Integral theory and its discontents

Excellent article by David Lane. The very process of map making chooses what to include while leaving a huge chunk of the mapped territory out. Hence all maps are incomplete and what is missing must be taken into account. And yet we mapmakers need constant reminding, as we often and seemingly inevitably forget this and take our maps for the territory.

Hence given our delusion we continue to think that we can actually know the territory in toto, often through some privileged access to reality as it is. Lane debunks this absurd assertion (as does cognitive science etc.) in that our very brain and biology are limited and constrained by what we can know. "Abdicating our critical faculties and accept[ing] eye of spirit experiences axiomatically devolve into reifications that are not much more than theological sloganeering." Whereas the eye of contemplation, tempered, constrained and syntegrated by the eyes of mind and flesh, accept what it experiences conditionally instead of jumping to conclusions about ultimate reality. Otherwise it becomes "third eye blindness" and/or "cross-eyed."

Lane then correctly notes that such experience goes through an interpretative process. He discusses how Wilber agrees, noting it depends on a developing interpretative frame. However as I have noted extensively elsewhere, Wilber tends to accept in its entirety the traditional eastern meditative frames on the experience. In other places he criticizes those frames as still containing magical and mythical elements, but not when it comes to direct, unfiltered experience of an ultimate reality. Murray's IR article is referenced in this section as a more sensible approach to the matter.