A potentially interesting way to think about Spiral Dynamics is by looking at the chakra system. The patterns map very well onto each other.
1. Root Chakra -- Beige Level (survival basics)
2. Sacral Chakra -- Purple Level (accepting others/tribal level)
3. Solar Plexus Chakra -- Red Level (confidence and control)
4. Heart Chakra -- Blue Level (Love and inner peace/authoritative)
5. Throat Chakra -- Orange Level (Communication/Science and entrepreneurship)
6. Third Eye Chakra -- Green Level (Big picture, intuition, imagination/egalitarian)
7. Crown Charka -- opening of Second Tier (Inner and outer beauty)
With the opening of the Second Tier, we return to the Root Chakra, opening it further, as Yellow is the "survival" level of the second tier and Turquoise is the "sense of abundance" level of the second tier.
In Spiral Dynamics, one goes from individualistic (odd numbers) to communitarian (even numbers). The chakras alternate between masculine (odd numbers) to feminine (even numbers). Each needs to be balanced in a yin-yang paradoxical fashion.
I have little doubt that this is more than coincidence. Whether one believes in the kinds of energies associated with the chakra system, it is certainly not impossible that the chakra system was a kind of intuitive realization of the emergentist process psychosocial model of Spiral Dynamics. And if you do believe in the chakra system, this is a potentially powerful synthesis.
2 comments:
Interestingly, if you look more closely at the Tantric system (the origin of what we now think of as the "chakra" system) you never find individual psychology separate from (a) universal consciousness and (b) transcendent consciousness.
There seems to be a pattern in the last 50 years or so of westerners turning east - they discover something, take one isolated element (chakras) then make it "westernized" (spiral dynamics) and then declare, "Well, the east may have been on to something but we westerners are much more complex and intelligent (Wilber's All Quadrant-All Level system, or AQAL).
The problem is, at some point, the westerners, after a few decades finding their borrowing to have failed, look again and realized they missed something when they first extracted (misappropriated) the elements from the East.
So take chakras. These are conscious-energy focal points for a universal energy (physical, pranic, mental and beyond) which in itself is an expression of what Jean Gebser calls "the ever present origin" - the originating principle of this and all universes (not the abstract "multiverse" of physicists but the many worlds of virtually all classic cultures).
This is why there is a direct connection between the "chakras" of the individual and the consciousness of world cultures, because both are phenomena equally (though one on the individual and the other on the societal level) reflecting the transcendent.
Sri Aurobindo has eloquently written about this in his socio-political writings, "The Human Cycle: The Psychology of Social Development" and "The Ideal of Human Unity."
The difference between his writing and that of spiral dynamics or Wilber is that in every sentence, once you learn how to read "between" (within?) the lines, you'll find always implicit the complex interaction of the transcendent, universal and individual, as well as the full complement of outer or gross consciousness, inner or subliminal consciousness, subconcient or infrataional and supranational consciousness, all expressing through an ever-shifting mixture of physical, pranic/vital and mental consciousness.
It is neither hierarchical or holoarchical (Wiber's term) but transrational, or "veridical" as Jean Gebser puts it.
While your criticisms are generally valid, I am wondering what, specifically, they are addressing in what I in fact wrote. I don't think I make any sort of claim of superiority or greater complexity. I'm not sure that my suggestion that there was a Western rediscovery means that the rediscovery is more complex, since the original had much more time to be developed. I'm suggesting we might look to what has already been developed, since they have had the head start.
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