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good discussion about the 4qs & the big3

in 'integral spirituality' i heard for the first time, ken say that when the big3 value spheres(arts/morals/science) were differentiated, it should have been 4: spirituality was not differentiated

i'm trying to figure out, if the big3 value spheres are the 4q's then where does the spirituality value sphere fit into the 4q map??

any ideas????

Everything Ken talks about here is material which he has covered many times before, but somehow it never loses its impact, does it...  For example, in SES he explained his view that a universe is created each time a boundary is drawn, meaning that suddenly there is an inside (2 left quadrants) and an outside (2 right quadrants):  'My own claim is that the distinction interior/exterior is not an emergent quality, but rather exists from the first moment a boundary is drawn; exists, that is, from the moment of creation.' (SES) 

And I find Ken's explanation of microgeny and how it fits into his spiritual vision of the Kosmos so beautiful... Again, he's explained it before, eg in the interview with Larry Wachowski, co-director of The Matrix, but it continues to entrance me:

'...everybody knows ontogeny and phylogeny, but there's also microgeny, which means the moment to moment movement through the sequence, and so, for example if I see an apple, the microgenetic movement is, there's an impulse, there's an impression, there's a simple sensation, then I form an image, that I might think about an apple as a concept and then I can have my personal reactions to it, et cetera.... And microgeny recapitulates ontogeny which recapitulates phylogeny which recapitulates cosmology. So from the Big Bang up to this moment is all that same sequence of the unfolding of the four quadrants but it's also repeated moment to moment out of that empty origin, right now, moment to moment. And that's the interesting thing about it because when you discover your original face, the face you had before the Big Bang, then you've discovered that moment as well - that's the satori moment, that's realising this radical self that's all-embracing and all-encompassing - out of that moment to moment all that thing's emerged, all the quadrants emerged, all the levels, all the lines, that same origin point that you're talking about, and that is what holds the quadrants together, because the quadrants are just dimensions or aspects of that origin, moment to moment, this very moment now.'

The integral vision as 'the view from 50,000 feet'.

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'This is all the time you'll ever have'.
~ Dr Hannibal Lecter

yes yes yes !!! absa-fuckin-lootley!

have read most of his books and have heard every dialogue on i-n and isc and have personally never heard him include spirituality as the fourth value sphere (along with arts/morals/science)which should have differentiated along with them

it makes so much sense and of course, it stayed behind at mythic ...

but if arts/morals/science also fits into the 4q map, where does it go? arts is UL, morals is LL and science is the Rqs

is it along with arts in the UL ? but isn't it also LL ?

and why am i obsessing about this anyway ?

 

Fairy-faye,

I see you're an Integral geek like me. I've heard basically all of the IN and ISC dialogues at least once and most of the IN videos and Ken's Kosmic Consciousness CDs and read all his wilber.shambhala.com stuff..and ...oh my god...I have no life...but surely this is the life...

no seriously, I loved the notion of the fourth 'big' being spirituality, but I agree that it is problematic trying to make it correspond with the quadrants. What is just as interesting is trying to see how what he says about the big four fitting in with the integral post-metaphysics stuff (see Appendix II of Integral Spirituality which I highly recommend - one of his best pieces of writing I've read yet.) I think that it can be worked in there more comfortably than using the quadrants - because when you see what he is saying about integral post-metaphysics, you see that the quadrants can be divided in so many other ways.

 

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"The god you don't believe in I don't believe in either" - paraphrased from a statement by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi - directed at Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and those holding similar views/beliefs.

fairyfaye:

but if arts/morals/science also fits into the 4q map, where does it go? arts is UL, morals is LL and science is the Rqs

is it along with arts in the UL ? but isn't it also LL ?

and why am i obsessing about this anyway ?

 

Art, Morals and Science are I, We, It. The 4th quad is just It's. Spirituality should be all four (or simply Spirit God in 1st person I, 2nd person You/We, 3rd person It or It's), but if we want to put it somewhere most specifically for discovery (usually, I guess) it would be UL.

As an artist, I have long lamented this fact without being able to put it in these exact words. But, every Great artist (cap. G) has eventually realized that their seeking and expressing culminates, basically, one way or another, in Spirit. The search for art is the search for truth is the search for spirit because spirit is the end or culmination of that search.

This has, however, been lost in the last 300-400 years. Certainly in the 20th century, influenced not only by modernity (and the LLF and Flatland) but by postmoderity and an aperspectival worldspace where we can find no ultimate meaning, so, as far as art goes, well, whatever fits your particular fancy.

Do you get what I mean? Art is not used to search for or express spirit nowadays. At least not directly nor with any conscious awareness. Just watch the Grammys

One other note, the arts are a 4Q affair always. So what I understand to be meant by that is just what is being expressed in the arts, which wold be interiors -UL, LL. (And then that can't be done without the exterior Quads. UR is the artwork itself. LR is the techno modes and means etc. to produce it.)

Peace, Tim

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"With whom or with what are you in communion at this moment?"
. . ."I?" he replied, almost mechanically. "Why not with anyone or anything."
"You must be a marvel . . . if you are able to continue in that state for long."
-Constantin Stanislavsky

Greetings fairyfaye,

I think that Ken refers to Art, Morals and Science as being equivalent to the 4 quadrants for at least 2 reasons. One is to give people an intuitive "feel" of what is involved in the 4 quadrant map. If you began with something as seemingly abstract as "perspectives" you would immediately lose half of the audience. The other is that although every occasion is tetra-enacted or a four quadrant affair, certain disciplines specialize in certain perspectives. Every discipline is always already a perspective that means that perspectives come first which means that there is no discipline that could be the definition of one of the quadrants. So Art is "essentially" but not "exclusively" an ul discipline. Morals are "essentially" but not "exclusively" a ll discipline and so on. Or you could say that for Art you NEED an I. For Morals, you NEED a WE. For Science, you NEED an IT. But obviously none of the quadrants can really be separated from the others.

I think the reason Ken refers to them as "the big three" is because of their importance in human history. This would easily explain why Spirituality could be considered one of "the big four". Or Spirituality and Religion. I also think you could consider "the big four" to be "the big four developmental lines" in human history. So if a "value sphere" is roughly equivalent to a developmental line, which I think it is, then Spirituality would be Essentially but not Exclusively in the ul quadrant, as a discipline.

Anyways, those are some of my thoughts on the subject. I thank you very much for raising the question. I had a good lot of fun thinking about it.

Peace,

Jeffrey