3.1.3 The 'pre-trans fallacy' controversy
One particular controversy was crucial to my attempts
at making sense of my experience and developing myself: Ken Wilber's 'pre-trans
fallacy'. John Rowan has presented several aspects of this particular
discussion (Rowan, 1993, pp.7-12, 17, 21, 40-41, 102, 113) and discussed the
root of it, the hierarchical and linear nature of Ken Wilber's spectrum that
bothers so many readers. Wilber's model influenced, from the seventies on, all
thinkers on psycho-spiritual development. Its merit was to show continuity
between psychological aspects of human development and spiritual aspects. It
took into account the notion of development and so conventional cognitive
psychology, as well as Carl Jung's archetypes (Jung, 1954). It could explain
many controversies between therapists, between spiritual masters (Rowan, 1993,
p.27), the un-integrated personality of some highly developed meditators
(p.84), or the '~ew Age drift' of spiritual people with inflated egos (p.26)
which can
culminate in what I call the 'mad guru' syndrom*. It
allowed Grof to explain aspects of life crises of a deep nature, by
distinguishing them from common psychosis, describing these crises as temporary
psychosis, and calling them 'spiritual emergencies' (Grof, 1989). Wilber's
model helps making sense of the 'spiritual call' now experienced by many in a
Western society that denies its existence. For neophytes, it is a relief to
find out about this model... for a time. A friend of mine, an unconventional
ex-seminarist, who discovered it recently, said to me: "It is a very useful
model because it integrates two separate fields, it explains a lot, but it has
rather drastic 'linear' limitations." I myself wrote several discussions of it,
until I wrote in my journal: "What is the assumption that limits, in this
model? Where is the paradox? Why is the linearity not entirely meaningless or
wrong?" (Sept. 97)
Rowan, in his discussion, suggests that the 'stages'
of development may be seen as "positions which it is possible to take up,
without implication of superiority. But the second thing to be said is that not
all versions of hierarchy are oppressive"(Rowan, 1993, p.117), and he supports
this with Riane Eisler's distinction between hierarchies of domination (based
on threat and force) and hierarchies of actualisation (aimed at maximising
potential) (Eisler, 1987, p.205). Rowan maintains, with Wilber, that the value
of the hierarchical model, is in the distinction that: "the complex includes
the simple, in a way in which the simple does not include the complex" (Rowan,
1993, p.117). This argument bothered me for a long time because it seems so
obvious that we cannot deny it. Yet, children can have transformative mystical
experiences (for ex. Krishnamurti 'channelled' his first teachings at age nine)
or psychic experiences. I find in my own teenage life, experiences outside the
ordinary psychological realm, and calls to altruistic values and desire for
'spirit', but I also feel I am going through a 'development'. The hierarchical
argument seems strong and questionable at the same time.
...'At the same time'. This indicates paradox. This is
my clue. Rowan's latter statement above mentions the words 'simple' and
'complex'. My seven year old son read to me the other day (11.09.98) a little
book that taught the opposites: big/small, long/short, dark/light... What about
shades, nuances and contexts? I thought, "this is how we are taught to think in
dual terms". Rowan and Wilber are using a dualist vocabulary to respond to an
intuitively felt argument against duality and judgement.
The complexity approach, as described in chapter 1,
might be more successful, than an elegant-integral approach to theorising, at
yielding the useful indications we need to understand what we need to learn and
how we need to change our actions and thinking, how we must change our way of
educating our children, etc.
My reflection gives meaning to the recent widening of
my inquiry in directions that I was not sure were not simply 'dispersed'. I now
have a clear strategy for inquiring into a series of spheres of explanation of
human experience, with a goal of making connections between the various fields
and dimensions I have recognised, as presented in Figure 8. This picture may of
course have to be widened in the future. I will now review several approaches
that have already yielded interesting theoretical links.
I participated for some time last year in Wilber's
internet forum, and in a long-drawn discussion about this phenomenon. Many
participants were highly strung about it. One of Wilber's role models, Da Free
John, is said to have gone down the path of requiring exaggerate devotion and
of isolating himself from society. Wilber had to qualify his earlier
unreservedly laudatory writings about the guru.
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