A position paper by Integrales Forum

Introduction

The Integral Forum has set itself the goal to discuss and apply the integral approach within the German speaking community as it has been developed by Ken Wilber and others. In doing so co-operations and partnerships have been developed and are being developed with organizations and individuals including spiritual teachers. These teachers are themselves subjects of public discussion that range from approval to very critical. Against this backdrop, the Integral Forum Board of Members has often been asked again and again and recently even more increasingly how we view our relationship to spiritual teachers and how we deal with the criticism of these teachers.

Based on this background and applying an integral approach we have prepared the two following articles.

Their purpose is:

• to clarify and outline our position on this subject
• to set a standard for our own (also spiritual) work
• to promote discussion and exchange with spiritual teachers
• to serve as a starting point for discussion with an interested public
• to help bridge the gap between humanistic disciplines, their applications and spirituality
• to be an example for an applied integral spirituality.

With the first article, Towards a School and Science of an Integral Evolutionary Spirituality, a philosophical framework is provided within which the discussion can take place. It particularly highlights theoretical questions in which different positions in theory can also have different ethical implications. For example a theoretical disregard of the Relative as related to the Absolute can practically lead to an ignorance and presumptuousness in a practice of the Absolute ignoring the practice towards humanity itself and finally result in spiritual arrogance. The second article, Enlightened Spirituality – A Checklist for Spiritual Teachers with Respect to Competence, Integrity, Responsibility and Transparency, then offers concrete criteria with which spiritual teachers but also their critics can be evaluated.

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“It is indeed possible to use vertical development models to make specific statements about competences, but unpredictability cannot be put into a box. If it could, this would rob Awakening of the radicality it needs to remind us time and time again of the One.”

By Thomas Hübl

The discussion launched by the position paper from the Integral Forum is a good and important initiative. It reveals the confusion that exists in the area of spiritual competence. However, such a discussion stands on thin ice if we only look at it in a purely intellectual way without taking spiritual competence itself into account. True mystics – those who experience divine or absolute reality – are “consciousness freaks”. They do not just understand the inner order of reality intellectually but they experience it in a truly profound way.

Only an Awakened Consciousness Knows What an Awakened Consciousness Is

A comparison might help to make things clear as we discuss the issue of spiritual competence. Grade school pupils do not usually approach university mathematics professors and start a discussion with them about differential calculus. Yet many people from many different spiritual traditions set about describing the spiritual dimensions of human nature although they do not have the competence necessary for this task in terms of their own spiritual development. In many cases their cognitive development far exceeds their spiritual development, which means they often seek to explain spiritual competence in a cognitive way. This mixes up different lines of development. Intellectual discussion is then regarded to be a ‘spiritual discussion’; but that is not what it is – it is a philosophical discussion about spiritual values.

The danger of Integral Theory is that individuals having a high intellectual capability and a cognitive-philosophical understanding of Ken Wilber’s models of consciousness could possibly apply the overall explanatory model in a distorted way if they haven’t integrated the higher levels of consciousness themselves. In contrast to this, Ken Wilber himself has a profound inner practice and a high intellectual as well as transcendental capability. A distorted application of the integral theory reveals a shadow within the integral movement. Yet another shadow is the fact that transmission cannot take place during an intellectual discussion about higher levels of consciousness (as compared to directly speaking from these levels). Here, the term ‘transmission’ is used to imply the energetic resonance that occurs when the higher vibrational energy of a more highly realized person stimulates the energy of a less realized person to resonate at a higher level. “Consciousness freaks”, whether they be spiritual teachers, highly realized people or awakened students, are able to perceive this transmission in other highly realized individuals. In this way, and because of this, they can determine the spiritual competence of teachers.

This phenomenon of transmission can also be illustrated using the example of a mathematics professor: she has a true understanding of advanced mathematics herself and is able to pass on this knowledge in such a way that she becomes a ladder for students that enables them to climb to higher levels of knowledge themselves. If she didn’t possess this inner capacity, then her teaching attempts would just trigger confusion. The students would believe they are studying with a knowledgeable professor, but they would become quite confused because they couldn’t understand what she’s talking about. The same can be applied to spirituality. If someone is talking about non-duality but is not in a state of non-duality, then the words are just empty words. A transmission cannot take place. The words might, for example, provide an intellectual motivation to take up a spiritual practice but fail to impart a taste of non-duality.

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Terry Patten’s response to a request for comments from Germany’s Integrales Forum, in response to your position paper, “Integral Spirituality and Spiritual Teachers.”

Abstract

The Integrales Forum “Position Paper” on validating spiritual teachers offers philosophically rich leadership, and is much appreciated. I have articulated similar principles and actively apply them to myself. I work transparently, and entirely non-coercively. But the principles articulated in the paper can be applied well or poorly, with potentially great good or bad consequences. Remember, it takes a nearly superhuman force to break free of the gravity of the ego and common worldly human society and to achieve “escape velocity” to go into the orbit of sustainable higher spiritual realization of transpersonal states and stages of consciousness. “Hard” schools of intense challenge arise for good reasons and should not be legislated out of existence or unduly constrained by the limited understanding of the unenlightened. Experiments at the leading edge can’t be consensually validated by those a half-step behind. We can establish criteria for evaluating spiritual teachers, yes, but let’s hold them humbly. In the process it is no less valid to evaluate the critics, and even students. This discussion is part of how we can birth the kind of sangha that can become the next Buddha, so this is great and honorable work. But let’s proceed humbly, recognizing the tentativeness of our hypotheses. Let the culture of integral evolutionary spirituality be rich and open, fed by some streams of wisdom that run through watersheds fed by thunder, floods and lightning, and not only ones watered by healing rain.

The Context of this Appreciative Inquiry: “Yes, And…”

Thank you, Integrales Forum and DIA, for tackling these issues, undoubtedly engaging in some deep conversations, and forging a first-draft document that is thoughtful and thorough. . It offers some philosophically rich leadership (perhaps even with dose of Habermasian rigor?) within the Integral movement, and much appreciated. It arrived, synchronistically, the day after I completed a draft of a paper for the 2010 Integral Theory Conference titled “Towards the Emergence of Integral Evolutionary Spiritual Culture.” In it (following a longer 2007 paper in which I discussed some of these themes more extensively) I articulated remarkably similar perspectives.

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