3. Facilitating Inquiry in AQAL Space

The Invitation

If the optimistic expectations of Ken Wilber and of graduate students such as myself are not unfounded, more and more teachers and students in the coming years are going to be looking for ways to navigate and comfortably inhabit AQAL space. What is this strange territory? What geography does it evoke? In one sense, of course, AQAL is simply a map of this world of ordinary persons and objects, perspectives and systems that we already inhabit, in all its teeming multiplicity and apparent contradiction. In another sense, however - as a way of seeing, as a vision of the world that is open enough to accommodate so much that has previously divided and confounded us - it is a map of a New World, a hidden kingdom just beginning to glimmer through the cracks in the crust of the familiar.

Rumors of the bounty of this New World are already beginning to circulate widely. Integral salons have cropped up around the globe to discuss its promise and to chart initial exploratory journeys (Wilber, 2005a, Overview section, para. 4). But if these elite forums are the flagships of Integral - sleek vessels designed to make intensive forays into new territory and report back their findings - it is our ordinary schools and educational institutions that will likely serve as the great sea carriers, the passenger ships ferrying a culture from the shores of flatland to whatever riches lie beyond.

For those teachers who take up this journey, many will likely find it imperative to travel deeply into AQAL space themselves, to acquire the embodied knowledge of seasoned explorers, if not the instincts of natives. As Mark Palmer (2005), a student of Wilber, observes, AQAL is as much a sensibility as a map. That, at least, is its potential. That is the invitation extended to Integral educators, and which we will extend in turn to our students. How do we awaken this sensibility, such that it meaningfully informs the conduct of our classes and our lives?

There is no single answer to this question, of course. Every teacher will chart her own way. For those teachers who, like me, have the ears to hear the call of time, space, and knowledge, and who find it sweet, I offer the following reflections.

TSK and AQAL

As a prelude to exploring applications of the TSK vision and its associated practices to Integral pedagogy, it will be helpful to highlight some of the ways time, space, and knowledge are embedded in the fundamental conceptual structures of the Integral model. As universal dimensions or aspects of our experience, it should not be surprising, of course, to discover their presence within any theory or model of existence, but I believe it will be instructive nevertheless to call their names and draw them out of their hiding places in the AQAL framework. If Tarthang Tulku's (1980) contention is correct, that a number of our perennial human problems flow precisely from our habitual relegation of time and space to the background (p. 19) -- from our failure to adequately acknowledge and appreciate their nurturing presence -- we would do well to invite them to the Integral table.

An obvious place to begin our exploration is the four-quadrant map, first for its centrality to Integral Theory and pedagogy, but also because it purports to capture some of the fundamental features of the Kosmos. The map consists of three components: a cross which divides four basic perspectives (interior and exterior, singular and plural); diagonal arrows through each quadrant which illustrate the dynamic unfolding of forms, structures, patterns, and levels of reality over time; and the open space of the paper which accommodates them. If we take perspectives to be a function of Knowledge or "knowingness," right away the following TSK reading of the AQAL map suggests itself (see Figure 2 below):

Figure 2. TSK and the Four Quadrants

Labeling the diagonal arrows "time" is an obvious move, as that is clearly what they are intended to represent: the dynamic flow of evolution, radiating out from the central point which Wilber (1995) identifies with the Big Bang (p. 127). The placement of the other two labels was suggested to me by the following passage in Knowledge of Time and Space:

As a way of experimenting with [the] capacities of mind, we could allow events and perceptions to arise freely in awareness, in such a way that each object was space and each event time, with the separation between knower and known as knowledge. Patiently cultivated and applied in daily interactions, such a nonstandard way of experiencing could shift awareness to the quality of experience itself [my italics]. (Tarthang Tulku, 1990, p. 388)

As the lines of "separation" that establish the four basic perspectives, the AQAL cross may thus be seen to stand forth as an enactive gesture of Knowledge, a "halting" in the endless flow of seeing that calls forth world spaces. And the open ground of it all, the allowingness that gives free play to time and "substance" to the inner and outer structures of the known, is Great Space. Together, in integral embrace, these three partners dance the world into being as surely as the native perspectives Wilber evokes -- or perhaps even as none other than them.

If the above reading of the AQAL map is correct -- if its structural components are indeed describable in these terms -- the question remains whether we have anything to gain by acknowledging this. Are we just playing with words here, tacking on labels that call attention to the obvious without adding anything substantial or new? By insisting that we acknowledge their apparent presence in (and as) the "structure" of the map, are we just muddying up the post-metaphysical water, drawing low-order abstractions back into the open clearing Wilber has been at pains to establish with his emphasis on perspectives?

Before offering my thoughts here (and some of these questions will be addressed more fully in subsequent sections of the paper), I would like to look at some of the ways time, space, and knowledge make an appearance in Wilber's more recent writings. As the following paragraph should make clear, they actually feature quite prominently in some of them:

Since space is often taken as ontological and time epistemological, then in third-person terms this amounts to saying that space and time are not separate but rather are a spacetime continuum. Fleshing that out with the AQAL metatheory, we say that the exteriors of spacetime appear topographically as chains of mass-energy interlinked in various networks and systems, while interiors appear as feelings and awareness interlinked in various cascades of intimacy. But they all arise together as perspective-occasions of the self-reflective Kosmos. (Wilber, 2005c, Appendix B, para. 30)

Wilber (2005c) here is making a rather eloquent case for the inseparability of time, space, and knowledge in the manifest realm, which is wholly consonant with the TSK vision. What is significant for the suggested TSK reading of the AQAL map is that while Wilber asserts that the universe is composed of perspectives, he invokes time and space as fundamental components or aspects of the quadratic arising of any sentient holon or "perspective-occasion." Knowing and being are the same events, he writes, and with that concise statement he places time, space, and knowledge at the center of his model (Wilber, 2005c).

A word of caution is in order here. In seeking to establish the centrality of time, space, and knowledge to the AQAL map and the worldview it evokes, I am not suggesting that we consider them to be truly existent "special objects," out of which the world is built up. The TSK vision is not to be understood as a metaphysical construct or a map of "how the world really is," but first and foremost as a path of inquiry, in which time, space, and knowledge serve as points of entry to greater intimacy with Being.

As third-person signifiers, time, space, and knowledge might appear to be on par with the "low-order abstractions" mistaken for realities that Wilber (2005d) criticizes in the models of the great metaphysicians (Part 1, Integral Post-Metaphysics section, para. 16). Like "feelings" and "dharmas," they might yet be further objects of perspectives that have been elevated to the level of absolute reality in a way that eclipses the very perspectives that have disclosed them. But if a focus on time, space, and knowledge, particularly as third-person labels or objects, runs the risk of eclipsing the "priority" of perspectives in the Kosmos, it appears equally true that the notion of perspective itself presupposes the presence of time, space, and knowledge for its very meaning. For whether or not a particular sentient holon is capable of conceiving of time, space, and knowledge as particular types or facets of experience, it is clear that no prehensive occasions, no arising of whole/parts, no interactions of interiors and exteriors, could ever get off the ground without them.

Of course, such language, while provocative, overstates the point if it gives the impression that time, space, and knowledge are in some way separate from and/or ontologically prior to the tetra-enactment of AQAL space. My point is simply that they are integral to any discussion of perspectives, and in fact to the definition of perspective itself. The etymological root of the word, per-specere, means "to look (at) through," where "through" implies a from/to baseline "along which" the sentient act unfolds. As Tarthang Tulku (1977) discusses at some length in his exploration of a geometry of meaningful experience, the known universe appears to enact itself along such baselines in time (now-then), space (here-there) and knowledge (self-other, subject-object), where each from/to structure may be understood as an expression of a particular focal setting or perspective. In the blooming of world spaces, if perspectives are foundational, so are time, space, and knowledge.

With all of this said, where does that leave us? What is gained by acknowledging the fundamental roles of time, space, and knowledge in Integral Theory? At the very least, I hope that by revealing their centrality in the architecture of AQAL, I have laid the conceptual foundation for a fuller exploration of the interface of these two great visions. As I will outline in the pages ahead, the TSK vision encourages an embodied approach to inquiry that has the potential to enrich any knowledge discipline, and offers a range of practices that I believe will be quite useful for exploring key aspects of Integral Theory, particularly the enactive power of perspectives. The dimensions of time, space, and knowledge, like Wilber's native perspectives, can certainly be used to map and index various fields of study, some of which will be discussed in a subsequent section. But the real promise of TSK, particularly with regard to the Integral project, is in its evocation of the how knowledge - its invitation to slip again and again into the refreshing currents that glide silently under the ice floes of the known. Exactly how such an invitation might show up in Integral pedagogy will be the focus of the remainder of this paper.

TSK Inquiry

It is appropriate at this point to say a little more about the role of inquiry in TSK. From one perspective, TSK inquiry is a vehicle of transformation, a means of carrying those who engage it to greater freedom, wider vision, and deeper intimacy with being. But from another perspective, it is already an expression of that freedom and knowledgeability, as revealed by its very availability at the heart of ordinary experience. If TSK could be said to have one goal, it would be to awaken an abiding appreciation for and an intimate embodiment of knowledge, or knowingness, as the essence of our being, inseparable from the infinite allowingness of space and the unbounded creativity of time.

What this means in less exalted-sounding terms is that we discover that knowledge is freely available, in and as the many situations we encounter in our lives; that we are free to look in new ways, to explore other options, to engage our limits and habits and reactions as expressions of a knowingness that is never ultimately bound. The exercise of this freedom is available every moment, a gift of time that we seldom acknowledge. Through inquiry, TSK invites us to open this present, and to enjoy it.

The TSK vision offers a number of approaches to inquiry, some of which will be explored in the following sections. Unlike many traditions of meditation or spiritual inquiry, which prescribe set questions to be investigated or which encourage practitioners to avoid thinking and to stay close to "what is" through bare attention, TSK is open to employing the full palette of human capacities (including those preferred by the spiritual traditions above). Discovering that we have, rather ironically, narrowed knowledge down by turning it into a "prized possession" of the self, we can begin to open up its fullness again, Tarthang Tulku (1997) suggests, by approaching our experience in a dynamic, multi-faceted way, using our faculties of imagination, analysis, speculation, visualization, sensory awareness, and whatever else allows us to more fully appreciate the ongoing presentations of time, space, and knowledge (p. xxii-xxiii).

The inquiry invited by TSK is not committed to particular positions or beliefs. Tarthang Tulku (1987) suggests, in fact, that awakening the TSK vision depends more on giving up unquestioning commitment to our formal and informal techniques than in learning to employ specific technologies of liberation or modes of inquiry (p. 274). Radically, this includes loosening our tendency to attribute our acts of knowing to an apparently incontrovertible observer or bystander, allowing it to be an occasion of knowledge as well, equally open to inquiry (Tarthang Tulku, 1987, pp. 193-198). Through such open and free-ranging questioning, we come to greater balance in our awareness as our presuppositions are opened and our rigid positions relaxed. Tarthang Tulku (1987) describes this process, and the knowledge that emerges from it, in an evocative way:

For inquiry to operate freely, it cannot be bound by `positions' that the `bystander' adopts. This does not necessarily mean, however, that those positions must be rejected. Indeed, it is not clear that it would be possible to reject one set of positions without adopting another. Inquiry will be free only if it allows for a way of knowing more fundamental than `rejection.' A position is the outcome of an act of positioning, which unfolds in time through discrete acts of distinguishing, knowing, and so forth. Seen in this light, positions are the expressions of knowledge, rather than structures that limit it. Instead of accepting the view-point of the `bystander,' which insists on its fixed positions situated at a point off-center from an imagined origin, we could see in positioning the manifestation of a knowing that is not itself situated or specified...

Free from all positions, inquiry has access to all manifestations, including the `bystander-self,' its interpretations, and all the most widely accepted and `best established' elements of experience. Inquiry can see `through' positions, recognizing them as `positionings' that express knowledge. By being ready to take each question to a deeper level, it dissolves or transforms each structure in turn, so that in the end there are no obstacles to the recognition of knowledge at work. (pp. 272-273)

When we discover the full availability of knowledge, as the essence of all appearance (even the apparently closed spots or "gaps" in our current understanding), TSK proclaims this the discovery of the Body of Knowledge. Tarthang Tulku (1993) suggests that we may only have glimpses of this body at first, as structures and contractions give way to a more open allowing, but through inquiry we will become increasingly familiar with it, until at last it is felt to "sink into our bones and melt into our being" (p. 169.) This intimacy with a knowing that is non-positioned and which cannot be owned or appropriated, is the ground out of which all of our knowledge projects may be launched in a new way, and all of our relationships met afresh.

Through inquiring specifically into the time, space, and knowledge of experience, TSK in some sense orients us vertically to what appears, to the "immediacy" of the emergence and establishment of experience from moment to moment (Tarthang Tulku, 1993, p. 87). Because these factors are present in and as the presentations of Being, and are in fact so "close" to what appears, TSK inquiry provides a way of working in all knowledge fields, in all disciplines and modes of inquiry, whether launched from objective or subjective perspective-dimensions. It invites us to taste the flavor of knowingness within each idea or fixed object of our perspectives, to appreciate the "luminous interpretive act" that lights up our interpretations (Tarthang Tulku, 1993, p. 144), to "thaw" our positions and therein to discover a truly unbounded knowledgeability.

The spirit of inquiry and love of knowledge that inform the TSK vision are wholly consonant, in my view, with the abiding concerns of Integral Theory, and when deeply engaged may enliven the pursuits of any knowledge discipline. TSK finds no problem with a multiplicity of views or modes of inquiry, and in fact celebrates their co-existence as no more contradictory or problematic than the "blossoming of flowers in a field or the profusion of stars in the sky" (Tarthang Tulku, 1997, p. xxxvii). Such a generous perspective is at the heart of Integral Methodological Pluralism, and only such a perspective is capable of moving gracefully and with confidence in the post-postmodern landscape.

That TSK and Integral Theory are both capable of moving in this way is not in question. What demands further exploration is how they may do so together. I will turn now to a more concrete consideration of the ways these visions may interact.

TSK and Instrumental Knowledge

Having argued for the integral roles of time, space, and knowledge within the AQAL map, we might now step back away from it for a moment to adopt a more critical perspective. As comprehensive as it is, and as helpful as it might be in reminding us to be as inclusive as possible in the conduct of our classes or our research, is there anything that it might also leave out or obscure? It is clear that, as a map, it cannot possibly cover all of the details of the terrain it describes - and that is not its purpose. Maps, in fact, tend to lose their effectiveness if burdened with too much detail. But aside from the question of the adequacy of the content of the Integral map, there is the issue of map use itself. What sorts of presuppositions are preserved or patterns are perpetuated when we rely on maps and models in our approach to knowledge? Are there any viable alternatives?

TSK does not discount the value of maps and models, and like Integral, offers its own broad orienting vision of reality, but it does caution us about the limitations inherent in what Tarthang Tulku (1987) calls "technological knowledge" - of approaching knowledge primarily from an instrumental perspective. This theme is explored in a number of TSK books, but it receives perhaps its fullest treatment in Love of Knowledge, in which Tarthang Tulku (1987) traces out the intricate and subtle relationships among our concepts of the self and our models of knowledge acquisition. As a modern manifestation of conventional, "first-level" approaches to knowledge, which tend to be polarizing, self-centered, and heavily reliant on models and beliefs, technological knowledge is a result-oriented style of knowing which treats knowledge as a commodity to be acquired and a tool to be used (Tarthang Tulku, 1987, p. 253). Tarthang Tulku (1987) acknowledges the many benefits that have followed from the proliferation of technological knowledge, and concedes that we may be justified in relying on it for that reason, but he suggests that this approach also limits our access to knowledge in fundamental ways, several of which will be explored below (pp. 19, 131).

As Wilber's Integral model becomes more popular and institutionalized, and as it is presented in educational settings and elsewhere as an Integral Operating System - a program for accessing, indexing, and manipulating various "products" of knowledge - it will be important for integral educators to remain mindful of the dynamics of the particular approaches to knowledge emphasized by models and instrumental metaphors, and to bring a critical awareness of these issues into the classroom. One way to do this might be to inquire into four assertions that Tarthang Tulku (1987) makes about models. I will briefly discuss them here, and then offer suggestions for how they might be used in an integral classroom to facilitate a series of directed inquiries into issues of epistemology in TSK and Integral Theory.

Defining models broadly as "explanations or descriptions of how things work within a specified domain" (p. 19), Tarthang Tulku (1987) points to four significant self-limiting tendencies of model-based knowledge:

• Models tend to freeze out the possibility of fundamental change.



• Models tend to allow only for knowledge that fits the basic structures of polar and descriptive knowledge.



• Knowledge based on models is distanced from direct experience in favor of conceptual structures.



• Models turn our attention away from a direct inquiry into the unfounded assumptions of the models themselves. (pp. 132-134)

Each of the above points could be explored in some detail with regard to the use of the AQAL map:

• What is the AQAL "model" of change? Are there any types of change which AQAL either rules out or overlooks, and are such restrictions on change warranted?



• As a third-person symbol system, does AQAL unduly emphasize certain approaches to knowledge over others? Is this tendency mitigated by the contents of AQAL, which point back to our many native perspectives? As a "summary" of regularly repeated patterns in knowledge and behavior, does it still overlook experiences or types of knowledge which perhaps are not easily captured by the nets we are using?



• Similarly, does the AQAL map distance us from direct experience in favor of conceptual knowledge, or is this tendency again countered by the map's acknowledgement of multiple modes of inquiry?



• What are the presuppositions that the map preserves, and in what ways are they opaque to inquiry? For instance, does AQAL presuppose a linear model of time, or does its structure contain and communicate other temporal presuppositions that may unintentionally limit or inhibit inquiry?

These questions and others could be raised with students as starting points for collaborative inquiry or topics for individual investigation. As an educator, I would certainly like to invite my students to bring critical awareness to the strengths and limitations of the various maps we are using. With a playful smile, I might even suggest that we apply an integral lens to the TSK criticism of models - reminding my students that the Hall of Mirrors is usually found in the House of Fun.

From a four-quadrant perspective, for instance, the questions above might be considered part of an Upper Right inquiry, inviting exploration and analysis of the features of an individual map. In third person singular mode, we would examine the map for its overt structure, its clarity, its presuppositions, its omissions (necessary or accidental), and so on. But the TSK critique extends to the other perspective-dimensions as well, situating model-based knowing in the modern socio-cultural presuppositions and metaphors of technological knowledge, and illuminating basic stances in consciousness that support and help to perpetuate these patterns of cognition. As TSK is interested in awakening a quality of knowing and a spirit of inquiry which can freely use models without being bound to them or subject to them, it may be helpful to look more closely at the current social contexts and psychological roots that foster our often uncritical reliance upon them.

Through the notion of technological knowledge, Tarthang Tulku (1987) invites us to see maps and model-based knowing as expressions of wider social (LR) and cultural (LL) preoccupations. Technological knowledge is a modern variation on conventional or "first-level" forms of knowledge which have been predominant throughout human history, but it is significant because of the world-transforming power of its methodologies and the widespread influence of its metaphors on our habits of thought, our institutions, our social practices, and our cultural beliefs.

In Love of Knowledge, Tarthang Tulku (1987) identifies a number of the presuppositions and consequences of the technological model of knowledge that are worth mentioning here:

• Knowledge is about ways to obtain results (which are not directly related to the subjective, private, ethical questions of how to apply those results).



• Knowledge is understood as a commodity, a tool, or a possession of the self.



• Valid knowledge is objective and makes use of the objectively given world.



• Knowledge is identified with and communicated (in discrete pieces) through the correct use of labels, maps, and models.



• Knowledge arrives at the end of prescribed processes of cognition.



• The technological model of knowledge encourages us to direct our energy at ends which have been determined in advance.



• In emphasizing the objective realm, technological knowledge assigns primacy to the already known.



• Dealing in models and bound to rules and conventions, technological knowledge tends to lose its intimate contact with Being.

Together, these factors can be seen to exert a profound influence on society and culture, from the organization of our schools, to the conduct of our businesses, to our understanding of issues as basic as knowledge acquisition and personal creativity. Tarthang Tulku (1987) is not interested here in discrediting technological knowledge altogether, but in highlighting its limiting presuppositions and situating it in a larger perspective that allows for greater freedom of inquiry and more intimate contact with time, space, and knowledge (p. 22). In his discussion of the above points, Tarthang Tulku (1987) is particularly concerned by the split between subjective and objective realms preserved by an instrumental approach to knowledge (pp. 34-35). The roots of this division lie, from a TSK perspective, in certain stances in consciousness that will be explored more fully in the Upper Left phase of our inquiry, but the social and cultural structures generated by technological knowledge tend to feed into and perpetuate this fundamental split.

Tarthang Tulku (1987) discusses several cultural dimensions of this split, such as the classification of the cultures of the world according to their level of material development and technological proficiency, rather than more subjective values (p. 20), but the area that is perhaps of greatest concern to us here is the disempowerment and knowledge disenfranchisement of learners in our society, as most students are encouraged to approach knowledge objectively as "a product to be acquired rather than a faculty to be exercised and developed" (pp. 28). Suggesting that our reliance on technological knowledge tends to limit the kinds of knowledge that are presumed to be valuable or even available, and to promote a pace of life which leaves little room for anything but the surface type of knowing that this model prescribes, Tarthang Tulku (1987) muses that these problems may underlie the failure of our educational institutions to prepare students to pursue meaningful lives or make difficult, value-centered decisions (p. 28). Educated to be consumers or "technicians" of knowledge, students concern themselves only with deciding which pre-approved models or systems to adopt, and do not readily discover or even conceive of that dimension of luminous knowledgeability that TSK suggests is available and, in fact, vital to human wholeness and well-being.

Alfonso Montuori (1997) reflects on some of these issues in "Creative Inquiry: From Instrumental Knowledge to Love of Knowledge." Drawing on his study of the TSK vision, he explores the difference between the notion of knowledge as capacity - as an innate and freely available quality of being - and the notion of knowledge as content, which is the operative presupposition in most instrumental and model-based approaches to learning and creativity (pp. 205-206). With regard to the latter, he notes the prevalence of a "tool-box" approach to knowledge in many educational and scientific research settings, and asks us to reflect on the innocent and perhaps not-so-innocent reasons that institutions might have an interest in encouraging a model-based, predictable, disembodied, and technician-like approach to knowledge and creativity (pp. 182-187). I do not have the space here to review the practical and power-related dynamics that Montuori (1997) discusses, but I would of course recommend this also as a matter for inquiry in the classroom. Why would schools or businesses be interested in emphasizing an instrumental approach to knowledge? What social and cultural purposes does it serve? In what way might AQAL be subject, or become subject, to such concerns? How might we minimize the tendency for educators and students to use it in this all-too-common instrumental manner?

With TSK, Montuori (1997) does not discount the utility or even the creative potential of models, but he is critical of institutional and cultural trends which encourage the use of these approaches exclusively and unreflectively, inhibiting free inquiry and the scope of human awareness:

Whether we know it or not, our actions are informed by a theory of the situation we are in, and that theory in turn is immersed in a larger "worldview" or philosophy of life, with a strong cultural component. To offer a model of my own (!), we might speak of a nested hierarchy going from the "smallest" element (perhaps "tools") through models, theories, paradigms (overarching frameworks for theories), and ultimately worldviews, which bring the full weight of our culture and history to bear on a larger interpretive framework for life and meaning. Without being consciously aware of this hierarchy, we will tend to shape our understanding of each new circumstance "as if" we were dealing with an objective situation. We will forget to check our assumptions about the world, testing them against our specific situation and noting how they shape what we act upon....We will ignore the process of differentiation, of inclusion/exclusion, that frames each perception and the distinctions it depends on. We will lose the opportunity to discover that there are many possible frames available, at many different "focal settings," each leading to very different understanding of "what is." And we will also lose the opportunity to engage in our own, full inquiry into the issues. (p. 183)

Montuori's comments are reflective of concerns addressed both by TSK and Integral Theory, and in that regard are particularly helpful for bridging these visions. Both traditions are clearly interested in encouraging an awareness of the availability of a multiplicity of focal settings or perspectives, and in countering the monological approaches which have come to dominate modern society. TSK's critique of technological knowledge is in some ways similar to the Integral criticism of flatland. Where TSK might offer a helpful additional perspective is in its exploration of model-based knowing as reflective of the "full weight" of contemporary cultural presuppositions that guide our approaches to knowledge acquisition and dissemination, and as rooted in first-level structures which, as we shall see, can influence our approach to inquiry in all of the native perspectives.

In an integral classroom, students can be invited to inquire into AQAL as an expression of current cultural preoccupations and concerns, and to evaluate how the particular ways it is used in that educational setting might escape or counter some of those limitations while leaving others obscured or unexamined. If it appears appropriate, this inquiry could be expanded, as well, to incorporate a TSK reflective meditation on the interaction of time, space, and knowledge in history to produce distinctive models and cultural expressions of knowledge, each with its supporting institutions and approaches to education and research. This exercise, which is included in Appendix 2 as "Pastness Knowledge," leads the student to reflect on the currents of time and knowledge in shaping the immediate past as well as the larger sweep of history. The development of the Integral model could be viewed in this larger historical movement of knowledge in time, as a particular expression of knowledgeability in cultural space.

Educators interested in exploring the LL and LR dimensions of the TSK vision in more detail, as an adjunct to its criticism of technological knowledge, might consult several articles written by practitioners of TSK. In particular, I recommend "Turning Inward Outward: Toward a Public Self and the Common Good" (Petranker, 1997); "Dimensionality: A Cultural/Historical Approach" (Smyrl, 1997); "Bracketed Bodies, Pivotal Bodies: Trajectories of the Postmodern Self" (Nichol, 1997); and "Time, Space, and Knowledge, Social Science, and the American Dream" (Shultz, 1980).

Let us turn now in our imagined class to the Upper Left phase of our inquiry. In his discussion of technological knowledge and the self-limiting consequences of model-based knowing, Tarthang Tulku (1987) indicates that he is more interested in examining the role of models in ordinary thinking than in such critically self-reflective disciplines as science and philosophy. Formal models tend to be fairly open to revision and correction, but others, such as the belief that models are valid means of transmitting new knowledge, or that experience is the property of an abiding self, frequently go unchallenged (p. 130). As presuppositions basic to ordinary cognition, they typically are not impacted by the critical analyses which we bring to bear on our more formal maps and models.

Thus, when Tarthang Tulku (1987) suggests in the second of the four points listed at the beginning of this section that models tend only to admit polar and descriptive forms of knowledge, he is drawing our attention to deeply entrenched habits of cognition that inform not only theoretical maps such as AQAL, but which structure our thinking at almost every step. To investigate models at this level is to investigate the foundations of our present, "first-level" ways of knowing. A comprehensive treatment of the TSK analysis of first-level experience is beyond the scope of this paper, but we can touch on some of the key ideas here, as signposts for possible avenues of inquiry into these issues. In particular, I would like to focus on the relationship of these ideas to the role of perspectives in Integral Theory.

To start, let us consider the definitions of polar and descriptive knowledge. Both terms refer to related cognitive processes. The first, polar knowledge, refers to the fundamental subject-object structure that marks present occasions of knowledge, in which a perceiver "here" perceives an object "there." Of this basic process, Tarthang Tulku (1987) writes,

The structure of division and polarity that operates in polar knowledge means that for the perceiver, `isolation' and `no-knowledge' take priority over knowing. At the outset, nothing is known. A `knowledge gap' separates `subject' and `object', `perceiver' and `perceived'. Knowing arises when knowledge is somehow transported across this `gap', ending the original isolation of the two poles. (p. 101)

The perceiver is not only located here, however, but is also located now, with the object separated by temporal as well as physical distance - at the very least, by the time it takes for "knowledge" to cross the gap between poles. The entrance of temporality into the act of knowing ultimately allows for a known world to be distinguished, labeled, and established, as the self compares the raw data of polar knowledge against memories of previous encounters and interactions. Tarthang Tulku (1987) describes this temporalized knowing as descriptive knowledge, to distinguish it from the basic, present-centered activity of polar knowledge (p. 104). But while descriptive knowledge allows for a world to be known (apart from the "perpetual innocence" of polar knowledge), it also tends to restrict knowledge in important ways, leading to a characteristic fixation in our perspectives or focal settings as the past increasingly comes to influence present experience (Tarthang Tulku, 1987, p. 105). Bound to the stories we tell and the limitations of the positions we adopt, we find ourselves increasingly penned in by the only means we have of approaching the world.

The perceiver that is positioned at a distance, spatially and temporally, from its objects of knowledge, is described in the TSK vision as the "bystander self" (Tarthang Tulku, 1987, p. 264). Polar and descriptive knowledge, which inform and structure the models we employ, are themselves dependent upon this fundamental model which assigns knowing to a self or a witness. As Tarthang Tulku (1987) points out in the passage I quoted above, this polar perspective establishes the self in a perpetual condition of knowledge-deficiency, essentially existing in opposition to the objects which it apprehends, and over which it then claims ownership (pp. 101, 264).

The positioning which puts the self at a distance from knowledge also tends to isolate it or cut it off from the fullness of space and time. Claiming to be an occupant of a particular point in space and time (here and now), the self is experienced as fundamentally different from both. When it does not take them for granted, as the unacknowledged background of its concerns, the bystander tends to exist in an oppositional relationship to them, as their owner or victim.

Discussing the temporal impact of the model that establishes the self as the owner of experience, Tarthang Tulku (1990) explains,

For this basic structure to work, the self must adopt a specific position that puts it outside of experience. Thus, while experience is inseparable from the flow of time, and is in fact the way that the flow presents itself, the self is an `outsider' with respect to the temporal dynamic.

As an `outsider,' the self occupies the specific role of bystander, unaffected by the passing of time. The objects and forms that it identifies and defines are also `outsiders,' but in a different sense: Like rocks in a stream, they are in time, carried or carved by its flow, yet separate from the flow itself.

`Outsiders' form the self's `world,' and self and world together comprise the whole of existence. Past, present, and future, considered as static structures, are among the `outsiders' available to be known; time as an active dynamic medium cannot be grasped directly, and so is largely overlooked. (pp. 24-25)

This condition of estrangement is the characteristic mark of first-level experience, although it is not often directly recognized as such, showing up instead in a sense of flatness and artificiality, a dullness of the senses, or in feelings of frustration, boredom, opposition, or intimidation. The positioning adopted by the self, while clearly beneficial in its power to order and make sense of our experience, appears also to leave us cut off from the vital roots of our being.

I am not able here to do justice to TSK's subtle treatment of this complex issue, but I will mention several approaches and insights that TSK offers as a means of addressing this alienation. Noting that the image of a self existing outside of the flow of time is problematic, we can inquire more deeply into time in our own knowledge and experience. Through such an inquiry, which can be conducted through reasoning as well as through phenomenological or experiential exercises, some of which will be described in the next section, we can come to see that the bystander self and its experiences are in fact presentations of time, arising together as an "interpretation of time's momentum" (Tarthang Tulku, 1990, p. 25). This insight might first grow simply from the recognition that the bystander, as a phenomenon or an interpretive move which is apprehended or felt together with the events which it "knows" from moment to moment, must not be as cut off from time as it makes itself out to be, but this insight may be deepened with extended experiential inquiry.

In the first of the TSK books, for instance, Tarthang Tulku (1977) offers an exercise which invites us to attend to facets of ordinary experience as evidence of the dynamic activity of time, space, and knowledge, allowing for the possibility that all appearances, including that of being a doer or witness, are in fact inseparable from this interplay. This exercise, which is presented in Appendix 2 as "Space-Time-Knowledge on the Conventional Level," follows on a number of other exercises which might be seen as foundational to the insight that this practice offers, but it works directly with the alienation of the bystander by going beneath it, to those currents which cast it up and sustain it. As Tarthang Tulku (1977) explains,

[This exercise] signals a very healthy shift in emphasis because it reasserts the primacy of the vitalizing dimensions which make all appearance possible, but which the ego tries to block out. These dimensions are the fundamental refuge for all that mistakenly wearies itself in striving to exist. Existing is a very lonely, isolationist tendency. Existence is so emphatic about filling up its position that all sustenance and contact must be received by `sending out' for them. However, there is another and better way to establish contact and enjoy fulfillment. Instead of inventing it, we just have to see and embrace it. (pp. 109-110)

Insight into the "timed-out" nature of the bystander has two consequences which are worth noting in the context of this paper. The first is that, once the bystander is recognized as being an act of positioning which brings its own conditioning factors, polar knowledge and the other structures which depend on the bystander's positions are understood also as contingent patterns of knowing, rather than representing anything fundamental about the nature of knowledge itself (Tarthang Tulku, 1987, p. 265). In Robert Kegan's (1994) terms, when we make the bystander and the polar knowledge model it establishes into objects of knowing, we are no longer subject to them in the same way. Our unconscious identification with them is broken.

The second important insight is that once we realize that the bystander is a way of summarizing a series of temporal events, we realize also that it in fact does not witness or know anything (Tarthang Tulku, 1994, p. 113). The consequences of this insight are perhaps surprising: the bystander self does not impede knowledge, and does not need to be discarded. Tarthang Tulku (1994) describes the freedom that this realization brings more eloquently than I can:

Now a shift becomes possible. Time itself can become the conductor, presenting the ongoing embodiment of knowledge in space....We can discover the magical, magnificent mechanism of time's conducting, in which knowledge is inherent in all arising and each act of taking form. We stand at the gateway of inward knowledge....Turning inward, we see that the presentations of objective time and its subjective witness are themselves ways in which time conducts knowledge into being. Thus, the witness is free to continue with its testimony. Each claim it makes expresses a knowledge that does not depend on the witness in any way. Seen as claims, without regard to their content, the proclamations of the witness are manifestations of knowledge. They do not need to be rejected, for they stand revealed with a new `lightness': as richly creative and wholly lucent expressions of a timing inseparable from knowledgeability. (pp. 113-114)

This insight is particularly relevant to our discussion, not only of the bystander self, but of models and maps and all the ways of knowing that we have been discussing here. With the bystander thus "freed" to continue making its proclamations, its presentations as well may be appreciated as luminous occasions of knowledgeability - as signs which trace outlines in space, setting specific patterns in motion, but never ultimately confining. In the light of knowledgeability, the products of our ordinary knowledge - our maps and models - shine with gnosemic significance.

Before concluding this section, I would like to take a moment to relate this discussion to the Integral model, particularly with regard to the native perspectives and their respective modes of inquiry. In the previous section, I argued that the notion of perspective presupposes the operation of time, space, and knowledge, not in a reductionistic way but as inseparable facets of its dynamics. If this thesis is correct, then the question arises as to the relationship of the subject-object polarity presupposed by the conventional understanding of perspectives, and TSK's discussion of polar knowledge, the bystander, and the relationship of these phenomena to focal settings on time, space, and knowledge. Do perspectives, by definition, demand polarity of some sort, and what is the nature of the "gap" which they apparently involve? How might the understanding of this gap be transformed, without compromising or reducing to irrelevance the distinctions that they draw? This is a rich area for inquiry, in my opinion, and one which I would like to take up in greater detail in a future project. For our purposes here, I will make a few tentative remarks.

It is clear that any mode of inquiry which is grounded in a perspective-dimension that is understood in first level terms will be subject to the limitations on knowledge imposed by the bystander and its related structures. At present, the majority of the practitioners of the modes of inquiry mapped by AQAL operate at this level. An issue that has not yet been addressed in much detail in Wilber's recent writings is how the understanding and phenomenological experience of the native perspectives is transformed, and how the practices associated with them are reinterpreted, as the individual practitioner moves to higher (second- or third-tier) levels of cognition and awareness. How is our relationship to second- or third-person objects of knowledge or awareness transformed when our identification with the bystander weakens? Does this influence our relationship to knowledge or our approach to learning? In what ways, if any, will this impact our teaching or our efforts in our various modes of inquiry?

Certainly, one of the aims of Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP) is to begin to initiate such a transformation, and Wilber (2005c) points to an important part of this change with the notion of the tetra-emergence of perspectives as mutually determinative and enacting events in space-time. This understanding invites a lightness or transparency into our perspectives, and is supported by the metaparadigmatic aspects of IMP, which encourage a more integral embrace of the many (mutually enacting) dimensions of our experience. But more remains to be written in this area - a fuller explication of the ways that the person-perspectives are held in awareness at different levels of development.

I believe TSK offers an incisive and potent understanding of many of these issues, and with its emphasis on facets of reality that appear to be indispensable to perspective-occasions, may provide a way to work particularly closely with the core concerns of the emerging Integral model. A fuller treatment of the ideas presented above will have to await a future project, but suggestions of the promise of TSK in this regard - particularly through its phenomenological practices and its "sacred geometry" - will be provided throughout this paper. I turn now to a discussion of its practices.

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