I recently made my way through two very interesting books, one by the Christian mystic Bernadette Roberts, What is Self? and the other by developmental psychologist Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads. Bernadette Roberts explores the path towards the culmination of what she calls no-self, which begins with an identification with ego at the center of self, the dropping away of ego (or the experience of no-ego), into the unitive state, and finally the dropping away of even the unitive state (no-self). In many ways this is a classic description of the spiritual path, although her background in Christianity gives it a particular flavor (one I’m less familiar with having studied and practiced primarily in the Buddhist tradition).
On the other hand, Robert Kegan describes the development of the complexity that an individual goes through, each stage going beyond the one before it, through 5 orders of complexity. The 5th order, what he calls “reconstructive postmodernism”, is a stage in which any one larger set of theories or beliefs are subsumed into a larger meta-framework. Kegan describes the reconstructive postmodernism in this way:
the possibility of a reconstructive postmodernism suggests that one could in fact advocate identification with a theory, a stand, or a way, and that such advocacy need not necessarily be a backsliding reification of one kind of modernist authority or another. An example would be a theory that was really a theory about theory-making, a theory that was mindful of the tendency of any intellectual system to reify itself, to identify internal consistency with validity, to call its fourth order brand of subjectivity “objectivity.” The expression of such a theory’s “maturity” would not be the modernist capacity to defend itself against all challenges, to demonstrate how all data gathered to it can find a place within it, but to assume its incompleteness and seek out contradiction by which to nourish the ongoing process of its reconstruction.
I have a deep passion for both the deepening spiritual maturity that Bernadette describes as no-self as well as the full maturity of the self that Kegan describes in the 5th order. On the surface they sound at odds, and while I myself don’t want to try and unify them theoretically (I’ll leave that up to people who want to make such distinctions as structure-stages and state-stages) I do know that from first hand experience each path can support the other. One is the path of waking up, and the other is the path of growing up. Why not do both?
Popularity: 7% [?]
November 5th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
>which begins with an identification with ego at the center of self, the dropping away of ego (or the experience of no-ego), into the unitive state
That almost sounds like mediatation on emptiness.
1: Identify the object of negation – the inherently existent self (which does not exist from a Budddhist point of view)
2: Negating this misconception.
Although the final goal of Buddhism and others is very different.
My Christian friends and I often talk about the methods behind our differences and similarities – it’s fun to do so – and they are quite inspired by the rich details of the Buddhist path.
I’m part way through Self, Reality and Reason by Thubten Jinpa (translator to the Dalai Lama), it is a great read.
And shows me just how advanced the Tibetan system is.
anyways nice post
November 5th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Waking up and growing up–I like that.
November 5th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Yeah, I borrowed it from Terry Patten.
March 21st, 2008 at 1:32 am
Serendipity. Her I am surfing late at night, integrating and deconstructing. Seeking that which is unseekable, and yet I look for it with the tap, tap of my finger tips. Maybe one more idea, one more data point, will create the critical mass. Silly me. It is the Doing that throws me. Being and Becoming seem so natural. Easy. It is the data lock on my worldview prior to each Action where the fear arises. Sure, I’d like to think I step forward from Keagan’s 5th order perspective, but can’t help feeling that the concretization of my perspective that heralds each Action is inherently flawed by its solidification. Well maybe that’s just what it means to be human. I guess the only action that isn’t imperfect is the action of taking action. We gotta do something with those 1440 minutes we get each day, eh? Roll the dice! Shit or get off the pot my uncle used to say. That’s still good advice.
Nice to stumble across you again Vince. It was just a few days ago that a grad student reached out to me for some coaching after bouncing through your website. I hope you are doing well. Keep the faith.
Blessings.