Reason and Contemplation

That discursive reasoning cannot attain contemplative wisdom or enlightenment is obvious enough. As I mentioned in my last post, if it this was possible, enlightenment could be attained in much the same way one follows a reasonable argument in a book. But enlightenment is not attained in this way; the great mystics of every tradition are unanimous on this point. It follows an experience, and one cannot simply "think" one's way into the experience.

Nevertheless, mysticism cannot be irrational, though some people see it this way. This is true both of detractors of mysticism as well as some who embrace it.

Ken Wilber writes, "all true mysticism is transrational and never antirational; 'right thought' always precedes 'right meditation.'"¹ He is alluding here to two elements of Buddhism's Eightfold Path.

Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, a high-ranking teacher in the Tibetan tradition, make a similar point about "right view," or "correct view," as he calls it.

Traleg Rinpoche notes that a lot of Westerners who are interested in Buddhism are very into meditation, but become resistant when it comes to studying the philosophy of Buddhism. I think this is true of a lot of people interested in contemplative spirituality in general: they want to meditate, but they don't care for philosophy.²

Traleg Rinpoche notes that many Western Buddhists believe "that meditation is all about getting rid of views or that all views will hinder us from attaining our spiritual goal." On the contrary, he says, "It is only incorrect views that we need to overcome. The correct view is to be cultivated with great diligence."³

The reason this is so important is that the experience of a higher state of consciousness is simply that: an experience. It is not itself knowledge. It has to be understood, and it will be understood within a particular framework. Taking care to ensure that the framework is adequate—that is, to make sure we have the "correct" or "right" view—is of great importance if our experience is going to be translated into authentic wisdom. As Traleg Rinpoche says, "We cannot simply practice meditation and hope for the best; we need a conceptual framework that is based on correct view."⁴

For people at the "Synthetic-Conventional" stage (or earlier), the framework in which they understand their experience will be one that is largely, if not entirely, unexamined. If someone at such a stage has a vision, there is a good chance they will take it at face value. So if I am at this stage and I have a vision of Mary or Jesus (or Krishna or Kuan Yin, or whoever) I will probably understand it quite literally as being that person or deity (or bodhisattva, or whatever).

A more rational perspective will recognise that the sensible content (visions, auditions, etc.⁵) of such an experience is likely drawn from the imagination of the one having the experience. It's not an accident that it's usually Catholics who have visions of Mary and Hindus who have visions of Krishna.

Even higher mystical states that do not feature any kind of sensible content have to be understood or interpreted. The understanding then has to be judged (which is to say, reasonably affirmed) for it to count as actual knowledge. The adequacy of this understanding and this judgment will depend on a large extent on the adequacy of our prior conceptual framework, even as this framework will likely undergo some changes as a result of the experience.

So I would say that rationality plays two very important roles in mysticism: first, in cultivating a correct view, which is to say an adequate framework in which the experience will be understood; and second, in judging whether the insight that results from the experience is itself correct.

The implications of this, as I see it, are twofold: First, you should not embark on the contemplative path unless you are willing to also learn philosophy and cultivate a correct view; you will not be able to properly understand your experience otherwise. Second, you should not simply assume that whatever insight occurs to you during the experience is correct. It is quite possible to have a mistaken insight during such an experience, and the powerful quality of the experience can too easily convince the person having the experience that the insight is correct.⁶

Cultivating a correct view, of course, is not simply something that happens before the experience, but also after. So it is not as simply as, "philosophise now, experience later." Wisdom, I think, is refined through an ongoing dialectical process of thinking and experiencing, thinking more, and experiencing more.

Notes

[1] Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, 179.

[2] One reason for this, I think, is that a lot of people become interested in this kind of spirituality when they reach James Fowler's Stage 5, the post-modernist "Conjunctive" stage, which corresponds with Wilber's "green altitude." For more on the relationship between Fowler's stages and Wilber's "altitudes" see "The Colours of Spiritual Development."

People at every level tend to be very resistant to certain tendencies that are characteristic of the previous level. The previous level in this case would be the modernist "Individuative-Reflective" stage, at Wilber's "orange altitude." The orange stage is characterised by what the green stage sees as a too-strong emphasis on rationality.

The next stage, Wilber's teal-altitude Integral stage, seeks to correct this by reclaiming rationality against green, but correcting the error of orange, which generally rejects the idea that valid knowledge can be attained in non-normal states of consciousness. I've written about this stage before in "The Problem is Orange." Note that Wilber's understanding of teal-altitude spirituality is quite different from Fowler's sixth (and final) stage, the "Universalizing" stage. A number of critics have found Fowler's Stage 6 problematic, as it is not based on the same kind of empirical evidence as the previous stages. See, for instance, Romney M. Mosely's "Forms of Logic in Faith Development Theory," in Christian Perspectives on Faith Development, Jeff Astley and Leslie J. Francis, eds., Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1992: 169.

[3] Kyabgon, Mind at Ease, 25.

[4] Kyabgon, Mind at Ease, 26.

[5] I use the term "sensible content" to refer to things that do not literally involve the senses, but which are described as though they were. So one does not actually use one's eyes when one has a vision, but it nevertheless has a visual character.

[6] Traleg Rinpoche says,

"Some meditative experiences may have the appearance of being genuine, but in reality are false and misleading. Such experiences can be deceptive, giving us the false conviction that we have attained a particular meditative state when in reality we have simply gone astray or fallen victim to fanciful thinking. To separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and to endeavor to find out whether anything genuine has occured, we must make use of conceptual tools that steer us in the right direction. That way, we can purposefully continue with our spiritual practice by critically examining and refining our views." (Mind at Ease, 26)

The failure of some people to recognise this, I think, stems from the erroneous belief that knowledge is attained simply through experience, which is sometimes called "naive realism": I saw it, therefore it's real.

Others might assume that whatever "insight" they had from the experience is necessarily true, apart from (or prior to) any kind of reasonable affirmation. This likely happens because the experience of having this mystical insight is so powerful that whatever one understands from it is simply accepted without question. It seems to me that the monistic non-dualism of the Advaita Vedanta tradition probably originated in this: I experience myself as "one with everything," so everything is "one," and so multiplicity is illusory. That’s kind of a complicated topic, though, so I won't go into it right now.

More on the Problem of Orange: The Line/Level Fallacy

In a recent post I argued that the absence of an appealing modern/ rational/ conventional/ Individuative-Reflective/orange-altitude form of Christian faith is a very serious and (mostly) unrecognised problem in the Church.

The Church is being torn in two by pre-modern/ pre-rational/ Synthetic-Conventional/ amber-altitude conservatives on the one hand, and post-modern/ post-rational/ Conjunctive/ green-altitude progressives on the other. Of course the reality is more complicated than this, but I think this is basically how things are going.

Today I thought I’d look a little bit at why the modern, orange level faith has posed such a problem.

Confusing Levels and Lines

The philosopher Ken Wilber has written a fair bit about what he calls the “Level/Line Fallacy.” The line in this case is the line of development, through a succession of stages, in some particular area (such as spiritual development).

The level is a particular stage along that line of development. In James Fowler’s faith development theory, there are seven such stages, beginning with the Primal faith of infancy through to the highest stage (so far), which Fowler calls “Universalizing” faith.

The Level/Line Fallacy is the tendency to confuse one particular level with the entire line.¹

For many people, including most devoutly religious people as well as many atheists, the Synthetic-Conventional/amber-altitude level of faith is religion, properly speaking. There is no room for development. There is only one true level. To many believers, anyone who moves beyond this stage will appear to be distancing themselves from the true faith, flirting with heresy at best, and sliding headlong into apostasy at worst. To many atheists, any faith that claims to have grown beyond the amber level is not the real thing; it’s just a pale, watered-down simulacrum. And far from being a positive development, it’s actually just enabling the more dangerous kinds of religion (see Bill Maher’s patronising rant at the end of Religulous to see what I mean).

Making such a mistake effectively prevents (or at least strongly discourages) growth into a healthy orange-level faith. One cannot be expected to embrace a healthy orange spirituality if one is unable (or unwilling) to recognise even the possibility of doing so.

Wilber discusses two different outcomes of the Level/Line Fallacy. The first he calls repression:

In the case of repression, the entire line is then denied and suppressed, resulting in atrophy and dysfunctional manifestations. If this occurs in the spiritual line of development, then in many cases, the repressed spiritual impulses are projected onto others, and then, like the anti-gay-porn crusader who is attacking his own shadow, this person becomes an obsessed, hyper-rational crusader fighting any and all spiritual endeavors, seeing them as complete irrational hogwash (with a pre/post fallacy not far behind). When then have science declaring war on religion.²

The second he calls fixation:

In the case of fixation, the particular level is so glorified that, while development again freezes at the level where the confusion occurs, instead of [a particular type of] intelligence being denied, it is obsessively and ferociously defended against all comers. But the only thing defended is that particular level in the line, which is then identified with the entire line and confused as the only correct type of the particular intelligence allowed. Ironically, in these individuals, as their own higher levels of that [particular type of] intelligence attempt to emerge, they will end up repressing them, repressing their own emergent potentials in that line because they are fixated to a particular level in that line. If the line is the spiritual line, then these individuals end up fixated at a lower level of spiritual intelligence (usually mythic), and ironically can project the their own higher, emerging spiritual impulses onto others, seeing these higher spiritual impulses as anti-spiritual. They then often end up denying higher levels of both science and religion, and lash out blindly at what amounts to their own higher potentials. We then have mythic religion declaring war on science (and the liberal world in general).³

These afflictions are both pretty common, I think, though of course not everyone so afflicted will be as extreme as Wilber’s characteristically hyperbolic descriptions would suggest.

They are also mutually reinforcing. Those fixated at amber are constantly being reminded of the “dangers” of rational thought and modern science by the anti-religious ranting of some of those who are repressing their own spiritual intelligence. And these spirit-repressors are always having their distorted stereotypes about religion reinforced by those fixated at amber, precisely because these happen to be the most publicly visible of all people of faith.

This public near-invisibility of orange (and higher) forms of faith is, I think, a real problem. Amber believers often wear their religion on their sleeves; orange (and higher) believers generally do not. The very fact that their is room to grow, even if it’s not officially sanctioned, is lost on a lot of people. I’m not entirely sure what can be done about this, but I have some ideas, and I’ll explore those in a future post.

Notes

[1] Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 184.

[2] Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 184.

[3] Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 184. Emphasis in original.

The Problem is Orange

People often speak of "polarisation" in the Catholic Church; this term denotes a widening gap between two opposing groups, and these two groups are usually called "conservative"/"traditional"/"orthodox" on the one hand, and "liberal"/"progressive" (as well as a number of less flattering epithets) on the other. There is also a tendency, I think, for people to see these as two sides on a horizontal axis.

The reality is, as I've argued before, rather more complicated than this, and I'm going to explain a bit more how I understand this conflict in the light of developmental spirituality.

It is probably safe to say that the large majority of adults in the Church today fall into three of James Fowler's six stages of development (and the corresponding altitudes in Ken Wilber's thought, as mentioned in a previous post). These are "Synthetic-Conventional," or amber-altitude; "Individuative-Reflective," or orange-altitude; and "Conjunctive," or green-altitude. There are some adults at the "Mythic-Literal"/red-altitude stage, and others at the "Universalizing"/teal-altitude stage, but these are probably small minorities.¹

Fowler himself has noted that individuals at the (amber-altitude) Synthetic-Conventional stage tend to be the "orthodox" believers; this stage of faith, he says, "can be seen as having rootage in and preserving important elements of pre-Enlightenment forms of cultural consciousness" (emphasis in original; Faithful, 161). Beliefs at this stage are held tacitly; individuals at this stage are generally non-reflective -- or, at least, not very reflective -- particularly when it comes to matters of faith. Additionally, authority is located externally at this stage. Wilber would add this stage is typically ethnocentric, which is manifested in the triumphalism and exclusivism of conventional Christianity.

The orange-altitude "Individuative-Reflective" stage emerged with the Enlightenment, and reflects a "modern" consciousness. It is characterised by a more reflective awareness of one's faith, and a more critical approach to one's beliefs. Orange faith also features a "relocation of authority within the self" (Fowler, Stages, 179). Fowler identifies this as the "progressive" stage (Faithful, 161ff.). It was this type of spirituality that eventually precipitated the "modernist crisis" in the Church in the late 19th century, which provoked an aggressively amber response from the Magisterium. It also brought us rigorous biblical criticism, and made a measure of openness to non-Christian religions possible for the Church. (The documents of Vatican II are essentially a mishmash of amber and orange ideas, with, perhaps, an occasional sprinkling of green.)

I would argue that most of the really committed progressives in the Church are more likely to be at the green-altitude "Conjunctive" stage. Green faith moves beyond the dichotomous rationality of orange, and embraces a more dialectical form of reasoning. It can move beyond a merely critical approach into a post-critical position (Paul Ricoeur's "second naiveté"), and is more experiential and pluralistic. It reflects a more "post-modern" consciousness.

If, as I've asserted, most committed progressives are at green, then what is orange? Who do we find there?

One well-known type of orange spirituality is that promoted by the retired Episcopal bishop, John Shelby Spong. This is not to say that Spong himself is at that stage (I don't presume to know what stage he's at), but his work is very much aimed at converting late-amber Christians into orange faith. Spong, at least in his works that I've read,² follows an aggressive demythologising approach. It's not uncommon for people to read Spong and ask why, if what he says is true, anyone should bother with Christianity?

And that is the problem with orange. It simply isn't very appealing. Orange is the stage where many people say their goodbyes to the Church (and religion in general), and many never look back. Some will regress, and re-embrace, often with great fervour, an amber-level spirituality. Still others will ride it out, continue to develop, and find a much more satisfying spirituality at green, or higher.

The lack of an appealing orange spirituality is, I think, the great unrecognised cause of the so-called polarisation within the Church. Many progressives look at their conservative co-religionists and wonder, "Why do they have to see everything in black and white?" "Why can't they just think for themselves, and trust their own experience?" "Why is it so important for them to believe their religion is the only way?"

"Why," we might as well be asking, "can't they embrace a green-altitude spirituality?"

The problem is orange. It's a massive stumbling block -- that is, until you've cleared it, at which point it all but disappears.

I'll talk about some of the implications of this, as I see it, some other time.

Notes

[1] Wilber and Fowler match up quite well in the stages up to Conjunctive/green-altitude, but the next stage in Wilber, which he identifies as having reached "Integral" consciousness, is probably a more common achievement than Fowler's Universalizing stage. I've indicated in the past that I have some problems with Fowler's Universalizing stage, which he identified in the 1970s, long before Integral philosophy began to find a following.

[2] I haven't read a book by Spong since his autobiography, Here I Stand, was first published in 1999. I read several of his books prior to that, with Why Christianity Must Change or Die, which I also read in 1999, sticking out in my mind as particularly memorable. I suppose he might have changed his approach in the decade since then.

The Colours of Spiritual Development

I’ve written a fair bit in the past about James Fowler’s theory of faith development, and I’m going to be picking it up again in the near future. I’ve decided that I need to clarify something about how I’m going to refer to the different stages in future posts.

In Fowler’s early work, his stages were numbered. In his more recent work, he has avoided numbers. I think there are good reasons for doing this, so I’m going to avoid using numbers as well. However, because the names for the stages are sometimes long enough to be unwieldy, it is helpful to have a shorthand name for each, and for this I will be borrowing Ken Wilber’s practice of using the colours of the visible light spectrum.

The line up like this:

• Infrared - Primal Faith (Infancy)
• Magenta - Intuitive-Projective
• Red - Mythic-Literal
• Amber - Synthetic-Conventional
• Orange - Individuative-Reflective
• Green - Conjunctive
• Teal - Universalizing

Wilber’s use of colours, which began (as far as I can tell) in his 2007 book Integral Spirituality, struck me at first as being somewhat gimmicky, but I’ve since realised that it is a very helpful way of comparing the levels across different lines of development. Basically, there are corresponding levels in the various lines (cognitive, moral, spiritual, values, etc.), and levels that correspond might be said to be at the same “altitude.”

For a more detailed (and more adequate) explanation of the concept of altitude, I recommend reading “What Is Altitude?” from Wilber’s Holons internet newsletter.

Developmental Theories

James Fowler's research into faith development has demonstrated how what we might call our "spiritual intelligence" develops through a predictable sequence of stages.¹ In his important book Stages of Faith, Fowler noted the relationship between the different faith stages and the stages of other developmental theories, particularly those of Jean Piaget (cognitive development) and Lawrence Kohlberg (moral development).

The stages would optimally line up something like this:²

Stage	Piaget	Kohlberg	Fowler
1	Preoperational	Heteronomous Morality	Intuitive-Projective
2	Concrete Operational	Instrumental Exchange	Mythic-Literal
3	Early Formal Operations	Mutual Interpersonal Relations	Synthetic-Conventional
4	Formal Operations (Dichotomizing)	Social Systems and Conscience	Individuative-Reflective
5	Formal Operations (Dialectical)	Social Contract, Individual Rights	Conjunctive
6	Formal Operations (Synthetic)	Universal Ethical Principles	Universalizing

I say "optimally" because moral and faith development do not always keep pace with cognitive development. Ken Wilber likes to cite the example of Nazi doctors as people who may have been very intelligent (highly developed cognitively), but whose moral development was obviously lagging far behind. Cognitive development is necessary but not sufficient for development in other areas (or along what Wilber calls "lines"). Both Fowler and Wilber make this point.³

Wilber has argued that different developmental theories describe different lines, which is similar to the increasingly popular notion of multiple intelligences (IS, 59). The lines develop in each individual relatively independently of one another:

A person can evidence very high development in some lines (e.g., cognitive), medium development in others (e.g., interpersonal), and low in yet still others (e.g., moral). (Wilber, IS, 59)

A nice chart showing some of these lines, and how they correspond to each other can be seen here (opens new window).

Some Objections to Developmental Theories

There are some people who reject developmental theories, so I thought I would address that a little bit.

One argument I’ve encountered on the web is that some people don’t neatly fall into any one stage as described by a particular theory. For instance, Fowler’s Synthetic-Conventional stage is a conformist stage, and by the way Fowler describes it, one would expect adults who inhabit that stage to have very conventional views. How does one explain the existence of conformist progressives?

This reflects a failure to grasp the distinction between “contents” and “structures.” Some contents are more likely to be found in some structures than others, but there is no necessary relationship between them. Someone raised in a progressive family might well inhabit the Synthetic-Conventional stage and still hold progressive views. “Contents” refer to what we think; “structures” concern how we think about it.

A more serious and legitimate concern is that hierarchical models can be used used by the powerful for ideological purposes, with the oppression and marginalisation of others being the inevitable result. They invariably see themselves as the most developed, and relegate everyone who disagrees with them to lower levels. (See Pope Benedict’s comments about what constitutes “adult faith” in this article by John L. Allen, Jr. for a recent example of this.)

This is a legitimate concern, there’s no doubt about that. But the fact that an idea can be abused does not mean it’s mistaken. Besides, as Wilber has never tired of pointing out, those who reject hierarchies (a common enough problem among postmodernists) inevitably assert their own: To reject hierarchical theories in favour of non-hierarchical ones is itself to create a hierarchy. Wilber argues that we have to distinguish between “natural hierarchies” (which are not good or bad, but simply happen to exist) and “dominator hierarchies” (which are bad).

Another related-but-different argument is that developmental theories are “elitist.” I must admit, this particular argument doesn’t resonate with me. Are we to suppose that all people are equally adept at all things?

Wilber addressed this in an article in What Is Enlightenment? magazine a few years ago:

But isn't this view of mine terribly elitist? Good heavens, I hope so. When you go to a basketball game, do you want to see me or Michael Jordan play basketball? When you listen to pop music, who are you willing to pay money in order to hear? Me or Bruce Springsteen? When you read great literature, who would you rather spend an evening reading, me or Tolstoy? When you pay $64 million for a painting, will that be a painting by me or by Van Gogh?

All excellence is elitist. And that includes spiritual excellence as well. But spiritual excellence is an elitism to which all are invited. We go first to the great masters —to Padmasambhava, to St. Teresa of Avila, to Gautama Buddha, to Lady Tsogyal, to Emerson, Eckhart, Maimonides, Shankara, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Bodhidharma, Garab Dorje. But their message is always the same: let this consciousness be in you that is in me. You start elitist, always; you end up egalitarian, always.

For a nice take on this issue in a editors’ blog for the same magazine (now called EnlightenNext), read this.

Notes

[1] I don't recall Fowler ever using the term "spiritual intelligence," but Ken Wilber makes the point that this is essentially what Fowler is talking about (and I happen to agree that it is an apt term); see Wilber, IS, 69.

[2] Piaget development scheme ended with formal operations (which most people reach in adolescence). The gradations of “dichotomizing,” “dialectical,” and “synthetic” have been identified by Fowler. Similar gradations beyond mere formal operations are found in Wilber’s work, though the terminology he uses tends to change from one book to the next. Fowler’s “dichotomizing,” “dialectical,” and “synthetic” are, respectively, “rational mind,” “pluralistic/meta-systemic/early-vision logic,” and “paradigmatic/middle vision-logic” in Wilber. There is no single source for this information – as I said, Wilber changes his mind about what he would like to call them – but one place would be SES, 623n.6.

[3] See Fowler, Stages of Faith, 65; Wilber, SES, 689n.46.