Hi Platt,
Thanks for the cautionary tales. Of course they are quite correct, but like
everything at this level I suggest the reality they describe is paradoxical.
This is the result of trying to express third level reality in second level
language.
So while the moral of your tales would appear to be "Don't waste your time
searching, what you seek is already present", actually it is not so simple.
I'd like to quote A.H. Almaas (Hameed Ali) from Elements of the Real in Man.
(p36 onwards)
"emotional suffering is not inevitable... it is due to not knowing who we
are, to not knowing our being, our true nature, not being free to be
ourselves... It has always been difficult to do the work because the
committment, the will, the understanding aare generally not available to us
due to repressed fears and resistances, which are completely unconscious,
which control our behavior, and which get stronger if we push against
them... Some methods work to push through the dark spots by sheer force of
will or dedication: ten hours of meditation a day for ten years, things like
that. These methods are very powerful, and they work, but usually only for
the lucky person who doesn't have many barriers or such strong ones to begin
with... Some methods have worked [with]...meditations, exercises,
visualizations, yoga postures, and so on. In these methods, the teachers
have had to work intensely to push and pull students through barriers,
usually with limited success... Not one in ten thousand students makes it
through the Zen approach, and then only after sitting and staring at a wall
ten hours a day for years."
This is the guy who has developed the Diamond approach, which I came to on
Wilber's strong recommendation "As of this writing, I myself can recommend
the Diamond Approach as probably the most balanced of the widely available
spiritual psychologies/therapies." The Eye of Spirit p 268, and a long note
in which he analyses his differences with Almaas pp359 - 373, which
concludes "Hameed Ali ... has succeeded in powerfuly utilizing the findings
about fulcrum-2 to help individuals move into postformal and post
conventional development. In my opinion, his understanding is precise,
extensive and accurate; and his use of this understanding to open access to
the transpersonal domains is superb and in many ways unprecedented."
As Roger suggested in his earlier post, Wilber views development as a
ladder, in which there is a necesary progression through numerous holonic
levels. The final transformation is of the type to which you point,
paradoxical to the ordinary intellect, in which the highest rung is not only
above all others, but is also the wood out of which the ladder is
constructed. In that sense, it was always present and is not fundamentally
different to what came before. But it is not to be found by sleeping at the
bottom of the ladder. It just doesn't work that way.
Almaas (Ali) puts it this way. "In the beginning, the student needs only
sincerity, and the understanding that the barriers to your fulfillment are
inside you, and so is the fulfillment itself... what is needed from the
teacher is the ability to embody the essential qualities,and therefore to be
able to perceive them in you. It is required that I perceive your essence
and know what it is I am seeing. But then, the only way you can know about
it is tasting it, experiencing it within yourself."
Almaas combines psychology, particularly object relations insights, with
traditional meditation and other ways of paying attention to ourselves. He
thus expands the student's ability to attend. He talks about making a leap
between mind and essence. Essential knowledge is, to him, direct perception,
which the mind can try to remember, but it is not within the realm of mind.
So yes, in one sense it is all present now, to me. This was Krishnamurti's
teaching. Any attempt to change is doomed, because change implies that what
is being sought is not present. To quote Almaas again "Usually, when you
come here, you are interested in getting something, or in getting rid of
something - to get this or get rid of that. That's fine. However, in time,
by using the understanding of the Work, you will see that most of your
suffering comes exactly from that attitude. And that is what has to change."
Paradoxically again, what has to change is the desire for change itself. If
this was easy then the world would be full of 'enlightened' people. Wilber
and Almaas agree it isn't. In fact they see it as a very rare 'state'
indeed. (I won't get into the complexities of 'enlightenment', except to say
both Wilber and Almaas agree it isn't really a 'state'.)
If there is one thing Wilber asserts with ferocity, it is that there are no
short cuts. He therefore detests much of the New Age good time spirituality,
that dominates in our society. That there is a path, is clear. Unlike other
paths, though, it is self-negating, and hence paradoxical. I am content to
explore this as best I can.
John B
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