INTRODUCTION Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 PART II Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 PART III Page 1 Page 2 PART IV Page 1 Page 2 APPENDIX A APPENDIX B NOTES Notes 1-15 Notes 16-35 Notes 36-44 Notes 45-56

Part II. ZONE #1: The Insides of the Interior (page 4)

The I-Boundary

     We have seen that when it comes to the interior I and its self-boundary, there are things that are internal to this I and things are that are inside this I, and sometimes they are not the same thing.

      What, then, actually establishes or creates the agency of the self or "I," the agency or pattern that determines whether something is internal or external to the self? Several items, but one of the most important is the self's own past history. Each I prehends its previous I. The present-I is thus a prehensive unification of all past I's, which are now internal to the present-I. The "I" of this moment prehends the "I" of the previous moment, and thus the feeler of one moment becomes the felt of the next: all the feelings of my yesterdays are tucked into my present I: all of my yesterdays are, to one degree or another, enfolded in the I of right now, they are internal to this present I. This is, of course, karma.

      This internality, this pattern that is I, is the agency of the self, reflected especially but not exclusively in the self's will or intentionality. This intentionality or agency is freely emerging or unfolding in each moment, and enfolding or enveloping its previous moment (free will plus determinism, creativity plus karma), which is why the I is not merely its past, but neither can the I escape its past. That movement of transcend-and-include is simply one example of the external/internal axis: each moment transcends (or is external to) the previous moment, which becomes internal to (or enfolded in) the new moment.

     That is why the vertical axis of external/internal is so important in self development. As it is now widely understood by developmentalists and summarized by Robert Kegan, the subject of one stage of development becomes the object of the subject of the next stage. (This unfoldment/enfoldment is the large-scale or macro-movement correlate of Whitehead's prehension, which covers the micro-scale. The latter looks at moment-to-moment touch, the former looks at what happens over longer periods of months or years, and they both find the same general tendency: unfoldment and enfoldment, or transcend and include, or external and internal, or creativity and karma).

     It is the self's history of being-in-the-world that is crucial in helping to define what is internal to that self, what is real and true for that self. What this means is that interior holons are internal to the self when they follow the karmic patterns of the self laid down as kosmic habits and present now as the agency of the self (and are external to it when they do not).

     This does not imply that what is internal is always healthy; a history of untruthfulness on the part of the self, or oppression on the part of others toward the self, can create an unhealthy, inauthentic, or dys-eased self-boundary, an inauthentic internality code, an inauthentic or false self--but it is nevertheless still the karmic history that is helping to define the code or agency, helping to define what is right for this particular self and what is not.

     Thus, each interior self or I-space has a regulative boundary that establishes the integrity of the self and allows its interfacing with the world. Phenomena that arise within the boundary of that I-space are inside the I; phenomena that arise inside the I and are following the agency of that I are internal to that I. Just as foreign elements like parasites can be inside a cell but not internal to it, so foreign elements can be inside my self but not internal to it (they are inside my self but not following its agency--they have a mind of their own). The internality of a holon is that which establishes its self-identity. Internal doesn't just mean something is inside a holon, but that it belongs there according to that holon's history of being-in-the-world. Items that do not follow this pattern or agency are external to that holon's regime (and are so experienced).³⁰

     As we saw, these external elements sometimes involve pathology (as when internal impulses become external "its"). The relation of externality is not, however, always or even usually pathological. Sometimes the external elements are simply items that are "over the head" of the present self (just as a molecule is over the head of an atom). External simply means anything that is not following the agency of the holon (in this case, not following the agency, will, or intentionality of the self or "I").

     Those events that are "over the head" of the present self--and are thus experienced as external to the self--include transcendence; and the most common form of that, as we have often seen, is prehension itself, or the moment-to-moment feeling of the present as it transcends-and-includes its previous felt moment. The previous moment becomes internal to the present moment, which is external to it. That is why, in my moment to moment existence, I feel that I am moving beyond the previous moment, and yet the previous moment is enfolded in my awareness. The previous moment is contained in the present moment, but the present moment is not contained in the previous moment--and so goes the Whiteheadian flow of Spirit's holarchical unfolding....

Transcend-and-Include

     If "internal" means any element or subholon that follows the agency of another holon, then external simply means: anything that does not. Sometimes the external element is at the same level of development; sometimes at a lower level of development; sometimes at a higher level. As Varela often points out, a molecule is internal to a cell, but the cell is external to its own molecules: all of the molecule is in the cell, but not all of the cell is in the molecule. The cell is "over the head" of the molecule, it transcends it in many important ways (for example, the molecule is following the agency of the cell, but not vice versa).

     These external event-horizons signal transcendence. Transcend-and-include means something new and higher and external to the present entity comes into being (transcendence), but the present entity is taken up, included, and enfolded in the new occasion as an internal thread or strand in its makeup. (Some people would call that eros and agape, respectively, but those people probably think geese have feelings.)

     Thus, transcend-and-include means external-and-internal. The "many become one" (which means, the many become internal to the new one) and "are increased by one" (which means, the new one is external or beyond the many, although it is in turn transcended-and-included).

     So an atom is internal to a molecule, but the molecule is external to the atom. Notice that the molecule is not outside the atom-- outside the atom is just more atoms. When the atom "looks" outside itself, it sees other atoms, but it cannot see molecules, or cells, or organisms--not in their wholeness--but sees clearly only the phenomena at its own atomic level. The molecule is not outside the atom but external and senior to the atom (the molecule is on a higher level than the atom), and therefore the atom cannot even see the molecule. Thus, in the entire phenomenological space of atoms, there are no molecules anywhere to be seen. (Likewise, in the phenomenological space of the blue meme, for example, there are no orange, green, yellow, or turquoise events anywhere to be seen. Literally.)

     The point is that indigenous event horizons are established not just by consciousness (interior and exterior), not just by space (inside and outside), but also and deeply by time, in which each holon in each quadrant prehends its previous moment of existence, makes that previous moment internal to its being, enfolds and embraces and envelops it, a moment of eros reaching up, a moment of agape reaching down. At instances of great evolutionary novelty, when emergent leaps of transcendence make the creativity component of each moment's karma-and-creativity significantly outweigh the dull density of the karmic components, then entirely new levels, new classes, new orders of holons stunningly emerge on the scene, testament to Spirit's lila or spontaneously creative play, but a play that tetra-meshes with Spirit's own play of the moment before, embracing, enfolding, and agapically loving that which came previously in the dance. Internality weaves the Kosmos together holarchically, enfolding more and more, embracing more and more, loving more and more, until a Spirit is revealed that transcends all and includes all, a Spirit nonetheless fully present in the first transcendence and the first inclusion, which to say, fully present from the very start of this or any universe.

     Internality is the form of spacetime's self-prehension, a self-organization through self-transcendence (to put it in dry third-person terms), or--in first-person terms much more accurate--the love that moves the sun and other stars.

     The "external/internal" dimension in its most essential nature is the vertical dimension or the "transcend/external-and-include/internal" axis of a development that is envelopment. To be internal is to be agapically loved. Internality underlies the enfoldment principle of integral metatheory, and it can be found operating in all four quadrants (more examples of which will follow). Such is the height/depth axis for navigational flow in the AQAL ocean: transcendence and inclusion, unfoldment and enfoldment, creativity and karma, Eros and Agape, operating wherever a compound individual transcends and includes its juniors, which is to say: all the way up, all the way down, leaving no holon in the Kosmos untouched by Eros and Agape, expressed in the higher reaches of the human domain as a wisdom that lets go of everything and a compassion that embraces everything, a sophisticated expression nonetheless of the same indigenous perspectives available to every sentient being across the spectrum of the miracle of manifestation.

Summary of Individual and Collective

     We have seen that individual holons are themselves composed of other individual holons--they are compound individuals that are internally composed of other compound individuals (which we called agency-in-superagency). Any compound individual can be looked at from within its own boundaries (as a first-person I) or from without its own boundaries (as a third-person it). At the same time, each individual holon (I/it) exists only in networks of other holons at the same level of complexity or development (i.e., agency is always agency-in-communion); these self-organizing networks or systems of compound individuals are societal, communal, or collective holons (we/its).³¹

     A system, to the degree that it is a functional whole, is indeed a holon; but what is internal to this holon is not individuals but their transactions (a point to be explored in more detail below). There is no I/it without a corresponding we/its, yet neither can those be reduced to each other. A collective or systems holon is a compound network, not a compound individual. A group of organisms is not itself an organism. In all systems or compound networks, the compound individuals in the systems are agencies-in-mutual-communion, not subholons in a leviathan; partners, not parts.

     Interiors and exteriors and singulars and plurals cannot be reduced to each other because perspectives are not interchangeable (hence, the nonexclusion principle). "I," "we/thou," and "it" are a sampling of the indigenous perspectives available to sentient beings, who, in order to manifest, must take up a position in spacetime relative to each other--that is, relative to other sentient beings. Hence, every sentient being aware of another sentient being is a first person relative to a second person; and every communication between them is a third person relative to them. (Peirce intuitively understood this with his definition of a sign: any aspect of reality that stands for another, to another: and there you have three persons.)

     There is no way around this in a universe composed of sentient holons who only manifest with each other, to each other. Thus, prior to (or, at the least, a simultori to) feelings, awareness, things, or processes we find: perspectives. The notion of perspectives appears to give us a much more accurate reading of the texture of the Kosmos than do notions such as things, events, processes, systems, feelings, prehension, awareness, or consciousness, because all of those arise only in a matrix of perspectives. One version of that matrix is called AQAL.

     Perspectives are not perspectives on (or of) a pregiven reality or universally given world; rather, each perspective helps to enact or bring forth a phenomenological world (hence, the enactment principle). This is not a mere subjectivism, however, because subjective realities are only part of the story (the part of the story enacted by first-person perspectives); in order to manifest in world of already composed of multiple perspectives, those first-person perspectives (of any I or we) must mesh with a world of objective perspectives (of it and its), so that subjectivities must take their place in world of objectivities. "Objective reality" is not a fiction, but is itself in turn only a part of the overall story (the part of the story enacted by third-person perspectives). Each perspective, then, both captures and brings forth a dimension of the universe, and those dimensions must mesh (for us, tetra-mesh) if they are to exist in the same world.³²

     Those first-, second-, and third-person perspective-dimensions, in their nonreflexive forms, are present whenever the universe contains three or more prehensive entities or holons (which is to say, always)--the four quadrants go all the way down. That is, if some sort of proto-awareness, feeling, or prehension goes all the way down, the quadrants go all the way down. There is no interior without exterior, but also no singular without plural. To say the quadrants go all the way down is to say that the Kosmos is built of perspectives, not perception, not feeling, not awareness, not matter, not consciousness, not energy--for all of those are abstractions from the real world where all of them are always already a perspective. Perception, feeling, awareness, prehension, and consciousness all privilege the monological subject, which exists nowhere in the real world; hence, the "death of the philosophy of consciousness" which is part of the move to a truly post-metaphysical stance.

     We looked at a single cell as an example. If, with the wisdom traditions (as well as many influential modern philosophers), we assume some form of pan-interiorism, then we assume that the cell has some form of sensation or proto-experience--it has an interior as well as an exterior. Further, the cell clearly recognizes boundary violations (as when a parasite invades it), and therefore the cell registers an inside and an outside to its interiors and its exteriors. If we add the notion of cellular solidarity--which simply suggests that if cells have exteriors in common, they must have interiors in common--then we have the four quadrants with their insides and outsides, even with a cell. This is why these 8 phenomenological spaces appear to be indigenous to manifest existence. Not their self-reflexive forms, of course, but their simple registration in the sensitive or prehensive Kosmos.

     By the time we get to humans, these 8 primordial perspectives are embedded in various explicit and implicit ways in natural languages, ways that can more consciously be disclosed, honored, and employed using an integral calculus of indigenous perspectives, which pays attention to the embeddedness (i.e., natural, not metaphysical) of phenomenological spaces using the heuristic guidelines of nonexclusion, enfoldment, and enactment.

     Doing so, we noticed that an occasion in any of the quadrants can be viewed from within its own boundary or from without its own boundary. (In reference to fig. 2, this simply means that a holon in any of the four quadrants has an inside and an outside.) That gives us (at least) eight different methodologies of human inquiry, and we are in the process of discussing examples of all eight--although we have grouped them, for this presentation, as the inside and outside of the interior and exterior, or four general phenomenological horizons, hori-zones, or zones, which are event horizons that are tetra-evoked by the subjects enacting those spaces. All 8 indigenous perspectives are hori-zones, but these four zones particularly highlight certain important features of phenomenological event horizons--namely, by focusing on the inside and outside of any boundary, we can pay special attention to knowledge by acquaintance (or touch) versus knowledge by description (or distance): the first-person and third-person dimensions of being-in-the-world, both of which are important, but neither of which can justifiably be privileged.

     (This excerpt is devoted to zone #1, or the inside-interior, disclosed especially by phenomenology and hermeneutics. The next excerpt is devoted to zone #2, or the outside-interior, disclosed especially by structuralism and cultural anthropology; and succeeding excerpts are devoted to zone #3 and zone #4, or the inside-exterior and the outside-exterior, disclosed especially by empiricism, behaviorism, autopoiesis theories and systems theories. The net result of a walk through our own indigenous perspectives is an Integral Methodological Pluralism that offers a more charitable understanding of the Kosmos, one that makes explanatory room for the many methodologies that people are already using anyway, and one that allows us to condense and instantiate this integral methodological pluralism in an IOS--an Integral Operating System, which acts a constant reminder to leave none of these indigenous perspectives behind in our rush to comprehension.)

     We start with hermeneutics, or how individual "I's" can understand each other, interpret each other, come to some sort of mutual understanding with each other--the miracle of shared interiors. What is a "we"? The more you think about it, the more amazing and mysterious it becomes, this secret interior place where you and I must touch if we are to understand each other at all....