I am continuing the project by typing out a book report I wrote in college. Its’ very difficult material.
The report was written in 1992. The title of the book is “The Spectrum of Conciousness”. The author is Ken Wilber”. it was published by the Theosophical Publishing House in Wheaton Illinous.
7-22-92 11:00 pm.
Tonight as midnight approaches, I sit at a table in the country cottage of my cousin, eighty miles from home. The task at hand is to write a summary of the book “Spectrum of Consciousness”. I have been reading and taking notes on this difficult text for four months. This book is the most difficult I have ever studied. Never the less, let us begin the task at hand.
Consciousness is seen very much like the electro-magnetic spectrum. Psychology is likened like gamma rays at 1/ 1,000,000th of an inch. Eastern esoteric schools are likened to radio waves at over a mile in length.
In fact, even our physical body, and all physical mass is seen as “materialized consciousness”.
Proponents of different ideological schools, from the psychologies to mysticism, are merely discovering different levels of the same spectrum.
The three basic levels of consciousness discussed are:
1. The ego level.
2. The existential level
3. The level of “Mind”.
The four minor levels to be discussed are:
1. The Transpersonal.
2. The Biosocial.
3. The Philosophic.
4. The Shadow.
Ken Wilber, the author of this book, labors to integrate varying ideologies. Initially, three levels of being are introduced. The “ego “level is the level of ordinary awareness, or “mind’, with a small “m”.
Second is the existential level, or what is experienced by an integrated mind and body.
Third is the level of “Mind”, capital M. This is the level of true enlightenment.
A discussion of “self” is initiated. The belief that self is ego within a body is an illusion. “Self” is also includes children, bank accounts, and lands. Self also relates to “Mind”, whereas “Mind” is the experience of enlightenment. The concept of a truly individual self is considered an illusion.
In chapter II, Wilber suggests that consciousness escapes its own grasp. i.e. the eye cannot see itself, a hand cannot grasp itself. In the proverbial beginning, it is will wanting to know itself that awakens consciousness.
In the soul of perception exist inborn dualities. These dualisms sit at the root of intellection. Only when duality is pursued to its limits is its falsity seen.
Around the year 1600, Kepler and Galileo formulated the principle that all natural law can be discovered by measurement. Aristotle classified while Kepler and Galileo measured. It was believed that reality is objective, and all reality is verifiable by measurement.
Science then began to attempt to reduce all phenomena to number, position and motion. However the emotions, senses, intuitions, and the mystical were extirpated, as the subtle subjective was proclaimed unreal.
The subjective, and the objective worlds began to merge, with the discovery of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This principle states that the electron is so small that its position changes by any attempt to observe or measure it. The observer and the observed are changed through observation.
An argument arises. Is the universe first thought, from which matter arises? Or does thought arise as a dynamic of matter?
The solid substance of things is an illusion. Solid becomes atom, then electron, and there solidity is annihilated. The event and the observer are not separable.
Through Einstein’s work, the dualisms of space and time, energy and object are destroyed. Matter reduces to vibration. Vibration is spirit. The matter verses spirit dualism is destroyed.
Language is defined as a map. Words are not the things to which they refer. The letters w-a-t-e-r will not quench ones thirst. The non-dual mode of knowing, alone, is real.
Symbolic map knowledge can generate different pictures of the world. While non-dual and non-symbolic knowledge presents but one picture for all people through all time.
A banana split can be described in many ways, but it is known when it is eaten. Non-dual knowing is reality. Different modes of knowing correspond to different levels of consciousness. “Reality is an organic level of consciousness, and this level alone is real”. This consciousness might be called “imageless awareness”.
Three ways of knowing Mind are the analogical, the negative, and the injunctive. The analogical describes reality in terms like omnipotent, omniscient, supreme bliss, or unexcelled wisdom.
The negative describes reality as what it is not. It is not limited. It is not specific. it is not finite.
The third way is by injunction. This is knowing reality by instruction, like meditation or fasting. Instructions are called injunctive reality.
We are individuals on one level, but on a deeper level, all members are of one body, one indestructible Mind. “Mind” is a singular of which the plural is unknown. We experience a seer and a seen, where there is actually but one Mind.
“Truth” is the self realization inwardly expressed and experienced by the wise through non-dual insight, and does not belong to the domain of words, duality or intellect. “All is Mind”. The word “reality” is the limit of verbalization. There is “One Mind” besides which nothing exists. +
There exists One God, containing all relatives, but bound by none- beyond dualism, and containing dualism. “The highest reality is eternally unthinkable”. “Reality has no opposite, and this cannot be thought about”.
The text suggests “the primary function of language is purification of the intellect”. The negation of thought is not destructive, but the opening of the path of light and being. The termination of thought becomes the beginning of intuition. “Void becomes the path of prajna, life. True reality is void of elaboration.
In a holographic sense, “everything simultaneously includes all other things”, in perfect completion, at all times”. William Blake said “to see the world in a grain of sand”. Each happening becomes a factor in every other happening.
“The paper is seen, and the seeing of it are two names for one indivisible fact, this fact is named experience”. The sage harmonizes with both right and wrong, and rests in the harmony of Heaven.
“The self’ is God. Ego, mind, body, etc. are externalizations of “self”. Absolute subjectivity or Godhead cannot be thought of, because it is doing the thinking. It cannot be looked at because it is doing the looking. Reality cannot be grasped in any final or definite fashion. Ignorance occurs when conceptualization arises.
Atman, or supreme knower, exists in each and every person. But this true nature is ultimately indefinable. The finite is not the opposite of the infinite, but an excerpt from it. Whenever I look for my true self, all I find is objects of perception. The real self does not know the universe from a distance, it knows the universe from being it. In eternity all time is now. In infinity, all space is here. The realization that time is eternal, and that Mind is infinite, is called Final Enlightenment. Time, space, and object are mutually interpenetratable. In Mind there is no before or after. There is only a “now”, including memory and expectation.
Non-dual understanding is Mind itself. Understanding there is no self versus other, or passage of time. We must journey deeply into the present.
CHAPTER V EVOLUTION OF THE SPECTRUM
The first level is Mind, the ultimately indefinable, though knowable, mystery of being.
The second level is the “existential level”. This is man experiencing directly through his mind and inner senses.
The third level is “Ego”. Here self is separate from body. One says “I have a body” not “I am a body”.
The forth level splits the ego into shadow and persona. The persona is the virtuous, while the shadow is the disowned dark side.
As the indefinable God-head is defined in terms of objects, the phenomenal appearance of creation, called “maya”, or illusion occurs. To try and comprehend the realm of Mind is like trying to collect whispers, or inches. The beginning of maya is the beginning of the physical universe.
The primary dualism is;
knower from known.
infinite from finite.
original sin.
subject vs. object.
Myth is described as the nearest approach to absolute truth that can occur through words. Every myth is created around dualities; Heaven and earth. Sun and moon. Man and women, etc. Logos divided light from darkness, and waters from the firmament.
The first climatic point of this book is that Absolute Subjectivity is sacrificed by “let there be a distinction”. And the illusion of organism versus environment is established. However, in reality, object cannot exist without environment.
Here is a table:
1.) Level of mind.
2.) Transpersonal Bands.
Jungs collective unconscious.
Extra sensory perception.
Transpersonal witness.
Astral projection.
Out of body experience
Clair audience
Etc.
3.) Existential level.
The boundary between self and other must not be crystallized for transpersonal experience to occur.
In the existential, man exists as separate from his environment.
Man falls from;
Non-duality to duality.
Eternity into time.
Infinity into space.
Absolute subjectivity into a world subjects and objects.
From cosmic identity to personal identity.
The primary dualism creates space.
The secondary dualism creates time.
The tertiary dualism creates the ego as separate from body.
The quaternary dualism divides the ego into persona and shadow.
Man, Wilber proposes, creates time in avoidance of death. Whereas, in reality, life and death are not two different things.
The fear of death creates the awareness of a soul within the body. The quest for ideas is born of man’s fleeing death.
Organismic awareness, sensual experience is non-symbolic, always in the present- therefore fully within Absolute Subjectivity.
Again, on the existential level, man is identified solely with the experience of his organism existing in space and time.
“Will to life” originates on the existential level, as does organismic awareness, with the basic splits of inside vs. outside, and past vs. future.
The ego level is the world of intellection, fantasy, imagination, and symbolic map knowledge. On the ego level, man looses body awareness.
Society projects expectations and demands onto the bio-organism. These are called bio-social bands. What we take for reality is really is no more than social convention. Language and grammar, as well. Language, and its offspring, intellection, are the major source of man’s dualisms. Language determines how we think and see. Ego arises from the tertiary dualism of mind versus body. The ego is a bag of memories. We identify with what we have done. Looking to a bright future is also an evasion of reality. Joy, is of the present moment .
Communication occurs on different planes. Met-messages are messages about messages. Body language is a meta-message.
The quaternary split cuts off negative factors of the ego. Ego is divided into persona and shadow. A person attempts to dis-own his inherent and natural evil tendencies. Remember, the basic, root layer of consciousness is the universe itself, trees, mountains, heavens and hells.
“The unconscious is the immortal sea which brought us hither, embracing all mankind, and all generations of Adam”
Ego is then severed from body. One then has a body, and no longer is a body.
We project shadow onto others, and so fancy ourselves innocent.
The level of Mind does not evolve, it is infinite and eternal. The way Mind manifests on other levels evolves and changes. However, non-dual awareness is not an idea, but rather an experience. Let Mind be the paper, with all the other levels drawn upon it. The true reality is covered, sheathed, from awareness.
Zen Buddhism is another discipline attempting to deliver the seeking soul to oneness or Mind, through the veils of illusion.
The text comments that the psycho-analytical models cannot go deep enough to include the experience of no-mindedness.
Overall, it can be concluded that the great metaphysical traditions from Vedanta to Zen, are in essential agreement with Spectrum of Consciousness. We have discovered a perennial philosophy.
The esoterics emphasize Mind, and western psychologies emphasize pathology. Eastern investigators, who do have the final say on consciousness, neglect the levels on which most of us are destined to remain. Western psychologies, respectively, have little insight into the level of Mind, as scientific knowledge is ultimately illusory.
In Eastern thought, insanity is every reality except Brahman, or Absolute Truth/ reality is seeing beyond this dream that is this world.+
To be continued in next entry: