Looking at Psychology from the
Inside-Out
By Don Salmon, Ph.D. and
Jan Maslow
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VISION OF SRI AUROBINDO AND KEN WILBER
MAY 13, 2003
Hi folks:
I hope this is not too confusing. I'm taking a moment here and there
to put this page together. I sent out two letters on Sunday, May 11.
They're down the page a bit. I've also added the letter I just
sent Paul, as it may help to sort out some of the differences in terminology
between Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo. I also thought of one more thing
- Julian's comment about non-dual awareness leaving the nature as it is points
to what is probably the most fundamental difference between the Integral
Psychology of Sri Aurobindo and Ken Wilber - at least in terms of its practical
application (and as the Mother said, psychology is useless if it is not applied;
or as Sri Aurobindo said, "Yoga is nothing but practical psychology").
Maybe some of the other Aurobindonians can help me out here. I wanted
to say a few words about the "triple transformation".
PSYCHIC TRANSFORMATION:
In most spiritual traditions, the awakening of the soul or Self is sufficient;
no further transformation of the nature is desired. A few of the tantric
traditions of India - both Buddhist and Hindu - and to a lesser extent some
of the Sufi schools, explicitly speak of at least a partial transformation
of the nature (this "transformation" by the way, is far beyond anything I've
seen written by Wilber, Almaas, Assagioli and other transpersonal psychologists;
what they are describing is mostly equivalent to an increasing sattwic development
of the nature following spiritual awakening, which is quite different from
what Sri Aurobindo means by "transformation"; this sattwic development would
include all the tiers - first second and third - described - at least so
far - by Wilber and Beck; none of the "integral" disciplines described by
George Leonard or Michael Murphy would lead to the kind of transformation
Sri Aurobindo describes either).
Sri Aurobindo does say that the first transformation - the psychic transformation
- is not uncommon in various saints. You can see in some of the Mahayana
Buddhist writings, for example, some glimmers of the psychic transformation
of the nature. What this means is that following awakening of the psychic
being, the entire nature - mind life and body - is completely remolded in
the light of the awakened psychic.
[Note: The psychic being is the innermost individualized soul, which emerges
after millions of life times, during which the soul - the "spark fo the Divine"
hidden in our depths", slowly grows and becomes an individualized being,
the psychic being. One of the signs of psychic awakening is the flooding
of the nature with a vast, impeccable and unquenchable devotion for
the personal aspect of the Divine; one develops a "personal relationship"
with God, so to speak. One knows this personal aspect of the Divine
in everyone and everything one encounters. Sri Aurobindo often contrasts
this to the impersonal realization common to many (though by no means all)
Vedantic and Buddhist traditions. It is not a "lesser" "dualistic" realization;
at least according to Sri Aurobindo. It carries the same status as
the realization of the impersonal non-dual Self. Sri Aurobindo says
that it is only on the supramental level that there is a perfect integration
of the Personal and Impersonal.]
After awakening and establishment of the consciousness of the psychic being,
there is a years-long process during which every cell of the body, every
vibration of feeling and emotion, and every passing thought becomes slowly
- and sometimes painfully, though Mother and Sri Aurobindo do speak of a
"sunlit path" remolded and tuned to the psychic vibration (again, remember
that "psychic" in Sri Aurobindo's language is not at all the same as "psychic"
in Wilber's).
There is no particular order to the awakening of the psychic being and the
Self; some realize one first, some the other; these are not evolutionary
events so they do not belong to any particular sequence. (well, the psychic
does grow in the course of evolution, but it is not in the same "framework"
as the evolutionary sequence matter, life, mind, supermind). With the
awakening of the Self, there is possible a subsequent transformation of the
nature. One may remain centered in the ordinary mind, and receive the
Shakti of the higher Spiritual levels which can thus further transform the
mind, life and body. But Sri Aurobindo recommends rising to the superconscient
levels of "higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind and overmind".
Beyond this is the supramental awakening, the third of the three awakenings
and the subsequent transformation of mind life and body in the light of the
supramental consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo has written in his "Letters on Yoga" on the occurence of these
awakenings and transformations in other spiritual tradiitions. (what
I'm going to say here goes against some of the dogma prevalent both in Auroville
and the Ashram; but you can check this in Letters; sorry I don't remember
the page numbers). Both Mother and Sri Aurobindo say the psychic awakening
is known in all the major spiritual traditions of the world; Sri Aurobindo
says the psychic transformation is fairly common among awakened saints. The
full spiritual awakening (non-dual awareness, "One Taste", sahaja samadhi)
is less frequent, but also experienced by many saints, sages and yogis in
various traditions (i'm using the terms "saint, sage and yogi" differently
from Da Free John and Wilber). The spiritual transformation is extremely
rare, though has occurred in some. The supramental awakening, he says,
has occurred in perhaps a very small handful of individuals in the past 4
or 5,000 years. The supramental transformation of the mind and life
has been achieved by a few, and nobody yet (including Mother and Sri Aurobindo)
has completed the supramental transformation of the body.
One more thing must be added - there is almost no mention of Shakti - Divine
Energy, the inseparable counterpart of Cit/Consciousness - in Wilber's writings.
It is through the Mother, the Divine Force, that all these transformations
are accomplished. It is by the descent of Her Force - whether through
the psychic being, the Self, or best, the supermind, that the transformations
take place.
Letter to Paul, May 13, 2003
Hi Paul:
Thanks much for these passages from "One Taste". From your letter and
Julian's comments, I'm starting to get a little bit of a sense of what makes
this YPIP (yoga psychology, integral psychology) comparison so difficult.
It's probably a good rule when you see a particular technical term, to assume
that Sri Aurobindo and Ken Wilber are using the word differently. To
give a quick list, this is true of the words "supramental", "evolution",
"involution", "soul", "psychic", "higher mind", "Vital", among many others.
Perhaps Wilber is "right", perhaps Sri Aurobindo is "right" - for now - I'm
just trying to clarify the differences.
You chose this passage from Wilber as exemplifying the "identity with the
supramental"
It is always already undone, you see, and always already over. In the
simple feeling of Being, worlds are born and die--they live and dance and
sing a while and melt back into oblivion, and nothing ever really happens
here, in the simple world of One Taste. A thousand forms will come
and go, a million worlds will rise and fall, a billion souls will love and
laugh and languish fast and die, and One Taste alone will embrace them all.
And I-I will be there, as I-I has always been, to Witness the rise and miraculous
fall of my infinite easy Worlds, happening now and forever, now and forever,
now and always forever it seems.--One Taste, p.370
This may be helpful from Sat Prem's book "Adventure of Consciousness" (written
1963): "a man can be a luminous yogi... yet still possess a crude mind, a
repressed vital, a body he ignores or crassly mistreats and a completely
virgin ***superconscient***." (p. 88).
This is what I was trying to get across in my letter to Bindu, in the 2 part
letter I just sent, and in my response to Julian. As Sri Aurobindo
said of his own experience, (this is from "Letters on Yoga" but I forget
the page), he had the experience of the Atman in and as everything, the "One
Taste" experience described above, long before he even knew anything of what
he calls the "overhead" planes or what Sat Prem refers to here as the "superconscient".
Regarding the comment about Cortright, I saw this in One Taste when it came
out, and it made me smile. Whenever I've seen Wilber correct someone
about misinterpretations of Sri Aurobindo, he always ends up making a number
of mistakes about Sri Aurobindo. There's a long endnote on p. 337 of
"Eye of Spirit" in which Wilber attempts to defend himself against critiques
from Integral Yoga folks that he didn't understand Sri Aurobindo's "system"
(In the course of hardly more than a page, Wilber makes at least 4 major
errors (in attempting to define the terms Sri Aurobindo uses, he gets these
wrong: "Soul", "psychic", "levels of consciousness", and "Self"; besides
generally portraying the relationship of the various levels incorrectly as
well).
I wrote in the 2 part letter (YPIP Website text) that according to Sri Aurobindo,
the realization of the Self in and as all (the "one Taste" experience) is
not an evolutionary process at all. This is what Sat Prem is referring
to in the sentence above. So Brant's right - with regard to the realization
of the psychic being or the Self, there is no specific sequence - in fact,
no sequence at all in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. This doesn't at all contradict
the quote that Wilber gave:
The spiritual evolution obeys the logic of a successive unfolding;
it can take a new decisive main step only when the previous main step has
been sufficiently conquered: even if certain minor stages can be swallowed
up leaped over by a rapid and brusque ascension, the consciousness has to
turn back to assure itself that the ground passed over is securely annexed
to the new condition; a greater or concentrated speed [which is indeed possible]
does not eliminate the steps themselves or the necessity of their successive
surmounting" (Aurobindo, The Life Divine, II, 26).--
The "spiritual evolution" Sri Aurobindo is referring to here is in regard
to the sequence "Matter, life, mind - supermind". The realization of
the self can happen at any point when the mind has emerged in the course
of evolution. That's why it was possible for Ramana Maharsi to give
"mukti" to his cow Lakshmi.
The supramental realization is profoundly different from the awakening of
the psychic being or Self.
As Sri Aurobindo describes it, the realization of the soul (not the same
as "soul" in Wilber' system, remember) or the Self is not an evolutionary
matter at all, so of course, there can't be any "successive unfolding" in
regard to either. I spoke about this with Brant (Cortright) when I
met him at the Integral Psychology conference at the Pondicherry Ashram.
We both smiled as we shared our collection of incorrect definitions of Aurobindonian
terms in Wilber's writings. Brant had come up with a list of 12.
During a break at the conference, I had in the course of about 15 minutes
jotted down a list of 29 distinct errors that came to mind.
On p. 344 of SES Wilber gives again the diagram comparing Plotinus and Aurobindo.
I'll just go over it briefly to give some examples of the mistakes he makes:
1. He equates Satchitananda (spelling it his own idiosyncratic way) with
Supermind and Godhead. This is incorrect. The Supermind is what
Sri Aurobindo calls a "link" plane between the 3 higher planes of Ananda,
Cit and Sat, and the 3 lower planes of mind, life and matter.
2. He puts the intuitive mind and overmind and the same level. They
are distinct levels, far more different than the earliest sensori-motor stage
and formal operations of Piaget, for example,
3. He equates the "Subtle" with the intutive mind. This is incorrect.
In Sri Aurobindo's system the subtle is behind, not above.
4. He equates "psychic" with the illumined mind. The psychic is behind
the subtle which is behind the front. (he gets this wrong in Eye of Spirit
also, where he describes the psychic as "typically dream state", which it's
not).
5. He equates his term "vision-logic" with Sri Aurobindo's "higher mind".
Brant wrote an excellent short essay on the many ways in which this is confused.
In Sri Aurobindo's terminology, one whose consciousness is centered in the
Higher Mind not only sees everything in and as the Self (which is possible
at lower levels also; Self Realization, Sahaja Samadhi or "One Taste" not
being an evolutionary development at all in his system) but begins to transform
the mind, life and body, something which is does not necessarily happen,
as Julian noted, with simple non-dual awareness). Here is something
to start reflecting on regarding the difference between Self-Realization
and what Sri Aurobindo calls the "superconscient" - whose equivalent, despite
apparent similarities, is not found anywhere in Wilber's writings.
6. Sri Aurobindo nowhere uses the term "logical mind" to refer to a particular
level. His "thinking mind" or "mind proper" actually includes not only
what Wilber calls "the higher mind" but even the most advanced of the second
tier levels that Wilber and Beck have been talking about. This is equivalent
to what in Indian psychology is known as the sattwic intelligence (See the
Bhagavad Gita, chapters 17 and 18 for a clear description of the levels of
physical, vitla and mental development - anohter example of a mistake Wilber
commonly makes in saying that the yogis knew nothing of the precise developmental
levels - actually, their understandign of development, as far as I've been
able to see over the last several decades of comparative study of developmental
psychology, is much more in harmony with a spiritual vision than Wilber's
conglomeration of developmental models from various psychologists, many of
whom have quite opposing metaphysical assumptions underlying their various
stages).
7. Wilber puts "logical mind, concrete mind and lower mind" as "levels"
in Sri Aurobindo's system, whereas they would correspond to different aspects
of the thinking mind; he uses the terms "vital mind" and "physical mind"
to refer to levels of develoment, and these terms have no equivalent to anything
in Western psychology, as they refer to the relative influence of the inner
domains of physical, vital or mental consciousness, something whose very
existence is denied by contemporary science (except for parapsychology).
8. Wilber mixes up vital-emotional and impulse with perception and
sensation. In Sri Aurobindo's system, "perception and sensation" are both
functions of the mind; perception has some equivalent with Piagets' preoperational
and concrete operational mind, but again, there is no exact parallel - for
example, as explained in the Kena Upanishad commentary, all the functions
of the mind - understanding, will, perception and sensation - are diminished
functions of the supermind. The functions and levels of the mind as
described by Sri Aurobindo can only really be understood within this larger
context.
There's much more that could be said about the meaning and context of the
errors Wilber makes regarding Sri Aurobindo's system in just this one example,
but that should be enough for some interesting conversation, no?
best,
don
MAY 11, 2003
The following is a rough draft of reflections on the relationship between
the psychological visions expressed by Sri Aurobindo and Ken Wilber.
For this draft, my focus is primarily on the attempt to give a clear account
of some of the major points of Sri Aurobindo’s psychological vision.
1. Intellectual Metaphysics vs intuitive knowledge by
identity.
The predominant view amongst religious scholars regarding the “truths”
contained in spiritual wrtings is that they are a mixture of experience and
intellectual interpretation. According to Robert Forman, scholars of
comparative religion in the first half of the 20th century believed there
was a single common core of Truth underlying the various interpretations
of spiritual experience. In the 1960s, with the rise of post-modernism,
and presented forcefully by Stephen Katz, the idea grew that there was no
essential underlying commonality between various spiritual traditions, and
all mystical/spiritual experiences were inseparable from the culture in which
they occurred. By the 1980s, another reaction set in and there was a
partial return to the idea of a common spiritual tradition underlying the
differing cultural expressions; however, unlike the ideas of the early 20th
century, the new idea was that the different cultural expressions had validity
as showing different facets of what is ultimately an infinite and unknowable
reality.
Where does Sri Aurobindo fit in all this? He says that it is impossible
to know the Ultimate Reality by means of the mind; whenever one attempts
to understand spiritual experience by means of the mind – no matter how exalted
that mind may be – there will always be mixed in a great deal of Ignorance
(Avidya). It is only possible, he says, to perfectly “Know” the relative
(changing, phenomenal) reality in relation to the Absolute (unchanging, noumenal)
Reality by means of a faculty of knowing entirely different from the mind,
a “supra-mental” faculty. This is not, as Wilber describes it, another
heightened form of mentality or cognition; it is an altogether different
way of knowing. It is characterized by what Sri Aurobindo calls “knowledge
by identity” – one knows something because one has become that thing.
There is nothing in this that contradicts any of the findings of science.
Modern day science is basically an activity of the surface intellectual mind,
interpreting various sensory, emotional, intellectual experiences.
The methods of science are entirely incapable of commenting – pro or con –
on the validity of spiritual knowledge. As long as we have not developed
supramental consciousness, the appropriate stance toward claims made by someone
who has awakened a supramental awareness is one of agnosticism. IF
we make the experiement and awaken our own level of supramental consciousness,
then we can know the truth of what Sri Aurobindo has written. This
does not require blind faith or acquiescence to dogmatic authority – it is
the attitude of the scientist who, hearing that someone else has made an experiment,
makes the experiment himself to see if he can replicate it. (the “supramental”
is not unique to Sri Aurobindo; many in both the Buddhist and Hindu traditions
have attained to this level, as Sri Aurobindo notes in his collection of
“Letters on Yoga”).
2. Evolution, development, and spiritual awakening.
According to Sri Aurobindo, the realization or awakening of the soul and
the Spirit is entirely independent of psychological development. One
does not have to attain any particular “level” of cognitive development to
awaken to the Self, for example. The infinite, transcendent,
ineffable, unthinkable Atman exists always, throughout “Eternity”, according
to Sri Aurobindo, and its realization is not part of the evolutionary spiral.
Similarly, the awakening to the soul does not require any sort of “frontal’
development (it is a different case for what Sri Aurobindo calls the “psychic
being’, but more on that later).
There are many practical implications to this understanding. The
whole idea of “pre/trans” is completely inapplicable to spiritual development.
A child – in fact, an animal or even a flower – may be more in touch with
its soul than a highly developed adult functioning at the “post-formal operations”
level. Contrary to what Wilber claims, it is perfectly possible for
a very young child who is in touch with his soul to empathize with others,
in spite of a lack of mental development which would preclude him from EXPRESSING
that empathy in mental terms. It is possible also (according to Sri
Aurobindo) for an individual to awaken as the non-dual spirit without going
through any process of mental development. This is not just a matter
of different lines of development – spiritual awakening or the awakening
to the soul is not a matter of development at all (“swimming in the infinite
ocean of love, who can say one is near or far” – Bhai Sahib, Indian Sufi
teacher of Irina Tweedie).
This also has implications for therapy. Because of Wilber’s extensive
promotion of his idea of the “pre-trans fallacy”, thousands of individuals
interested in transpersonal psychotherapy have put forth the idea that “first”
one has to “have an ego” and later “transcend” the ego. This goes against
the common understanding of religious traditions around the world {Sri Krishna:
“All who turn to Me with Devotion are accepted with love by Me”; ].
Since the influence of the soul and the awakening to the Spirit is in no
way dependent on or even related to development it is possible to make some
kind of soul and/or spiritual contact at any point in life. In fact,
there have been cultures (Tibet, for example) where this knowledge is so
common that children are encouraged from infancy to remain in touch with
their deepest soul longings. Virtually all therapy could be potentially
enriched by bringing this soul awareness into the therapeutic environment.
In fact, it is likely that if there was a more widespread understanding of
the healing potential of soul-contact, what we call ‘psychotherapy’ would
probably fade away altogether and be replaced by something less focused on
pathology, healing the “inner child” and more on learning to use one’s mind,
heart and body in harmony with the promptings of one’s soul and Self, and
this would eventually become part of normal education, not abnormal therapy.
Sri Aurobindo offers a profound understanding of “faith” (Sanskrit – “Sraddha”).
Rather than being a mental belief or dogma, it is the ray of the soul’s knowledge
reflected in the surface nature. According to this understanding, we
have available to us at all stages of our life journey the wisdom fo the
soul, if only we turn away from the “pleasant” and seek the “good” – not
in the sense of morally good, but that which helps us become more full of
spiritual light. This is nothing mentally complex; simple, illiterate
people have expressed a deep understanding of this throughout history in cultures
around the world.
This brings a deeper understanding to the word "conscience" - it is the
voice of "Sanjaya" (the narrator of the Bhagavad Gita") who overhears the
Divine Krishna speaking in the depths of our being to our soul-consciousness
(represented by Arjuna). We, living on the surface, blinded by the
trumpet tones of desire, can at least, if we wish, still our surface deliberations
enough to listen for the voice of "Sanjaya", the voice of conscience, even
if we are not yet able to still our mind sufficiently to hear the Voice
of Silence, the voice of the Infinite and Eternal Reality ever speaking
forth the Word at the core of our Being.
This is the basis of many Christian meditative practices, such as "lectio
divina", sacred reading, practices which throughout the Middle Ages were
engaged in not only by monks but by the ordinary uneducated peasant. Again,
this is not a 'developmental' issue - at least, not developmental in the
modern sense.
The ancient Indian psychological tradition had an understanding of development,
but it is very different from the modern one; Sri Aurobindo draws on this
ancient tradition, and illuminates it in remarkable ways. To understand
his presentation, we need to have some sense of what "planes of consciousness"
are, and the difference between physical, vital (pranic) and mental energy
(or "shakti"), and the difference bgetween physical, vital and mental consciousness
as well.
Roughly speaking, according to Sri Aurobindo, we human beings, in our
ordinary psycholgoical make-up, are constituted of a confused jumble of
different levels of consciousness, the mental, vital and physical (with the
supramental, bliss, Cit [consciousness] and Sat [existence] levels behind
or "involved"). When, by learning to step back, to detach from the
workings of our surface thoughts, feelings and sensations, we go within,
we discover quite readily discernable grades of consciousness and energy.
These individual grades are related to universal grades of energy (not
the same as Wilber's quadrants, though they do incorporate all that he includes
in his All levels, all Quadrants model).
Not only are there different levels of energy and consciousness, there
are different organizations of our "being" - reflections of the individual
Self, the Jivatman (not something that "disappears" with some ultimate non-dual
realization; but rather, as Sri Aurobindo often quotes Sri Krishna from the
Gita, "an eternal portion of the Divine"). The fundamental factor determining
our level of "development" - devleopment in the ancient Indian sense - is
the level of "being" with which we identify inwardly. If we are centered
in the inner plane in the physical being, we will express ourselves outwardly
in a crude manner, our nature characterized by dullness, inertia, incapacity,
etc (what is traditionally known as "tamasic"). If centered within
in the vital being, we are characterized by ambition, desire, intensity of
energy and expression, etc (traditionally, "rajasic"). If centered
within in the mental being, then our nature is characterized by calmness
and light (traditionally, "sattwic"). An extensive description of these
different levels of development can be found in chapters 14-18 of the Gita,
with a profound and detailed analysis of what might be called different "lines
of devleopment" (hence, "lines of development" is not a concept. that was
invented by Howard Gardner in the 1980s!!).
In practice, our personality is an incredibly complex mixture. The
Mother says somewhere we are made up of tens of thousands of competing, conflicting
personalities, mental-vital, vital-phsyical, etc etc, of all different kinds
and combinations. The mind itself is made of different parts - a physical
mind, vital mind and thinking mind, the thinking mind again having several
levels. Each part of the mind may be sattwic, rajasic or tamasic.
Remember that the term "physical mind" refers both to the outer nature
and the influence of the inner physical consciousness, thus there is no
equivalent either in modern psychology or in Wilber's version of it of Sri
Aurobindo's developmental vision.
3. EGO, DESIRE SOUL, PSYCHIC BEING, SOUL AND SELF
Sri Aurobindo's view of the nature of the self is quite dramatically different
from that of Ken Wilber. Following traditional Indian psychology,
"Ego' in Sri Aurobindo's vision specifically refers to a process of identification.
He speaks of the ego idea in the thinking mind (the centralizaition
of thoughts, ideas, memories, etc around a fictitious center); the ego feeling
or vital ego (the centralization of feelings, desires, emotions, etc around
a fictitious center) and the ego sense (the centralization of various kinds
of sensory experiences around a fictitious center). But, he adds,
this process of centralization reflects a deep truth. The "ego" is
the shadow cast on our surface consciousness of the true individual, the
infinite, spaceless, timeless reality of the Jivatman, which is an individualized
expression of the universal and transcendent Atman, what Sri Aurobindo calls
our "true being" or "central being". I'm not familiar anywhere in Wilber's
writings where he makes this connection between the experience of an apparent
"ego" and the Jivatman, or true being.
Similarly, our personality - called by Sri Aurobindo the "desire-soul"
- is not simply a collection of thoughts, feelings, memories etc to be cast
away when we attain spiritual awakening. The "desire-soul" is related
to the true soul, the psychic being, as the ego is related to the Jivatman,
our central being. The desire soul or surface personality (actually,
it can be a mixture of both inner and outer parts of our being) is a reflection
- distorted reflection, that is - of the true soul-personality, the psychic
being.
It is the growing psychic being - the psychic being grows over countless
hundreds and thousands of lifetimes, that is the true source of development.
The unfolding of the psychic personality stems from the Real-Idea
- the essential nature of the individual soul hidden in the profound absysses
of the Absolute.
Another problem with Wilber's lack of understanding of the psychic being
is that it seems to lead him to leave out altogether the personal
aspect of the Divine. Writers who tend toward seeing non-dualistic
awareness as the ultimate realization tend to put the impersonal Divine
above the personal, whereas according to Sri Aurobindo, with the awakening
to the soul, one realizes that Personality is as much an aspect of the Divine
as the Impersonal (the Divine, of course, being ultimately beyond both Personal
and Impersonal; though this "beyond" doesn't mean that the soul cannot relate
to the Divine as a personal beloved).
The soul, according to Sri Aurobindo, is not the simple "Witness" that
Wilber describes as the nature of the soul; and this soul does not eventually
merge with the Self once th witness posture is transcended (Wilber
in one of his books claimed this was what Sri Aurobindo meant by the soul
- which is almost the opposite of what Sri Aurobindo has actually written
about it).
The "witness" may be any number of "parts of the being" according to Sri
Aurobindo. The long passage at the end of "Eye of Spirit" (the chapter
is titled "Always Already" or somethign like that) where Wilber attempts
to give an experiential description of the highest non-dual awareness sounds,
in terms of Sri Aurobindo's description, like the first layer of the witness
that the individual discovers in the inner mental being, when the surface
mind is slightly quieted. Wilber's description - despite it's
One Taste" claims - doesn't have any of the qualities of the psychic being,
and doesn't seem to have any connection with the individual, universal and
trasncendent aspects of the realization of the Self.
According to Sri Aurobindo, once one becomes established as the "Witness",
there is a further step (this doesn't necessarily mean some ultimate stage
of self realization) where one is no longer merely a passive witness but
becomes the active "sanctioner", realizing that all the phenomena of Nature
move only because of the "gaze", the intention", of the witnessing (now sanctioning)
purusha, or being. IT's difficult to say much in writing about this
- this "gazing" or "sanctioning" is related ultimately to the Supreme Will
manifesting at the level of the Supermind (about which Wilber has nothing
to say at all) where epistemologg and ontology become one, where knowledge
and will are inseparably united, where one altogether transcends "interpretation"
because knowing and being and doing are One. At this level there is
no longer any sensory phenomena that exist apart from the knowing of the
sensory phenomena, the individual and universal are perfectly ujnited, with
the transcendent Absolute apparent to the eye as clearly as the palm of one's
hand.
4. CONSCIOUSNESS: INDIVIDUAL, UNIVERSAL AND TRANSCENDENT
Wilber, following the "vedantic" trend of much of modern intellectual thought,
seems to have little feeling for the "Tantric" aspect of Indian thought
(this in spite of his studying with a number of Tantric teachers in
the Tibetan tradition. Sri Aurobindo, following the tantric tradition,
never speaks of "Consciousness" without associating it with "Shakti", Force,
energy, the Divine Mother. The Divine Mother, amazingly, is never
mentioned once in all of Wilber's works - well, the Goddess is, but the
Goddess Wilber speaks about has little in common with the Divine Mother
of Indian tradition, the Conscious-Force that creates the worlds, the holds
them in Her consciousness, and dissolves them, the same Conscious-Force
that is One with the Absolute Divine.
This Force, this shakti, manifests in the individual as physical shakti,
prana shakti, and mental shakti, as well as soul-force, the shakti of the
soul. As the consciousness becomes progressively more subtle, this
energy is perceived directly in and as all phenomena, inseparable from the
knowing aspect of consciousness.
This Force manifests at the universal level as well. When one's consciousness
awakens to the unviersal physical conscious-force, the universal vital-force,
and the universal mental-force, one can know directly "universal" or cosmic
events. This shows one of the most profound misunderstandings in Wilber's
writings of the understandings of the ancient yogic writings. He portrays
Yogis as concerned primarily with inner individual consciousness, whereas
virtually all great yogic writings describe the unviersal planes of consciousness
and collective/cultural consciousness structures as inseparable from the
individual planes and structures of consciousness.
Another place where this misunderstanding of Wilber's shows up is in his
total misunderstanding of Sri Aurobindo's term "Group-soul". In replying
to Gary Jacob's article, he described the "group-soul" as some kind of fascist
way of thinking. He was confusing the group soul with what Sri Aurobindo
calls "the collective or ego-soul" of a nation or culture. This confusion
of Wilber's is exactly what Sri Aurobindo warns against again and again
in his book, "The Human Cycle" The Psychology of Social Development".
There are some notes below on other topics where Sri Aurobindo's psychological
vision differs dramatically from that of Wilber, but this is enough for
now.:>))))
5. KARMA AND EVOLUTION; SWABHAVA - ONE'S "OWN
NATURE" OR "TRUE NATURE"
Much more comprehensive understanding of “lines of karma” and lines of
dev in Gita and Indian psychology Nothing about karma; won’t have metaphysical
understanding in any case; relation of individual and group karma;
6. EVOLUTION AND HISTORY
Linear view of history; not spiraling like in Indian view
7. THE SUPERMIND AND THE LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS ABOVE THE MIND
Definition of higher mind;
No understanding of supramental; knowledge by identity;
