Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V

      "I agree with all of what you said," someone from the audience yelled, "but to tell you the truth, I still have trouble with the ranking that you do of spiritual experiences. How can you possibly say that nondual mysticism is higher than formless mysticism, which is higher than deity mysticism, which is higher than nature mysticism? Isn't that just your own imposed value system? Aren't you marginalizing or degrading the so-called lower expressions of spirituality? Surely the critics are right about that."

      "Shall we go into it a little bit?" The audience groaned. Joan laughed. "Oh, people, be nice.

      "Here's a simple rundown on that delicate, difficult issue of ranking spiritual occasions. But let's forget any labels right now--forget 'nature mysticism' or 'deity mysticism' or whatnot--and for now let's just focus on four of the major types of spiritual experiences. These are not the only types of spiritual experiences, just four of the more interesting ones.

      "Experience #1 is an overpowering feeling that you are one with the entire world that you see out there--you are one with nature, one with the manifest universe, one with everything in the waking state--you actually experience yourself as this oneness with all of life. This is a profound, genuine, authentic spiritual experience, I believe.

      "What happens, dear souls, is that this experience is often temporary for many people. It is not permanent, it does not last. Also, when a person has this experience, even if it tends to be permanent during the day, when they fall asleep at night and begin to dream, they do not have this experience of oneness. But some people remain conscious during the dream state, and thus if they have an experience of being one with everything in the waking realm, they might also begin to have an experience of also being one with everything in the subtle dream state. Of course, the dream state--and the overall subtle--sometimes contains images of gods, goddesses, angelic beings, bodhisattvas, beings of light and love and bliss, and so on. That's sort of what the subtle is all about, isn't it? And whether you interpret those as actual entities or just aspects of your own higher consciousness, well, they can be numinous, awe-inspiring, transcendentally divine!" Joan looked at each of us and smiled.

      "Now, we are using the example of somebody who, having had spiritual experience #1--and therefore experiences being one with everything in the waking, gross realm--now enters the dream state and eventually remains conscious during that state--so-called lucid dreaming--and eventually has an experience of being one with everything in the dream state, too. So this person has an experience of being one with everything in the waking/gross realm AND being one with everything in the subtle/dream realm. Call that spiritual experience #2.

      "Take it further. Say this person continues his or her growth and development, and thus they continue to 'strengthen' their consciousness, so that they start to remain conscious even as they enter deep, dreamless sleep. People who do so report often that they have an experience of being one with formless, infinite consciousness--or we can simply say, they experience being one with everything in the deep dreamless state (which is literally nothing: or boundless, limitless, formless). So this person has had an experience of being one with everything in the gross waking realm, in the subtle dream realm, AND in the causal formless realm. Call that spiritual experience #3.

      "Now, this is the ONLY claim that we have EVER made about the ranking of spiritual experiences: we claim that experience #3 is higher than #2, which is higher than #1.

      "Why is #2 higher than #1? Because #2 can do everything that #1 can do (namely, gross-realm unity), but it ALSO experiences a subtle-realm unity. And #3 is higher than #2, because it experiences all of those PLUS a causal-realm unity. Does anybody have any trouble with that ranking?" I looked around; nobody moved.

      "Right, there's nothing wrong with that ranking, because it is a simple description of events. In other words, each senior state has everything the junior state has plus something extra; the 'extra' part makes it deeper, wider, higher, more inclusive, take your pick. These are concentric spheres of inclusiveness. Each of those higher states are higher because they are more inclusive, less marginalizing, less partial, less exclusionary.

      "(Notice that we are not saying that the dream state is higher than the waking state, but that a consciousness that has access to both is higher than a consciousness that has access to only one of them. Technically, the dream state is not higher than the waking state, because the waking state can be extended into the dream, and then into deep sleep, so that all of them are converted to waking realities by being suffused with ever-present Wakefulness. What is higher in each case is the consciousness that grows to include more and more of these states in the brilliant clarity of ever-present awareness.)

      "So that is why we claim that some spiritual experiences are higher than others--each higher state includes the lower plus something extra--and I can see that nobody here really objects to that once they understand how we actually mean those words, as opposed to how some critics misreport it," she laughed.

      "But we definitely have to be careful when we assign names or labels to those states, because names often carry all sorts of extra baggage that we might not intend. I have to confess that I and some of my colleagues--Mark and Charles, for example--have been somewhat sloppy here. We sometimes refer to experience #1 as nature mysticism, #2 as deity mysticism, #3 as formless mysticism, and #4 as nondual mysticism--well, we didn't talk about #4, but #4 is integral or nondual mysticism, which includes the other three. Anyway, some people who call themselves 'nature mystics' actually have experiences of subtle-realm phenomena or even nondual events; some deity mystics also have causal-realm unity, and so on. Therefore, strictly speaking, we ONLY claim that the spiritual experience of #4 is higher than #3, which is higher than #2, which is higher than #1, because each senior occasion transcends and includes the junior. So when you hear us slip into easy generalizations or loose labels, please remember that we are actually talking about nothing but these increasingly inclusive states--or more specifically, a consciousness that increasingly includes more states."

      "Are those four types universals?" the same questioner yelled out.

      "Yes, of course they are, at least in some ways, because waking, dreaming, and deep sleep are universal. Of course, none of those exist apart from their AQAL setting, which includes cultural and social backgrounds. But reducing the general features of these states to nothing but cultural relativism is an agenda backed by ideology, not evidence. So let us put it this way: when a Jew in Tel Aviv goes to sleep at night, and enters the deep dreamless state, and when an Palestinian in Jerusalem goes to sleep at night, and enters the deep dreamless state--do you think those states have anything in common at all? If you believe they have anything in common, then those are what we mean by the universal features of these states; they are deep Kosmic habits available to humans anywhere on the planet.

     "More specifically, this is what we seem to find. In the Upper-Right quadrant, waking, dreaming, and deep sleep are defined, among other things, by specific brain states (or specific objective states of affairs in the human organism), such as theta waves in REM sleep and delta waves in deep sleep. Those universal, biologically given patterns or brain states (i.e., Kosmic habits of the objective domain, or formative causation acting on objective exteriors) have interior correlates in states of consciousness in the Upper-Left quadrant. As we have seen, none of the contents of these broad states of consciousness are given (which only occurs via development in an AQAL matrix). However, the broad contours of these brain states and consciousness states are given, in that all humans wake, dream, and sleep, and those general states are similar-enough wherever we find them.

      "So notice, for example: in Buddhism, the Dharmakaya is often correlated with the deep-sleep state of formless emptiness; the Sambhogakaya, with the luminous dream state; and the Nirmanakaya, with gross waking form. But Hinduism also claims that the causal body of Brahman is experienced, among many other ways, in deep formless sleep; the subtle body of Brahman, in the dream state; and the gross body, in the waking state. Green-meme reductionists are fond of saying that you can NEVER equate any part of nirguna Brahman with Buddhist Emptiness--because that would be, oh dear, to impose rigid universal abstractions on richly different pluralistic realities. But clearly, if you believe that there are ANY similarities between deep formless sleep in a Hindu and in a Buddhist, then of course you can make these types of universal comparisons. And please, nobody is oppressing somebody if we point this out. Good grief!" Joan Hazelton oppressing Buddhists was indeed pretty funny.

     "Of course, as we have often seen, when a person--Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or agnostic--comes out of the causal formless state--or if any of them has a waking-state experience of formlessness--then they most definitely interpret that experience according to all four quadrants in their own case: that is, they interpret these spiritual experiences based on their cultural background, on their social system, and on their own particular wave of development: as we said, a blue soul will interpret this largely in blue terms, an orange soul in orange terms, a green soul in participatory terms, and so on; and further, the actual forms of those will often vary from culture to culture, as determined by the AQAL matrix in which they arise.

     "All we want to do, if we are aspiring to an integral embrace, is to make sure that we don't create interpretive structures that marginalize any waves in the spectrum of consciousness, so we don't want to follow green's example and marginalize blue, orange, yellow or turquoise. At the same time, any second-tier and truly integral approach will point out when some engagements are more inclusive than others, as long as it is done with great care. This is why the green approach of pluralistic sensitivity is profoundly necessary, but not sufficient, for integral constructions: it is a preliminary preparation platform for that quantum heap into the hyperspace of second-tier consciousness, where green's own values are completed, fulfilled, included and transcended."

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V