In defense of integral reading

“In Defense of Naïve Reading” by Robert Pippin is a pretty interesting integrative article on literary postmodernism published at the New York Times website. Reading it was as if the surfaces of the Red Postmodern Sea were parted and the depth of self-consciousness revealed itself. At least for a moment a silent green beam of hope shined. To quote,

“[L]iterature and the arts have a dimension unique in the academy, not shared by the objects studied, or ‘researched’ by our scientific brethren. They invite or invoke, at a kind of ‘first level,’ an aesthetic experience that is by its nature resistant to restatement in more formalized, theoretical or generalizing language. This response can certainly be enriched by knowledge of context and history, but the objects express a first-person or subjective view of human concerns that is falsified if wholly transposed to a more ‘sideways on’ or third-person view. Indeed that is in a way the whole point of having the ‘arts.’”

For me, literature has always been a source of deep wisdom that fosters one’s greater maturity. As a brilliant Russian thinker Vasily Nalimov argues in his books, consciousness is a text-reading phenomenon (in the broadest sense of the word). In my opinion, narrative brings meaningful & very subtle structures to one’s personal development; and Ken Wilber has pointed out the importance of the world greatest religious narratives as developmental conveyor belts for preconventional & conventional worldspaces in his book Integral Spirituality.

To continue quoting this wonderful article,

“Likewise—and this is a much more controversial thesis—such works also can directly deliver a kind of practical knowledge and self-understanding not available from a third person or more general formulation of such knowledge. There is no reason to think that such knowledge—exemplified in what Aristotle said about the practically wise man (the [Phronēsis]) or in what Pascal meant by the difference between l’esprit géometrique and l’esprit de finesse—is any less knowledge because it cannot be so formalized or even taught as such. Call this a plea for a place for ‘naïve’ reading, teaching and writing—an appreciation and discussion not mediated by a theoretical research question recognizable as such by the modern academy.”

Definitely, aesthetically-built literary narratives seem to have the capacity of constructing experiential frameworks for conveying certain domains of tacit knowledge (necessary for action learning in the pragmatic sector). To additionally contribute to this statement about the importance of aesthetics in our narratives, I would quote the famous Russian writer Anton Chekhov who said, “The writer’s function is only to describe by whom, how, and under what conditions… The artist must be only an impartial witness of his characters and what they said, not their judge.” (I borrowed the quotation from another interesting article by Nina Schuyler.)

Here are some of the questions worth pondering. Why reading comprehensive literature is so important for our development? Why do I think that in order for us to contribute to humanity probably the best thing we can do is to calm our minds enough to be able to actually have read Dostoevsky’s passionate reflections on universal conscience and self-liberation? Why do stories and their archetypal images have played such an important role for our humanity’s evolution for millennia? Why good 1st-person storytelling is so important not just for narrow marketing and cheap sales pitches but for a wide range of dimensions of life that involve communication and knowledge sharing?

One of the many perspectives that I find increasingly important when contemplating the matrix of these questions is the mind-blowing neuroscientific discovery of mirror neurons: 

“In multiple reports published in the Sept. 19 issue of Current Biology, neuroscientists provide evidence that mirror neurons are multimodal—they are activated by not just by watching actions, but also by hearing and reading about them.

An effort led by Lisa Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, found that the brain’s premotor cortex shows the same activity when subjects observe an action as when they read words describing it.” (“Mirror Neurons Also Respond to Language and Sound,” September 21, 2006)

Hence, we are witnessing the capacity of comprehensive narratives to evoke altered states of consciousness and deeper modes of knowing and appreciating life which are important for the emergence of a more sophisticated pragmatics of our being-in-the-world. Science cannot replace art and morals—Habermas, Wilber and others have proved it convincingly; but if science, morals, and art are in a complementary relationship with each other their synergy will most definitely bring forth powerful results.

The sketches on contemporary biosociopsychoanalysis

I read daily news using the Internet; and sometimes I watch conventional TV news. Newsfeed often acts as a machine producing meaningful coincidences that would point to a recent trend in the emergence of creativity. Recently, there have been two news articles that were able to hold my attention for many hours. First article is about North Korea; and this year I have been following news about North Korea with an increasing interest. Something in my guts tells me it is very important to point my attention to the developments in this country. So, in this post I will start with the North Korea theme and then gradually move to the second topic.

Kim Jong-il seems to enjoy luxury.

The article about North Korea bears the title "Kim Jong-il's Label Addiction Revealed." It describes strange peculiarities that, according to a person who decided to escape from the Kim Jong-il's regime (who in a somewhat silly and disrespectful way is called a "defector"), the leaders of the long ago isolated country seem to have. It appears that Kim Jong-il (who, occasionally, was born in USSR) seems to be prone to the kind of very ordinary consumerism which can be observed among the elites and not-so-elites of the world, a consumerism that consists of the addiction to buy and wear expensive clothes, drive expensive cars, and attach oneself to expensive things in general (as we all tend to do at some point). 

If this is true—and it can be very true because it simply fits our present-day knowledge of the human nature and biosociopsychology—then the North Korean society could provide another example of the hypocritical splitting which reveals itself as discrepancies between the ideology that is being imposed by the government on the people and the ideology that is being followed by the very leaders of this government—inauthentic communication of one thing and engagement in another is the most ancient secret which is astonishing in its simplicity and yet so carefully guarded by the few! (The splitting which has been exposing itself, to a different extent, in Russia, USA, Europe and many other countries and places. In isolated countries such as North Korea it simply goes to its extreme.)

It becomes a sad and fascinating case study of how the rulers of the world often tend to use their enormous  social powers and influence to enforce entire civilizations' self-organization around satisfaction of the rulers' egocentric needs. Obviously, it's nothing personal between me and Kim Jong-il; and I believe that in the depths of his heart we can find remnants/seeds of a wonderful, if unformed, personality but in overall manifestations of his self-system—one shouldn't  let oneself be deceived—it's all repeating the same old pattern that we have seen in the Soviet Union and other totalitarian social systems where the few used the many for the benefit of their self-serving drives, the drives that they simply couldn't stop due to their socially-conditioned neurobiology (furthermore, they don't want to stop—and why would they, if all their basic egocentric needs are met at least for the moment and they can feel, if, again, for a fleeting moment, centers of the universe). 

It also demonstrates how a passion of the few for accessing a particular kind of states of consciousness (related to igniting the zones of pleasure associated with the areas around the limbic system in the brain) could virtually create entire civilizations centered around human suffering, misery and scarcity! This would be one simple case study that I would refer to if one asked me why I find the projects that articulate the importance of knowing thyself in terms of dynamics of your own states of consciousness to be crucial for our lives right here and now. (Incidentally, the altstates.net project that I am co-developing now will hopefully become one of such initiatives that would skillfully highlight the significant role consciousness and its states & structures have played in the human history.)

In some sense, we're all junkies for blissful states; and this is our "reaching the God state" project, so to say, as Ken Wilber has pointed out in his brilliant The Atman Project. Stan Grof, another pioneer of states of consciousness exploration and investigation, has emphasized that it is in the human nature to unconsciously, semiconsciously and consciously desire reaching a holotropic state, that is a state of the ultimate wholeness which has been historically associated with experiencing God states. In order to figure out today's markets and politics one simply has to master skillful biosociopsychoanalytical action inquiry that takes into account these complex dimensions in a coherent gesture.

Here we can make a discrete leap into the second, seemingly unrelated, news article which, as I mentioned in the beginning of this post, attracted my attention. The Daily Mail claims that "computers and TV take up half our lives as we spend seven hours a day using technology." This claim also seems to reflect something important; in particular I mean a very important notion that the technologies that we are using (and in which we are immersed) increasingly become essential parts of our personal ecosystems and consciousness. It is now a widely accepted reflection that the flow of information becomes so massive and multiplies so enormously that it poses multiple difficulties on societies today. (I should have said here, "it poses multiple difficulties on societies yesterday," for every word I have spoken right now in some sense reflects the past—but the past that influences each and every aspect of our present moment.) 

In order to cope with this informational stress we have to always be one step or even a few steps ahead in our creativity; and I would claim that this step would involve at least two parts: the first would be anchoring one's self in the ocean of timeless stillness (which can be achieved via advanced contemplative/meditative paradigms & technologies); and the second would consist of learning to communicate at multiple levels in one bit of information simultaneously (these levels would include the domains of body, emotions, mind, soul, and spirit, with the latter being described as a certain quality of all-pervading and compassionate meta-awareness that is built into the very fabric of the material substrate of our consciousness, that is the brain, the electromagnetic activity, and the entire material system that surrounds the space of our individual being and co-existence). For instance, this very blog should touch all these domains and contain a key for an easy-and-instant access to the holograph of experience it conveys with its limited words and textual canvas.

One possible future
of a human form.

It can easily be predicted that, since the computer and information-based technologies are conquering the human minds, there will be a growing need in brain-mind interfaces that would ensure the accessibility of simultaneous engagement with all the essential domains of being-in-the-world (by which I mean the aforementioned body, mind, soul, and spirit distributed across the interiors and exteriors of the individual and collective). For instance, in order to ensure exercising of the body in the operator of a computer in the conditions where the time is  increasingly limited and one cannot afford to exercise dissociatedly and separately from the work flow, the humanity would first attempt to create computers working on which would involve kinaesthetic "karate-like" movements. However, the advancement of consciousness/matter interfaces and technologies will quickly move to a different variation of being, the one that would involve working on a computer while exercising karate or strength training (or, better put, at the same moment with body exercises). The same goes for mind and soul and spirit. Each and every gesture would consciously and super-consciously include the involvement of all these domains simultaneously. I would walk in the street while meditating, praying, and doing tai chi exercises and enjoying this fine weather and that wonderful sunset. 

And when within a few decades humans will most likely be able to extend their life span indefinitely be prepared to include all the essential domains in your life—for death will become a luxury and if there is anything less than a fully-functioning body-mind-soul-spirit-powered cybernetic human being you are going to slide into an infinite loop of unnecessary suffering—and this is why we would need to establish psychosocioneuroethics commissions that would prevent such unfortunate cases for the greater good of humankind as soon as we are going to be ready to consciously do so.

Sounds like science fiction? Well, in this case I can only advice you to simply remember how it was 20 years ago and look around yourself now—and simply read the news, dammit! We are currently on the verge of living in the world of cybernetic ecosystems, whether we want it or not.

Notes

To demonstrate the heightened awareness in the choices I made around building the current blog post I claim that the placement of the first image in the article is done according to the recent fair use trends. The image was originally displayed in The Chosun Ilbo article. The second image is a work of art created by Richard Marchard and borrowed from here; it is used as an illustration to the ideas expressed in this essay (the picture itself, in my interpretation, points towards an artistic vision of how the future human form might look like); and my position—even though I am a human being and not a lawyer-android—is that the fair use rules are applicable here, too, and also that there should be an easier way to share reproductions of artistic pictures according to the leading-edge sense of basic moral intuition.

Anamnesis and aletheia

I am in the process of re-watching a movie called Memento (2000). My dear friend reminded me of the existence of it. It is a movie by one of the most gifted directors of our time Christopher Nolan (who also created The Dark Knight which is simply a perfect film if you are in the right mode of consciousness). The protagonist of Memento, Leonard, is suffering from anterograde amnesia, a clinical condition that blocks mind/brain’s capacity to remember new phenomena. In order to survive in the world which is full of people who would like to take advantage of his condition Leonard constantly leaves himself notes to remind who he is, where he is, and what his goals are. 

The feeling of watching this movie is so uncanny that I had to stop watching it. And when I went to bed this uncanny feeling didn’t disappear, insisted on it being followed and brought me back to my computer to write this down. To be straightforward, this uncanny feeling is that of the recognition that in some bigger sense Leonard’s condition reminds me of my own—and, perhaps, it appears familiar not only to me but also to other people.  

I feel that in some way I live a similar life always leaving myself notes in attempt to re-mind myself who I truly am in the fullness of my being-in-the-world. I have this and that peak experience, I glance here and there on my true nature, I become one with something which is what I am, I become capable to hold it in the gesture of my meditative awareness for longer periods; and yet once in a while I slip into the darkness of forgetfulness. In a sense, this very blog is a note that I leave to myself to constantly remind myself of what I am—or at least of what it is worth living for and of what it is possible to choose as one’s own destiny. 

In addition to becoming a person on the frontal egoic plane in the process of individual growth and development mediated to a great extent through socialization it seems that my life is about, first of all, reminding myself of something—of my Soul’s True Love if you let me put it that way—then remembering it and then knowing through embodying my True Self (and finally letting go of it and stepping into not-knowing). As long as I am locked within the cell of my mind which constantly chaotically twinkles and flows I have to re-mind myself of what I am and then to train my mind to remember. But eventually when the personal mind gets transcended but included, once one enters the narrow gate, a bigger entity emerges, the one that simply knows and feels and moves and speaks and sees. Here, life becomes quite easy: I simply smell my way further and operate on the skills my well-adapted personal ego has learnt through the years of learning. Sometimes I could recall to my presence some farther events and perspectives that I have once known somewhere else—and feel as if I am actually there—and yet I don’t need to rely that much on re-minding myself of all those limited details any longer—I let go. 

Sometimes I can even forget what I said a minute or an hour ago and there is simply too much information in the world now for me to try to remind myself of all of it. When I open my email client and see all these different emails from different streams of life, different parts of the world, different projects, different ideas… they simply overwhelm if I attempt to remind myself of everything through my mind.  

I don’t know where the need for re-minders would disappear. My friend Jim whose depth of mind fascinates me says the word money comes from the word warning or reminder. Will the times when we don’t have to re-mind ourselves come? How would it be if we simply… remember—for starters? All the beautiful churches, all the beautiful temples, all the beautiful pyramids, all the houses, all the cities, all the graves, all the monuments, all the books, all the photographs, all the paintings, etc.—are they here to simply re-mind us of something once in a while or can they act as catalyzing portals into remembering and eventually simply and profoundly non-forgettingly being and fulfilling one’s destiny on multiple planes of living. I don’t mind if it happens.

I am concluding with an entry from a dictionary on Plato’s works:

truth

The Greek word for truth, aletheia, incorporates the word for “forgetting”; a-letheia might be translated as “unforgetting” or “remembering.” This etymology is particularly significant in Plato’s epistemology, which maintains that true knowledge can be achieved only through anamnesis, the soul’s recollection of the Forms it has glimpsed during its circuit through heaven in metempsychosis. For Plato, knowledge of mere phenomena cannot attain the truth, as only the ideal Forms are truly real.

Brother David Steindl-Rast's Big Heart

As I mentioned in the blog earlier, two weeks ago I went for 3 days to Moscow to present at the International Transpersonal Conference. Being at the conference was quite an eclectic experience because it's attended by people of very diverse backgrounds. It was very hot on those days in the city; and the air conditioners at the Hotel Izmailovskaya were barely working. Some of the speakers whom I expected to be quite extraordinary disappointed me a little bit because they did not take an integrally balanced position. But, on the other hand, there were many profound moments, too.

There were two episodes, two meetings that have had a profound impact on me. The first episode consisted of having an opportunity to express in person all my gratitude to Stan Grof. It might not be realized by many people in the world (or in America for that matter) but Grof's books have the reputation of being somewhat classic for the generation of the intellectual Russians who spent their youth in the post-Soviet society, especially starting with the emergence of the open Internet access. It can be said that these works have broadened notions of being-in-the-world for many thousands of people. I mean not among psychologists or academia but among some ordinary people who are enthralled by the possibility and intuition of the transpersonal (although, of course, the influence is not that huge in terms of its span). Even though Grof's cartography of consciousness and its states now cannot be considered comprehensive (but it can be very useful for many individuals who are interested in consciousness exploration through altered states and peak experiences), the very fact of the existence and foundation of the transpersonal movement by such folks as Stan Grof, Abe Maslow, and Mike Murphy should be appreciated enormously.

 Expressing all my gratitude to Stan Grof, MD for his contributions to the humankind.

The second episode was the blessing of meeting Brother David Steind-Rast and having a little blissful exchange of meanings with him. Meeting him in person could definitely be a life-changing event not only for me but also for other people. I don't know what else to say here. I can only be grateful for being able to know him.

 An inspiring meeting of Brother David Steindl-Rast.

I invite you to watch the video clip I have recorded which includes a part of Brother David's beautiful speech about integral spirituality (filmed in Moscow on June 26, 2010). (I have also added subtitles but I've had problems hearing some of the words, so I'd appreciate if you can help me in filling the missing spots.)

Andrew Lloyd Webber & JCS

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar is one of the most beautiful and touching modern prayers that I know of.

The tale of Midas

Many Russians grew up on stories and tales from the Ancient Greek mythology. There were many Soviet cartoons made about Heracles (known in the West under his Roman name Hercules) and his Twelve Labors, about Prometeus who brought fire of knowledge, about smart Odysseus, Argonauts, and so many others. Perhaps, one of the most mysterious stories of all is the tale of King Midas.

The story is usually told in a very sad and ironic manner. Midas was a king of Phrygia. Once, his soldiers caught Silenus, who was a right-hand satyr to the god Dionysus (whose Roman equivalent is Bacchus). Midas recognized him as such and set him free. Dionysus was very pleased by this doing, so he offered to grant whatever Midas should wish for. Midas asked that everything he touch be turned to gold. As the story goes, soon Midas encounters that his blessing is also seems to be his curse. Everything he touched, a tree, a chariot, a fruit, food, and even his daughter was turning into gold. So Midas begged Dionysus to take this gift away. The god told Midas to wash himself in the river Pactolus. Ever since Midas washed away his magic touch in this river, it has been abundant in gold, and Midas returned to his normal life.

The way I am interpreting this myth is quite optimistic. In fact, gold and the color of gold has always been a symbol of Spirit. When Midas receives a gift from Dionysus to turn everything into gold, what he receives is the power of transmutation and transfiguration: of discovering Spirit beneath each and every occasion. Everything he touches turns into gold, that is every phenomenon in the universe that he  spontaneously selects with his awareness shows its true Divine essence. In the end he realizes that everything around him is Spirit's, and there is nothing he, Midas, could personally own or have. This leads to the agony and transformational death of his egoistic self. Then he asks Dionysus to retract the gift. But what has actually happened is that he makes one step further: by washing himself in the river he has undone the last barrier before the realization of Spirit as Spirit. In some spiritual traditions this move is called realization of the Nondual. Then the world becomes as simple as it has ever been. The source of gold, of spiritual energy is not ego but God. There is nothing to turn into gold because everything is always already gold—everything is always already Divine.

The Bremen Town Musicians

In 1969, a Russian musical cartoon The Bremen Town Musicians started its voyage into the hearts of citizens of the Soviet Union. It resonated with the social revolution and the civil rights movement of The Sixties in the West, and due to this fact received harsh criticism from the USSR establishment and government for "noxious Western influence."

Within the two consequent years more than 28 millions Soviet people watched the cartoon and listened to the music. Two decades later, in the ruins of the collapsing empire, the songs from this cartoon fostered my early growth and development. For all my life I have remembered the subtle joy of freedom from these songs. 

Lives of several generations were guided and transformed by the sun beams of hope brought forth by this music. Such is a power of music. Let's remember and listen in silence and reverence.