Tom Murray

2013 Integral Theory Conference

Paper copy at www.perspegrity.com/papers

MYSTICAL CLAIMS AND EMBODIED

KNOWLEDGE

IN A POST-METAPHYSICAL AGE

?

Reality

(it)

Experience

(I)

Belief & Language

(we)

USEFUL CATEGORIES FOR

KNOWLEDGE/BELIEF

BELIEF/KNOWLEDGE CATEGORIES:

EXAMPLES

Linguistic / symbolic

Concepts

• Taste of chocolate; gut

certainty; meditative

state; playing tennis;

intuitions…

• Tree, democracy,

interior,

consciousness…

• Trees are…; We

should…; the

cognitive line leads…

• AQAL, SD, CR,

Einstein’s, ….

4

Non/pre-Linguistic:

Experience

Model/Theory

Statements

OVERVIEW

1. What are mystical/metaphysical claims/beliefs?

2. Reasons for caution and reflection

3. What embodied cognition says about mystical/metaphysical claims and reality <–> idea gap

4. ‘Post-metaphysical’ approaches to mysticism

“Theories can do shadow work”— so can mystical beliefs

Not questioning mystical, magical, or ineffable experiences, or the need to share and construct meaning from it

WORKING DEFINITION OF

MYSTICAL/METAPHYSICAL

CLAIMS/BELIEFS

• Claims about the overarching or underlying nature of the universe/Kosmos/everything

• Not provable by science or amenable to measurement; i.e. not purely physical or psychological phenomena – but still being about “reality” or “truth” (not about the good or beautiful)

• Common themes: Consciousness, Being, Reality, Spirit, Life, Non-dual, Cosmology, other Realms

• Have import to human life/spirit, ethics, ultimate “meaning”

• Mystical differs from metaphysical in that its source is direct experience or intuition (purportedly) with ultimate reality or transcendental truths

SOME EXAMPLES OF

MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE AND CLAIMS

KEN WILBER — PHILOSOPHER AND

MYSTIC

"the great morphic field of evolutionary

potential…pulling all manifest holons back to their ever-

present Ground as Spirit--a Kosmic field of Agape,

gently pulling evolution into greater and greater

consciousness, embrace […] The reality, suchness, or

isness of every holon is actually Spirit…a drive which

ultimately wants to embrace the entire Kosmos […] This

ultimate realization [is] of the ever-present, spaceless

and therefore infinite, timeless and therefore eternal,

formless and therefore omnipresent, Condition of all

conditions and Nature of all natures and radically

groundless Ground of all grounds.”

Ken Wilber, Excerpt A, Volume 2, Kosmos Trilogy Draft

MORE MYSTICAL STATEMENTS

"…perspectives are primordial, which is to say they are

the most fundamental or primeval elements of reality,

existing at or from the beginning of time"

Clint Fuhs, ITC 2010 paper on Perspectival Semiotics

"the dimension of the profound," "mystical deeper

reality," "timeless present," "eternal now," and "infinite

spaciousness”

Jeff Carreira (student of Andrew Cohen) audio dialogue with Patricia

Albere

"infinite vastness...open suchness... infinite peace...true

self...always already liberated"

Wilber, audio interview with Alan Coombs

DR. BRONNER (THE SOAP

GUY)

• ... a sense for work-love-song-art-law-play-beauty, a

face turned up from the sod!

• Absolute...ever- evolving, ever-recreating, ever-

loving order!...guided by One...God...all-embracing,

• Eternal One! — We're One! All-One!

• DILUTE ENJOY — 1 SQAP FOR 18 DIFFERENT

USES!

NON-AD-HOMINEM

The individuals quotes can be assumed to:

• be sincere and authentic

• have had deep experiences and intuitions

• be pointing to important “truths” or deep

meaning

• not be absolutist; allow for fallibility and

revision

• have a sophisticated and nuanced

understanding

DON’T TRY TO USE THESE WORDS AT

HOME! :-)

Infinite, Omnipresent,

Universal, Ultimate, Primeval,

Primordial, Eternal, Formless,

Ever-Present, Supreme,

Unbounded, Timeless,

Spaceless, Radically Invisible,

Radically Empty, Non-Dual,

Ground Of Being

• Poetry? Metaphor? Inspirational

oratory?

• Truth claims about (exterior)

reality

OUR RELATIONSHIP TO MYSTICAL

CLAIMS

BERTRAND RUSSELL ON MYSTICAL

KNOWLEDGE

• It often deals with universals, infinites, essences, or foundational

truths.

• Mysticism has "a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard

to what is believed about the universe." It has a sense of

"certainty and revelation." Though it sometimes uses logic to

justify beliefs, the claims seem to come from "a way of wisdom,

sudden, penetrating, coercive, which is contrasted with the slow

and fallible [process of scientific reasoning]."

• Mystics are attempting "an articulation upon the inarticulate

experience gained in the moment of" what is called insight or

intuition.

• There is a "sense of a mystery unveiled [and] revelation" of "a

reality behind the world of appearances and utterly different from

it." Truth and essence is found through profound introspective

thought, not through sense experience.

• Can be expressed in deeply poignant, poetic, or metaphorical

prose.

YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH METAPHYSICAL

BELIEFS?

1. Brainstorm mystical/metaphysical

claims/beliefs you hear in the Integral

community.

2. How do you feel when others make

such claims?

3. What happens when you mention

mystical/metaphysical claims to your

friends/family?

4. When you explain or justify these

beliefs, how do you support them?

5. Does it matter if we can explain or justify

MYSTICAL / METAPHYSICAL

KNOWLEDGE HAZARDS —

RUSSELL

• Tendency for the passion of the mystic to

conflate "the good with the truly real"

• Those who "are capable of absorption in an inward

passion" can experience "the loss of contact with

daily things [and] common objects."

• Focus on pure logic to the exclusion of experience or

common sense– "logic used in the defense of

mysticism seems to be faulty as logic”

• >>Highest form of thought is a combination of

mystical and scientific understanding...

MORE CAVEATS RE PROCLAMATIONS

OF THE ULTIMATE OR ESSENTIAL

• Complex philosophical approaches and worldviews...reach beyond the boundaries of the academy and into the lifeworld" where they are subject to being watered-down, muddied, and misappropriated

-Stein 2010

• Ultimately can be:

grandiosity, hegemony, elitism, demagoguery, proto-fascism, colonization, assimilation, totalizing

EMBODIMENT <-> FALLIBILITY

Fallibility, uncertainty, ambiguity, paradox,

fuzziness, systematic bias, indeterminacy

THE IDEA PORTABILITY PRINCIPLE

• Understanding and dealing with the fallibility

and indeterminacy of ideas is more important

the greater the distance between the world

views or beliefs of interlocutors

• Preaching to the (integral) Choir vs.

a) crossing disciplinary boundaries to interact with

other theory/practice communities

b) applying ideas in real contexts

explaining one's purposes to stakeholders

c)disperse ideas into other world views or

conceptual frames

DISCUSSION:

EMBODIMENT & BELIEF FORMATION

1. How does knowing you are angry, in love,

in fearful resistance, or prejudiced influence

what you believe and how you hold a

belief? How does understanding how

shadow works change how you hold a

belief?

2. How does knowing that some aspects of

love — such as attraction, bonding, and

empathy, are tied to bio/neuro/chemical

processes — change the experience of

being in love?

3. New evidence shows how most memory,

perception, and judgment is influenced by

emotion and cognitive biases — how do

you think this effects the claims of scholars,

philosophers, and mystics?

THE EMBODIED MIND

— A Philosophical History of the Fallibility of

Reason

1. Traditional Philosophy — mind/reason separate from body

(Cartesian) &

pure, universal, transcendent, reliable

2. Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution — removing the

influence of

authority, emotion/passion, dogma, instinct/intuition

• Valued: observation, measurement, logic,

repeatability/democratic

• But battle: Realists & Empiricists vs. Rationalists & Idealists

3. Kant — reason is limited by underlying structures of the mind

4. Darwin — cognition evolved through natural selection—from

animal brains

5. Freud — the unconscious; unpredictable hidden powerful

influence on thought

EXAMPLE COGNITIVE BIASES

• Confirmation Bias

• Hindsight Bias

• Amygdala Hijack

SOURCES OF FALLIBILITY

IN MYSTICAL AND METAPHYSICAL

BELIEF

1. Concepts &

Abstractions

2. Misplaced

Concreteness

3. Mystical Specialness

4. Epistemic Drives

1.

SCHOLARLY WORK IS

"NOTORIOUSLY FRAUGHT

WITH DEFINITIONAL

DISAGREEMENT"

(SHERMER, 2011)

George Lakoff

Subject / Object

Singular / Plural

Cognitive, Emotional line...

Non-Dual (/ non-non-dual)

Good, True, Beautiful

Epistemic

Distance

2. MISPLACED CONCRETENESS /

REIFICATION(TREATING INTRANSITIVE OBJECTS LIKE/AS TRANSITIVE

OBJECTS)

3. ESOTERIC CHOCOLATE —

MYSTICAL FEELINGS

STATES REFERRED TO IN BUDDHIST

TEXTS(THE SATIPATTHANA SUTTA, PITAKA SUTTA)

• A series of state experiences (Jhanas) obtainable

through contemplative absorption practices. ...terms

include happiness/joy, rapture/bliss,

attention/mindfulness, unification/attention/one-

pointedness, equanimity/serenity/contentment/utter

peace, infinity of space, and

emptiness/formlessness/cessation.

• Common warnings along the path indicated drives

(addictive & obscuring)

• What from the experience gets transferred to

theories/concepts of reality?

• Terms like infinite, boundless, empty, used in

mystical ideas may point to feeling states, more

than actual properties of reality.

IN "MYSTICISM AND LOGIC" RUSSELL

CONCLUDES THAT

"while fully developed mysticism seems to me

[a mistaken outcome of the emotions], I yet

believe that by sufficient restraint, there is an

element of wisdom to be learned by the

mystical way of feeling, which does not seem to

be attainable in any other manner [and which

is] to be commended as an attitude toward life,

not as a creed about the world"

4. EPISTEMIC DRIVES (FROM COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY TO

PHENOMENOLOGY)

Any cognitive drive or tendency that influences how we produce or share knowledge or ideas

• Desire for certainty (and the avoidance of uncertainty and cognitive dissonance)

• Need to make meaning, seepatterns

• Misplaced concreteness

• Symbolic Impulse

EPISTEMIC DRIVES (FOR MYSTICS!)

35

Abstract Concrete

General Specific

Integration Differentiation

Universal Relative

Fundamental Consequential

Permanent Changing

Simple Complex

Oneness/singularity/unity Multiplicity

Whole, Integrated Part, Differentiated

Completeness, Totality Partiality

Similarity Difference (diversity)

Transcendence Immanence

Perfection, purity Imperfection, grittinessUniqueness, specialness Ordinariness

POST-METAPHYSICS

• Habermas:

1. post-metaphysical era has "replaced

foundationalism with fallibilism” and

2. has a procedural conception of rationality

— from “a rational person thinks this” to

"…thinks like this”

• In Integral Spirituality Wilber (2006) says that

"[arguably,] metaphysics…ended with Kant [who

realized that] we do not perceive empirical

objects in a completely realistic, pregiven

fashion; but rather, structures of the knowing

subject import various characteristics to the

known object. […] Metaphysics is then a broad

name for the type of thinking that can't figure

[out that] reality is not a perception, but a

conception…thinking that falls prey to the myth

WE WILL ALWAYS NEED METAPHYSICS

• To satisfy our epistemic drives toward meaning,

certainty, .... in areas outside the reach of (current)

science/measurement.

• Some things may always appear as mysteries to the

human mind: death, life, infinity, subjectivity, being...

• But we can still avoid unnecessary degrees of

certainty, foundationalism, bias....

APPROACHES TO METAPHYSICAL

CLAIMS

1.Meaning Generative Claims

2.Indeterminacy Analysis

3.Body Awareness of Epistemic Drives

4.Follow Sean Esbjörn-Hargens!

1. MEANING GENERATIVE CLAIMS(A 4TH VALIDITY TYPE)

True

Good/Right/Just

Beautiful

&

Meaning-generative

39

2. INDETERMINACY ANALYSIS

George Lakoff

3. BODY AWARENESS OF EPISTEMIC

DRIVES

4. HUMOR, PLAY, HUMILITY,

UNKNOWING, DANCE

(SEE SEAN!)

• Fallibility: "Blind spots and square

pegs and messy -- oh my!”

• Evolving definition of concept of

"integral"

• Ontological (metaphorical)

Pluralism: multiple earths

• Epistemic Drives: "I love maps,

iteration, and symmetry!”

• Misplaced concreteness: Force-

fitting into quadrants

SUMMARY

• Embodiment implies fallibility and indeterminism of

mystical/metaphysical ideas and claims

• Most abstract/foundational/general concepts are the

most indeterminate (epistemic distance)

• The most deeply meaning-full concepts involved

highest epistemic drives (—“ultimate concern”)

• Honor the mysterious, sacred, mystical, enchanted

— and the need to share and make meaning from

them

• With post-metaphysical, fallibilistic, self-critical

approaches

• That allows integral theory and meta-theories to do

emancipatory work

THANKS!…

tommurray.us@gmail.com | www.tommurray.us

A FEW EXTRA SLIDES…

POST-METAPHYSICS

• Is not anti-metaphysics

• No view from nowhere (privileged perspective): reality is not out there waiting to be seen (“misplaced concreteness”)

• Beyond the “myth of the given:” reality is not simply as it appears

• Perspectival: all truths/experiences come from a perspective and are partial

• Misplaced concreteness and “map vs territory:”abstractions are not “real” (independent of us)

• Knowledge is fallible (no absolutes)

• Knowledge is socially constructed

• Concepts and language are indeterminate

TOM MURRAY |

WWW.PERSPEGRITY.COM | MAY

2010

47

IDEAS AS REALITY:

STAGES OF MISPLACED

CONCRETENESS

• Magical thinking – imagination as reality

• Mythical thinking – stories as reality

• Conventional thinking – norms as reality

• Modern thinking – concepts/models as

reality

• Post modern — deep knowing/intuition as

one truth

POSITIVISM/CERTAINTY VS.

FALLIBILISM/INDETERMINACY

• Positivist attitude: clarity, certainty, action

• knowledge/meaning-generative; problem solving, theorizing

• Negative capability: awe, humility, curiosity

• Limits of language & knowledge & method

• Tolerance for ambiguity, uncertainty, unknowing

• Dealing with the above

TOM MURRAY |

WWW.PERSPEGRITY.COM | AUGUST

201049

Espoused fallibility vs.

Stylistic (or illocutionary/enacted) fallibility

CALLS FOR HIGHER LEVEL THOUGHTDavid Bohm: "underneath [humanity's dilemmas] there's something we don't

understand about how thought works" and that what is needed is a "very deep [and] very subtle" awareness of thought itself.

Albert Einstein: "the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

• Cultural development as skill of understanding mind, thought, language, knowledge, belief…=> the “post-metaphysical turn”

TOM MURRAY |

WWW.PERSPEGRITY.COM | AUGUST

2010

50

SECOND TIER - GOING “META”(FROM ITC-2008)

• Meta-cognition (thinking about thinking)

• Meta-knowledge (knowledge about the nature and limitations of knowledge); META-BELIEF!

• Meta-learning (learning how to learn, also called triple-loop learning)

• Meta-dialog (dialog about how we engage in dialog)

• Meta-decision making (making decisions about how we will go about making decisions)

• Meta-affect (investigating the feeling of our feelings; somatic awareness of feeling states)

• Meta-leadership (supporting leadership in others)TOM MURRAY |

WWW.PERSPEGRITY.COM | AUGUST

2010

DEVELOPMENT, DISEQUILIBRIUM

AND HUMILITY

Heart/Empathy: Relationally aware -- opening to the suffering of

ever wider circles of relationship

Mind/Cognitive: Construct aware -- foundations of certainty in

knowing are shaken

Spirit/Self: Ego aware -- awake to the profound levels of chaos and

vulnerability in life

External world: Systems aware – chaos: radical connectivity,

unpredictability

TOM MURRAY |

WWW.PERSPEGRITY.COM | MAY 201052