Brighton Integral Salon

Ken Wilber's recent interview with Salon has provoked some debate in integral circles about the use of jargon when talking about all things integral. A great copywriter, someone who makes a good living my clear and careful use of words said the interview "really shows up how jargon-ridden and mostly incomprehensible the current presentation of integral is".

The debate has brought some interesting ideas to the table and some clarity of speech on a few topics.

John Rowan, transpersonal therapist and LIC list member, said it takes two minutes to explain to a group what 'transpersonal' means. He was asked to tell the LIC list what it did mean and his response is posted below so the Brighton Salon can use it as a start for their own conversations on this topic.

"We are all on a path of psychospiritual development,
whether we know it or not and whether we like it or
not. There are three main stages on this path: the
first is the prepersonal, studied in developmental
psychology, where we have not yet got the idea of
being a separate individual. The second - usually
post adolescent - is the personal, which is what
most psychologists study. Here we learn how to
play roles in society, and society gives us as it were
an escalator to help us move on to get better and
better at playing these roles, until we arrive at a
mature ego. At this point society gives up, and
we are on our own. We MAY then move on into
the transpersonal, where we start to take responsibility
for our own life, not referring all the time to other
people to tell us who we are, and seeing the world
through our own eyes rather than through the eyes
of others. This is the first stage of the transpersonal,
which Wilber calls the Centaur and Jenny Wade calls
the Authentic and Maslow calls self-actualisation.
I often call it the Existential stage of development.
At this stage people tend to talk about ultimate
concerns, rather than God or The Absolute. We MAY
than move on into the Subtle realm, where we admit
that we are spiritual beings in touch with the sacred,
the holy, the numinous, the soul, the psychic centre
(in Aurobindo's terms). This is the world of deity
figures, archetypes (so gender is important), symbols
and images - the imaginal world. This is a place of
deep juicy compassion and accurate intuition. And
then we MAY move on further into the Causal realm,
where there are no symbols or images, no signposts
or landmarks, no limitations, no descriptions, this is
the deep ocean of spirituality or mysticism.

So the transpersonal comprises these three way
stations - the Centaur, the Subtle and the Causal.
Of these, the Centaur is the most accessible and
the most often encountered. It still has vestiges of
the personal about it, and can be inconsistent in that
way. It is hard to get hold of at first, and many people
do not enter it until they have had a crisis or some kind.
This most often happens at the age of 33, plus or minus
three years.

I do not talk about the Nondual, because that is not
on the path. It is not a further stage on the journey.
It is something different altogether.

Hope this helps - best wishes.

John R"