...Ken's pre-trans fallacy... evolutionary theory... having fun with it ... tag team if you will, and destroy.. although, i may not reply, as i hate this website..

But first, Advantage. Advantage is of no concern to the Ground, is it not? Is not the Ground complete? And when one speaks of pre-trans, they speak of advantage. For, what is the difference between pre and trans? As you know, the inbetween is that holy of holy, Rationality. But is the Ground anyless without it? Is the Ground attainable without it? By the very implication of the theory, indeed, i guess it is. And so, i guess i'll speak for the "Pre", since it is implied that there is only the duplicity... i am teasing of course.

Rationality is only an advantage for man, and he seeks "trans" rationality, because he wants an advantaged elightenment... ahaha.. if that isn't an oxymoron, what is? Are not then, these evolutionary theories entirely anthropocentric, being that the holy of holy is limited to namely Man? And not that there is anything wrong with it, or maybe not even anthropocentricism (word??), but it still seems to be an entirely unecessary part of the equation... Although, those damned leaders of the pack, the Mahayana, do say that upon awakening, one is filled with an unquenchable thirst to liberate ALL Sentient BEINGS... Either they loose sight of the pre-trans upon awakening, seeing that all these non-human types lack rationality, or, the pre-trans is indeed, and forgive me, a load of shit. And so, with all of evolutionary theory in regards to enlightenment. It's one of those coefficients that drops out as the Self becomes aware of the Ground, or if you prefer, aware of itself, and does so not by evolution, or by going Trans.

And, regarding development... is it not the valuation of movement, an entirely rational, human concern, and a naive concern if one believes, and I stress believes, that it is necessary for awakening? How can you Know unless you are awake that enlightenment proceeds via a developmental path? Should we not be careful with these Ideas, that we ourselves don't get caught up in them? Perhaps we are being mislead? I know no one that has awaken via Integral practice, do you? Do you really? Why then do we offer our trust, even if well convinced? maybe then we should be the most skeptical?

And so we are left with the same question I always ask myself. What then is one to do? Hahahahaha... This is because we are idiots... someone ought to beat all of us Integral believers, and even that past ones, with a big fucking stick... I'll shut up now.. but first..

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One day Rinzai gave his sermon: "There is the true man of no rank in the mass of naked flesh, who goes in and out from your facial gates. Those who have not yet testified, look, look!"

A monk came forward and asked, "Who is the true man of no rank?"

Rinzai came down from his chair and, taking hold of the monk by his throat, said, "Speak, speak!"

The monk hesitated.

Rinzai let go his hold and said, "What a worthless dirt-stick this is!"

Lin-chi

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"Morning after morning the sun rises from the east,

Every night the moon sinks in the west;

Clouds disappearing, mountain ridges show themselves,

Rain ceases, surrounding mountains are low."

Dogen

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Bury and destroy me please, my response was completely unenlightened and terribly reactionary,

Well... the idea is that evolution eventually produces rationality as it did for us... the winding up of the complexity wheel as sentient beings proceed towards enlightenment. This is necessary because of the inherant differentiation that happened in the involution process as the absolute (is this your 'Ground'?) disolved into self and other.

The pre-trans falacy speeks to rational beings because it is itself a rational idea expressing an idea that can only be understood fully first hand in experience, through consciousness that can take rational thought and use it as a tool instead of as an end. For trans-rationality, intuition, rational thought, perception, and whatnot are all tools that can be used as is appropriate for a situation. If you can subsist in a practical life with mostly intuition, then rationality is less useful except in situations where you are involved with rational thinkers or a rational framework (contemporary American society). The Mahayana, I think, are not forsaking the non-rational beings of the universe but instead they realize that you cannot 'pull' beings upward in understanding. They will stumble into development on their own and then will become receptive to help, but trying to generate a catalyst for development in something that isn't ready is incredibly destructive. Obviously the processes that created human consciousness are very intensive and required quite a bit of time. What in the world would you have humans do to expedite the process? What can we do besides watch for it and be supportive of it if, at some point, we discover another species is rational like we can be? I mean, short of genetic engineering, I can't think of any tools humanity has to expedite the evolutionary process, whether it be in an individual human or in other species all together.

By the "Ground" i suppose your "absolute" suffices, but I have no experience with involution, nor have I seen any evidence that "development" has occured as such. Yes, there is self and other, and the non-self-other. I certainly have heard it stated as the involution story before, but it's only metaphysics at best, and entirely unprovable, so why bother with it?

What do you make of the fact that no no-dual tradition, outside of integral theories, suggest that enlightment is "proceeded towards"? Is sitting Zazen a developmental process? Or simply, a seeing of what has been developed of the self, and a letting go of it? Can you call that a development, of what? One could say that one must first develop the self to have one to overcome, haha... sure, if you believe you need a self first, but we already have that, so what needs development? Or better yet, WHO? The fact that it occurs in time is of no consequence, for awakening "proceeds" spontaneously, as in "look, look!" as Rinzai (Lin-chi) suggested.

I agree with you on the Mahayana, the point was simply, to suggest that by the inclusion of other beings, enlightenment isn't limited to only the rational. The pre-trans fallacy does imply that, does it not? Doesn't it say that a Pre-rational enlightenment, isn't an enlightenment? You say it is tool within rationality itself, but then it is a pointless tool, for to use it, we are already rational, and on our way to being then "trans" rational. So to whom is it intended to speak? Those that cannot understand it? No, it is meant only to criticism those "intuitive" folk you referred to, that don't require much rationality. Does it not say that their enlightenment, if they have it, is less than ours, the rational and enlightened. By doing so, it offers us a direction, it insists, however subtly, that there is indeed a goal. And as we know, that goal is indeed the devil, if there was one, for that seeking becomes the greatest of all barriers, and spirituality, a developmental addiction.

So if the development process is a given, then the question becomes whether or not we chose to recognize this development as steps to enlightenment or steps to a more complete and accurate ego. Right?

But you're right... you cannot mix the medium. No non-dual tradition says that the nonduality is a developmental achievement, including integral theory. It's not possible.

Here's the key:

100% agree, development does occur. And there are most certainly things that an adult understands that kids cannot, but of course, these things are irrelevant in regards to enlightenment.

Developing an ego, sure you can. Developing enlightenment, no you can't.. .so again, we've found agreement. So that throws out the steps to enlightenment.

And!! we agree again, the ego does mask the non-developmental nature of non-duality. But, the point was, development is not necessary, and actually unrelated. does any development/modification of the ego help? I think it only helps/change the ego. There certainly have been crazy people, with huge ego problems that have awaken. Trungpa was a fricken drunk for one thing, and he slept with students... Ken's obviously got huge ego problems.. hehe.. i love him though, so don't misunderstand all this. To those he effects, he does wonders, but these wonders are not them waking up.

but in regards to waking up.. new ego, old ego, it's the same bad ego. why spend time changing an ego when one ought to just let it go? Then take the thing back of course, and have fun being a bastard, or a nice dude if that's what you want. shit, i'm not awake, so what do i know anyhow.

Can't say that I know any enlightened infants.. eheh.. you got me there, but shit, maybe?? They are supra-pre-rational, so how could we know with our trans-rational standards? I know everybody hates that old and ugly, the enlightened innocent state stuff... i do too.. but.. shit, i can't say i wasn't awake when i was a baby. Can you? Carefull.... is memory, knowledge, and of course what it produces, that nasty ego, necessary to be classified as awake?

I'm being a bugger, i know... and i love this crap as much as i like to disagree with it.

forgive me,

"What part of a person compells them to let the ego go".....and "How does one come about realizing that one needs to let the ego go if not through development?" .. The ego compells the ego to let go of itself, as it wishes to gain from it, but again, awakening is spontaneous... and the second question, again, one is compelled by the ego to seek enlightenment.....

Is it developmental to hear of enlightenment, to hear that one ought to just sit, and then let go? This is an invitation, and yes, once we have a self, i'd think it would be extremely rare to wake up without it... but, any development from then is a movement away from... I think also, when we say "development", we mean something much bigger, much more involved than such simple listening.

The word development is not an accurate representation of what we mean. It implies a cummulative mound of stuff that is added upon. I am of the belief that ego maturation is actually peeling away layers of egocentric self. The ego compells us. Whether one step (ego->no ego) or many, development is really maturation and maturation is really transparency.

I believe you when you say that your definition of development is maturation, which is transparency, but, i don't think it's the definition of development within evolutionary/integral theory. The transcend and include process, levels and lines, which is indeed the development suggested by integral theory, is a far more involved one than the maturation or transparency that occurs when a person looks for the ONE-NONE-(NON-NONE). I don't think we can call your maturation/transparency a process at all, for it is the end of process, the movement to end of self action. Can we call this a process? Maybe, i think i can flex there, but not a Transcend and Include, not a RED-BLUE-ORANGE-GREEN and so on.... it's far simpler than all that. And yes there is development, cummulative development from child to adult, but couldn't a child, upon receiving the invitation to sit, not do so and awaken?

The point really though, is once the invitation has been recieved, and maybe it does take some development to what you are calling an ego-fulcrum, although i need to think about that, there is no more Transcend and Include needed. Look at Ken's favorite of favorites, Ramana Maharshi. He awakened spontaneously in his teens, and I assure you, he wasn't Green, Yellow, or what have you. He was a kid. After being disturbed by, i believe (??), his father's death (or grandfathers??), he decided to laydown on the ground and see what it was like to die. He blew out all of his breath, and stayed that way, and confronted the SELF. He woke up that day. And how is this so? Well, what is it that wakes up? The ego does seek enlightenment wrongly, but it is not what wakes up. I can suffer the Transparency, and cause THAT to shine through, but is not the ego.

Can we call that anything even close to Transcend and Include Development? Now, transparency, yes. Agreed. But you see, this is the whole danger of the Integral/Developmental models. They suggest there is more to go, more onion to peel if you will, than is by any means necessary. Why dont' we just lay down and die/wake-up if we are interested in enlightenment? Because we are so damn busy intellectualizing about Integral Theory, Developmental lines, stages, and so forth. I'm guilty too. Isn't this an overlooked danger to the whole deal? How can it be necessary, or even really helpful when all one need do is lie down and die?

And regarding ego-fulcrum, which is a fine idea i might add, but i think when one can even conceive of the usefulness, or non usefulness of these Theories, or no, even before that, enlightenment is possible and fully available. So, Integral Theory, as fun as it is, is not a valid model, for their is no model, of how enlightenment "proceeds"... BUT, it is valid in regards to how humans evolve to be more harmonious with other humans, and what motivates them, causes them to fight, and so forth. But what is it's relevance to actually waking up? This is ignored, or at best, casually mentioned that one ought to have a practice, when it should be stressed that to wake up, one needs know none of this, as evidenced by past Buddhas, or R. Maharshi just lying down.

Infinite Onion? I think you and I can make it so! i've had too much time to think about this since i last got on here... Totally turdular.

Indeed your friend,

Corpse

I'm really surprised that nobody else has joined in on this discussion. I'd love to hear what other people have to say about this...

I largely agree with you. But again, the Integral Theory model is not designed to describe absolute consciousness, but the consciousness that is tied down to duality.

I'll have to think about this some more and bounce it off of some of my wise friends.

Keep in mind that Ken has said that enlightenment is accidental but that integral transformative practice makes you 'accident prone'. To some extent he acknowledges what you say.

I still think that Spiral Dynamics does a good job of describing the effects of maturation... remember, this is the external of maturation. It does not describe the internals of maturation, which is what, I think, you are craving. An external process might seem cummulative and have perfectly valid cummulative analogies, but be reductionist on the inside. Why not?

Just some thoughts. I don't think we need to abandon a theory because it does not describe the end by the means. If something can be used as a tool and is of some use to describe our reality, then we should use it as long as it remains useful.

I'm suprised as well. I was expecting, and kinda hoping for, a joint attack. You all are too kind, really, perhaps too kind for your and others good. I would keep this thing going, hopefully not indefinitely, but I can see it's winding down to a close... and so... the truth..

To be honest, I have been seeking a proper burial for the stance I have so far been arguing for. I have been the Devil. You see, all ideas are potential sticking points, and this one even of abandoning development for "no"-development is again, a sticking point. Integral theory, integral practice, or even just practice, can also become the very sticking point. I have asked a favor of you, indirectly, but it was understood. All things act to create greater understanding if we have the eyes open to see it. And wise understanding can lead to Knowing, but some things ought to be burried, and now, i wish to bury myself. Isn't the proper place for a corpse in the Ground? Ha.

You do know what I crave, and so I wait for grace... but really, she waits for me to be ready. I cannot yet handle a life simultaneously as a human and know her as well.... I am not just afraid, I am terrified. Have you seen the end of the end, where seeing has no eyes? I have seen her face, and when I touched her ear, I ran, and ran, and ran. I'm still running. I have not the courage to look, and stay. Her face destroys me. Her face is Death. Real Death. And this is a point hit upon with a friend today. How does one learn courage? Not naive courage, not the charge into battle courage, or watch me jump into this argument courage knowing full well I'll lose, no... it is a different kind. Much, much deeper courage. This is why we sit, and learn how to, ... Just Stay. This is the beginning of real courage.

I agree with you, and always have agreed with you, but it was important not to say so. Exhaust the mind and then let it go, or so is my method. Sometimes we need to walk down every wrong road to be willing to take the right one... hehe.. at least the crazy ones....you see, i do see the truth in Development. haha.. what a terd, no? And integral theory... haha... of course i have all the books, kegans, and so on, and love them, recommend them FIRST ALWAYS, but still have my doubts about pre-trans... but, it's of little consequence. Actually, no, i see it's value within his framework.. i'll explain, it is a tool after all.

You see, the true blessing offered by Ken and integral theory is that, as you said, it makes people more "accident prone". But even before that, it makes people willing to listen to the invitation and consider it. Without the voice of the Integral movement, far, far less would be listening, and i doubt many here would be listening to me now. Not that I'm not wasting your time.. :o)

But Ken's gift to the world is in his swordsmanship, for he is a Samurai. He does his dirty work by hacking through all that one previously thought, and by showing one entirely new and different ways of thinking. He knows how to motivate the ego to pursue those ways, by secret advantage.. oh, how we lust for advantage... brilliant. He motivates our ego, by demonstrating advantage in the movement, and thereby, less directly, opening us to the invitation. This is how the pre-trans fallacy fits in. How can one guarantee, as it should be contrary, that a righteous mind will run forward into it's own destruction. Prove to it, by it's own methods, that it will be dumber if it doesn't... ha... again, brilliance. He detonates a thermonuclear bomb! Ken, the lovely bastard! If only i were gay and not hideous.

But, beware, there are traps along the way, and the biggest is the confusion between understanding and KNOWING. A good understanding will cloud the will to KNOW. It will believe it does. This is huge in the integral world, do beware. Seek wise understanding, by questioning everything, everyone, every method, every book, and especially me. Ken too. Even your guru. So don't listen to me! I shouldn't listen to me either!

To all those who understand Integral Theory, see it as an invitation.... or do you just like the fancy greeting card it came in? You ought to quit playing with the card and get dressed for the party, SOMEONE is waiting to meet you. Try not to be afraid when you meet. If you do, please introduce me, and remind her that I'm bashful.

Well played Bloom. Many thanks. Back to my hole now,

Corpse