Book published in August 2024 - Interview: October 12- 2024
RAQUEL
Hello everyone, hello Ken to this special encounter to put in value the superb work that you’ve done in your last book FINDING RADICAL WHOLENESS. I see it as an elegant and peak compendium of your Integral MetaTheory.
I’m generally a slow reader and yet, in this case, I’ve read your publication rather quick -as I’ve been amazed, satisfied, motivated and very mentally and spiritually interested- even though I reckon it’s not an easy book.
The contents are very deep and require a high level of intellectual comprehension and I would even say consciousness to understand its total and profound meaning. Nevertheless, Ken, you make it easy by the way you express yourself, the repetitions you make to leave it clear and the examples you give us for better comprehension. So, thank you very much, Ken, for having written this wonderful work and also for having accepted to dive into your book together, offering us your voice, as well, to read some of your own paragraphs.
KEN
Sure, my pleasure
RAQUEL
To make a review of this “Finding Radical Wholeness” volume of yours -although relative for the big extension of its contents- we’re going to be making three interviews to cover it all. This is the first, mainly treating the concept of Wholeness and diving into Waking Up and Growing Up. We will be mixing questions with paragraph’s readings (questions are totally referred to your book and are mere picks from the profound and extensive information you offer. Paragraphs are gathered from several lines on the same or different chapters that refer to the same matter). At the second interview in February 14th 2025, we’ll maintain the style (Q&A and quoted readings of your book) addressing Cleaning Up, Opening Up, and Showing Up. This year our habitual General Questions’ interview will be dedicated to the last part of your book: Total Wholeness and Tantra.
At the end of this first interview, we will end up with your Witness (Turiya) “pointing out instructions”. At the end of the second one, in St. Valentine’s Day 2025 we will offer your “pointing out instructions” about One Taste (Turiyatita) and Tantra experience in your book. So, are you with me, Ken? Do we already embark in this beautiful trip toward Total Wholeness? Let’s make it wonderful, enjoyable and fluent as your book is!!!
KEN
Well, that's great. And I appreciate you taking it in chunks because when I first started out, I thought that there was just such a thing as one wholeness and you were either one with wholeness or you weren't. But the more I looked into wholeness, the more I realized it actually has several very distinct dimensions. And they each have to be dealt with quite differently because they're really covering very different realities. And yet they're all equally important. And I found five basic dimensions. I called them Waking Up, Growing Up, Opening Up, Cleaning Up and Showing Up. And when we put those all together, we get a Total Wholeness or a Big Wholeness.
RAQUEL
Let’s start by the already previous veiled question of the first paragraph of this interview:
1) Which level of Growth (Altitude) do a person require to fully understand this book, knowing surely that everyone will read it from their own level, but which level is needed to fully get the message and practice it?
KEN
Well, it's sort of a matter of degrees. The more developed and evolved you are, the more you'll get out of the book. But people can start to pick up useful things at Amber or even the Mythic level. And then certainly the Rational level, they can at least get the framework and understand that fairly fully. And then at the Pluralistic and integral stages, they can actually start to embrace the real essence of what the book is about. And particularly at Integral Turquoise or the highest general, expectable level that human beings grow to. By the way, the percentage of the population at Green or Pluralistic is about 25%. The percentage of the population at Teal or the beginning Integral stage is around 5 to 8%. But the percentage of the population at Turquoise or the high Integral level is 0.5%. That’s very little. But people that are attracted to my work tend to be in the integral stages of development. And so, they shouldn't have too much trouble with it.
RAQUEL
2) Which was your main concern when writing this work? What’s the purpose?
KEN
As I was explaining to you earlier, the topic of a book is not something I generally consciously choose. And by that, I mean, when I finish writing a book, which only takes me about a month -because I actually write the book in my head first- then I edit it, and only then I just try to spread it down. And so, when I finish writing a book, I just type it up, send it into Shambhala Random House, my publishers, and they almost never edit it anymore, because I already edited it myself, and I'm a fairly good editor. I mean, I've been an editor my whole life. And so, I'll have, after writing the book now, which takes about a month, around 6 to 8 months where I can just goof off. I generally watch movies or go on walks or meditate more or stuff like that. What I'm actually doing is writing the book in my head during that six to eight month’s period. And so, I edit it and break spelling and all of that kind of stuff. And then sometime around the seventh or eighth month, I'll wake up one morning and I just go: Wow! oh, okay, I've got to get out of bed and start writing now. And so, I do that and I go straight to my computer. And then for the next month, I'll wake up around four o'clock in the morning, I get right out of bed and go straight to my computer. I don't brush my teeth, I don't wash my face, I don't do anything. I don't have anything to eat. I'll make a cup of coffee and sit down and just start transcribing what I've already written in my mind. And that's when I start to find out what it's really all the depth about.
Of course, as I was writing in my mind, I was aware of what I was writing. And so, I do know generally what the book is about because I've been working on it and editing it and so on. In this case, what I wanted to do was to have, I mean, I've written several books that in a sense summarized the integral approach because whenever I write about the integral approach, I first have to explain what it is. Because many people have not any idea that they actually go through eight or nine major stages of growth of development or evolutionary unfolding. They can't even name them. You can't see them when you look within. I call this process: Growing up.
You can't see a single stage of Growing up. They’re third person perspectives. And a first person is the perspective of the person talking. So that's a pronoun like I, me, mine. Second person is the person being spoken to. So that's you, thy, yours and so on. Third person is the person or thing being spoken about. So that's he, she, they, them, it or it's, and you can go up to a fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth person perspectives. And Jane Loevinger, who's a very great pioneer in Developmental Psychology, she actually defines each one of her major eight stages of growth by being able to add further perspectives. So, her stage one understands a first person’s perspective. So that's the first six months of a life or so. And the infant can understand, I, me, mine, give me. But they can understand second person or third person or fourth person.
When they get to the second stage, which starts around six months to a year, then they can start to understand that you have a perspective different from theirs. And so, they understand you, yours, and so on. And then when they get to the third stage, they can understand he, she, they, them, it, or it's. But Jane Loevinger has, beyond the third stage, she has the fourth stage, the fifth stage, the sixth stage, the seventh stage and the eighth stage.
Each one of those
stages adds yet a further perspective. So, her fourth stage can actually
see a fourth person perspective. And what's a fourth person
perspective? Well, if you just think about third person perspective,
which is being aware of second person perspective, that's aware of first
person’s perspective; when you think about that, you're using a fourth
person perspective to think about the third person perspective. And
a fifth person perspective is if you start to think about what is a fourth
person perspective. And so, each time you grow a stage, you add another
perspective until you get up to the seventh or eighth person
perspectives. And she actually has tests that she can give people to
determine what stage they're at.
That was sort of the
overall purpose of the book was to write an overview of all of this material.
And again, I've done a couple of books that were in a sense overview,
explaining what Integral is. Because like I say, in order for me to
write about it, I have first to explain it. But since nobody knows any of it, I
have to explain it all. To explain what Integral is I have to explain Waking
Up, Growing Up, Opening Up, Cleaning Up, Showing Up. We'll go through all of those and make them
very clear to everybody who's watching. So, they'll have a very full integral
understanding of what integral is. And that was sort of the purpose
of this book. And I'm very glad to say I actually think it's probably -of the
35 books I've written-, the very best book that I've done. And I would agree.
RAQUEL
And I would agree with that
absolutely!
RAQUEL READS 1
Start quote.
To enter into the book, I want
to read something from the Introduction that may summarize the purpose in one
word: Wholeness: Ken says: Start quote.
“Wholeness is
actually the meaning of a real spirituality and thus it can offer a genuine
meaning and purpose to your life”. What happens is that Wholeness almost
never just stands out in awareness by itself. None of the areas of Wholeness
are totally obvious and apparent right now.
If you don’t know where and how to look for them, they will remain
mysterious unknowns in your life. You have to know where to look for Wholeness.
One of the most shocking things to me in my entire professional life has been
the realization of just how utterly hidden real Wholeness is -and is shocking
because when you do see it, it’s absolutely and staggeringly obvious”. Finish
quote.
KEN
Let me just say that these
five dimensions of Total Wholeness: Waking Up, Growing Up, Opening Up, Cleaning
Up and Showing Up. When you put them all together, you get what I call a Big
Wholeness or a Total Wholeness. So just to make sure that that's
what we mean.
KEN READS -1-
Start quote.
“This book was
originally titled: “Making Room for Everything” Big Wholeness makes room
for everything in your life, much of which right now might not be included. You
are very likely missing an enormous number of things that actually belong to
you and should be included in your own life, to its huge benefit and likely
improvement but you haven’t made room for them. You don’t have enough Wholeness. When you really see the fundamental Big
Wholeness of this world, then everything fits and you feel as if there is a
superabundant fullness in your life and no friction, no tension, no torture”. End quote.
RAQUEL
3) So, Ken, regarding
this “Wholeness”, tell us the difference between “Wholeness” and “Total
Wholeness or Big Wholeness”
KEN
Well, as I just sort
of quickly went over, when I started looking at Wholeness, I started out
thinking there was just one Wholeness. And everything was Whole.
And you were one with that Wholeness or you weren't. I found that it
really included several different dimensions. And what sort of shots me was
that they were really quite different dimensions. So just to give a quick run
through Waking Up is discovering the Wholeness when you become
one with everything. You have a mystical experience of unity consciousness. And
you don't look at the mountain, you are the mountain, you don't see the sun,
you are the sun, you don't walk on the earth, you are the earth, you don't see
a flock of birds fly by, you are the flock of birds. You're one with
everything. That's a very real, very deep Wholeness. But then within
that Wholeness, we have our individual selves. And what I found is that
this individual self Grows and develops through a very real series of stages
of development. And almost nobody knows this, let alone what these stages
actually are. But I'll just give a quick rundown from Gene Gebser. He
called them the archaic stage, the magic stage, the mythic
stage, the rational stage, the pluralistic stage, and the integral
stage.
They each sort of
mean what they sound like. But that's a very real Wholeness that you can
reach if you grow through all of those stages. And they're very simple
practices you can do to help you grow and evolve through them. But it's a very
real Wholeness. Then, Opening Up is different. Developmental Psychologists
have explored people's growth and development from birth to childhood to
adolescence to young adulthood to older adulthood to old age. In different
lives. They found that we actually have several different intelligences, what
are called: multiple intelligences. And so, we have psychologists vary
on how many we think we have. Somewhere between 8 and 12 multiple
intelligences. So, we have not only cognitive intelligence, which
most people think of as their thought process, their everyday thinking. And
that's what cognitive perception is. Is our everyday thinking. In addition to
that type of intelligence, we have an emotional intelligence, we have a spiritual
intelligence, we have an aesthetic intelligence, or the perception
of beauty, we have a spatial intelligence, an intelligence that’s seeing
spatial dimensions, and so on. And so, when we include all of our multiple
intelligences, we are what I call: Opening Up, mainly we're opening
up to all of the intelligences that we have.
I still call them
lines. And there are like 12 different lines of development. But they're
all going through the same levels. That's archaic to magic, to
mythic to rational to pluralistic to integral. Those
are the levels of development, and there are: cognitive line, emotional
line, spiritual line, egoic line, motivational line, spatial line, those
are all different lines. But they all go through the same basic levels.
Each of these
developmental pioneers were investigating, usually they'd select one multiple’s
intelligence to measure. And whether they knew they were selecting just one
multiple’s intelligence or not, they almost all did. So, Piaget studied cognitive
intelligence, Kholberg studied moral intelligence, Maslow
studied motivational intelligence, Loevinger studied ego
intelligence. And what I studied, the first big opening for me was when I
took all of their models and put them on a sheet of paper next to each other. What
I realized is that all of them were going through the same basic levels,
and give them different names. So, Piaget named his levels: pre-operational
cognition, concrete operational cognition, formal operational cognition, and
systemic cognition. And Kholberg named his: pre-conventional
morality, conventional or conformist reality, and post-conventional or integral
morality. And Maslow named his: physiological needs, safety
needs, belongingness needs, self-esteem needs, self-actualization needs, and
self-transcendence needs. They're all going from archaic to magic,
to mythic to rational to pluralistic to integral.
So, when we add all
of these different dimensions together, including Cleaning Up, which is
generally associated with the name of Sigmund Freud, is when we get a Big
Wholeness.
When Freud was asked,
what does this new analysis of yours do? He famously replied: “where ‘id’ was,
the ‘ego’ shall be”. And that sort of creates a whole and healthy psyche. What
people don't know is Freud never once used the term ‘id’ or ‘ego’. His
translator, James B. Strachey, used the words that Freud used and translated
them into Latin, because he thought that made Freud sound more scientific. But
Freud never once said: “where ‘id’ was, ‘ego’
shall be”. What he said was: where ‘it’ was, the ‘I’ shall become”. And this
shows that Freud is actually very astutely aware of the different pronouns and
the different perspectives that there are. So, where ‘it’ was, it's a third
person pronoun, while ‘I’ is a first person pronoun. And so, what he meant was,
he noticed that when people repress something or push it out of their mind into
the unconscious, they generally start referring to it as an ‘it’ because it's
now a third person. It seems alien and foreign. So, let's say the anxiety: “it
overcomes me” or the depression: “I can't control it” or the obsession: “It
overtakes me”. And so, when Freud said: “where ‘it’ was the ‘I’ shall become”,
he meant we're going to take these ‘its’ and reunite them with the ‘I’. And to
see how this was really best done can be seen by studying his student, Chris
Pearls.
Pearls became a
superstar at Essalen Institute. And Essalen, was the first growth
center founded in America by my good friend Mike Murphy. His parents left him
an absolutely stunningly gorgeous piece of land on the edge of the Pacific
Ocean on a set of cliffs overlooking the ocean at Big Sur. And there were some
old buildings on it. So, he would use those buildings to put different teachers
teaching meditation or psychotherapy or whatever they were teaching. And each
year hundreds of people came through Essalen and it was so successful that by
the end of just one year in America, there were over 300 growth centers all
modeled on Essalen. Fritz Pearls came through and he was a big star there. And
what he would do is he would say, okay, who wants to do work? And hundreds of
people would show up for his workshops. And he selected a person who wanted to
do work. And he'd sit them down in a chair. And then in front of them, he would
put an empty chair. “What do you want to work on?” he would say. And the person might say: “well, I've got this
anxiety. It's driving me crazy”. And Perls said: “okay, put the anxiety in this
empty chair and talk to it”. And the person responded, “what do you mean, talk
to it?” “Well, ask your anxiety, why are you doing this to me?” “Why are you
picking on me? Or something like that?” Perls would say. And so, the person would do it: “okay, why
are you doing this to me?” And Perls would have the person sit in the empty
chair and play like he was the anxiety answering back, saying: “why am I doing this
to you? Because you're stupid. You're an idiot. You always screw things up.
That's why I'm bugging you”.
Perls would put back
the person in the original chair and would say: “now respond as yourself and
answer to what the anxiety just said. Just have a conversation, talk back and
forth”. And I should preface this by saying, Pearl's very famously said: “I
can cure any neurosis in 15 minutes”.
Even his harshest
critics who hated Pearls, agreed he could do so, because he was a real genius
when it came to feeling out a person's neurosis and helping them come to terms
with it. He would have them identify with whatever they put in the empty chair,
that “it” that they put in the empty chair. And they would do that because the
person would identify what they did as they answered it: “I'm doing this to you
because you're stupid, an idiot”. That's a first person talking. So, your
anxiety is now part of your first person. And as they go back and forth,
everybody in the audience could see that within about 10 minutes, this person's
anxiety was just dropping away. And within 15 minutes, Pearl's was right. He
had more or less cure their anxiety. So what Freud said is clearly: “where ‘it’
is, the ‘I’ shall become”. And that's a very important part of finding wholeness
because we want to own all of our ‘its’ because usually when we split something
off and make it an ‘it’, we end up making a projection.
If I'm mad at you,
but I split it off and I don't want to admit I'm mad at you and I project it on
you, I'll think you're mad at me. And we all have all sorts of those battles
and problems with people in our lives, or we just can project our qualities
onto things or onto a car. We have a new car for example and a lot of young
boys will project their manhood onto a car and identify with cars as if it's
their real self. So that was about having the ‘it’ be returned to ‘I’.
Now the wholeness
of Showing Up. That's the last major dimension of wholeness that I
discovered. And that's we already talked about having a first person’s perspective
and a second person perspective and a third person perspective
and a fourth person perspective. Well, when I first wrote those down, I
wrote them down on like a cross. I just made a cross on a big yellow pad and I
had the upper left and the upper right and the two upper
quadrants were individual quadrants. So, they were first person
or second person and the lower quadrants were collective. The
plural of an ‘I’, which is the upper left quadrant is a ‘We’ and that became
the lower left quadrant. And a ‘We’ of course is our whole social
interaction. ‘You’ and ‘I’ make a ‘We’ and that's our culture and our
interpersonal interaction and so on. And then the left hand quadrants
are all consciousness and the right hand quadrants are all matter.
And every holon in the universe, a holon is a whole that's part
of a larger whole. And everything in the world is a holon. I mean, if
you think about it, our language goes from letters, whole letters that are
parts of whole words, whole words are parts of whole sentences, whole sentences
are parts of whole paragraphs, whole paragraphs are parts of whole stories. We
see the same thing in Nature in the evolution of nature. It goes from
whole quarks and a whole quark is part of a whole subatomic particle part of a
proton, a neutron, an electron. And then whole atoms are part of whole
molecules and whole molecules are part of whole cells and whole individual
cells are part of whole multicellular animals. And so, we see the sequences
like again, everything is a holon because it's a whole, but it's also
whole that's a part of an even larger wholeness. And that's just everywhere we
look, we find holons and holons are all developing this greater
wholeness, which is why each stage of Growing Up gets bigger and bigger
and bigger from archaic to magic to mythic to rational to
pluralistic to integral. So, when we take all of those elements, Waking
Up, Growing Up, Opening Up, Cleaning Up and Showing Up, and the Cleaning
Up is where we clean up our shadow elements and reunite the ‘it’ with the
’I’ to make a whole and healthy psyche. That's what I call the process of Cleaning
Up. But when we combine all of those, we do indeed get a Total Wholeness.
And it's important that we include it’s an integral approach, because integral
means to unite or to make whole.
RAQUEL
4) In page 5 you
already present two very important concepts to understand Wholeness that is the
difference between “experience” (Knowledge by acquaintance) and
explanation (Knowledge by description). Could you briefly explain this
difference and why it’s important as it seems that your book is addressing the
acquaintance.
KEN
Right. Well, let's take Waking Up, which is where a person who's
generally identified with a small self and a small mind, and they think they're
just this one individual body. And that's it. And then maybe they're walking in
the woods or making love or listening, their great classical music. And they
all of a sudden drop their separate self-identity. And they find that
they're one with everything, it’s sometimes called Cosmic Consciousness
or Unity Consciousness. Because again, you don't look at the sky, you
are the sky, you don't look at a mountain, you are the mountain, and you don't
look or feel the earth, you are the earth.
I'm describing that state of Cosmic Consciousness, but you
don't necessarily feel that state when I describe it, because I'm just
giving you knowledge by description, or explanation, or so on.
But if you actually then take up like a meditation practice or some sort of
actual practice to get you into this direct experience, this first person’s
experience of oneness, then that's a direct acquaintance. You are one
with ‘that’. And it's a first person’s experience. And all first person’s
experience is conscious, because it's your ‘I’ experience, or your me or your
mind. And so that direct acquaintance is what I want to try to convey to
people. I usually have a series of exercises that they can do, along with each
of the different dimensions of wholeness. So, I have some Waking Up and Growing
Up exercises they can do to experience that acquaintance, and also
with Opening Up and Cleaning Up and Showing up. And that's
a very important distinction. Because too many people just write about these
things. And very few of them have actually experienced them in first person.
RAQUEL
5) “Living, loving
and being”, as proposed by Spong; sounds a beautiful and simple way of Wholeness,
although may be not an easy ride, don’t you think? Is that why we need those pointing
out instructions that Integral Metatheory give us? Is your metatheory our
Know How to live, love and be?
Yeah, sure. Living,
loving and being is a great term that Spong used. And Spong, incidentally, was
a bishop. He's a devoutly believing Christian. But he wrote books with names
like; ‘Why Christianity must change or die’. He very powerfully believed
that all of the myths and miracles in the Bible, they're all fake. They're not
real. And he wrote like that. And I always say, I don't know how he's escaped
being excommunicated. But he wrote, he's written over a dozen books. And all of
them are tearing down all of the mythic beliefs of Christianity. And I love it,
of course, because mythic is the last stage before the rational. And Spong was
a very rational guy. And he doesn't like myths or magic. And so, he's
devastating to them. And I love reading his stuff. I always get some ideas from
him. And I still don't know how he's avoided being excommunicated. But he's a
great read. And I recommend any of his books.
KEN READS -2-
Start quote.
“We find this quest
for Wholeness at the center of most of the world’s great religions, even though
their major mythic stories differ wildly.
The philosophical school called “The Perennial Philosophy” believes that
the fundamental Wholeness is what all of the world’s great religions are
pursuing as the experience of Oneness is similar), an ultimate
Unity consciousness, what some Tibetan Buddhist call the “One Taste” “. Finish quote.
6) And why calling it
so? Why to use one of our sensorial qualities to describe it? Why not one sound
or one tact?
KEN
Well, you could use
any sense you wanted to. The point is there's a oneness to them. So, I use One
Taste because the Tibetans call it One Taste, the Tibetan Buddhists.
And also, the idea is that when you have this experience of Oneness,
it's so close. It's almost like you can taste it. It really is an
experience that just saturates your being. And I'll give you a simple
metaphorical example of what one taste is actually like.
This will give you a
direct experience of Oneness, if it clicks. This works for about 50% of the
people, and about 50%, they understand it, but they don't quite get it. If it
works, it'll give you a direct experience of this Oneness. This simple
metaphoric example was first discovered by a man named Douglas Harding. He
was a member of the London Buddhist Society. So, you know, he was
interested in this kind of things. He called it: “on having no head”. It's
actually half funny and half serious. He pointed it out by saying: “notice that
you can see every part of your body, except one, you can see your feet, your
toes, your ankles, your legs, your thighs, your waist, your stomach, your
chest, your arms, your hands, your fingers, but you cannot see your head”. And
you really can't. If you try to see your head, all you'll see are these two
sort of fleshy blobs. I can see your head and you can see mine, but you can't
see yours, and I can't see mine. Instead look where you think your head is. And
most of us sort of think it's behind our eyes and sitting on our shoulder. And
he says: “okay, look at that space behind your eyes. And what do you see there?”
And what you'll see in that space is everything you're looking at. So, if
you're looking at a computer screen now, and you actually look at it, you'll
realize it's sitting right where you thought your head was. And you're one with
that computer screen. And the same if you look at your wall, and it's just
sitting right where you thought your head was. And so that's a very easy way to
get a sense of this unity consciousness, because it's sitting right on
your shoulders, right where you thought your head was. And so that's a real Waking
Up experience. And it's sort of right where your, you thought your taste
buds were, what’s is sitting now is your computer screen. So it's a One Taste.
RAQUEL READS 2
Starts quote.
Integral basically means
“Wholeness”. Integral Metatheory has searched for almost five decades to find
the 5 major aspects, dimensions or areas of fundamental Wholeness: Waking
Up, Growing Up, Opening Up, Cleaning Up and Showing Up.
Human development includes
several stages of growth and evolution and Humanity itself is moving through
those stages reaching today the beginning of the “integrated stage”. End
quote
7) So, Ken, having in
mind that even though a person may have a high level Waking Up experience or
even be at a high level of Waking Up, it will always interpret it from the
level of Growth they’re at, therefore it calls my attention why you’ve started
your book writing first about Waking Up as I would find that Growing Up is
crucial to then be able to understand what happens from a higher and more
inclusive perspective when I Wake Up. And yet, you not only start writing about
Waking Up, you also say that it’s “the most important and foundational aspect
of a genuine Big Wholeness”. Why?
KEN
Well, if you think
about it when you're really become one with everything, one of every object
that you're aware of, that's a very Big Wholeness. As a matter of fact,
it's a Oneness with the entire universe.
So, it stretches to
infinity. And there's no other aspect of wholeness that stretches to infinity.
It's a very important part of a really Big Wholeness. So, and Zen
Buddhist, for example, think that Satori is the best of all and the end of
all wholeness, simply because it's so vast and extensive. And when you
experience it, you really are just blown away. You feel like you're one with
absolutely everything in the entire universe, all those galaxies and stars that
you see at night. You're one with all of them. And they are actually of One Taste
with you. And so, you can't say that about any other of those dimensions. Growing
Up gives you a sense of being able to think of a whole and Opening
Up lets you identify with all of your multiple intelligences. But even when
you identify with all of them, you don't feel that you're one with everything. Cleaning
Up is just reuniting the split off shadow elements of yourself. Showing Up
is just using all of the perspectives that you have available to you. When you Wake
Up, you really have a fundamental shift in identity. And when you Wake Up,
you're actually shifting from the small mind to Big Mind. And that's the
only time that happens. So, that's a very fundamental part of Big Wholeness
is this Waking Up. So, I start with that. Most people, when they get a
sense of Waking Up, they think it actually does include everything. But
although you're One with all the objects you're aware of, it's not
everything. It's not all types of Wholeness. They’re not actually
included. Because you can have a very profound Waking Up experience and
have not a clue of what stage of Growing Up, you're at. You don't
even know you're going through Growing Up stages, even though you're
feeling enlightened. So, I generally introduce Waking Up and then I say:
“and notice you also have to Grow Up”. And you can't confuse these two
things. I also like to talk about that because that was my own first major discovery.
It was the difference between Waking Up and Growing Up. When I
first started studying Growing Up, I went through all the developmental
psychologists and put them all next to each other and saw how they were all
different lines going through the same levels. I had like 8 or 9
major levels of development and 8 to 12 lines. And when I first started
studying Zen, I had a sort of spontaneous satori when I was 13 or 14.
And then I read DT Suzuki's essays and Zen Buddhism, which is a brilliant set
of books. It's a three volume’s set of books. It's about that thick. But I
learned what satori was. And I learned they also had 10 Zen ox herding
pictures, which were 10 major stages that people go through on their way to a
real satori, a real enlightenment, a real awakening to
this Cosmic Consciousness. And since I had 8 or 9 stages and there were
10 stages, I thought, wow, these stages are everywhere. They're talking about
the same thing. But the more I started studying Waking Up and Growing
Up, the more I saw that there were really some profound differences. For
example, every experience you have of Waking Up, you know it, because
it's a first person, direct, immediate, conscious experience. So, if you're
sitting in the woods and you're meditating and all of a sudden you become one
with everything and you're bathed and loved and bliss, you know it. You are fully
aware of that. You're aware of this blissful love flowing over you. You're
aware of this oneness with everything. And there's just no thing They would interpret it as a very magical state that they're
sort of experiencing this. And it's just an extension of magic to them. So, I'm
one with everything. All of Waking Up experiences are conscious, first
person’s experiences. But none of Growing Up is conscious or you can't
look within and say what stage of growth you're at. You have no idea. They're
like the laws of grammar. I mean, you and I are both speaking English now, so
we're both using the English laws of grammar. But we can't look within and see
these laws of grammar and then write them down so we can share them with each
other. We have no idea that we're using a grammar. We have no idea what stage
of Growing Up we're at. We can't look within and see them. We have
no idea that they're there unless we've actually studied Developmental Psychology.
And then we'll learn that there are various stages going through the
different lines of development. And then we might start looking within
and try to figure out, okay, well, what stage of I am? And if we do all of
that, then we'll have some general idea of where our stage of development
is. And that's fine. But that's very different from Waking Up, which
just hits you in the head and there's no mistaking it and you're fully aware of
it. That's not true of Growing Up stages. They're very, very
third person. They're rules of grammar. And so those two became very important
understandings for me. And it also became important because as I studied with
various Zen teachers and got to know all of their students, I noticed that
nobody had a clue that they were going through the Growing Up process.
They were all doing great with their growing, they're Waking Up, but
they had no clue at all that they had these Growing Up stages of development.
And so, I would often end up explaining them and maybe giving them a book or
two. But that became a very important distinction that everybody needs to make.
It's so important, so important because there is a lot of confusion.
RAQUEL
You say it in your book and you have also stated it
before in other books and in other interviews that that's why Psychology has
only like 100 years. And that's why the consciousness about Growing Up
is very recent.
KEN
RAQUEL
¡Oh, I would have said William
James!
KEN
RAQUEL
Following your own way of
presenting the 5 Wholeness, let’s start with Waking Up. Would you please read
the first text about it, Ken.
Start quote
“Waking Up (or Non
dual Wholeness) has been known to human beings as far as twenty thousand years
ago, from the Shamans to the present Mindfulness teachers and therefore from
the mythic ways to see religion to the high levels of nondual spiritual
practices. These “spiritual but not religious “experiences can ground a type of
interior science, which takes nothing on belief as a dogma but rather bases its
claims on direct experience and evidence, and asks you to believe nothing that
you haven’t verified for yourself.
Over the centuries
and millennia, various spiritual systems around the world pressed into
increasingly deeper and deeper or wider and wider or higher and higher
spiritual experiences in the path of Waking Up and any human being could, if
they too up the requisite interior scientific experiments and practices find
out for themselves what these higher and higher states were”. End quote.
RAQUEL READS 3
Start quote.
“This process of
spiritual growth, development or realization -Enlightenment, Awakening, or
simply Waking Up – is a profound Wholeness -revealing process and is found in
virtually all of the major systems of meditation, contemplation, yoga or
contemplative prayer presented in the Great Wisdom Traditions (several dozen
major ones) although they have, of course, many different ways of presenting
their stages”. Finish the quote.
8) Talk to us, Ken,
about the Ultimate or Absolute Truth and the relative truths
in this path of Waking Up, as I’ve always said to my students “Spirit is not
time or space”, so what relationship has this “time” and “space” with the
absolute truth.
KEN
Time and Space
are called manifestations of ultimate reality. So, if you think of ultimate
reality, think of it as God or Godhead or Brahma or Tao or Buddha nature, it
manifests, it throws itself out into create the manifest world. So, both space
and time come into existence as the absolute truth throws itself outward
to create this relative world. And everything in this relative world is
referred to as relative truth. And that includes the truth of space and time. Absolute
truth is infinite and eternal. And what those mean is
actually free of time and free of space. If we take eternity, eternity does not
mean an everlastingly long time. Neither a point without time. It's called the
timeless now. And when you think about it, you're only actually ever aware of a
timeless now moment. So, there is no real past and no real future. Those are
all relative truths. They're not ultimately real. If you want to see
this, just think of anything that you want into your past, get a really clear
image of it, think of it as being very real. And now notice where that image
exists. It doesn't exist yesterday. It exists right now in the timeless now
moment. And the same is true of the future. When you think of the future,
pictured as clearly as you want, it's still a present experience existing in
the timeless now. So, space and time aren't really that real. There are only
variations on the timeless now moment, which is absolute truth. So, well, when
we have a Waking Up experience, it always comes to the direct
realization of this timeless now moment. And so, all the mystics talk about the
timeless now. And that's all they want you to be aware of is this present,
timeless now moment. And as you just focus on that and focus on that, that's
called doing Mindfulness is being mindful of this timeless now.
RAQUEL
9) I’ve heard many
people getting confused between states and stages. Could you
please explain the difference and present to us briefly the 5 major stages of
Waking Up.
KEN
A state
refers to a state of consciousness. And that's an immediate present
experience that you're having. So, whatever you're experiencing right now is
your state, and you're according to the mystical traditions, you're now in your
waking state. And they generally define five major states of consciousness. And
when a state itself unfolds in a sort of linear sequence, it goes through what
are called stages. So, state one is experienced in stage
one. And the second state is experienced in stage two. And the
third state is experienced in stage three. And the fourth state
is experienced in stage four. And the fifth state is experienced
in stage five. Now, the distinction between states and stages.
Stages almost always apply to ‘structures of consciousness’. And
in order to clarify, I refer to them as structure stages. And
then when states do unfold in stages, there are state stages. The
five major stages of Waking Up, which would be five major state stages,
because Waking Up consists of states of consciousness. And the
general five major states of consciousness are gross, subtle, and
causal, And, those are all relative states. They're all
experienced in this relative world of space and time. And then those are the
three major relative states. And then there are two absolute states. And they
are called Turiya, which is not a very original name. Turiya is
just Sanskrit for ‘the fourth’. Okay, the fourth state, the fith state called
Turiyatita, which just means beyond Turiya, beyond the fourth. So, it's
the fifth state. And they're generally experienced in that direction. So, at
night when we fall asleep, we go from waking into dream state (subtle),
and then into deep dreamless sleep, which is emptiness, or the causal state.
The subtle state is a state of imagery, vivid imagery, art types, gods
and goddesses, things like that. And then the gross waking state is the
state that we're experiencing now. And we have access to logic and mathematics
and stuff like that. And then when we pass from those three states into the
fourth, or Turiya, Turiya is simply experienced as awareness of whatever
is arising. So, it's also called The Witness. It's the witness in us
that is always ever present, because it's an absolute state. And
this, ever present witnessing or pure awareness state is the
state that we want to get into, because it is an absolute state. And if we're
going to disclose the absolute realities of the timeless now. So, and you can
do that just by being aware of the present moment, and just witnessing whatever
arises, just don't judge it, don't condemn it, don't love it, don't applaud it,
just witness it, just watch it, just be aware of it. Without any judgment. And
that's the state you want to get into. And then if you get into that state, and
you hold it for a long time, what will tend to happen is the witness itself
will tend to dissolve. It will tend to evaporate. And you'll just, there'll
just be the state of oneness with you being one with everything you're aware
of. And that's the One Taste. And it's the headless state. And that's
called Turiyatita. So, Turiyatita is the actual state, the ultimate
state you want to get into. You get into it by going through Turiya or
‘The Witness’. You can just start by witnessing, and we'll have some exercises
for witnessing in a bit. And just stay with that. And that is a very absolute
reality
And ends up
reading:
“These major states
of consciousness become the major stages of meditation, because a
person’s central identity starts out confined to the typical ego-dominated
waking state, and with increasing meditation, it ends up traversing all of
those states-stages in consciousness, resulting in a pure Awakening of Ultimate
Unity consciousness. I refer to this sequence
of state-stages, in whole or part as Waking Up…as just saying “Spirit” isn’t at
all the same as truly knowing Spirit…so you don’t need a Growing Up statement,
you need a Waking Up experience…because statements are metaphoric, not
descriptive and my statements are metaphoric. As Nagarjuna tells us, mere Growing Up
statements (or ideas about spiritual intelligence) won’t get you anywhere near
ultimate Truth. You have to have what
Zen calls a “satori” which is a direct Waking Up realization, a pure nondual
experience… not more Growing Up maps being confused with the real territory of
Waking Up”.
RAQUEL
10)
Do this mean
that we cannot Wake Up if we do not meditate or have a “satori”? Wouldn’t this just
only be one of the modes of Waking Up? representing Assaglioli’s ascending
methodology and thus individual/self-assessment/1st person choice?
As I can do something for myself to awake. Also, I can go up the
ladder myself.
On the other hand,
in Christianity and other religious’ traditions it’s said that we’re chosen
by the Spirit, meaning that we may also have a Waking Up state and/or a
conversion to a stage by the purity of the regard and love of the Godhead upon
us: “By the grace of God you’re already fully saved”, you remember us in
your book. And the Mahayana Buddhism: “If
you could just realize that the Enlightened Mind is not attainable, you would
be Enlightened”, you also write.
In a sense and
above all regarding the Christian way of seeing it this would represent the Assaglioli’s
descending mode of Awakening. Is that so? I ask you this because
I know people that seem and feel Enlightened and yet they’ve not ever meditated
in their lives. Do all this have to do with “the paradox of instruction”?
KEN
RAQUEL
For
an old catholic like me is easy to understand it and see it intellectually and
not so emotionally easy. We have this idea of God in second person like you
call it and the feeling is there as an authentic reality.
KEN
The second person, in Vedanta is referred to Ishvara who
is the personal God, who emanates from Brahman. And Brahman is
our own Big Mind. Brahman is the
Absolute Truth. And Ishvara is the relative reality, because is a
relative God. Is a production from Brahman.
Is a creation of the ultimate absolute reality that rises a personal God in
second person. In other words, the Divinity generates God. And the Divinity is
our Big Mind. You may unite these two
ideas as you want to.
RAQUEL
It’s
very interesting in a sense because when I finished to read your book, I was a
little bit angry with you and you will understand why as al lof a sudden ¡You
had robbed God to me! ¡You had left me as an orphan!
KEN
Well, it’s not so and yet I understand what you mean.
RAQUEL
Intellectually
is very clear to me, Ken. I clearly
understand it with my rational mind, I can even rest in the midst of the
paradox and integrate it and yet understand that my inner child is attached to
this idea of a personal God with which I can talk and can feel as something
real and authentic.
KEN
May you describe me that God? Which is the image? As any image you say
is just an idea.
RAQUEL
It
doesn’t have any idea as for me is Energy with capital letters.
KEN
Energy has a time and has a space.
RAQUEL
No,
not according to what I always say: “spirit doesn’t have time or space” It’s
pure potentiality. And, therefore IT may
create everything, time, space… it may become relative.
KEN
Reality itself doesn’t exist
RAQUEL
This
Spirit, Godo or Divinity that I feel in me is pure potentiallity, and therefore
anything could arise or be created. Like
this pen in my hand that is like pure potentiallity as it can draw or write
everything that there is.
KEN
And yet, that pen has time and has space. When Vedanta speaks about Ishvara
is simply noticing that most people when they think of God, think of some sort
of concept or some sort of idea, even if it's the idea of potentiality, but
that itself is a concept. And they're just simply saying, notice that that
concept has dimensions. And that's because it comes out of the dimensionless.
And what you mean by God is what they would call God head, which is that which
is a head of God. And so, you have God head and then you have God. And they're
simply making that distinction because as long as you're latched onto a second
person God, you'll never discover the prior God head. And they just want you to
do that distinction.
RAQUEL
I
understand it intellectually, I have even experienced within the meditation
void. And yet understand that,
emotionally, there is a desire of maintaining this idea of the relationship with
the pure potentiality, that is not any other thing than Energy. I want such a relationship. I don’t want to lose it.
KEN
Alright. How about doing the following? Next time you think about God,
only observe that thought. And you will find yourself in relationship
with that Divinity as you may change that emotionality to such a Divinity.
RAQUEL
And
here where I perceive we’re talking about the same thing, because what I’m
saying is not about a thought but about a feeling. So, let’s keep on with the questions, please.
11)
According to your studies brilliantly
shown at the Wilber Combs lattice, we could experience a Waking Up in
any Level of Growth, in any Line of Development or from any type,
and yet a person in a drunk state who experiences a Waking Up will be
really awakened?
KEN
They'll
have a definite experience. And it could be that they're experiencing a God
head. But, how much of that they remember in their drunken state? How much
actually penetrates their drunken state? How much is a really real awakening?
That's open to argument.
12)
Regarding lower quadrants, do you
find possible a collective Awakening, having in mind like you always state that
everybody is born in level one (no “conscious” wholeness)?
KEN
Hmmm, collective states of consciousness are possible. We often know
them in their pathological forms, when we talk about a collective hysteria, and
hysteria is very contagious. And one person experiences it and another person
can experience it and another. And all of a sudden, you've got a whole slew of
people who are hysterical. In a similar way, you can have a bunch of Zen
students sharing a satori. One gets a satori and they sort of
convey it to another and another person conveys it to another.
RAQUEL
Sorry
Ken, I mean more collective Awakening of the whole Humanity.
KEN
If it’s collective in the biggest collective possible way. No, no, the
answer is no.
RAQUEL
Yes,
thank you Ken for clarifying this as I understand that this is very important.
There are many who think and await that there will arrive a moment in time when
we are all awakened. And then I talk to them about Growing Up.
KEN
I've suggested that Third Tier ends to include a Unity
with various states of consciousness. There's fundamentally a difference
between Waking Up and Growing Up, but as you Grow Up more
and more, because each higher stage is more whole, it's a larger whole on, it's
more expansive, then it can start to include various states of consciousness.
And if that happens and we go through three or four stages of Third Tier
growth and development, it's possible that we'll get to very high states of
consciousness that are accompanying these higher structures of consciousness.
And whenever that happens, it still wouldn't be everybody in the world because
the growth structures themselves were always, humanity is always at some
percentage of humanity is at those stages. So, as you go up, as I said, Green
has about 25%, Teal has around five to 8%, Turquoise has about 0.5%. But when
you get to those higher structures, they're relatively rarer to get everybody
to the very highest structure.
RAQUEL
13)
It seems that throughout millenia and still nowadays, Awakening,
Enlightenment, Waking Up, has been mistaken with spiritual intelligence,
generally at a magic or mythic level. Clarify, please, why they’re not the same and
why it’s so important to differentiate them to then integrate and finally
dissolve them in pure Loving Bliss?
KEN
RAQUEL
Yeah,
so separated! And, in many occasions, people who were high in Growing Up and
therefore high in spiritual intelligence, would say: “I am very spiritual”. And
no, they are just high in spiritual intelligence and not have any acquaintance
with the real states.
KEN
That’s right, they have a knowledge by description, but not an
experience by acquaintance.
RAQUEL
14)
In your book
you somehow criticize the mythic and mythic-literal levels of several
religions, mainly putting examples of the Christian beliefs in those
levels. I’m sure that many Christians
-who do not understand what you’re talking about- are feeling insulted by your
comments, so how would it be a profound awakened Christianity?
And well, how would Jesus Christ be seen from, let's say, the magic, the
mythic, the rational, the pluralistic and the integral stages?
Magic Jesus Christ would be a miracle performer. You could pray to Jesus and
you would cure your illnesses, or you could pray to Jesus and you'd get the job
promotion. He can magically intervene in your life and give you anything you
want. If you pray to him with enough fervor and believe on the mythic level,
you also have a relationship to God or Jesus Christ. And you're frequently
praying to him. When you were at Magic level, you would often think that
you could sometimes do the magic yourself because you're confusing signifier
with the referent or the word with the thing that is indicated, as we talked
about earlier. But when you get to the Mythic level, you've transferred
all of that magic to Jesus or to God, and they can perform these miracles for
you. So, if you again pray with enough fervor and correctness, then they will
answer your prayer by giving you what you want. And so, Jesus can cure your
illnesses and get you the new car and all of that stuff. And then when you move out of the Mythic
literal stage, you move into the Rational stage. And there, Jesus,
if you're still a believer, appears as a humanistic teacher. He's very
rational in his talking. He was generally talking from a rational stage anyway,
but he frequently laps into magic miracles and mythic God and Goddesses and
stories and stuff like that. But he would talk about them in a rational way,
because he, Humanity had moved to Rational level. And he, of course, had
evolved at least that far. So, when you would think about Jesus in a rational
way, you would simply think of him using logic and you would see him as a very
great humanistic teacher. And then when you get to the Pluralistic stage,
you would frequently believe not only in Jesus, but you would start to consider
other world religious teachers. And you would consider them being great
humanitarian teachers too. So, you might take a Buddhist meditation or start
studying Vedanta Hinduism or Taoism or Zen Buddhism or something like that. And
Jesus Christ would still be sort of your primary teacher, but you have these
other teachers as well. And then when you get to the Integral stage,
you'd start to actually pull all of them together into unified belief systems.
So, Jesus would be part of a unified holistic structure that you would
create in your mind that would pull all of these different approaches together
into a single unified entity.
RAQUEL READS 4
Start the quote.
“Waking
Up is surely one of the most profound areas of Wholeness that the modern world
has forgotten, ignored, or outright denied…as when modernity tossed out
religion altogether , it totally confused spiritual intelligence (which is a
line of Growing Up) with spiritual experience (which is a direct state of
Waking Up)…We have seen that there is an important distinction between spiritual
intelligence, which is an indirect ‘knowledge by description’ that
occurs in Growing Up, and spiritual experience, which is a
direct ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ that occurs in Waking Up…whose higher
states are Turiya, the 4th state, the Witness (pure
Subjectivity) with its total Freedom from objects, resulting in total Bliss and
Turiyatita, the 5th state, One Taste (non-duality)
with its Unity and Love…The key to all genuine mindfulness training with both
the Witness and One Taste, is to recognize an ever-present, primordial Witnessing
Awareness that is not caught in avoidance but rather is always letting
absolutely everything …arise in Awareness and spontaneously manifest itself
just as it is. We need the ups and downs, the light spaces and the dark, the
mountain and the valley, the good and the evil, the pleasure and the pain, the
happiness and the sadness, in order for any of these qualities to manifest at
all… Now…in the Standing Present…which does nothing but change and recognize
this timeless and ever present I AMness…and then Turiyatita as the
ultimate state who is recognized when any sensation of a “self” (whether a
capital ‘S’ Self or a small ‘s’ self) disappear into the seamless unity of a
nondual Suchness… They really do demand a certain type of active looking in
order to find them. But when and if you do that, they can all be included in
not just a holism or wholeness but also a very expansive all -inclusive Big
Wholeness…which will result in the resurrection of a genuine meaning in
your life”.
RAQUEL
15)
Entering now in the structure-stages
of Growing Up, you say that it’s “the major process to interpret our
world” and that each one of those levels will see the world differently.
Could we say that this evolutionary process accelerates as it goes up higher?
or it’s not related with time at all?
Regarding quantity of people could we say the higher we Grow Up, the
less people we find? Finish the quote.
KEN
RAQUEL
Yes, I love that notion that whenever
we reach the highest structure of development, structure stages and stage
states become the same, like merging, integrating.
KEN
Right. Structure stages seem to embrace or enfold
state stages.
16)
Which stage of Growing Up would you
say that is the most difficult to trespass individually and collectively?
KEN READS -5-
“When religion experience is interpreted from a low level of Growing
Up (for example egocentric or ethnocentric), we get some of
the meanest and most malicious forms of religion imaginable…it’s the largest
source of hatred, torture and warfare in human kind’s history: while when it is
interpreted from the highest stages (worldcentric or integral) it
is one of the greatest sources of love, charity and compassion… this is the
‘paradox of religion’. That paradox is
still with us: no matter how much Waking Up a spiritual system might
have, it’s still totally ignorant of Growing Up… When individuals move…to
an integrated or Integral structure of Growing Up, their interpretative
capacity for all experiences …will likewise move to that larger, more expansive
integral stage … that “transcends and include the perspectives of all
their previous stages… which is why Wholeness just increases and increases”. Finish the quote.
17)
Why the “structure-stages are not the
same as the various stages of biological growth or maturation” and why it has
been so difficult to spot them out, so much so that they were recognized only
100 years ago?
KEN
RAQUEL
I thought you were going to say William James.
KEN
RAQUEL
READS 5
Start
quote.
“Researchers
discovered the emerging structures of Growing Up only when they started
studying how people acted in ways that were egocentric, ethnocentric,
worldcentric, or fully integrated and then inferred the type of interior
maps or structures that could cause those behaviors… They found that these structures always
unfolded in one direction only… In other words, those…structures were not just
different responses in general, they were different stages (in
this case, structure-stages) … and they apply to around a dozen different lines
of development (or intelligences)”.
End quote.
18)
In page 129 of your book, you say:
“From the egocentric level, the ethnocentric level is a major step up
and a truly significant advance. It introduces the extensive capacity to take
the role of another (a truly 2nd person perspective)”. As I
understand a lower level cannot understand, accept or interpret a higher stage,
so how is someone that is in an egocentric level going to be able to accept
that which it’s in a higher level? Yes,
a world-centric may be able to see this growth as it has already trespass both previous
stages and yet how this view “from the egocentric level” can recognize anything
up from itself?
RAQUEL
19)
What is the most needed key
ingredient that impulses/enact growth from 1st, to 2nd to
3rd and 4th persons’ permanent perspectives, which represent
the 1st-tier structure-stage? Could we say that is “Evolution”
itself? And why is it so difficult to jump into a collective 2nd -tier?
KEN
Evolution is the key for
that opening up in perspective and in consciousness. We could say is a
manifestation of Godhead.
“The stages are like a cake fusion -archaic, red magic,
amber mythic, orange rational, and green post modern, are
often combined into what is called ‘1st-tier’. They all have one
thing in common: each 1st-tier stage thinks that its truth and
values are the only important truth and values in existence; all others are
childish, confused, goofy or just plain wrong. But starting at the Inclusive-Integral
stage, with what is called the “2nd tier”, the idea is that all
the previous stages are deeply significant -if nothing else, each of them is a
stage in human growth and development, and so none of them can be deleted or
skipped. This makes Integral 2nd
tier the first truly holistic and inclusive stage in existence and a stunningly
profound leap in evolution.
Teal Holistic and Turquoise Integral are combined into turquoise Inclusive-Integral…because
together they represent the very best of the Wholeness offered by Growing
Up…and this 2nd tier is clearly the leading edge of evolution
at this time and it will almost certainly be the main stage from which
any truly genuine Religion of Tomorrow will spring…So when I use the
term Integral I mean both this 2nd-tier stage of
development…and also Integral Metatheory itself which includes the
entire AQAL Kosmic Address. Finish the quote
20)
What is the difference between Kosmic
Address and Altitude.
KEN
Altitude is one ingredient in Kosmic
address. The Kosmic address is the sum total of all five dimensions
of Big Wholeness. So, a Kosmic address includes your quadrant,
your level, your line, your state, your type, and altitude is one
of them. It's your level.
RAQUEL
21)
In page 203 you say “when Turiyatita
(One Taste) came into existence it was almost always accompanied by
the Inclusive-Integral stage of Growing Up”, how is this ‘coming into
existence’ isn’t it an ever- present reality? And then, would it be true to say
that only when being at Turquoise is possible to create and understand
crossed-paradigmatic realities whether they may be theories or real
applications of them? Were these your structure and state – stages when
creating Integral Metatheory?
KEN
Well,
yes. I
would say yes. Does it come into existence or were they simply remembered? That
again comes down to is truth remembered or discovered. In a sense, all of the deep
structures of every stage of consciousness, are already present within us.
And I say it's part of the ground unconscious, but they're present within us
and they emerge. They come into existence according to a given timetable. When
they come into existence, they've quite a timetable: from archaic, to magic,
to mythic, to rational, to pluralistic, to then integral.
That's a timetable. They emerge in that order of time.
When these deep
structures emerge, they have to take on surface structures. The deep
structures are remembered. The surface structures are
learned. So, when we first developed what Piaget referred to as natural
intelligence or sensorimotor intelligence, these are just the sum
total of all our five senses. And when they emerge, they can detect the
sensorimotor environment, taste, touch, smell, and so forth. And the deep
structures are simply remembered. And as they remembered, they emerge. And
the thing that sparks them to be remembered is when their particular timetable
comes up. That means archaic generally has a timetable of the first
several months of life. And then magic timetable is the first year or
two of life. And then mythic tends to emerge at age four or five. And it
comes into real existence at age six, seven, eight, and with the concrete
operational thinking. And then rational timetable is starting in
early adolescence. And then the rational tends to emerge through around age 11
to age 21 or so. And then if we continue our growth and development, the pluralistic
stage can emerge. And its timetable is usually in the mid 20’s. And then if we
complete those, the integral timetable can emerge. And its general
development is in the 30’s.
When those deep
structures emerge, then they have to take on surface structures,
like when concrete operational thinking emerges, Piaget described
concrete operational thinking as “thought operating on the world”.
So, by the side, I want to ride my bicycle. That's a concrete operation. I go
over, I pick the concrete bike up, I sit on the concrete bike, I put my feet on
the concrete pedals, and I push them. And I start to ride my bike. That's a
concrete operation. How to do all that was a memory. But I actually had to
learn how to ride the bike. I had to actually practice getting on it, practice
pedaling it, practice steering it. Those are all surface structures. They
had to be added to the deep structures. I mean, I have the muscles, they
have the capacity to do all these concrete operations, but I still had to learn
the actual surface structures of the concrete operation in order for it to
really emerge. So, the deep structures are remembered and the surface
structures are learned. And that's true all the way up, all the structure
stages of Growing Up, as far as we can tell to the very highest.
RAQUEL
22)
In page 357 you show us that we can
move our awareness to higher states and not to ultimate states as
the first are relative and these ultimate highest states are absolute therefore
eternal, timeless and ever present. We
cannot attain them, reach them or achieve them, as they are - you remember us
that Maslow said - “ever present conditions”. Are the “pointing out instructions” what
permit the revelation or realization of their all-pervading nature as
background reality never born? And what’s the difference of these “pointing out
instructions” with “meditation practices” that move our awareness to higher
states but not to the highest ultimate states?
KEN
You can't attain them
because they're already fully present. So, you say, I want to be aware of the
now moment. And as you zero in on the timeless now, you'll realize that you
have ‘always’ been aware of this timeless now. And you're not bringing it into
existence. You're not creating it for the first time. You're simply recognizing
that it's already there as you then understand there’s no time. And then that's
why you can't attain it.
The Buddhist sutras are
very clear: “If you could just realize enlightenment cannot be attained,
you would already be enlightened”. You quoted that earlier. And that's
exactly right. Enlightened state of mind is a state of mind that
exists in the timeless now. The timeless now is ever present. And, therefore
your enlightened mind is ever present. And that's why you cannot attain enlightenment
as it is already the state you have right now. Indeed. It is. It is. It is the
paradox, because you sort of go from like in Zen, you go from not having a satori
to actually having a satori. And then you sort of achieve a satori,
because there's a time you didn't have it. And then there's the time you do
have it. That's the time. Yet a satori is when you realize that you've
known this forever because there’s no time. Right. Satori consists of:
“Oh God, I was looking at it the whole time. Why didn't I see it before?”
RAQUEL
READS 6
Start
the quote:
“A
truly comprehensive spirituality (or any sort of Integral Life Practice)
launched from the turquoise-Integral stage …would be able to speak effectively
to every stage of Growing Up and would not make one stage the dogmatic and only
correct stage…instigating an authentic Growing Up in addition to any Waking
Up. I refer to any system that helps
with this Growing Up transformation as a “conveyor belt…So, turquoise-Integral
can potentially include Growing Up and Waking Up (As well as Cleaning
Up, Opening Up and Showing Up) and these would all embrace
together for the first time in our history in what is indeed a Big Wholeness.
This Integral approach will occur whether or not religion gets on board; but if
it does, we will have a genuine and authentic Religion of Tomorrow” Finish
the quote.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
And
now, Ken, if it’s alright with you, you’ll be presenting, through your own
quoting the “pointing out instructions” toward this Waking Up experience
of the Witness (turiya).
Are
you ready?
KEN:
Sure
KEN READS -7-
Please close your eyes.
Start
the quote:
“As Zen points out …we’re going to see your “Original Face” which
is the ‘face you had before your parents were born’. That doesn’t mean that it existed at a point
in time before your parents were born but rather that it simply doesn’t enter
the stream of time in the first place; it’s prior to time altogether. Your Original Face, your Real Being, is prior
to your parents’ birth, prior to the birth of the Solar System and prior to the
spacetime created by the Big Bang simply because is prior to time…
Start relaxing into a Witnessing Awareness and simply witness the
present moment. Notice that the present
moment arises, exists for a second or two, and then fades into the past, as a
new present moment arises and comes to your Awareness and the old moment
becomes a memory. The new moment lasts
for a brief second or so, and then it fades into the past as well, and a new
moment arises… This movement is constant.
It just goes on and on…
Notice the Witness itself.
Notice the Awareness of this passing present, a passing present that
moves continuously from present to pass. The pure Witness of this moment does
not itself change; it’s just a constant Presence, a pure unmoving point of
being Aware, a true constant Mirror Mind. It merely watches the passing present arise,
stay a bit and pass; arise, stay a bit, and pass. The Witness remains completely unmoved
and unmoving, a pure, unending Present or timeless Now… an unchanging and
standing present… This timeless Now does
not come into being or fade into the past – it is an ever-present, unchanging
pure Present. The passing present, your thoughts of the future, your memories of
the past all arise in the unending Present…
It is from this unchanging, timeless, motionless Present Awareness that
the Witness sees everything that arises.
This Standing Present is Aware of the passing present and everything in
it -present experiences, past memories, future thoughts – all of them arising
in this ever-present timeless Now. The Standing Present, which is
unchanging, is fully aware of the passing present, which does nothing but
change…
Think about some event you believe exists in the past. Picture this past
event as clearly and vividly as you can.
Notice that all that you’re actually aware of is a memory and that
memory exists only in this Now-moment.
And when that event actually occurred, when it really existed it was
itself a Now-moment. In either case, all
you are ever actually aware of is the Now-moment…
Likewise, think of something you believe will exist in the future.
Notice that is just a thought and that thought only exists right here, in this
Now-moment. And if it ever becomes a
real event, it will then occur only in a Now-moment. This is your Original Face…which does not
exclude the past and future but fully embraces both…and is a vast, all
inclusive, all-embracing Awareness…
There will never be a future time where it will be more present than it
already is right now. Never. Whatever comes into existence tomorrow but is not
present Now is strictly temporal, not eternal…
…The utter simplicity of the Witness is the reason we can so
easily miss it, …as we quickly identify it with something more complex …when
it’s your own I AMness (it’s the Witness existing in you right now)…We
never realize the timeless ever-present pure I AMness for the simple
feeling of Being that it is… As you recognize this ever-present I AMness
you will also recognize that this is the same feeling that you have always had…
as you can never remember a time when you weren’t you…
You’re not entering a state that you were not previously in but have,
through practice brought about; it is the simple and immediate recognition of a
state that has always been present but which you have not fully noticed…and you
always knew it.
Welcome to the paradox of instruction:
you need a satori to realize that you don’t need a satori!!!
“
And with a full breath, you may open your eyes
now
RAQUEL
Wonderful,
Ken, thank you very much. I’m sure that people that follows these instructions
are going to Wake Up to their Witness Consciousness!!! You’ve
been very graceful to be with us in this fall of 2024 and it’s been a real pleasure
for me to read your book and an honor to have prepared these questions and
readings. Thanks a lot Ken in my name and in the name of the Integral
Community for having wrote this book and for having given us this
interview.
KEN
RAQUEL
Take
care, dear and see you in February at the second interview to keep on
traversing this path of Wholeness altogether/all-together and hopefully after
seeing this many people will buy your ‘Finding Radical Wholeness’ book
from Shambala😊!!!
KEN
My pleasure, bye.
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