What is Integral?

20 Guests, 0 Users

The two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a big fat white guy who is threatened by change. ~ Seth MacFarlane

Advanced search

Dilber MulticolorMarley TPSMF Default Theme -

[jimtzu]

while it was written thru his own personal, poliitical lens there were a few gems amongst his ideas. i liked the way he wrapped up his thoughts with this:

An integral theory which valorizes its own epistemology by denying other traditions, theories, practices their own voice, or by simply mis-characterizing them segregates rather than integrates. Any theory which asserts itself ideologically by cannibalizing other traditions and appropriating the voice of alterity as a function of its integral model while discarding the ten thousand nuances, subtleties, traces of culture which are essential to indigenous identity, fails at the level of integration itself.

nothing really groundbreaking there, but i liked the way he stated it

[Michael]

Good new article on Vissor's site:
http://www.integralworld.net/forman-hargens.html

[jimtzu]

good article. but one thing....coming from a place about as far from academia as you can get, i've never really understood wilbers and others fascination with being accepted by academia. either something is true or it isn't (simplistic, i know).  i suppose thats part of the process but also part of the danger, becoming codified and lifeless.


here is an integral look at Integral:
http://www.kheper.net/integral/index.html

[Jana]

I was reading In the Wave Lie the Secret of Creation today by Timothy Binder on Walter Russell's sci diagrams and such...and Walter said that only Mystical consciousness can really effortlessly integrate the One and the Many...at which point you just shut up I suppose.
This book and all Russell's material is some of the very best, if not the best integral theory out there. His work is exquisite.

[henry]

after reading your post today, i googled kundalini/magnetism and the first result was b.o.k./jana. my next novel will be about synchronicity and cyberspace . agnostic about russell, but i have been to swannanoa a time or two and it was beautiful. helpful to image kundalini as vortex rather than two dimensional ida and pingala ...henry

[Francis]

Integral is the conscious embrace of the big picture, without losing touch with any of the little bits. – Paraphrase of Liz.


This formulation avoids “discarding the ten thousand nuances, subtleties, traces of culture which are essential to indigenous identity...” It also seems to fit the “transcend and include” mantra pretty well. I like it.

On second thought, here's another version:

Integral is the conscious embrace of minutia, without losing touch with the big picture.

As my mother says "Can you see the forest for the trees?" or the old expression "penny wise and pound foolish" both express different aspects of the same idea.

[Francis]

I think of integral thinking as decompartmentalized thinking. Thinking outside the box(es). Integrating the personality by dissolving the barriers between 'compartments' is what Jung called individuation. Thus the person gains "personal integrity."

This would involve only four basic compartments to be looked at:

Physical, Emotional, Intellectual, & Social.

Say I have a plan of action to achieve some stated goal. (E.g. flying over the Rockies) I need the physical means, I need to feel emotionally secure, and I need to be intellectually cognizant of what I'm doing, especially as it relates to my goals and how it affects others in terms of the possible physical, emotional and intellectual impacts.

[henry]

(against his better judgement ) ..there are two very distinct strains of integral. one is popular, theoretical, wilber(5)centric, Coming Soon! phase 7(beta testing), the movie starring sharon stone and jennifer annistead . the other is embodied, winding its way from aurobindo through michael murphy and the extroardinary 46 year history of esalen, CIIS, esalen center for theory and research, etc...pick whichever suits you (or not), but don't get the two strains confused or blur their distinctions...years ago if i mentioned esalen the response often was "oh, you must mean EST"...."people inoculate themselves with the weak form of the virus so that when the real thing comes along, there is no danger of catching it"...(and now back to our regularly scheduled programing  )....henry

[Francis]

I brought Carlos [Castaneda] to Esalen [in] 1965, and I want to speak about whether he may have taken material from gestalt psychology and tell you a little story.

At that time workshops were not given on spiritual things and we had a weekend symposium, you might say, at Esalen, and to this symposium was invited Essie Parrish, now deceased, a Pomo Indian born shaman, and a doctor specializing in quartz crystals, and also Carlos, and I was on the panel too.

And at the end of the symposium, since Fritz Perls had attended as an observer and walked out rather disgruntled with the idea that there were spirits, Michael Murphy, who then ran Esalen Institute, thought it would be nice, since there was a TV crew there from a public educational channel in San Francisco, if there could sort of be a rapprochement on the last day, and so he called Fritz in, and Carlos was there and the rest of us were there, and Fritz, for those few of you who might not know, he is considered the person who really introduced gestalt psychotherapy into the United States.

Anyway, Carlos started talking about this other reality, and Fritz got increasingly uncomfortable because he was in front of the TV cameras, and he looked down at Carlos, who had not published anything at that point, and said "Young man, you don't know what you are talking about."

And Carlos ignored him, and Fritz then said, "It's all inside of your head."

And Carlos said, "Oh no it's not," and then just continued ignoring him.

And Fritz was the big man on campus and he wasn't used to that, and he got very upset, and so he hurled off and whacked Carlos in the face, and Carlos looked up at Fritz and said,

"You're a naughty naughty boy,"

and that's the end of the story. But I seriously doubt that Carlos was influenced by gestalt psychotherapy. - Michael Harner

[henry]

good story francis. i did a workshop there with michael harner in '76 which german tv filmed. i never knew fritz, the style of gestalt has evolved, and the "wild west" days of encounter are long gone.  ..henry

[Francis]

Getting back to your point about embodiment. Physically, we're all fully immersed in the completely integrated universe. But we walk around as if we're disintegrated and isolated, because of our socialized mindset. So the greatest need is an intellectual model that will embrace the reality of perfect integration. Embodiment has already been accomplished, we just need to wake up to it.

[henry]

however way a body can get the job done, they are doing better than i am . its hard for me to imagine how someone can intellectually or theoretically bootstrap themselves into embodied integration . the only fruits i see born of 10 years of "integral theory" is endless arguing/bickering and hubris . my post was only hinting at where integral integrity might be hiding ...enrIIque

[Francis]

What do you mean by the word 'embodiment'? Let's start there.

"Philosophers, cognitive scientists and artificial intelligence researchers who study embodied cognition and the embodied mind argue that the nature of the human mind is largely determined by the form of the human body—that ideas, thoughts, concepts, categories and all other aspects of the mind are shaped by the body: by the perceptual system, by the intuitions that underly our ability to move, by our activities and interactions with our environment, and by the naive understanding of the world that is built into our bodies and brains.  - wiki

[henry]

supramental embodiment in the murphy "future of the body" sense....some time back, steven said during a forum dust up that forums were useful only as entertainment. i bristled at this at first, because i've been around longer than what came before dirt and know stuff. but there is truth in what he says and i have tried to be sneaky with my earth shaking brilliance since. this outing, maybe not sneaky enough ...sheepishly returning to comedy  ...henry

[Francis]

I agree that forums are only useful for entertainment. Good point to keep in mind.

Embodiment - The bodily aspects of human subjectivity. Embodiment is the central theme in European phenomenology, with its most extensive treatment in the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment distinguishes between the objective body,which is the body regarded as a physiological entity, and the phenomenal body, which is not just some body, some particular physiological entity, but my (or your) body as I (or you) experience it. Of course, it is possible to experience one’s own body as a physiological entity. But this is not typically the case. Typically, I experience my body (tacitly) as a unified potential or capacity for doing this and that-typing this sentence, scratching that itch, etc. Moreover, this sense that I have of my own motor capacities (expressed, say, as a kind of bodily confidence) does not depend on an understanding of the physiological processes involved in performing the action in question.
The distinction between the objective and phenomenal body is central to understanding the phenomenological treatment of embodiment. Embodiment is not a concept that pertains to the body grasped as a physiological entity. Rather it pertains to the phenomenal body and to the role it plays in our object-directed experiences. -The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Second Edition General Editor: Robert Audi. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999
Embodiment refers to the biological and physical presence of our bodies, which are a necessary precondition for subjectivity, emotion, language, thought and social intereraction. -- Musical Identities, Macdonald, Hargreaves and Miell. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2002
The expression 'the body' has become problematized and replaced with the term 'embodiment'. This change "corresponds directly to a shift from viewing the body as a nongendered, prediscusive phenomenon that plays a central role in perception, cognition, action and nature to a way of living or inhabiting the world through ones acculturated body. (Page xiv, Thomas Csordas in Perspectives on Embodiment by Weiss, G. and Haber, H., (eds.). Routledge; March, 1999)
If embodiment is an existential condition in which the body is the subjective source or intersubjective ground of experience, then studies under the rubric of embodiment are not 'about' the body per se. Instead they are about culture and experience insofar as these can be understood from the standpoint of bodily being-in-the-world. (p. 143, ibid)

So embodiment in this sense is the process of psychological identification* with our experiences. *Def: Psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the other and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model the other provides. It is by means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified[wiki].

In other words, taking ownership of our experience(s).

Do you agree?