Click here for more on Ken Wilber and Rational Spirituality

The Nature of Nature
Ken Wilber's Pre-Trans Fallacy vs. "The Secret"

What is the "nature" of something?

nature = identity = what something IS (capitals) = its essence = its objective reality =  the splat your body makes when it hits the pavement after a 10 story fall.

Whatever it is about the last part of that definition that makes a point - points to the "nature" of bodies, gravity, pavement, etc. 

To be somewhat more precise and philosophical about it...

Ken Wilber's great gift (or one of the greater ones) IMO is that he has credibility among spiritual/enlightenment practitioners AND shows how 90% of what is called "transrational/spiritual" is actually pre-rational/mythical-magical thinking.

Most consequentially, he suggests that, because both pre-rational/magical teachers AND transrational/spiritual teachers say "you create your own reality" - it is easy to think that they are saying the same thing. However, they are saying completely different things, and confusing/conflating/collapsing/equating the two is what he call "the pre/trans fallacy" (a mistake, a screw-up, a mis-reading) that has profound negative consequences for individuals and society as a whole.

If he were not so thoroughly grounded in a transrational spiritual perspective, having meditated 35 years, studied/talked with "enlightened masters from around the world, etc. - people could just write off what he says.  However, because anyone who reads/listens to him for a few hours GETS the depth of is understanding, It is very difficult to write him off and maintain their intellectual integrity.  Hence, when he says the following, some people actually listen!

The pre-rational/magical perspective of "you create your own reality" ((a la "the Secret," "What the Bleep?", the Tao of Physics, Abraham-Hicks, Conversations with God, ad naseum) says that thoughts actually change the "nature" of reality (the noumena/metaphysics).  As Wilber puts it, the child asks their parent to change the spinach into cake so it will taste better. He addresses this quite directly, saying bluntly that such thinking is delusion.  Thoughts do not alter matter in this way.  It doesn't matter if it is a child asking their parents, a devotee praying to a guru/God, or a "manifestor" "intending" it through a quantum fields - These are all pre-rational delusions, end of story.  They represent a profound misreading of both quantum physics and enlightenment texts (he quaintly suggests/blames "Boomer" narcissism [Boomeritis] for this misreading, but he is clear it goes much deeper than this).

(For more on this, check out my essay on The Mind Reality Fallacy here )

Rather he suggests that the transrational interpretation of "you create your own reality" can be easily understood in the spinach example.  It is how you understand/interpret/define and evaluate/judge/relate to your experience of the spinach (VAKOG) that "creates" the reality you experience around the spinach (the phen-noumena/epistemology).  The spinach has a "nature."  It IS what it is (green - in the human visible spectrum, pungent - in the human olfactory spectrum, chewy - in the human kinesthetic spectrum, etc.). However, how we "understand/identify" it (or as I like to say - define and evaluate "defeval" it, or, how we interpret it and project our values onto it "interproject" it), "creates" how we personally experience it.  "We create our own reality", not by our thoughts changing the "nature" of reality, but by our thoughts/defevals/interprojections/mind-sets creating our "experience" of reality.  We can enjoy the sensations, imbue the spinach with positive meaning, imagine we are Popeye, etc. 

When we confuse the magical with the transrational interpretations of "you create your own reality" or "there is no 'there' there," we make HUGE/COLLOSSAL mistakes in how we approach our lives.

This is nowhere more true than on the political/interpersonal dimension of existence - our relationships.  We each have a nature, like spinach, that IS what it IS, regardless of what we want it to be, or how we "create" it through our interprojections.  Given earth's gravity in San Francisco and normal clothing, we "splat" when we hit the pavement after a 10 story fall. We can "interproject" that an infinite number of ways, some of which are more consistent with "objective reality/nature" than others.  For example, someone might _say/believe_ that we never hit the ground, but actually flew and will be coming over to visit later this evening... However, that interprojection/understanding would be delusion.  They would be _creating_ their own "delusory" reality.  And, as I am fond of saying (parpahrasing my mentor Jason Alexander [JA]), "illusions lead to disillusionment when reality has its day, as it always does, sooner or later."

The more consistent our interprojection/understanding/identification/articulation of reality is with the "nature" of reality, the more we will make choices that actually "work" and "consist" through time.  Paraphrasing JA again, "Human Being Lives Consistent" and dies if s/he is inconsistent.

For example, if I create a paper mache bridge as a prop in a movie, that's "works" in the movie.  It creates the "experience" of a real bridge, which is all that is necessary.  However, if I try to drive a semi-trucks over it. Then the illusion crumbles under the weight of reality - the "nature" of paper mache and semi-trucks.

If I build a relationship (US) around principles that are inconsistent with either person's "nature" (the YOU or the "I"), that relationship is built on illusions/delusions, and will fall apart when the mass of the appropriate reality "weighs in" on the "conversation."

Unfortunately, my experience of many people in the "transformational/personal development" community is that they often confuse the pre-rational and trans-rational understandings of what it means to "create your own reality," and end up building delusory relationships (bridges made of paper mache) that fall apart in emotionally (and often phsyically/financial/etc.) painful ways.  Then, instead of learning from their mistaken understanding of "transformation," they blame themselves for not being "transformed" enough, and deepen the cycle of delusion.

More subtley, I also often see people judging/gossiping about others using this mistaken standard of transformation, creating a culture/community that fosters delusions/illusions and hence disillusionment - while claiming to be relatively more 'enlightened/evolved' than others.  As Wilber points out again and again, this is powerfully destructive and truly unfortunate.  I urge us all to become asymptotically more aware and "clean" around this, so that we truly create a game we all can win.

--

Now, creating a community that understands the difference between pre-rational and trans-rational understandings of "you create your own reality"...that is a challenge that I am not currently up to, but am working as hard as I currently can to create.  "SEE-Inc. A Beautiful Future Now! Creating A Game We All Can Win" will, I hope, be a completely new venue through which to build that community.  I hope you all wish me luck...and support me in staying "clean."

:-)

--

(In response to this essay, I was asked the following question:)

It seems to me that IS/the facts/objective reality has 3 facets to
it's nature. It's open (like space), it's radiant (like light) and
it's cognizant (like mind). In other words, IS ISes by knowing,
glowing/showing and floating.

We I get present to presence itself and then interpret/imagine/frame
my experience in a way that is consistent with openness, light, &
knowing (in the deep sense) I am true to my nature and thus fulfilled/
happy (maybe this is what you mean by "natural values"?).

To which I answered...

First, I like the know/glow-show/flow-t triune articulation. Very nice.

Next, with the hope of riffing your love into my swoon...

I like to say that eternal/emptiness always manifests in a temporal/form.
In that sense, although it contains it (and is not other than it), the 3
fold characteristics of presence you list describe the "eternal emptiness"
side of the emptiness/form equation. To speak of it is to attempt to
transcend Time/Space/Knowledge (TSK) to touch the ur-reality of
timeless/spaceless/unknowing - the potential of that trinity arising. In
metaphor, it is the "before" the beginning/big bang, the "space" in which
space arose, and the "chaos" from which knowledge/structure comes into
being.

It is the form side of that equation, the knowledge/knower duality, rather
than the emptiness/potential non-dual side that I was speaking about with
"nature." Although I think you did perhaps as well as can be done to
quickly speak the nature of the ineffable, I was pointing to the effable
when I spoke of "nature."

In that sense, it is the reflection of that _glow_, the object carried along
in that _flow_, the knowledge that focuses/limits the infinite _know_ that I
meant by "nature." It is the instantiation of the insubstantial, the
"something" that comes from nothing when we collapse awareness into a
particular point of TSK.

It is not until TSK instantiates in this way that "natural values" come into
being. Eternal/Emptiness can have nothing for or against it, nothing to
value. Only temporal/form ("form"al TSK) can have values, because only
formal TSK can have a set of conditions that futher its form/nature, or
thwart it. To say it differently, once something is instantiated, it has a
"nature" in the sense of a specific form that can be brought in or out of
existence, a "pattern integrity" (to use Bucky) that can consist through
time. That which threatens its pattern integrity, its nature, is "bad" and
that which furthers it is "good." These are its natural values.

Because YOU have a nature, you can be fulfilled/happy by
interpreting/imagining/framing your experience through the openness of the
eternal/emptiness side of TSK. However, TSK is not fulfilled or happy, YOU
are.

Because you are an instantiation of TSK, when you interpret experience
through its lens, your "articulation/knowledge/agreements/commitments" are
consistent with your nature and lead to pleasure/happiness/bliss (thrival).
They are your "natural" values. They are WholeSum. If they were
inconsistent, they would lead to relative pain/suffering/languishment (or
slippage/retreat/recidivism in culture). They would be "detours" from your
natural values. They would be unWholeSum.

I hope that both integrates your gifts and answers your question.

For fun, in The Key Is In The Darkness, I speak about this consistence using
what I call the 4 Pieces of the Integrity Puzzle. At the center of the
puzzle are natural values, which are given - they are your nature.
Surrounding it are 3 types/levels of articulation/understanding which are
chosen. 1) Beliefs, 2) Commitments, 3) Actions. Your "Primary Integrity"
is when your Beliefs, Commitments and Actions are each consistent with your
natural values. This is the formula for Lasting Happiness. Your "Secondary
Integrity" is when your Beliefs, Commitments and Actions are consistent with
one another.

Notice that you can have tremendous Secondary Integrity but lousy Primary
Integrity and have a really shitty life (the good Nazi), even if everyone
else "agrees" with you. This is especially true on the
political/interpersonal dimension of both social systems and relationships.
Just because you have agreement does not mean that things will work. This
is why the idea of "nature" and "objective reality" is so important, because
agreement alone is not a helpful guide to belief, commitments, or action.
It is consistence with nature/reality that is the key to happiness.

Mark Michael Lewis