5. Conclusion

In our classrooms, we wait for those rare moments when time shivers like heat lightning down the edges of our perspectives, lighting up new fields of knowing in the space we share with our students. Like lightning, those moments may be too unbounded and free, too full of the primal energy of time to ever be tamed by our techniques or harnessed by our lesson plans. And yet, as the two visions we have been discussing remind us, such moments are ultimately inseparable from the simple beauty of our ordinary experience: they are equally the shining presentations of the primal facets of being we have always known, and too seldom appreciated.

If the TSK and Integral visions have one feature most in common, it is the invitation they extend to savor and appreciate the mystery and the beauty of our essential nature. It is here, paradoxically, that we draw closest to the magic of those moments when our perspectives light up, and time, space, and knowledge reveal themselves anew.

In this paper, I have also extended an invitation: to savor the richness of these visions in themselves, and to imagine with me a new story they might tell together. As I come to the end of this paper, I am feeling that sense of warmth that sometimes comes at the end of a conversation I have particularly enjoyed. And yet I also feel that the conversation has just begun; that much more waits to be said. In a dialogue, intimacy never quite eclipses mystery: we never know for certain how our partners will respond, and that is part of the delight.

Although neither the TSK vision nor Integral Theory is insular in its orientation, I have stayed relatively close to them in our discussion here, resisting the impulse to bring in many voices from other fields or approaches. I did this in the interest of preserving the intimacy and integrity of the conversation I wanted to develop, and out of the conviction that other voices, while certainly welcome in larger contexts, would have proved distracting at this point.

One voice that strikes me as particularly interesting is that of Jerry H. Gill (1993), the author of Learning to Learn. He has developed a theory of pedagogy based on the work of Whitehead, Polanyi, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, and others, and his emphasis on the dynamic dance of the knower, knowing, and the known in learning makes his work quite complementary to the approach proposed here. Other helpful or complementary perspectives might be found in the works of A.H. Almaas (2002) or John Heron (1996), particularly with regard to their approaches to inquiry.

I have admittedly taken a somewhat biased approach myself in selecting the topics to discuss here, choosing not to dwell on those areas of philosophical tension that manifest at some points between these visions. Again, I have done this for several reasons: one, the potential for mutual enrichment is such that it overrides the smaller points of contention, and in any event, fruitful cooperation does not demand absolute agreement; two, the areas of tension, such as in the visions' understanding of time and evolution, are more apparent at lower focal settings and thus do not represent absolute philosophical gulfs; and three, TSK is more interested in awakening a spirit of inquiry than in making absolute claims about the nature of reality, and thus its response to confusion or conflict typically would be to invite closer inquiry into whatever barriers, foreseen or unforeseen, may have arisen in our classroom explorations. Communicating this spirit rather than any absolute philosophical positions was thus more important to me.

In a project of this size, I have not been able to cover all of the ways that TSK might contribute to classes on Integral Theory or to the field of Integral Theory in general, but I have offered a number of suggestions in the section entitled "Prospects" that I believe represent promising areas of future inquiry. If TSK is to play a significant role in Integral education, I believe a phenomenological or biographical study of the experiences of teachers and students in universities where TSK has been a part of the curriculum, in some cases for several decades, is also merited. The potential of TSK to enliven a classroom and to uniquely contribute to our understanding of prominent ideas in Integral Theory is apparent even in a survey such as this one, but a fuller study such as the one I have just mentioned would be helpful in illuminating some of the deeper dimensions of that potential.

In these few pages, I have begun to trace the ways that time, space, and knowledge might light up the AQAL house; how the TSK vision and its practices might help to disclose some of the secrets in that many-roomed mansion, and how it might quicken curiosity and a love of knowledge in those students and teachers who walk its halls. If we cannot always summon those magical occasions of knowledge that grace our classes from time to time, we can savor where we are; we can dive more deeply into our present concerns through inquiry and an abiding appreciation for the power of our perspectives to disclose ever-new horizons of our beings. We can respond to the promise of TSK and AQAL: fullness is here, if we dare to embrace it.

Dedication

May the boundless Knowledge

that Time presents and Space allows

illuminate the Native Perspectives

of your Original Face.

~*~

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kosmos/excerptD/part1.cfm/

Appendix 1

Glossary of Integral and TSK Terms

Core Integral Concepts

The Four Quadrants

"The four quadrants are four of the basic ways that we can look at any event: from the inside or from the outside, and in singular and plural forms. This gives us the inside and the outside of the individual and the collective. These four perspectives are not merely arbitrary conventions. Rather, they are dimensions that are so fundamental that they have become embedded in language as pronouns during the natural course of evolution. These embedded perspectives show up as first, second, and third person pronouns. Thus, the inside of the individual shows up as "I"; the inside of the collective as "you/we"; the outside of the individual as "it/him/her"; and the outside of the collective as "its/them." In short: I, we, it, and its" (Wilber, 2005a, Part 1, Kosmic Karma in Four Dimensions section, para. 4).

"[E]ach of those four dimensions has a different methodology of disclosure and enactment. As we will see: empiricism and behaviorism primarily engage the Upper-Right quadrant; introspection and phenomenology primarily engage the Upper-Left quadrant; hermeneutics and collaborative inquiry primarily engage the Lower-Left quadrant; the ecological sciences, structural-functionalism, and systems theory primarily engage the Lower-Right quadrant" (Wilber, 2005a, Part 1, Summary section, para. 3).

Eight Native Perspectives

"There are (at least) 4 major perspectives of being-in-the-world, which we are calling the four quadrants--I, we, it, its--each of which can be looked at from its own inside or outside, giving us 8 primordial or indigenous perspectives available to sentient beings. Each of those perspectives has an inherent methodology or mode of inquiry, or ways that sentient beings touch other sentient beings....Each of those 8 views is in effect an "event horizon," or a phenomenological world enacted and brought forth within that perspective. We called these event horizons, or hori-zones, or simply zones. All 8 perspectives engender phenomenological zones or event horizons....These four zones are not the same as the four quadrants, but simply represent another useful way to group the 8 indigenous perspectives (namely, the inside and outside of interiors and exteriors). These zones are as follows:

Zone 1: interior holons (an `I' or `we') looked at from inside their own boundaries. This means a first-person approach to first-person realities (1p x 1p), in both singular and plural forms. The singular form is the inside of an `I' (classic paradigms or injunctions that bring forth, enact, and disclose these first-person singular dimensions of being-in-the-world include phenomenology, introspection, meditation). The plural form is the inside of a `we' (which can be brought forth, enacted, and disclosed with methodologies such as hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, participatory epistemology).

Zone 2: interior holons (an `I' or `we') looked at from outside their own boundaries. This means a third-person approach to first-person realities (3p x 1p), in both singular and plural forms. The singular form is the outside of an `I' (which can be approached with methodologies such as developmental structuralism). The plural form is the outside of a `we' (which can be approached with methodologies such as cultural anthropology, neostructuralism, archaeology, genealogy).

Zone 3: exterior holons (an `it' or `its') looked at from inside their own boundaries. This means a first-person approach to third-person realities (1p x 3p), in both singular and plural forms. The singular form is the inside of an `it' (which can be approached with methodologies such as biological phenomenology and autopoiesis). The plural form is the inside of an `its' (which can be approached with methodologies such as social autopoiesis).

Zone 4: exterior holons (an `it' or `its') looked at from outside their own boundaries. This means a third-person approach to third-person realities (3p x 3p), in both singular and plural forms. The singular form is the outside of an `it' (which can be approached with methodologies such as behaviorism, positivism, empiricism). The plural form is the outside of a `its' (which can be approached with methodologies such as systems theory, component systems theory, chaos and complexity theory)" (Wilber, 2005d, Part 1, Some Major Event Horizons section, para. 1-4).

Holon

"A holon is a `whole/part,' or a whole that is also a part of other wholes: a whole atom is a part of a whole molecule, which is part of a whole cell, which is part of a whole organism, etc. The Kosmos is fundamentally composed of holons, all the way up, all the way down" (Wilber, 2005a, Part 1, Kosmic Karma in Four Dimensions section, para. 1).

Integral Methodological Pluralism

"[A]n integral social practice would of necessity include and exercise all of the important practices, injunctions, and methodologies of the first-tier waves, but now set in an integral framework that included their enduring contributions yet transcended their partialities, absolutisms, and exclusionary practices. The result would a set of paradigms, behavioral injunctions, and social practices that might be called an integral methodological pluralism. `Integral,' in that the pluralism is not a mere eclecticism or grab bag of unrelated paradigms, but a meta-paradigm that weaves together its many threads into an integral tapestry, a unity-in-diversity that slights neither the unity nor the diversity. `Methodological,' in that this is a real paradigm or set of actual practices and behavioral injunctions to bring forth an integral territory, not merely a new holistic theory or maps without any territory. And `pluralism' in that there is no one overriding or privileged injunction (other than to be radically all-inclusive). Unlike postmodernism, which practiced a type of exclusionary pluralism that condemned all other first-tier values (not to mention second-tier values), integral or inclusionary pluralism is a conscientiously adopted set of behavioral paradigms for acknowledging--and actually seeking out--the enduring truths in categorically every major methodology in first- and second- and third-tier probability waves" (Wilber, 2005b, Part 1, Integral Methodological Pluralism section, para. 9-10).

Karma and Creativity

"[T]he relation of the present to the past turns out to be crucially important, for it touches every aspect of our lives (psychological to sociological to spiritual). It appears that the past-and-present somehow constitute an inheritance-with-novelty--in other words, the present moment is a mysterious mixture of karma and creativity. That karma-and-creativity appears to be the very matrix of our moment-to-moment reality" (Wilber, 2005a, Part 1, Kosmic Karma in Four Dimensions section, para. 2).

"Each actual occasion--or each present moment--as it comes to be, does two things at once: it prehends (or experientially feels) its immediate predecessor (i.e., the present moment touches, prehends, or feels the immediately preceding moment), so that the subject of this moment becomes the object of the subject of the next moment. This means that the present moment is, in part, determined by the nature of its predecessors: it is handed an inherited past as part of its feeling in this moment, a feeling that is therefore a prehensive unification of all ancestral feelings, and this inheritance is the basis of a type of causality exerted by the past on the present (i.e., a causal inheritance of past objects that were once present subjects, or a feeling of feelings). But two, according to Whitehead, the present moment then adds its own moment of creative novelty or emergence--it feels something entirely new--and thus it also transcends the past to some degree. Thus, each moment transcends and includes its predecessors, inheriting a history of feelings (or objects that were once subjects) but also adding a creative novelty found nowhere in the past--but a creative novelty that then itself becomes part of the inherited feelings handed to the future, which will then likewise transcend and include that inheritance" (Wilber, 2005a, Part 1, Kosmic Karma in Four Dimensions section, para. 8).

Perspectives

"[T]here are no perceptions anywhere in the real world; there are only perspectives. A subject perceiving an object is always already in a relationship of first-person, second-person, and third-person when it comes to the perceived occasions. If the manifest world is indeed panpsychic--or built of sentient beings (all the way up, all the way down)--then the manifest world is built of perspectives, not perceptions. Moving from perceptions to perspectives is the first radical step in the move from metaphysics to post-metaphysics. Subjects don't prehend objects anywhere in the universe; rather, first persons prehend second persons or third persons: perceptions are always within actual perspectives. `Subject perceiving object' (or `bare attention to dharmas') is not a raw given but a low-order abstraction that already tears the fabric of the Kosmos in ways that cannot easily be repaired" (Wilber, 2005d, Integral Post-Metaphysics section, para. 10).

"[T]here is no real space that is not always already a space-arising-as-a-perspective; therefore we cannot say that occasions (or holons or beings) come into existence and then see each other, because the "seeing each other" and the "existence" cannot be asserted apart from one another. To say that the quadrants arise simultaneously is to say that ontological dimensions and epistemological perspectives are one and the same thing, which is why we often call them dimension-perspectives....This does not mean "to be is to be perceived," for that implies there is being per se that can be perceived; nor is this to say that perception creates being, for that implies that perception itself exists apart from something perceived. This is rather to say that being and knowing are the same event within the set of perspectives arising as the event. The idea that being and knowing (or existing and prehending) are somehow different things arises only because we shift from one perspective-occasion to the other without realizing what we are doing. There is simply no perception that is not also a perspective, and therefore no appearance of being that exists other than as a phenomenal perspective" (Wilber, 2005c, Appendix B, para. 27-28).

Definitions of the Levels of Time, Space, and Knowledge*

*Selected from compilation of quotes on the TSK Association website, http://members.aol.com/tskspace/levels.html

Time, Level 1

"As transmitted by the dynamic of time, experience unfolds along a continuum from past to present to future. Active in the present, we take form from the past and live forward into the future. The three aspects of time seem inseparable: manufactured by the same process, composed of the same substance, conducted forward by the same mechanism" (Tarthang Tulku, 1994, p. 73)

"When time's momentum is measured out as the lifeless ticking away of linear temporality, the intrinsic 'aliveness' of time is channeled into mechanisms for multiplication and duplication. Played out into a world of positions, time sets up

boundaries, identities, partitions, and limits, affirming a 'from-to' order that moves away from the centerless center of time's flow. Filtered through such 're-presentations' of knowledge, the creative energy of time disappears from view, and becomes inaccessible. The 'self' as 'bystander' serves as guardian of this order. When the self 'stands by', it claims the right to possess what time presents, assuring that time's momentum will 'take form' in accord with a specific logic" (Tarthang Tulku, 1990, p. 19).

"Shaped into a structured sequence, occupied by a 'bystander-self', permitting only the sequential knowledge available to the 'owner-occupant', time's creative potential is stripped away beyond the point of recognizing that anything has been lost" (Tarthang Tulku, 1990, p. 38)

"On the ordinary level of experience, we still think very much in terms of an 'object-with-characteristic-power' orientation. Because we do not take time seriously, considering it only as an abstraction or an index, some aspect of it has become a hidden factor" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 120).

Time, Level 2

"[We come to perceive] 'timing'--as being an embodying process which leads to our restrictive conventional reality in which subject and object, things and `space' are seen as different" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. xi).

"'Time' at this second stage can be seen to be the essential force that lets moment give way to moment, and the factor which permits items within a situation or moment to have their own identities....An actual appreciation of 'time' shows that the way in which it presents identities, differences, and interrelations is a direct evocation of 'space', of 'no-things', of non-plurality" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 146).

"We may see all serial `timing' to be occurring in the same place, rather than establishing an extended `world out there'. That is, all going from place to place, experience to experience, which validates the picture of a spread out world, actually occurs as a succession of 'timed out' experiences in the same 'spot'" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 151)

"Solid things, places, and directed processes seen on the first level become appreciated--in their second-level 'time' aspect--as being very fluid. This fluid quality is a central feature of 'time', which has been rendered more dry and friction-filled in order for us to play in a first-level way" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 161).

"A focus on momentum lets us consider subject and object alike as projections of the underlying energy of second-level time. 'Time' in this second-level sense distributes experience through past and present and future, presenting the 'logos' that informs the first-level temporal order. Its dynamic allows knowing to 'build up' and interpret a world. As active vitality, 'time' is the essence of our being and our becoming, on which we feed and draw our sustenance" (Tarthang Tulku, 1990, p. 77).

Time, Level 3

"The Great Space perspective shows everything to be more integrated--an infinite form . . . without an infinitely extended temporal dimension. From this perspective, different times express only an openness and accommodation of Great Space; they do not establish temporal succession, discrete moments, or `things in time'" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 81).

"Different times do not violate the nondistributive nature of Great Time. They are not linked, in a way that irrevocably separates them, by their respective positions in a temporal series. The 'series' is a fiction" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 106).

"When fully appreciated, Great Time is seen to be a kind of perfectly liquid, lubricious dimension--it is quintessentially 'slippery'. For this reason--although there seems to be movement and separate places to move to on the first level, and still more open, fluid possibilities of movement on the second level--on the third level there is no 'going' and no separate places. It is as though all the friction in the world were removed--nothing can then walk away from anything else. So, from a third level view, an eternity of `straying' still leaves us very much `at home', intimately united" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 162).

Space, Level 1

"Space is significant for us only insofar as it is available to be occupied by 'objects', things totally separate from the space that encompasses them" (Tarthang Tulku, 1990, p. 120).

"We understand space as a vacuum. Though space is globally available--the all-pervasive domain of existence, the ground of our being--we will not take it in. We are always looking elsewhere" (Tarthang Tulku, 1993, p. 74).

"Our usual focus on substance and identity has turned space into the nothing of non-appearance. Setting space in contrast to what has form, turning it into the simple emptiness of the vacuum, we have made it into a 'formless body': a 'thing' that has the quality of being nothing at all. Misconceiving its nature, we have made it disappear" (Tarthang Tulku, 1994, p. 30).

"Great Space is `here' in a sense. But from a certain viewpoint, that nearness of infinity is toned down to a level tolerable for a `self', a level sufficient for `here' to `be someplace'. The infinity of Great Space then unfolds as a particular world, an indefinitely-extended field of places and times populated by innumerable particulars" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 75).

Space, Level 2

"A second-level relationship to Great Space . . . can manifest in infinitely many ways. Typical examples include an increase in personal freedom, less psychological pressure, greater physical relaxation, a heightening of the senses, and even parapsychological capacities, such as telepathy and clairvoyance. . . . But on this second level, the openness of Great Space and the relaxation of felt restrictions is still subject to a subtle, self-centered or `standard world order' interpretation. So the freedom of Great Space is still appropriated to our limiting convenience" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, pp. 112-13).

"`Space' will henceforth refer to a dimension of reality whose openness is both a requisite and a concomitant feature of all experienced happening" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 50).

"When the 'inwardness' of space 'appears' within appearance, we see clearly that space has no location, no conditioning, and no foundation. The conditions that manifest when we pursue things 'in' space do not impose their structures 'on' space" (Tarthang Tulku, 1994, p. 37).

"Like ordinary space, 'space' is the 'background' of what is projected, but unlike ordinary space it is also what is 'doing' the projecting. It is 'empty', for without being 'free' of substance, it could never project substance; yet 'emptiness' is not the essence of its creative power. Active 'within' both 'lower-level' space and the objects that appear within that space, the 'second-level' space that projects physical appearance enables what exists to appear in the mode of occupying space . At the same time the projecting projector and the projected appearance are unified as one manifestation--a second-level reformulation of the first-level interdependence between space and appearance. Second-level 'space' remains unoccupied whether it is projecting form or physical space, which from a second-level perspective are equivalent. Objects that appear within physical space, like that space itself, remain 'space'. In the same way, 'space' projects mental and physical 'things' interdependently, in the appearance of the object to the subject" (Tarthang Tulku, 1994, p. 152).

Space, Level 3

"This vision concerns Space, which is primordially peaceful, open. In its openness, it is an open-ended accommodating of various views, all welling up, floating, gathering within Space. Although undisturbed, it is filled with appearance. Space is therefore not static, but is instead a serene explosion of expanding creativity, filling all the eons of pasts and futures, without exhausting its openness or its capacity for exhibiting a further wealth of presences" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. xl).

"The Great Space dimension reveals an all-inclusive unity that, rather paradoxically, is not spread out over any region" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 62).

"The capacity of Great Space is never exhausted or compromised by a commitment to one particular trend or world order. Great Space can let anything appear. Great Space supports infinitely many choices of perspective" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 69).

"While all familiar things are separate and distributed over ordinary space, delineated partly by differences in position, they are all intimately connected insofar as their Great Space dimension is considered. `Distance between' becomes meaningless" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 112).

Knowledge, Level 1

"Limitations [are] usually placed upon our `knowingness'--the most restricting of such limitations being our insistence on indexing knowingness into a tiny `knowing self' or `mind', and our preoccupation with being `aware of' finite and terminating `objects of knowledge'" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. xvi).

"We feel cut off from `the world', the object of knowledge. We try to look, to know, but in doing so we throw up a screen in front of our eyes. We relate to knowledge as though it were little drops of water, falling from different places, that we must chase after and collect in a bucket. And we try to escape in experiences that seem special in some way--pleasurable, informative, liberating, meditative, or `peak' experiences" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 213).

"Even though 'knowingness' is always available to us, we ordinarily try to achieve knowledge in what we see as basically an insentient world. This has the effect of freezing knowingness into a world of knowable or known but unknowing things" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 220).

"The themes of the self-oriented trend take over: a subtle grasping and consolidating, a resultant stance taken up `outside' experience, labeling and trying to `get' the content of experience, and an emphasis on the acts `of knowing' and `being happy'. Labeling, and the preoccupation with `content', obscure the fulfillment available for a `knowing' which remains `in' experience from the beginning and which is not a separate act or event" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 266).

`There is very little depth or sensitivity to `lower knowledge', and little fluidity as well. Everything is forced into conformity with a certain implicit logic of how knowing occurs and of how the known world is structured. `Lower knowledge' acts like a kind of magnet, attracting experiences and presuppositions that obscure understanding of the nature of appearance" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 237).

Knowledge, Level 2

"The `knowing' . . . cannot be appropriated by a `self'. It actually frees us from the persuasiveness of meanings. Furthermore, the exercise of this knowing does not amount to a special kind of mental event" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 59).

"Our `knowing' is usually a simple conjuring up of conventional elements; but we may now learn, instead, more about how the conventional world of appearance merges and unfolds in terms of bodies, knowers, and things known. This new type of knowledge may be concerned more with an open field or dimension--which makes it possible to take up various points of view--than with the observed objects deriving from such particular points of view" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 28).

"This knowledge [is] freely available: less a possession to be obtained than a luminous, transparent `attribute' of experience and mental activity" (Tarthang Tulku, 1987, p. xlv).

"Working together, inquiry and analysis need no longer rely exclusively on thoughts and concepts as tools, but instead can find knowledge directly within each moment--not isolated in the knower or hidden within the known, but freely available in a way that links the mind and the surrounding world, without necessarily locating either `mind' or `world'" (Tarthang Tulku, 1987, p. 301).

Knowledge, Level 3

"We can develop a mode of 'seeing' which is not limited to a particular position or 'point of view' at all" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 27).

"Great Knowledge is the immediate and knowing dimension of all reality and experience. It is the interplay between the openness of Space and the expressive creativity of Time. The very way in which Space and Time set up distances, differences, finite knowing capacities, and obstacles to knowledge leaves everything directly `known'. . . . Great Knowledge is the interpreter and the demonstrator of this Space and Time, but it is not limited to the events which we single out as knowing acts. Knowledge is not something which knows something; it is simply the presence of reality as `knowingness'" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, pp. 211-212).

"Ordinary knowledge has particular uses and values, but Great Knowledge is irrepressible--it cannot be tied down or limited in any way. There is no way we can truly fail to comprehend it. And like ordinary knowledge, Great Knowledge always leads to more Knowledge of its own kind. It inspires itself and can grow infinitely" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, p. 215).

"Full knowledge dissolves the 'distance' between knower and known that characterizes conventional not-knowing. With no distance, an intimacy of knowing emerges, and knowledge becomes inseparable from love" (Tarthang Tulku, 1987, p. xlviii).

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