A friend sent me the following question which may be of general interest: “Do personal events that happen in your life go in the UL or UR? I feel UR and then of course they can influence UL?”
I replied: "Good question. Ken Wilber refers to events, personal and otherwise, as ‘occasions.’ Every occasion in our lives is a holon and therefore has four quadrants. For example, you meet a friend for coffee. When you shake his hand, that’s individual behavior, which is mapped in the Upper Right quadrant along with a correlated brain state. You are also having some feeling --pleasure; you’re glad to see him. That’s Upper Left. The meeting creates a ‘we space,’ a relationship characterized by mutual respect and shared ideas, beliefs, and values. That is the Lower Left quadrant. Sitting in the coffee shop, you are functioning appropriately in a system governed by rules of behavior and customs–placing your order, waiting to be served, tipping the server, etc. That goes into the LR quadrant.
Everything you do, everything that happens to you, can be analyzed in this way. Every personal event has an individual interior and exterior and a collective interior and exterior–four quadrants. And, of course, as you point out, they mutually influence one another."
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Thanks Charles! Ok wow so they are holons
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Yes, and all holons have 4 quadrants. The only exception to this is so-called ‘social holons.’ Those are collective exterior realities like ecosystems, political parties, athletic teams, capitalist economies, etc. They differ from individual holons in having no ‘central monad’ or control center. Humans, dogs, and birds have a central monad, an interior controller or will, that confer on them agentic unity. When you decide to get up from your chair and walk to the door, your whole body-mind, your whole self goes. Brain, lungs, hands, and feet have no choice; they are going to the door. By contrast, each part of a social holon is an individual holon with a central monad that allows it to leave the social holon whenever it wants to. Thus, a goose in a flock on the wing usually stays in formation, but it doesn’t have to. It can fly off in any direction it wishes.
So it is more correct to say that all individual holons have 4 quadrants but social holons do not. If you find this a tad confusing, you are not alone. For a complete explanation, see Integral Spirituality, pp. 145-152.
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Charlie,what confuses me in this system is when I hear the phrase “you are not part of the Universe, the Universe is a part of you.” From a metaphysical view using abstruse and convoluted logic, this is a very old kind of spiritual reasoning. I wonder if you can shed some light on how in ILP the Universe is a part of humans? I can understand “a part of the Universe is you or a part of you” or “we participate in the Universe so we are one with the Universe.” That makes sense to me.
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I can live with that. A Duoverse or Oneness with…(choose whatever is the Absolute for you). I like your metaphor! I would suggest that while the child maybe lonely he is also loving. He breaks his toys, cares for his toys, and even makes new toys.
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Yes, the confusing phrase is indeed an ancient kind of spiritual teaching. It is part of an interpretation of a direct experience of Ultimate Nondual Reality, often called satori in Zen Buddhism and “Waking Up” in Integral spirituality. All such interpretations or explanations are paradoxical and beyond the powers of your dualistic mind to resolve the paradox. You are part of the universe and the universe is part of you. That makes no sense, but if we quit trying to resolve the paradox and instead just look at it, then confusion dissolves into acceptance or letting go. The paradox just is. It defeats our logic, and that’s ok.
Still, we want to do something about it. It’s unsettling; we are not at ease in a world that makes no sense. What to do? The answer is again an ancient one, not spiritual reasoning but spiritual awakening. Ken Wilber likes to express the project of Waking Up as an injunction, which in this case might be phrased as, “If you want to resolve the paradox of you and the universe, take up an appropriate meditation practice, preferably under the guidance of a qualified teacher.” In the meantime, make the paradox your friend. It’s really pretty cool.
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Good answer. I lean toward the One which is transcendent and immanent. The best things can only be expressed in silence. The second best things can be represented by symbols (to express dualites, contradictions, and paradoxes), and the least important things can be expressed discursively. I have clarity with how you expressed the idea that
I have heard here though, really for the first time, “you are not part of the universe, the universe is part of you.” With all the caveats about words not being able to grasp the ungraspable, maybe it is true but it is slopy and unbalanced logic. BUT, maybe there are fractals of the universe (multiverses) in all the innumerable waves of being and becoming that come in and out of existence, When you figure it out you’ll tell me, OK? 
(I did understand the injunction, it is more about being than thinking. I had a kundalini bomb drop on me in 2004 and it has been slowly moving up to the top of my head. White light is now pretty much consolidating at my third eye and slowly, ever so slowly, making a permanent spot in the crown chakra. My head feels much lighter, sometimes I feel like a ghost or invisible. I am part of kundalini yoga at a studio and really like the teacher. She is definitely filled with good energy.)
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Underlying this conversation is the ancient doctrine of the Two Truths. Humans have access to Relative Truth, which is everything we know from experience, history, science, art, and so on. Absolute Truth is also available to us, but only via a Waking Up experience. The statement “you are not part of the universe, the universe is part of you” comes from the Absolute realm. In the relative domain, of course we are part of the universe, and “the universe is part of you” makes no sense, as noted above.
I’m not fond of stating Absolute Truth in terms of parts; it smacks of duality. A better approach is the wonderful dialectic created by the great Buddhist mystic Nagarjuna:
You are part of the universe.
You are not part of the universe.
You are both part of the universe and not part of the universe.
You are neither part of the universe nor not part of the universe.
Have fun with that.
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Of course, the other part of the paradox can also be deconstructed by Nagarjuna’s dialectic:
The universe is part of you.
The universe is not part of you.
The universe is both part of you and not part of you.
The universe is neither part of you nor not part of you.
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I like it. From what I can tell it covers about all the bases. Emptiness is empty. I think it’s fun to play with these words and there’s something to continually examining the good, true and the beautiful. It’s the healthiest and most noble way of experience (in my opinion) even if we can’t approach Being in a relative sense, even if we can’t ever achieve full and permanent enlightenment through contemplation in this realm. Keeping the soul as pure as possible through loving kindness and contemplation on being one with the whole is better than anything else to maintain wellbeing (in my opinion). And the extra bonus if you really are able to open up is you get nice blissful feelings running through your body. What’s not to like?
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Hi Sidra, I have studied the Christian mystics both Teresas, St. John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Saint Bonaventure, Thomas Merton and especially Meister Eckhart. In someways they had a more difficult road to travel because they have to explain the Trinity and then explain what Eckhart called “the ultimate ground of being”.
I like Elkhart because he didn’t fool around. He preached that there was a ground of being from which the Trinity itself came forth. He like everyone else in the west was influenced by Plato and he couldn’t posit a simple, non-divisible, unqualified, etc., entity and match that with the Trinity because you have three persons with one essence and that does not correspond to the Platonic One.
The others were more interested in prayer life and wrote mostly introductory works for novices that didn’t tackle a lot of theological issues. So how do you explain Christ has no body but yours? It has to be a mystery. There is no way you can talk about transcendence and imminence without using metaphor. By the way, I was basically using Plato and Plotinus who in a strange way could be thought of as being more eastern than western, not the Asian wisdom traditions.
Again, I would like to note that I believe we are all self biased and whether we like it or not we believe what we believe is true. I try to be mindful of what I say is not the Truth but one perspective. I’m throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks.
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The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.
The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace Num 6:24-26
We are all struggling or at least I am struggling to have a tender heart coupled with an inquiring mind. This can sometimes either be or appear harsh to others because I fail so often. I wish you the best and contentment Sidra.
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Charlie, are you still up for doing another book group? I know it’s a lot to ask but for me it’s so much better getting to know people, going over material slowly, and learning. There is mostly a lot of healthy give and take on the threads but it is more of a debate than an uncovering of themes, ideas, and research that can be generated in a close group.
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