Causal versus Nondual Nonduality

[theurj]

I'm once again exploring nonduality but now in relation to the myth of the given, "pure" awareness or experience and epistemological indeterminacy (EI). There's a thread on this over at Open Integral (www.openintegral.net) but I wanted to get some feedback here on at least one aspect of my thread there: types of nonduality. It seems Ken mixes and matches types of nonduality in Integral Spirituality and elsewhere and that this is not only inconsistent but incompatible. I'll insert some quotes and comments below to give you the jist.

From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber

Others, including Georg Feuerstein, argue that Wilber’s Neo-perennial Philosophy is a confusion between concepts of differentiated nondualist doctrines (such as Plotinus’s neo-Platonism and Ramanuja’s Vishishtadvaita Vedanta) and truly unitary monism of Zen and Advaita Vedanta: the former philosophies distinguish between emanated or manifest reality and the unchangeable source, while for Zen or Advaita the Source and reality are essentially one and the same. This is expressed in a famous Zen saying of which Wilber is quite fond: “Nirvana is Samsara fully realized; Samsara is Nirvana rightly understood.”[citation needed]

Wilber’s response to criticisms like this is typified in this quotation from the extended audio interview Speaking of Everything: “…when I lay out the stages of development, I am giving what I explicitly called in SES a ‘rational reconstruction of the trans-rational’.[12] Thus, differentiated non-dual doctrines and truly unitary monist doctrines are describing (or coming from) different levels of consciousness, the former from a causal perspective that differentiates between emptiness and form (and hence must see form as emanationary), and the latter from a nondual perspective that equates emptiness and form (and hence renders emanation a redundant concept).

[12] http://www.geocities.com/piers_clement/wilber1.html

Now from Integral Spirituality (draft) p. 131:

"This realization of Nonduality is the cornerstone of both Mahayana (“Great Vehicle”) and Vajrayana (“Diamond Vehicle”) Buddhism. When it comes to the nature of enlightenment or realization, this means that a complete, full, or nondual realization has two components, absolute (emptiness) and relative (form). The “nonconceptual mind” gives us the former, and the “conceptual mind” gives us the latter. Put it this way: when you come out of nonconceptual meditation, what conceptual forms will you embrace? If you are going to enter the manifest realm—if you are going to embrace not just nonconceptual nirvana but also conceptual samsara—then what conceptual forms will you use? By definition, a nondual realization demands both “no views” in emptiness and “views” in the world of form."

You can see that this is more along the lines of the differentiated nondual doctrines. Granted at times in the same text, and even in the same paragraph, Ken will then mix in some monist nondual verbiage. But this distinction is important when we get to EI and "pure" experience. And of course all this relates to the difference between states and stages and their integration via the Wilber-Combs lattice.

I said at OI:

Let me state what I think is going on here. Ken no longer puts the states of consciousness above the stages in the Wilber-Combs matrix because they are distinct. States and stages are the supposed “raw” ontological experiences on the one hand and the interpretative epistemology on the other hand. However, in IS Ken notes that both always arise together, so that a “direct” perception is also always already an interpretation, i.e. they co-arise simultaneously. Therefore there is no perception without interpretation, and vice versa. It’s both/and. And this both/and dialectic is represented by (one of) Ken’s definitions of nondual realization.

The myth of the given comes in when we posit a “pure” experience (or “raw”, to my understanding) that can exist apart from an immediate and co-arising interpretative framework. Hence we get Ken’s critique of Aurobindo’s separate ontological realms, and Alan’s defense of them as being outside the “mental” or “interpretation.” If Ken is right on this, and I think he might be, his postmetaphyical insight finds such an integration (to a point) between ontology and epistemology (nondually), whereas Alan and the Aurobindians can only see it as a mental abstraction because there is “pure” consciousness without relativity.

But of course Ken then back-tracks on this when using the “causal” level interpretation, that there “really” is a “pure,” “ultimate” consciousness free of form and relatively. And it is this “pure” consciousness that is united with, or integrated with, the relative realm in the nondual.(1) But that version of the nondual interpretation is not the same as the Nargarjuana or zen intepretations of nonduality, which does NOT posit such an “absolute” distinct from the relative.(2) Hence this “causal” nonduality is more akin to what Alan and the Aurobindians are saying. Ken wants it both ways here, where it’s NOT a both/and situation. Yes, if we contextualize each type of nonduality we can say they are both/and correct given the context, but IF the non-dual non-dual trumps the causal non-dual (and it does, according to Ken), then one is relatively better than the other, absolutely.

1. And also the source of some ”ultimate" measure of altitude via consciousness per se.
2. And it is here where I think Derrida comes in, with the same type of distinction AND realization.

Whaddaya think?