unity with the gross realm, which is the beginning of what the Indigo ParaMind does, and so it's
the beginning of Nature Mysticism.
And then when
you get up into the Violet stage, you tend to have more subtle
stage phenomena. So, Deity Mysticism is frequently
present at that stage.
Then you have
an Ultra Violet Stage, which is ONE
with Causal. And so you have Empty
Mysticism or Emptiness Mysticism.
And then at
the highest stage of SuperMind, you
have a Non-Dual mysticism.
So Indigo ParaMind is the first stage
where you actually feel a Oneness with
the entire physical Universe. So that's like a Nature Mysticism. It's a
very real experience of a very real union with Nature. And it can have all of the pathologies that Nature
Mysticism has. And that can include a confusion of self and other or a
pathological fusion state between self and other. And all of the various
problems with the Nature Mysticism can occur at the Indigo Para Mind. The word "Para" simply means: "beside
of" or "beyond of". And that is where we're sort of moving
beyond our mental framework.
So we have a ParaMind. And above the ParaMind is the MetaMind. And that's an even greater degree of transcendence, which
again moves into subtle stages beyond gross union.
There's a
subtle union and subtle date, of course, is the realm of gods and goddesses and deities and spiritual forms and so on. So that MetaMind, the Violet meta
mind is a subtle stage transcendence that often includes it. And then beyond Meta Mind is SuperMind. And that includes Causal
and Non Dual.
So Third Tier is very poorly understood. And the reason is that if you look at
the percentage of the population that reaches each stage of development, when
you're Green, almost 26% of the
population is at Green. Then when you
move to Teal, it's down to 5 to 7%.
But when you get to Turquoise, it
drops to 0.5%. The next highest stage, the Indigo
ParaMind is even less than 0.5%. It has to be. And so that's putting it
down to something like 0.1% of the population. And that's just not enough to
even show up on most developmental tests. They don't test or anything higher
than Turquoise because there's not enough
people that are actually at that stage. So we really don't know that much about
Third Tier. And that's why we're very
careful to not include automatically Waking
Up states with those Growing Up
stages. But when we do find it in the very few number of cases, we can actually
study, we'll find…
RAQUEL: that there is a correlation, right?
KEN:
It has a relation with the gross Nature
Mysticism and then the Subtle state
and Causal state and the Non- Dual state. That's why I include Third Tier and almost none of the other
developmental models except for specifically Transpersonal models like Susanne
Cook-Greuter has some Third Tier stages. You don't find them
in Bob Keagan or Jane Loevinger or Robert Colbert. They don't have any Third
Tier. Sure. But 50 years from now, the percentage of the population at the Indigo ParaMind will be at least
probably 5% whereas it's like 0.1% now. But that's the whole. And many developmental psychologists will be
studying that Indigo stage of
development along with the Violet
stage, the Ultraviolet stage and the Clear Light stage. So I look forward to
that period.
RAQUEL: Me too. If we are still alive, you know, but
at least we will see it from the Etheric world.
So Ken, a very personal question now that someone wants to know about …
9) Why do you keep on using that
wig that you wear?
KEN:
Do you not like it?
RAQUEL: Don't ask me because you know I am very
sincere. Do you want me to tell you? Do you really want me to tell you? No, I
don't like it. I prefer your bald head.
KEN:
I'm just not used to seeing me with hair. You're used to seeing me with the
bald hair.
RAQUEL: Well, yes. Absolutely. I love your bald hair.
KEN:
Well, I started shaving my head largely because of Zen Buddhism when I was
25 years old. And I'm 75 now!!! So for 50 years, every single day I shaved my
head. And I never once grew it back. May be once every year or so for all 50
years. I would try and grow it back in. I'd let it grow back in, but I couldn't
stand how it felt. I got so used to just feeling this shaved head. And so I
couldn't actually let it grow back in. And when I first cut it, I would get a
lot of glances because people were not used to seeing a 25 year old kid with
the shaved head. But then when I would try to grow it back in, that's when I
started getting strange glances because
people didn't want to see me like that
anyway: " We're used to seeing a bald head" and seeing me grow hair it
was strange. It just sort of upset them. And so about six months ago, I was
talking to somebody and I said, I'm going to try and grow my hair and again.
I've never been able to do it because I can't stand how it actually feels. I'm
so used to just having a bald head. And they said, well, why don't you try
away? And I just laughed. I thought, "Oh, I've just seen how many old bald
men wear those two pays and how horrible they look". I can't do it. I'm
not going to try it. You might find something that works. And so I was out
shopping one day in a large Department Store and they had a section of just
wigs and I started to pull some of them on just the hell of it. I found some
that I actually liked and it felt good on and they looked okay. Although I
wasn't really used to seeing myself looking like that. And so I've just sort of
kept doing it mostly because I could. I actually found that didn't feel weird.
I just kept, I'm used to how it looks. And so I just keep wearing it.
RAQUEL: So it means you like it.
KEN:
Yeah, I guess I'm still not totally used to it. I'm not used to seeing
myself something on my head: hair. But I've become I've become used to sort of
this type of wig that I'm wearing now. I mean, it feels okay, which is
important. It doesn't feel weird or odd.
RAQUEL: Are you going to go back to your bald hair?
KEN:
I don't know. I'll probably keep wearing it just for a while because I
can. Like I said, I have no problems with it. And about it's about 50-50. Half
of the people that know me like it. And about half don't. So I'm not getting
the kind of intense feedback one way or the other that would leave me to get
rid of it or wear it forever. So I'm also at about 50-50. I don't know. But an
enormous number of people aren't telling me I hate the way it looks. But very
many people aren't telling me, oh, I love it. It really is almost exactly
50-50.
RAQUEL: Well, even though I don't like it, I find
that it looks good on you in the sense that I prefer your bald hair. And yet I
reckon that it does not look bad at all.
KEN:
And that's about the point of view.
You're in the 50% side that doesn't
think it looks horrible or weird. It doesn't look like those old two pays that
all bald men wear. And it's always better than the looks of the 80's-odders.
And it's totally obvious. I mean, so because I am not getting that: " I
can't stand it. It looks terrible on you". I'm getting very little of that kind of
feedback. People don't like it. Well, so they say: "I just don't like it. I prefer you
bald. It's very much like a dance. But
that's not far enough for me to rip it off this afternoon. I'm just wearing it
mostly to see if I get used to it myself.
RAQUEL: Okay. So Ken, thank you for answering this
personal question. Now let's go with your books on the last question.
10) What is the difference in the contents between your books: " Integral Meditation", "Integral
Spirituality ", "The
Religion of Tomorrow" and this new " Finding radical Wholeness"
that it seems it's going to be published already in May or so? Could we say that they are different
perspectives of the same thing and therefore different Wilber stages? And is
this new book bringing something new?
KEN:
"Finding Radical Wholeness"
is a very new type of book. So to go through them: all "Integral
Meditation" is not much Integral
Theory or Integral Framework, but it is the practice. Which are the types of
meditation? Can you practice that would take an inclusive or integral approach?
And so most meditation systems divide up
into two major types of meditation: 1) That which generally has some sort of Form. So it'd be a mandala that you focus on or something like that, or it has
something that's some phrase or word or mantra that you'll repeat over and over or it may be a Koan:
What's the sound of one hand clapping? And you meditate on that
question. 2) The other half of the Meditation systems, is just: Formless. You just let your mind think
whatever it wants to think, whatever shows up, you're just aware of it, you
witness all of it with perfect equanimity and you don't try to prevent anything
from coming into your mind or going out of your mind. The book talks about
those two types of Meditation and particularly points out the importance of the
Formless types of Meditation.
Then "Integral Spirituality" is a fairly
intense discussion of the theoretical aspects of an Integral Spirituality per
se. So it discusses what Integral Spirituality means and the various aspects of
reality that it would include. The difference between "Integral Theory"
and "Integral Spirituality" is
that "Integral Spirituality" is one aspect of an overall "Integral
theory". It's the spiritual aspect. There's also a sociological aspect, a
political aspect, a medical aspect and so on. Some goes into 15 different
disciplines that are all brought together, one of which is an Integral Spirituality that has a form
and a formless Meditation and those areas are all discussed.
Into much
more detail talk about this in my book "The
Religion of Tomorrow" as it is related to Evolution. If Evolution
continues and we get further stages
and states of development, what will
they look like? So it's different from
"Integral Spirituality", particularly in looking at what form
will Integral Spirituality have if Evolution continues. So we'll be the part of
the tomorrow.
Then "Finding Radical Wholeness" is
a very different book. I was calling it for a long time: "Making
room for Everything". It divides the types of "practices" we
can do into five major types, which I call:
Waking Up, Growing Up, Opening Up, Cleaning Up and
Showing Up. And what I do is I take each one of those areas and discuss
them separately. So I discuss what Waking
Up is, as well as each of them, as different type of "wholeness".
Waking Up is finding a wholeness for the entire physical
universe. It's a Nature Mysticism.
And so I go over the type of wholeness that each one of these presents. So when
I talk about Waking Up wholeness, I
talk about you being one with everything you're looking at. And I actually use
Douglas Harding's simple, but very clever metaphor called "on having
no head". Yeah, that should be a very serious party who's a member of
the London Buddhist society. He wrote a book called "On having no head". And it's a very serious book, but it's
also very serious because he says: " notice that you can never see your
own head". As far as you don't even have a head, you can see your hands,
you can see your feet, you can see your legs, your arms, your torso, but you
can't see your head. If you look at these two fleshy bulbs, this is your nose,
but you can't see it, only you can if you get a mirror and hold it in front of
you. But that's not your head, that's an image of your head three feet out
there. That's not your head.
RAQUEL : That's right.
KEN:
I can see your head, but we can't
see our own head. He says: "if you
look for your own head and try to feel what's like on this side of your eyes,
all you'll see, if you're looking at an
orange tree, is the orange tree and it's sitting right where you thought your
head was. Just like the computer screen you're looking at now. If you look for
where is this computer screen located, well it's sitting right where you
thought your head was. It's sitting right on your shoulders. There's no
distance, there's no separation between you and the computer screen. Your
subject and object are in a perfect non-duality.
They're in a non-dual unity state of awareness. That's what Waking Up experience is, waking up to
this unity that you have with everything you're aware of. Now, you're one with
all of it. All of it is sitting right on your head, right where you thought your
head was.
Growing Up is completely different from Waking Up. It was an enormous discovery
for me when I realized that the stages that were taught in Zen Buddhism were
not at all similar to the stages that were taught in Developmental Psychology.
I realized this in my early teens. I started meditating and I had a spontaneous Satori when I was 13. That gave me a
very strong Waking Up experience with
everyone, with everything. I discovered Developmental Psychology when I was
around 14. What I learned as I studied all the great developmental
psychologists, A. Maslow and his Needs Hierarchy,
Jane Loevinger and her Stages of Ego Development,
Lawrence Kohlberg and the Stages of Moral
Development and the stages of aesthetic
intelligence, stages of emotional
intelligence, stages of cognitive
intelligence, we don't just have one intelligence. We have psychologists
vary but somewhere between 8 and 12 multiple intelligences. You can actually
make a list of them and the type of questions that they answer, so like cognitive intelligence or a typical
normal thinking process. It answers what am I aware of right now. My cognitive intelligence just sees the
objective computer lying in front of me. In addition to cognitive intelligence, we have an emotional intelligence. How do I feel about this computer? We have
an aesthetic intelligence, is there
any beauty in this computer? So stages of beauty. We have a moral intelligence like is this computer
doing something good or something bad? And so on through around 12 multiple
intelligences.
When I first
discovered these 8 to 12 intelligences, what I did to find them in myself was I
took one intelligence for each day of the week and so when I would take moral intelligence, I would just think
of moral thoughts and I would think, am I being moral or ethical? and what I'm
doing now? and I just all day would think of what is a moral intelligence and
how am I expressing my moral intelligence right now. And then the next day I
might do emotional intelligence.
Okay, I think I have my feeling about this today and the next day I do aesthetic intelligence and spatial intelligence and each day I
would take a different intelligence. And the funny thing is you can actually
realize these different multiple intelligences. When you think of an entire day
of emotional intelligence and you
live through that day, you'll really get in touch with your feeling intelligence. So I feel and when you do Aesthetic Intelligence, you'll really
notice beautiful things in the world and you'll actually see them and you can
feel your oneness with them, particularly if you realize, you have no head!!!
And so when I went through all of my multiple intelligences, I called
that "wholeness" which results from experiencing that: Opening Up. I was opening up to all of my Multiple Intelligences. And so I
included all of those what it gave me a type of "wholeness" that
comes from Opening Up.
As I go from Waking Up as a "wholeness"
with the entire physical universe, the type of "wholeness" I get from
Growing Up go from Archaic to Magic to Mythic to Rational to Pluralistic to Integral
or Systemic or Unified. And therefore the "wholeness" I get when I
include all my Multiple Intelligences
is a type of Opening Up Wholeness.
And you actually do feel an increase in "wholeness" when you go
through all of your Multiple Intelligences.
Cleaning Up is the type of "wholeness"
that is generally associated with Sigmund Freud and his inner circle. Freud
attracted an enormous number of literal bona fide geniuses to his circle: Carl Jung, which most people have heard of,
Otto Rank also very well known. He recall and worked with the birth trauma. Alfred Adler ( if you take -as researchers have
done- all of the psychotherapists in America and ask: who do you follow? Are you a Gestalt
therapist? Do you follow Fritz Perls? Are you a strict Freudian? Do you follow
Freud? Are you an Adlerian? Do you follow Adler? By far the largest number of
psychotherapists in this country follow Alfred Adler). He was an incredibly
clear and simple writer. And so people would read Alfred Adler, then remember
his version of how did he 4 Stages Therapy.
And when they became psychotherapists, they would end up practicing Alfred
Adler's version.
Freud, of
course, is the best known of the lot. And most people learn the terms Ego and Id,
for example, from Freud, because that's where they would hear the Id, when reading
Freud, or just hear Freud discussed. What most people don't know is that Freud
never once used the term "Ego" or "Id". He used the German
pronouns, because the German pronouns that he used was the "it", and "I".
And James Strachey, (his official translator) every time, Freud would write a
sentence like he was once famously asked: " what does this new Psychoanalysis
of yours do?" And he replied: "where
"Id" was, "Ego" shall be" , by giving the terms. And yet
what Freud actually said was: "where "It" is the "I"
shall become". That was his direct quote. And James Strachey, changed the "it"
to the Latin "Id" and the "I" by the Latin "Id" and "Ego". He did that, the use of those Latin terms- because as he put it, they made Freud sound
more scientific. So all of Freud's books with exception of one, which is called:
"The question of Lay Analysis"
(1926) -which I actually recommend you buy it and read it one day-; all what Freud does is he'll say things like: the "it" can cause the "I"
an enormous amount of pain. That's how he talks. And most people, when they
split off some part of their psyche into an "it", they actually refer
to that split off part as an "it". So they'll say: " I can't
control "it"" , or "this obsession, "it" controls
me". " I can't get rid of "it"". Freud would want us
to get the "I" back as one
with their "It". So whatever they were repressing from themselves
that produce this anxiety, or this depression or this obsession, Freud would
want them to re-identify with that "it" and make "it" part
of their "I". So where "it" was, their "I" shall
become.
Well, the one
that really made the most out of that formula was a guy named Fritz Perls and
Perls created something called Gestalt Therapy.
Because he was from the Gestalt, the German School of Psychology called Gestalt
Psychology. And Gestalt is simply German for "whole". Fritz Perls would actually work with the "I"
and the "it" in a very concrete way. So Perls was a big hero out at
Esalen Institute. Esalen is the first so-called Growth Center in America. And within a decade after Esalen was
founded by our friend, Mike Murphy (by
the way, over 300 Growth Centers in
America and all of them were based on the example of Esalen Institute !!!) it
just exploded and they would have things like Therapy sessions and Growth
sessions and all of these Workshops that
they would give. And when Perls would give his, he would say usually at least
100 people would show up in the audience to watch Fritz Perls' work on
somebody's neurosis. He mostly said: "I can cure any neurosis in 15
minutes". And then, even his hardest
critics tended to agree. Perls was a genius when it came to working with
neurosis. And the way he would work with it, was impressive. Who wants to work? And they called somebody up from the
audience. He would have in front a chair and he'd have the person sit in that
chair. And then between the two of them, there was an empty chair, which was
just called "the empty chair". And so Perls would say:
-
"okay, what's bothering you?"
And the
person would say:
- "well, I
have this anxiety and "it"'s driving me crazy. "It"'s driving me crazy.
And so Perls
would say:
-
"okay, I want you to take that anxiety and put "it" in
the empty chair. And now I want you to talk to that anxiety, ask the questions".
And the
person would usually say:
- " well, why are you bothering me? What are you doing
to me? Why are you making me so painful and hurting?
And so the
person say:
- oh, okay, I'll play along.
So he or she would
look at this empty chair, pretending his anxiety was sitting in the chair and
say:
- why are you doing this to me?
And Perls
would say:
- Okay, now answer yourself. Sit
in the empty chair, be the anxiety and answer yourself. Tell them why you're
doing "it".
So the person
would sit in the empty chair and go:
-well, I'm causing you all this anxiety because you're
worthless. You're no good. You're a rotten person.
And they've
generally brought all the horrible things their parents had said about them or
something.
And then Perls
would say:
- okay, now answer that and talk.
Go back and forth on the chairs and talk.
And everybody
in the audience could see what was happening, which is the more this person
played the anxiety and spoke as that anxiety spoke as an "I" the
better is was feeling. I am doing this to you because then the more they were turning
that anxiety into an "I", they were actually recognizing ownership.
And within about 15 minutes, they would be fully re-identified with their
anxiety and their anxiety would go away. And everybody in the audience could
see this happening and they would most of them look at their thoughts and go,
well, that's 15 minutes, he's right. But that I call: "wholeness" where you reintegrate
the "it" with your "I", the "wholeness" of Cleaning
Up. So I explain sort of all of that stuff in a chapter of the book.
And then the
final one in addition to Waking Up, Growing Up, Opening Up, and Cleaning Up, is "Showing Up". I simply defined it as:
becoming one with all Four Quadrants. So it's to use an
"I", and an "It", and an "Its". Because each of
those is a very real, but very different form of knowing. And they're so real
that they actually have real pronouns assigned to each of them. So the Upper Left Quadrant is an "I"
space. That's why it's called First Person. The first person perspective is the perspective of the person speaking.
So it's on me. Second person is the
perspective of the person being spoken to. So that's you, thou, thine, etcetera.
Third person is the person or thing
being spoken about. So that's a he, she, it, and so on. So all three or four of
these perspectives are important. They each have a different Epistemology. They
each have a different Methodology. And they're all very important. And usually
a lot of the battles in Philosophy are is the "I" real or is the "self" or is the "it", the
brain real?. So is it Mind or Brain? And there's an enormous argument about
that. And the answer is that both are real. They're just different perspectives
of this self space. So there's an "I", a "self" and an "it".
So there's a Mind and there's also a Brain. Once the Upper left, once the Upper Right.
And then in the Lower Left, there is a
"You" space and an "I" space and a "You" plus an
"I" give us a: "We".
So the Lower Left is the "We".
Yeah. And yet the Lower Right is the interobjective plural: "They" or
"Its".
RAQUEL: The word in itself of Showing Up seems to me more exterior, right? It seems a terminology
which indicates that I'm manifesting everything which is in the inside. I am
manifesting in the outside everything that I know and that I think.
KEN:
And that's why the Four Quadrants are involved. It simply means that all
of these perspectives, First Person,
Second Person, Third person and Fourth Person are genuine perspectives.
They're actual dimensions of your reality. And if you want to be "whole", you have to Show Up for all of the dimensions that
you actually have !!! A First person view and you have a Second Person view and you actually have
a Third and Fourth person view. It's an all reality. They're not showing up for
the fullness of what they are if they don't Show up together !!! And
so that's what I call it Showing Up.
I mean, showing up for all dimensions and perspectives that you actually have
as a reality of your being. Going up for all of them or not.
RAQUEL: I see. Ken, I need to go because I have a consultation
right now. So could you tell us, please,
when is it that this wonderful book is finally going to be published? It seems
very interesting and I am already wanting to read it to clarify more this Showing Up to really make a "whole"
of the Four Quadrants in their
manifestation of the inner and outer. This integration of all that is a
"Show up", which seems
external and yet it's also internal. A showing up of my own self, let's say
everywhere. So I am very much looking
forward to read all that. So Ken, thank
you very much. And I would like to know when is this book finally going to come
out in the market?
KEN:
I don't exactly know, but it's there. Shambhala is done editing it. So
it will just go to the printer and it will be a month or two and it should be
out. It's a fairly long book because I have a lot of these chapters and each
dimension of finding wholeness Waking
Up, Growing Up, Opening Up, Cleaning Up and Showing Up. Each of those five
areas usually have two or three chapters each written about it. So there's one
that explains what it is and then there's a chapter or sometimes two on
practices you can actually do to realize this wholeness. So their practices for
Waking Up, Cleaning Up, Showing Up,
Growing Up and Opening Up. It's a very
easy to read book, which is why I like it. It's very simple and very
straightforward and very clear. I think it's probably, I would probably count
it as my favorite book right now.
RAQUEL: Would you say it's like a summary of all your
Integral Theory?
KEN: Basically. Yeah
RAQUEL: Well, thank you for all that because it's been
great. It's the compilation of all your experience, wisdom and real thoughts. A
way of giving yourself to the world. So thank you very much for it, Ken and
also thank you very much for this time with us on this LOVE day. You are a loving person, very generous what
it's clear in this interview that you've so nicely offered us.
KEN:
Thank you. I appreciate it. Bye
RAQUEL: Bye. Bye.
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