tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7910834.post9065483541719945766..comments2023-10-15T08:40:12.715-05:00Comments on Interdisciplinary World: Chakras and Spiral DynamicsTroy Camplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16515578686042143845noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7910834.post-14339344995952545362015-06-09T10:35:48.442-05:002015-06-09T10:35:48.442-05:00While your criticisms are generally valid, I am wo...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. Troy Camplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16515578686042143845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7910834.post-54351775253375700332015-06-09T10:17:12.811-05:002015-06-09T10:17:12.811-05:00Interestingly, if you look more closely at the Tan...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.<br /><br />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).<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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). <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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." <br /><br />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. <br /><br />It is neither hierarchical or holoarchical (Wiber's term) but transrational, or "veridical" as Jean Gebser puts it. Donhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13741454531338054082noreply@blogger.com