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

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.

Towards an Integral Gnostic Community

I'm double posting this on Zaadz as well..

Having participated in and checked out a number of "integral" forums and on-line communities, I am intrigued by the fact that there is one thing that seems to be missing. Gnosis.
By Gnosis I mean an inner certainty and spiritual knowing that goes beyond the endless futile turnings of rational argument.

These words - when divorced from the content of their experience - appear shallow and new agey and thus can be misinterpreted by those who lack Gnosis and coming only from the sceptical rational mind. Because, as with all things, they have meaning through experience. You need to have Gnosis to understand Gnosis. Elitism? Perhaps. But if that's how it is, that's how it is. You cannot say that the state of gnosis is the same as the state of lacking gnosis. When there is an lack of gnosis, all that understanding has to rely on are endless intellectual theories, abstractions, dogmas, of which one is chosen as the mental truth, and the others denied or subordinated to that. Sure there are degrees of gnosis too; it's not like anyone who has Insight is the same or in agreement or lacks ego. This is only the very first step.

And this, I contend, is where the current Integral movement totally fails. The latter is based on academic and quasi-academic thinking, and heavily influenced by the intellectualising of the Wilberian/Post-Wilberian paradigm, an intellectualising that seeks with great good will to understand. But which cannot understand the transcendent, because the transcendent by its very nature is beyond such intellectualising. All that the best intellectualising can do is point to the infinitely manifold Supreme. In the words of the old cliche, the map is not the territory. And philosophy and academia fails when it remains fixated on the map, and ignores - or still worse in the case of radical agnosticism, materialism, or religious fundamentalism, denies - the territory.

This is not to denigrate the many wonderful people I have met in the Integral community, or to deny the influence Wilber's work has had on my own way of thinking. However for me Wilber's influence has been more along the lines of a catalyst - the immensely inspirational idea of bringing everything and everyone on the cutting edge of human and collective evolution together. Unfortunately I consider Wilber's own philosophy - his integral theory - an intellectual dead end. His theory, with all its lines and levels and quadrants and stages and states, is much too tiny and much too inflexible for this vision. And his ego, sorry to say this Ken, is much too big. Without humility, nothing can be achieved.

This is why I advocate not a mental integral theory, and not egotistic pomposity, but a spiritual gnosis, an integral insight that goes beyond all such limitations. I have yet to see anyone do a better job at pointing the way than Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. What Wilber fails to do, philosophically, spiritually, esoterically and occultly, they succeed in doing.

So okay, if the Wilberian/Postwilberian movement isn't the way (at least not for me; there are many for whom it is the way, and it is good and right that they are there, because they are exactly where they should be), what about the Integral Yoga community? Wouldn't they constitute the sort of thing I am talking about?

Well, much as I am grateful to share this planet with others inspired by the same twin avatars as I, and very glad that they are carrying on the message, there is also a danger here. It is exactly the same danger the Wilberians face; the danger of becoming fixated on a single teaching. And sure in this case it is a genuine teaching, not an intellectual dead end. But there is still the fact that if you follow those two great teachers literally, you'll be stuck yet again in another limited religion. And you'll only be able to approach the Supreme through a limited perspective, that is, through the mental filter of a literal reading of only one set of teachings, rather than an unlimited one through the experience of all teachings and all teachers. Also, just because someone follows Sri Aurobindo and the Mother doesn't mean they ave gnosis! It may simply be an intellectual attraction, or an emotional affiliation, or a combination of factors that have nothing to do with spiritual insight.

Now, I'm not saying that following Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to the exclusion of all other teachers is no good. First, esotericism has always worked that way. You attain enlightenment through a fundamentalist approach to Vedanta, a fundamentalist approach to Sufism, a fundamentalist approach to Kabbalah. The rigid and inflexible Thoughtform leads beyond itself to the Supreme. And those who are fundamentalist Aurobindonians are following the path that is exactly right for them, and honouring that path and that teaching, and I would be the last one to try to dissuade them. Also, there are those Aurobindonians who are aware of the danger of literalism. So I am not saying everyone in Integral Yoga only follows the one thing, absolutely not.

And second, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother truly did bring something new, the Yoga of Descent, the Yoga of the Divinisation of the Body and of Matter, which marks a complete break with old spiritualities and yogas, which were only concerned with the attainment of a nirvana or enlightenment that renounces the world (or in the case of the bodhisattva ideal defers liberation until everyone else has been enlightened and entered nirvana and disappeared from the world). In this regard, Wilber, for all his claims to be the most advanced, the most integral, etc etc, is totally stuck in the old idea of the highest state (what he calls nondual, Spirit, One Taste, etc) as one of transcendence of the world.

But even so, for me, and for many others, there is the need to go beyond the reliance on one teacher or teaching only. Sure you may still honour that teaching, and that teacher. It may be your primary orientation to spirituality and gnosis and the Supreme. For me Sri Aurobindo and the Mother always will be. But it is not the only one. Your spiritual conscious is wide enough to take in many authentic teachings and teachers, and see the Supreme in each. For example, I see Ramana Maharshi as equal, that's right, equal, to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This is a paradox since mentally I consider Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's teachings superior. And I am always open and receptive to further teachers and teachings, who would likewise be equal in status, because all partake of the Supreme through their complete Enlightenment. You may have similar experiences with different teachers and teachings, or with the same ones, it doesn't matter. What matters is the Gnosis that goes beyond words. And beyond focus on a single external form.

Nor does this mean that everyone has the same gnosis, the same experience, and will attain the same enlightenment. We are all different, unique, and so are experiences and our gnosis are too. It is not a bland uniformity. It is the exact opposite.

I do envisage a very new type of spiritual community emerging, a community of gnostics, not bound by religious or philosophical limitations. There have always been such esoteric groups, but in the past they were limited to a particular tradition, no matter how authentic that tradition was or is. The Supreme however encompasses all traditions, and infinitely more besides. And a community of gnostics connected over the Internet would indeed be something new. The work of transformation is still done in one's own self first and foremost. But the synergy of spiritual exchange between gnostics all over the world may lead to a totally new emergent phenomena, new spiritual evolution, quite different to the current mentally-based noosphere. And this would aid in the work of global transformation, a community of Gnostic Lightworkers.

Such are my thoughts. I look forward to your feedback on this :-)