How Do You Describe 'Integral Truth'
The title question and the following response is from a Discussion Thread on Integral Naked Forums:
I ... am not much impressed by the process or effectiveness of combining various theories and practices and trying to use that material as a basis for a better [i.e. Integral] view of the whole.
I have been a bit skeptical and critical of the proliferation of the word 'Integral' in the present-day spiritual arena. Whereas developing an Integral consciousness is certainly a good intention, ideal, ethical approach and philosophy, I don't think that most Integral approaches (including Ken Wilber's) have a true idea of what the word 'Integral' means in terms of really understanding the Earth and the evolution of consciousness in material creation. In my view, an 'Integral' perspective, if it is to really live up to the essence of that word, must encompass the Earth's actual patterns of growth, geography, cycles of time, historical movements, mythologies and such.
In 'The Human Cycle', Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) - a forefather of all things INTEGRAL - writes about the typical mental use of words as a spinning of fiction, as opposed to the words used by Vedic Seers some 5,000 years ago. Sri Aurobindo understood that a true Seer’s words are connected to their living ROOT (sol/source) and that the connection to and understanding of the hidden realities of creation are not yet filtered out (that is until a lesser Mental perception gets a hold of the words).
'To us poetry is a revel of intellect and fancy, imagination a plaything and caterer for our amusement, our entertainer, the nautch-girl of the mind. But to men of old the poet was a seer, a revealer of hidden truths, imagination no dancing courtesan but a priestess in God's house commissioned not to spin fictions but to image difficult and hidden truths; even the metaphor or simile in the Vedic style is used with a serious purpose and expected to convey a reality, not to suggest a pleasing artifice of thought. The image was to these seers a revelative symbol of the unrevealed and it was used because it could hint luminously to the mind what the precise intellectual word, apt only for logical or practical thought or to express the physical and the superficial, could not at all hope to manifest.' p. 8
Sri Aurobindo describes that a 'curve of degeneration' brings civilization from the Living use of Symbols to what he calls a Typal stage and then into a Conventional stage that may still use some of the symbols and rituals but the real sense is gone and words, symbols, images, rituals religions used for upholding ethical and psychological 'motive and discipline'.
My thoughts are that the word Integral in our modern hands is far from a direct expression of what Integral IS. It seems to me that we are commonly using the word to describe a attractive and honorable theory of life, but that it is removed from the roots and realities of the living Earth and the Cosmos which must be at the heart of an Integral perspective.
To read more of this post (which includes a quote from Sri Aurobindo's 'The Secret of the Veda')link here: http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/24810/ShowThread.aspx#24810
