Swami Ramalingam

I haven't blogged for a while. For some people blogging comes naturally, but for me, especially at present, I find it is easier for me to write stuff for my website (kheper net) or my book (The Integral Paradigm) or simply reply to emails. But I do feel obligated to at least keep some updates going, and a lot's been happening, so here goes:

Swami Ramalingam (Vallalar) - About a month or two ago my friend and correspondent Rick Lipschutz told me about the work of the late T.R.Thulasiram, a Tamil devotee of Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, Swami Ramdas, and Swami Ramalingam (my brief (at time of writing) page, Wikipedia page), also known as Vallalar) and resident of Sri Aurobindo ashram. In 1980 Thulasiram's huge two volume 2000 page opus (Arut Perum Jyothi and Deathless Body was published by Madras University; it is long out of print and very rare (although a CD and pdf version is available on the AUMRA Trust website (dedicated to Thulasiram's work). Basically, Thulasiram's thesis is that some of these Tamil siddhas (especially Thirumoolar and Ramalingam) attained the same Supramental realisations as Sri Aurobindo. At first I was sceptical, but the more I attuned to Swami Ramalingam presence the more he affected me in a positive way. For me he combines elements of Ramana Maharshi (deep compassion for all sentient beings) with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's supramental integral yoga.

At the same time, whether separately or not I don't know, I have been inspired to upgrade and update my website (and also my book), especially focusing on the Integral Paradigm. For me now the Integral Paradigm begins primarily with the yoga of Thirumoolar, Ramalingam, Sri Aurobindo and Mirra (the Mother), although there seem to be a few amazing parallels with Christ, and perhaps one can go back further to Ancient Egypt. All this refers to the yoga of the perfection (divinisation) of the body (hence also siddha and Taoist yogic alchemy). In classic spirituality the body and things of the world are disparaged (with only a few exceptions, e.g. Paganism, Tantra etc), but this is a yoga that includes the body. I still take Sri Aurobindo's definition of Integral Yoga as the esoteric core of the integral paradigm - the complete and evolutionary divinisation of the entire being.

This is not to deny the importance of the secular Integral philosophies or studies of Teilhard, Gebser, Haskell, Jantsch, Maslow, Murphy, Paul Ray, Wilber, etc. However I do make a distinction between the radical esoteric yoga of Integral divinisation, and the "exoteric" theories of synthesis of psycho-socio developmental and evolutionary levels.

Sri Aurobindo and Ken Wilber on Wikipedia

In terms of the current Integral Paradigm, can there vbe any two more influential figures than Sri Aurobindo and Ken Wilber?

Sri Aurobindo is of course by far the more important and original; the founder of Integral Yoga, who provided both a roadmap to planetary transformation and, with his co-worker The Mother, the means.

Wilber's relevance lies more in his skill in synthesising and popularising many difefrent worldviews around the central core of evolutionary development, thus craeting a second generation New Paradigm movement. In terms of insight or gnosis however he gets no further than standard New Age/New Paradigm Advaito-Buddhist nonduality, which is only one of many aspects in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's yoga. And while if carried to its end it is able to confer Liberation, it is in insufficent on its own to bring about the required Transformation of the world, or even of the individual in the world.

Sri Aurobindo and Wilber are in fact are two extremely different and unrelated individuals. It was actually unfair of me in the past to try to compare them, because you can't compare them. One is an Enlightened Yogi-Sage, the other a spiritually orientated intellectual teacher and theorist. They have nothing in common other than that both set forward an spiritual-evolutionary worldview, and both provided an inclusive, rather than exclusive, philosophy. So if you are looking for a lowest common denominator for "Integral philosophy", that is about it. Nevertheless Wilber, as a passionate and articulate propnent of (his version of) the Integral paradigm, does have an important role to play in the current memetic evolution.

In my book in progress, I have much more to say on the Integral Paradigm, bringing in Jain and other approaches and thus going beyond the current and still very limited and exoteric Integral Movement.

But enough rambling. What inspired this present blog post is the status of the respective wikipedia pages of these two very different innovators.

Wilber's page is well referenced (32 footnotes at last count, plus a very comprehensive bibliography), dynamic, and constantly being adjusted.

Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's pages are static, in the case of Sri Aurobindo poorly refernced (only 7 footnotes), and constantly savaged by editors who for the most part don't have the faintest idea what they are talking about. Two examples. On The Mother's page, almost every reference to "the Mother" has been replaced by "Alfassa". It's a bit like replacing every reference to the 14th Dalai Lama with "Gyatso", or every reference to the current Pope Benedict with "Ratzinger", on their respective pages. If you want to know how stupid it would look, just read their respective pages accordingly. While the current version of the Sri Aurobindo page is full of "original research" tags. Not just at the top of teh page, but under almost every subheading. I scanned through teh page and it didn't look like there is original research there; the only problem is taht there are very few footnoted citations to Sri Aurobindo's works. So because there are no footnotes, it is assumed that it must be "original research", a big heresy on Wikipedia.

Of course, one can hardly blame the Wikipedia community for this sorry state of affairs. Were it not for the presence of a strong online Wilber-Integral community - both supporters and critics - the Wilber page would be just as constantly mutilated as the Sri Aurobindo and The Mother pages are.

Since it is unlikely that Aurobidonians are less passionate, nor would it be the case that Wilber is many times better kniown (if anything the opposite is the case!), what this shows is that there is a much larger online Wilber community, and hence the percentage of those motivated to work on Wikipedia would be sufficiently large as to have an effect.

Despite its vaunted NPOV ideals, Wikipedia is not and never has been neutral; it presents a selectively deletionist forum in which minor comic book and TV characters given prefernce over less famous real life biographies. And while an excellent resource in mainstream subjects and geek special interests (and I for one do appreciate and are attracted to Geek things, so this isn't an insult), fails miserably when it comes to alternative knowledge; anything outside teh mainstream consensus paradigm.

I have no doubt that many years from now, there will be enough Aurobindonians active on Wikipedia to rectify the current imbalance at least as far as the coverage of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother are concerned, but I don't envisage this happening any time soon.

A final comment, lest it be seen that I'm unduely wiki-bashing. For all its faults, and for all its decline from its pre-deletionist summit of 2005, Wikipedia still serves as a powerful knowledge-building community and invaluable resource. I wouldn't continue to be involved if I didn't think it served an essential role in the ecology of the noosphere. But Wikipedia is only as good as its contributers and contributions. Doubtless it will continue to evolve, as human knowledge does. But it will follow, rather than lead. And perhaps, as an online encyclopaedia of a traditional, rather than unconventional, mould, that's the way it should be..

New insights

Following a hiatus of several months (due to a cycling accident) I've come back to my book again, although I won't be doing much or any work on it until I have finished a revision of my website. Basically though, my metaphysics and methodology have changed, as in both these I no longer give priority to any intellectual systems of thought that lack gnosis.

From this new perspective, my old arrangement or metaphysic was based too much on a mental interpretation of an old fashioned interpretation of the "Great Chain of Being". In the revised book I will retain the "Great Chain of Being", but only as one orientating perspective or partial understanding of Reality among many. Otehr perspectives are nonduality, supramentalisation, etc. There is still a hierarchy though, in that Supramentalisation is a far more profound and all-encompasisng Realisation than Nonduality, just as Nonduality is far more profound than Avidya/Maya/Samsara (relative consciousness).

So rather than ontological realities, the emphasis will be on the hypostases (levels of being, e.g. Manifest Absolute etc) as states of greater or lesser Enlightenment and trans-enlightenment; as different ways of experiencing the Absolute. This does not mean that i am buying into some sort of postmodernist wilber-V interpretation that says there is no such thing as metaphysics, levels of being etc, as I still fully acknowledge such realities.

In any case, I believe this approach is truer to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's position, which remains my central orientating perspective

Two different Integral initiatives

Two very different "Integral" projects:

The Gnostic Centre - a research centre for the growth of consciousness, based on Aurobindonian Integral philosophy. "Gnostic" here would seem to be a reference to Sri Aurobindo'sd term for higher consciousness and supramentalised being (see The Life Divine Book II ch.27)

To quote from the site:

based in new delhi, set up as a non-profit public charitable trust, in 1996, engaged in research, training and education

The Gnostic Centre was set up by a group of youth, with the purpose of creating a space for those who seek a more integral knowledge - about themselves as well as the world. Based on the Integral Yoga philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, it is working towards creating a community for research and training in growth of consciousness, and to grow into a future university that integrates the subjective and objective realms of knowledge - towards a larger perfection of knowledge and action, based on an inner core of self-discovery and self-mastery.

and also

The Gnostic Centre is continuously engaged in creating resources that emerge out of its ongoing work, as well as support that work based on study and action research in the fields of Integral Yoga, Psychology, Self-development, Integral Education, Management, Social Change, Transformative Learning, Culture......

Includes an "International Centre for Integral Studies" (ICIS) which is quite different to both the Californian Institute of Integral Studies and the Wilberian Integral Institute, although the similarity of topic titles to Wilberian I-I i\s intriguing. Obviously, the content will be very different (and no doubt much more practical and grounded in authentic spirituality). But I am extremely pleased to see this development, which shows that the Wilberians do not have a monopologly on "integralism". Indeed, my main criticism of Wilber is not his philosophy (as I consider his attempt at a grand synthesis very inspiring) but his hegemonistic claim to ownership of "Integral" (see the AQAL glossary) and to represent and build upon Sri Aurobindo, who he seriously misinterpretates. If he even half-correctly interpreted Sri Aurobindo I would be all for him! Yet, ironically, even he is still furthering the Divine Work established by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

The Gnostic Centre / International Centre for Integral Studies seems to have been around for over a decade (founded in 1996, the journal goes back to 1997), which intriguingly is also about the time the Wilber Integral Institute was established (1997-98).

A very different, and still new, and equally worthy, project is Open Source Integral, a forum established by Mike of the Integral Research Group (Integral Praxis blog). It's a bit like a post-wilberian version of Zaadz, although much smaller (only two dozen or so members). But some very interesting discussions and comments, even if only a very few people are involved.

For example, might Integralism at the broadest be defined, in one contributer Bill's words (this in a comment on the thread "Mapping out the "Integral" Tool Kit"), as a "cohesive model of human development" (this would nicely include both Wilberism and Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga)

But I'm not sure if the Integral Open Spource Project will keep going; the problem being that a certain minimum critical mass of people is required (the "tipping point" or threshhold) for the project to have a life of its own, rather than being "carried" by only one or two people.

For example, Zaadz has a life of its own. The science fiction project I initiated and co-founded, Orion's Arm, also has a life of its own. Even though i am involved at only a very minimal level now it is still continuing better than ever. Wikipedia has a life of its own; I can definitely see it continuing even withoutt Jimmy Wales at its head.

I don't think that Wilber's Integral Institute has, because i cannot see it continuing without Wilber's central presence, except as a hollow shell or at best an exoteric religion. But a wider Integral Movement definitely has a life of its own, because this movement seems to already be being established, and is no way depedent on the personality cult of one person. Whether it will continue to grow and develop and become a whole new evolutionary cultural stage of consciousness, as Sri Aurobindo (using different terminology - see The Human Cycle) Paul Ray, Sally Goerner, Ken Wilber, Don Beck, Scott McIntosh, and others have suggested, remains to be seen. For now, my position is that the Western Integral Movement (established by but no longer limited to Wilber) is the newest development of the New Paradigm, and the New Paradigm/Integral movement is the secular and intellectual counterpart of the New Age.

An interesting development, were it to happen, would be a New Paradigm convergence of Integral Movement (secular, exoteric) and Integral Yoga (esoteric). If Wilber keeps publicising Sri Aurobindo, maybe something like this might actually happen, despite Wilber (and most of the mainstream Integral movement)'s complete misunderstanding of what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother actually taught. That is why I say that even Wilber is, unknowingly, furthering the Divine Work established by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

An Integral rant

Author's note: This was originally written as a rather rambling rant. I decided to put it more in order, and divide it into four statements. These are

• The Current Integral Movement does not seem to be receptive to the concept of Divinisation


• The Integral Movement is a subset of the New Age/New Paradigm/Global Mindshift and lacks gnosis


• The Synthesis of Yoga describes true Integral Spiritual Practice in contrast to the non-integral spirituality of the mainstream Integral movement


• There is a lack of understanding of Bhakti (Surrender to the Supreme) in the Mainstream Integral Movement

This material is also being incorporated into an essay that I will submit to Frank Visser's Integral World when finished.

The Current Integral Movement does not seem to be receptive to the concept of Divinisation

I've been having some interesting discussion on the Integral blogs. And one thing that intrigues me is the lack of receptivity to concepts such as Divinisation. Now, I will say that Integral Praxis is a very admirable initiative, the people behind the blog are top guys, and hopefully something raelly meanintgful and productive will come of it all. I support them, and I'll probably chip in with comments and posts now and then, and also give them links and mentions. But having said that, I am reminded of where I stand, and where the Integral Movement (as opposed to the Integral Yoga movement, which which I identify) stands. And the difference is great. And always has been. I still see the Integral Movement - whether wilberian, neowilberian (hows that for a neologism ;-), postwilberian, or nonwilberian, as an important part of the planetary mindshift. And I still identify with it to a partial extent, in teh sense that I agree with their ideals of spiritual evolution, the integration of knowledge, and building a better world (all of which are indistinguishable from the goals of the mainstream New Age movement too). And I find the Kosmos definition of Integral preferable to the Integral Institute definition, because there is more praxis and less theory there.

The Integral Movement is a subset of the New Age/New Paradigm/Global Mindshift and lacks gnosis

Some background, for those who don't know my story. The reason I became interested in the Integral Movement because it seemed to me to embody a spirit of universal spiritual synthesis combined with the intellectual rigour lacking in the New Age. The reason I became disillsuioned with the Integral Movement is when I realised the whole movement is limited to a very Wilber perspective, which goes against the whole idea of a synthesis of teachings, in which everyone has their say. Who wants to follow a guy who isn't even enlightened? This is why (I discovered to my great disappointment) there is no authentic gnosis or integral spirituality there at all.

The problem with the Integral Movement is that its foundation is not spirituality or enlightened revelation, but both a religion based on Wilber worship, and an intellectualism based on Wilber books, and some Westernised Buddhism thrown in (Buddhism is pretty much the only spirituality they can handle, because it is intellectual and pragmatic, and does not involve metaphysics or radical practices such as Surrender to the Supreme; you can be a physicalist and still be a practicing Buddhist! It is ideally set up for the secular Western mindset), as well as some Californian Lifestyle choices marketed as "Spiritual Cross-Training". And even the people disillusioned with Wilber, not interested in his personality cult, and involved in activism and practice, are still limited by his intellectualism; there is no gnosis there at all.

This is now being supplemented by practical activism, which is a very positive development. But the activism and practice is still tried to modernist, wilberian, and buddhistic perspectives.

On the theoretical level, the Integral Movement can synthesise opposites and integrate the diverse areas of human knowledge in a larger evolutionary paradigm. But so could Whitehead, Vernadsky, Teilhard, Haskell, Jantsch .... So what is unique?

On the practical level it is no different to the general New Age / New Paradigm / Alternative / Global Mindshift / etc movements. All of which are highly worthy, and the most exoteric stage of the Integral Transformation. But it is not an Integral Movement or Practice, but a New Age sensu lato (Hanegraaf) / New Paradigm / Alternative / Integral / Global Mindshift / Great Turning cluster of mcurrenst within the larger Integral Transformation.

The third level? that's the spiritual. And I mean teh authentic, total transformation of all parts of the being and incorporation of all the yogas. And you won't find this sort of spirituality anywhere in the current, mainstream, Integral Movement (which is not to deny the spiritual nature of the movement, but I am talking about a much more radical and yogic spiritual practice)

The Synthesis of Yoga describes true Integral Spiritual Practice in contrast to the non-integral spirituality of the mainstream Integral movement

The following passage, from chapter V of the introduction of Synthesis of Yoga, explains how even in its most preliminary methodology, the Integral spirituality of Sri Aurobindo goes far beyond anything in the Integral movement now, and probably beyond anything the Integral Movement will have to offer for decades to come (unless my own work has an influence; because by writing about something i am also changing it).

...it is always through something in the lower that we must rise into the higher existence, and the schools of Yoga each select their own point of departure or their own gate of escape. They specialise certain activities of the lower prakriti and turn them towards the Divine. But the normal action of Nature in us is an integral movement in which the full complexity of all our elements is affected by and affects all our environments. The whole of life is the Yoga of Nature. The Yoga that we seek must also be an integral action of Nature, and the whole difference between the Yogin and the natural man will be this, that the Yogin seeks to substitute in himself for the integral action of the lower Nature working in and by ego and division the integral action of the higher Nature working in and by God and unity. If indeed our aim be only an escape from the world to God, synthesis is unnecessary and a waste of time; for then our sole practical aim must be to find out one path out of the thousand that lead to God, one shortest possible of short cuts, and not to linger exploring different paths that end in the same goal. But if our aim be a transformation of our integral being into the terms of God-existence, it is then that a synthesis becomes necessary.

Ok, let's look at Sri Aurobindo is saying here.

Ordinary existence or nature itself is an integral movment, but one based in ignorance ("ego and division").

The various previous yogas were not interested in transforming this world, only in finding the quickest shortcut out, selcting only a single attribute of the lower nature (prakriti) and using taht to attain the transcendent (so it could be jnana or bhakti or whatever). Hence Buddha's parable of the arrow. Why waste time discussing metaphysics when you can be working on attaining Liberation?

Sri Aurobindo's unique synthesis - Integral Yoga, in contrast has to combine all the systems. This is because he isn't interested in fleeing the world. rather he wants to transform it. But to transform it he has to addre4ss all the aspects of the lower nature, and hence incorporate all the yogic techniques. rather than just one, he has to synthesise all of them.

And that's Integral Yoga.

Now, let's return to the present-day Integral Movement.

This proposes an evolutionary synthesis of knowledge. This is the first stage, theory. Here we have Wilber and development psychologists like Kegan and Cook-Gruber, Spiral Dynamics (Don Beck), neowilberian theory (i.e. people who like Wilber but add extra stuff to his ideas - e.g. Mark Edwards), and postwilberians (people who reject or go beyond Wilber but still retain certain of his ideas - e.g. Edward Berge of Open Integral). And we have lots of others who use "integral" in a non-wilberian sense - e.g. Sally Goerner and Erwin Lazlo. There is also a lot more that isn't called Integral but that says the same thing - e.g. non-integral spiral dynamics (Chris Cowan), Great Story neo-teilhardism (Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme), and New Age sensu lato and so on. So we can't even use the word Integral because Integral is just a subset of a broader paradigm shift.

Then we have the next stage, practice. This means putting that exoteric synethsis into practice in thought and word and deed. This is the cutting edge, the "frothy edge" to use their term, of the Integral Movement now. And once again there is also Great Story eco-spirituality and practice, the Alternative Movement, the New Age sensu lato, etc etc . Once again, Wilberian/Neowilberian/Postwilberian Integral is just a tiny subset of a much bigger paradigm shift.

Then we have stage three, Integral Yoga. This means going beyond mental forms altogether, and going beyond exoteric limitations, and living and practicing a life and praxis and activism that is infused with gnosis and enlighetnemnt and spiritual transformation of self and world at every stage. Here is where we leave the poor Wilberian movement far behind. Because this stage involves all spiritualities, not just Wilber's Westernised Buddhism.

So it can be seen that spirituality in the current Integral Movement is old, premodern to use their term. They have integral theory, excellent. They are only now making admirable steps in practice. have not made a single advance beyond what the Buddha discovered 2500 years ago, and if anything they have gone backwards, because rather than following the path to enlightenment they get distracted by all this mental masturbation over minutiae of quadrants and lines and waves and altitude and methodological perspectives.

There is a lack of understanding of Bhakti (Surrender to the Supreme) in the Mainstream Integral Movement

What Sri Aurobindo taught, in contrast to all this, was an Integral Spirituality. He wasn't the first, Ramakrishna did it before him. But so far this Integral Spiritual Practice is limited to the Aurobindonian Integral Yoga community, which with a few admirable exceptions such as AUM ("All USA Meeting") and an offshoot blog SCIY ("Science, Culture & Integral Yoga"), does not dialogue with the rest of the world. Well, who can blame them? There's a lot of ignorance out there, and it can be tedious. But this means the collective social transformation (noosphere) is not addressed.

Each is one-sided to some extent. The Integral Yoga community in the West is not active in outreach (in India however Sri Aurobindo is very big, and there are important education iniatives in the state of Orissa for example). While the Integral Movement remains tied to a limited, non-integral, non-world-transforming spirituality.

Ok, but what about Michael Murphy - Integral Transformative Practice - linking Aurobindo and Wilber? Well, I cannot comment here. i get a good vibe from his photo, but does ITP raelly radically go beyond the mental, transcend the ego, transmute the lower desires, enlighten the cells of the body, bring the Divine down to Earth? Or is it just another California lifestyle thing? I can't tell, because I have no experience with it. but what makes me cynical is that Murphy, like Craig Hamilton (formerly of What is Enlightenment? magazine, and a devotee of Andrew Cohen), while strongly supportive of the AUM 2007 Conference, seem to lack insights in the way that Bhakti and Surrender focused on an enlightened guru (not an intermediate zone one) works. To quote from a report about the AUM. Below is an article written for Auroville Today on the conference

Craig Hamilton (former editor of "What is Enlightenment?" magazine, whose workshop at last year's AUM brought this question into the open) along with Michael Murphy of Esalen found that their major criticisms (the unquestioning acceptance of Mother and failure of self-reflection that they'd seen in the Ashram and Auroville) were effectively answered by the very fact of the panel itself.

Failure of Self Reflection? Or heart-felt devotion through Bhakti Yoga? A devotion taht transcends the mental faculties. This is not to say that the mental cannot be employed as well; indeed it should be to avoid the slide into fundamentalism. But one thing I find interesting is that nowhere is there any evidence of Bhakti, or of Surrender to the Supreme, in the entire Integral Movement. This is not surprising, given the over intellectual nature of the whole movement. People with a strong mental nature tend to be weakly developed on the emotional. But unless there is balance between head and heart, then nothing can be achieved.

by the way I do feel this balance at forums like Integral Praxis and Zaadz; but I never see it in Wilber's obsessive intellectualising. This is obviously one reason why Wilber frequently mentions Sri Aurobindo, but never once in all his thousands of pages The Mother.

But balance of head and heart alone are not enough. A third element is needed; transcendence of the rational mind. This requires giving up hierarchical perspectives such as ideas of second tier elitism etc. And this is achieved most powerfully through heart-felt aspiration to the Supreme. If your mind and heart is centered on the Supreme, then you won't be thinking about how special and superior your mental understanding is, how you are at the cutting edge or frothy edge of kosmic evolution, and so on.

This essential humility is what is most needed for the Integral Movement

So where do I go from here? Well, I'll keep blogging and stirring things up. And finish my books. And help launch a new definition of Integral, which is also teh original definition, which is so far in advance of what is around now (which is not to denegrate, only to speak strongly).

The world is waiting for a new evolutionary consciousness.

Book update

An update on my book in progress.

Currently the manuscript is being reorganised. I've renamed it Integral Metaphysics and Transformation. Some of the material in the early chapters has been moved to other chapters. There will be less stuff on the Wilberian (current mainstream) Integral Movement, which basically I have to say is just another exoteric philosophy and intellectual new age religious movement, and more on my own unique Integral Vision. Rather than just reacting to and writing within the context of the current Integral Movement, which I find to be very limiting (because of its exoteric religious and overly mental nature), I'm presenting a more active and unique worldview based on gnosis and practical transformation. This will be a new definition of "Integral", going back to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the real founders. Also I'm making the language a bit snappier and more provocative; the previous drafts were rather too tame. I was trying to hard to be polite, and a think a lot was lost as a result. There are times when one has to speak out strongly and boldly.