Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 14:04:19 +0100

To: ken-wilber-l@listserv.azstarnet.com

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

Subject: [theory] Re: Intellectualized Rationality

Thanks Ozguc,

for summarizing KW's reply to Rothberg. I haven't read it, but the reasoning is the same as in Eye of Spirit. My concern is not "spirituality", but more what Rothberg refers to as mindfulness. But not quite.

>Wilber replies
>that this might be an excellent idea and poses his last question to Rothberg:
>does this mindfulness come in complete form or does it develop?

Surely mindfulness develops, if mindfulness is conceived as the ability to witness your own mind. At the late formal-operational level, you are capable of observing that your personality operates as a system. Things fit together, and certain thought habits and emotional reactions have a function in the personality as a whole. At the vision-logic level you can witness how your mind is conditioned and reconstructed through interaction with the cultural and social environment, for example.

But this is not the core of ego-transcendence. Now I'm getting a bit grandiose, but at least I witness it :-): KW has yet some way to go in clearly differentiating *skills* (cognitive, emotional, volitional, interpersonal) from *self-embeddedness*. He does talk about this, but only as a general observation. Ego-transcendence is not equal to the capability to witness, but to shifting the location of the self-sense from embeddedness in a particular form (the ego, rational level) or even in a particular process (the transforming personality, existential level/centaur), to *being* the Witness. You no longer *feel* that the particular self-image you have, or even the particular personality you are wedded to, is central to your existence. There is a firm sense of existing that is not dependent on the emotions, desires, thought habits, values that the body and the mind continually give rise to. You can witness them from a position beyond them. This position is pure awareness.

But this is only products of my mind, interpretations largely based on deduction. I'm quite capable of witnessing a lot of my own functioning, but the very logic of my self is still basically egoic. Someone who has been there is in a better position to report (if they have the cognitive prerequisites, of course :-)).

Thomas