Skip to main content

New Transition

We return now to a personal account of the journey through the 3 main levels of Band 5.

Once again these bear a complementary relationship (on the spiritual descent) to the same three levels (on the spiritual ascent).

However whereas as the direction on the ascent is primarily of a transcendent nature, where nondual spiritual development is - to a considerable extent - at the expense of customary dualistic understanding, here a reverse immanent emphasis applies, where one now gradually attempts to incorporate the dual in a balanced manner with the nondual.

And once again, these 3 levels (of Band 5) are characterised by a special emphasis on each of the corresponding key polarity sets.

And just as with Band 3 the journey initially commences at Level 1 with intense exposure to the (horizontal) interaction of external and internal polarities, equally it is similar at Band 5.

However whereas at Band 3, this largely represents the gradual breakdown of rational analytic type appreciation in favour of a more intuitive - ultimately nondual - holistic worldview, here the reverse is in evidence as one attempts to indirectly communicate in a somewhat paradoxical fashion the nature of this worldview through the normal medium of rational interpretation.

Therefore in an important sense, this represents the first real attempt to properly harmonise both the analytic and holistic aspects of experience.

In my own case this initially coincided with the time of about 4 - 5 years (1996 - 2000), when I was intensely involved in day-to-day dialogue on the various integral forums.

For me the critical challenge that arose during this time was the requirement to effectively communicate my vision in a scientific objective manner, without becoming distracted internally by - at times - considerable personal opposition to my stance.

And though overall, I felt that I managed quite well in this regard, inevitably over time secondary attachment arose manifesting itself through a growing irritation in dealing with "difficult" participants and through suffering increasing levels of psychological stress.

In particular, I gradually had to face a crucial imbalance in that preoccupation with communicating an overall global vision of reality was interfering with my ability to properly carry out everyday responsibilities at a local level. Thus as my intuitive energy continued to be strongly focused on the former, more mundane activities gradually became drained of all inspiration.

This then led to gradual withdrawal from involvement on the forums punctuated by occasional returns on a less sustained basis.

However just as on the outward journey, this phase gradually ran its course with the realisation that once more deeper exploration of the unconscious was required in order to properly address the limitations that I had faced during the previous stage.


So a familiar pattern again reasserted itself. I had been working on a detailed account of the binary approach to development. Here every stage represents a unique configuration of both linear (1) and circular (0) aspects - representing both differentiation and integration - respectively, with a precise holistic mathematical rationale.

However having carefully mapped out the 21 levels (of the seven major bands) with respect to both (external) physical and (internal) psychological structures and then later both their characteristic states and structures, I found that my attention was becoming increasingly absorbed  by - what is perhaps - the key unsolved problem in Mathematics i.e. the Riemann Hypothesis.

I strongly sensed that issue was not only of fundamental importance in mathematical terms but was now - when properly understood - inseparable from my on-going psychological development.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Modes of Development (9)

We have looked now briefly at the modes of development both with respect to the primary "colours" (cognitive, affective and volitional) and the many - and somewhat arbitrary - list of secondary modes (i.e. "multiple intelligences"). And we have seen that as far as successful integration of the personality, the primary modes are vital. In fact the complete mature development of the personality requires that cognitive, affective and volitional be both differentiated successfully in a sequential manner with respect to each of the major bands (and accompanying levels) on the spectrum, while also being simultaneously integrated with each other. Now, while imbalances are indeed possible with respect to development of the three primary modes (up to and including Band 5), the final two radial bands would however require a high degree of integration with respect to all three modes. As we have seen, in terms of the secondary manifestations, a person may show special ...

Dark Night of the Soul (7)

We return here to providing a holistic mathematical perspective on the "dark night" stage. As we have seen the first level of the 3rd band (of which the "dark night" is the final and most important stage) is defined in terms of 2-dimensional interpretation. Thus starting with the dualistic phenomenal distinctions (that characterise the 1st dimension) one then attempts to approximate as close as possible growing nondual spiritual awareness through a process of dynamic negation of attachment to all conscious symbols. So this dynamic negation of conscious phenomena constitutes the 2nd of these two dimensions. So we posit conscious phenomena in a linear dualistic manner (+ 1). We then unconsciously negate such phenomena in a circular nondual manner (  – 1). Such positing and negating in experience leads to an ever increasing dynamic interaction as between the external (objective) and internal (subjective) aspects of experience. In this way, ever more refined d...

Integral Studies (3)

Yesterday, I talked briefly about the 2-dimensional approach to interpretation based on the dynamic (bi-directional) complementarity of external and internal polarities. This leads to the direct realisation that both the physical and psychological aspects of reality are likewise complementary. Therefore a new psychological stage of reality necessarily entails a corresponding new interpretation of physical - indeed ultimately of mathematical - reality. So rather than just one accepted form of science (and mathematics) interpreted in a somewhat absolute fashion, properly speaking a whole range (or spectrum) of possible sciences exist (of a dynamic relative nature), which are intimately related to corresponding major stages of development. It was a strong contention of mine that the unquestioned acceptance of present conventional mathematical and scientific interpretation itself acts as a major barrier against the possible emergence in development of the "higher" contempl...