Then, as vision-logic opens gnosis, "the capacity to draw from and appreciate insights from non-rational sources of information increases...the more regular practice of turning inward and observing one's own mental processes also often leads to the spontaneous experience of a direct mode of being in which knower and known momentarily merge, and the personal self-sense disappears..."
This experience of transcendence of the subject-object stance of formal operational thinking is transformative. Although it often first produces a temporary disdain for conventional knowledge and thought, as it matures, it eventually enhances intellectual capacity. Vision-logic becomes the basis for a more and more free, flexible, and appreciative relationship to, and a profoundly enriched capacity for, rigorous formal operational thinking. There is the recognition that "all perspectives are both true and partial including my own." On that basis arises the humility necessary to bring "awakened consciousness" into compassionate and respectful re-engagement with linear thinking. At this point, mature vision-logic is spontaneously interested in engaging the implications of the insight Wilber succinctly summarizes, "that all perspectives interrelate, or that no perspective is final...does not mean that there are not relative merits among them."
Looking Ahead
Advanced vision-logic only began to appear fairly recently in cultural evolution, so it is still statistically quite rare, and therefore only a marginal emergent voice in popular cultural discourse. However, it is appearing more and more, and it's rapidly growing in its capacity for engagement with popular discourse. There, it can be recognized not only by its awakened consciousness, but by its courage and willingness to go "off the reservation" of metaphorical, poetic, and mystical expression, developing a capacity for intellectually rigorous re-engagement with formal operational reasoning.
That's exactly what I'm aiming to engage here -- a rational, yet more than merely rational, examination of our cultural dynamics. I'm looking directly at the kinds of thinking at play, and the distinctions among their modes of thought, in order to set a context for a deeper level of this conversation.
A vigorous debate about the terms of the "marriage of science and spirituality" has been underway for many decades among philosophers of science and religion, but has not yet taken place within a single coherent conversation. A whole series of segmented sub-conversations have occurred, many of them using non-intersecting kinds of thought. And they've all mostly been conducted in the absence of serious meditative practice and realization.
What will happen if that conversation continues on a higher level, informed by practice, realization, and awareness of the different kinds of thinking we are engaging, making use of these Integral developmental insights?
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