Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 17:49:11 +0100

To: Don Salmon

From: Thomas Jordan <Thomas.Jordan@redcap.econ.gu.se>

Subject: A first try

Dear Don,

I have tried to formulate the issues I'm grappling with. However, I'm still so confused about them that I am unable to be coherent. I only know that some observations and questions I have are related to each other, but not how. Instead of waiting for more coherence to emerge, I'll present you with some disjointed fragments. They overlap a lot, but I can do no better right now. Also, I'm not sure you can follow my thinking, since I don't try to explain the concepts I use. But since you're familiar with Kegan and Wilber, I think I might be at least reasonably comprehensible. BTW, have you read Wilber's Eye of Spirit? He has a quite comprehensive discussion of the relationship between different lines of development there, well worth reading and reflecting upon.

Here we go:

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FRAGMENT 1

In most theories of consciousness development, I miss a clear differentiation between development of abilities and develoment of self-sense. For example, it is not the *ability* to witness internal processes such as perception, thinking, evaluation, desiring, visioning, etc. that is crucial, but the emergence of stable awareness that is not *subject* to desires, opinions, perceptions, emotions and alluring visions. The ability to consciously witness one's own reactions, desires, emotions and thinking does not automatically imply a full-fledged ability to contain them without acting upon them.

Pure consciousness, awareness that is not bound to a particular self-representation, does not require very sophisticated cognitive abilities. Disidentifying from egocentrism is possible without developing metasystematic reasoning, without being able to pinpoint the subtleties of cultural conditioning of the self, without any advanced role-taking abilities. It is not even necessary to develop a universalistic morality. Disembedding from ego removes a major obstacle to developing universal compassion, but is no guarantee that it will happen. Perhaps most disturbing, witness consciousness does not automatically lead to development of interpersonal skills, such as unconditional listening, creating trust and a safe atmosphere and how to convey respect for another’s integrity.

Witness consciousness undermines egocentrism. The compulsiveness of defending a grandiose self-image and the absolute centrality of satisfying desires are deconstructed. What replaces them as motivational dynamics? There is a high probability that compassion will emerge, but not with certainty. One might as well develop a kind of relativistic cynicism: anything goes, nothing matters. After all, you can witness your compassion dispassionately as well, without necessarily act upon it.

Development of a witness self implies an ability to have strong emotions, without being forced to act out or repress them.

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FRAGMENT 2

Wilber forcefully argues that there is a quite orderly sequence of developmental stages, roughly ordered into preconventional, conventional, postconventional and transpersonal. When describing the first three phases, he relies quite heavily on the piagetian tradition, which postulates stages of growing cognitive complexity. Wilber explicitly states that consciousness development is not equal to cognitive development, but nevertheless the stages of cognitive development seem to form the core of stage descriptions up to Wilber’s existential stage (vision-logic). The transpersonal stages, however, are primarily defined in terms of how the self-sense is experienced, in particular the transcendence of the separate-self sense into an experience of pure consciousness and nonduality. Wilber mentions postpostconventional forms of cognition (prajna, gnosis, savikalpa, nirvikalpa), but does not specify how they relate to the developmentally earlier vision-logic. My problem with this conception is that I can’t see that even a radical dissolution of the separate-self sense and an emergence of stable witness awareness has any necessary relationship to the quite advanced cognitive abilities attributed to the higher stages of postconventional development. Since I cannot see the sequential relationship, I feel that there is a qualitative difference in the basic principles defining developmental stages up to "existential" and the basic principles defining transpersonal stages. Development of the existential stage is not a necessary precondition for development of the transpersonal stages, as Wilber has described them. Wilber says that there is a crucial difference between spirituality integrated with postpostconventional cognitive abilities and other spirituality, but I don't feel the probelm is resolved by saying that only postpostconventional spirituality is real spirituality. That doesn't account for the praxis very well. Look at the last chapter in Eye of Spirit, where Wilber tries to convey a vivid image of "ever-present awareness". What is postconventional about it? I can't see anything.

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FRAGMENT 3

Let us focus on two different dimensions of consciousness development:
I. Self-sense (or self-embeddedness)

II. Cognitive complexity

I. Major stages of the development of self-sense would be:
1. Self-as-spontaneous desires

2. Self-as-persona

3. Self-as-ego

4. Self-as-process of development

5. Self-as-witness (pure consciousness)

(Actually, I’m not even sure that the experience of pure consciousness, and of witnessing emotions, desires and thought processes is only possible for persons who have first developed the self-as-process identity. Maybe one can learn to witness emotions and thoughts without seeing oneself as a continually transforming system.)

II. Major stages of development of cognitive complexity would be, in terms of the most complex operative unit of reasoning:
1. Durable categories

2. Crosscategorical relations

3. Systems

4. Meta-systems

5. Paradigms

6. Cross-paradigmatic relations

If you haven’t developed systematic thinking, you are not really able to perceive yourself as a system, for example, seeing how your emotional reactions are conditioned by your enculturation or your childhood experiences. You are also not able to understand that other persons may have a perspective which is structurally different from your own, and therefore yields other kinds of meaning when considering the same phenomenon as you are considering.

Now, consider these two dimensions together. I’m quite sure that it is possible to develop a self-as-witness self-sense without having developed more than crosscategorical cognition. I also believe that one can develop at least paradigmatic cognition (when reasoning about the external world of phenomena) without having developed more than a self-as-ego self-sense. If this is true, is it then meaningful to postulate a neat sequence of consciousness development in terms of preconventional –> conventional –> postconventional –> transpersonal?

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FRAGMENT 4

I asked a person who incarnates for me some very tangible spiritual qualities to fill in the Loevinger sentence completion test. Some of the qualities I feel this person embodies are:
- Ability to meet each new person unconditionally.
- Ability to relate to each new experience without defenses, accepting the world as it is.
- Absence of need for ego-gratification
- Absence of defensiveness regarding worldview, self-esteem, criticism, etc.
- Well-developed ability to accept other persons unconditionally
- A fundamental attitude of awe and positive affect in relation to the cosmos.

Does this make any sense? Do you understand in which direction I'm heading? I feel it might be important to clearly differentiate the different dimensions, in order to demonstrate that it is important to work *both* with disembedding from the separate-self sense *and* with development of cognitive and feeling abilities. I'd like to be able to specify what happens to a person who only develops in one of these dimensions.

Any thoughts? Am I heading towards a dead end? I'm acutely aware of the limitations implied by my own scant familiarity with genuine transcendence (as contact with the numinous).

Thomas