New Territory

COHEN: You know, ever since I started teaching almost twenty years ago, I have been consumed by this question: What does an uncompromised and uninhibited expression of enlightened consciousness look like in a postmodern twenty-first-century context? Or to use the terms of our discussion today, what would a second or even third tier perspective really mean—in real life, for you and for me? Not just in terms of some idealized state, but in terms of our actual level of development as fully human beings. Usually, when people experience higher states of consciousness, they effortlessly and ecstatically relate to a higher, or what I would call enlightened, perspective. But unfortunately, it rarely informs the way they relate to their experience, or the experience of others, the rest of the time. What I'm interested in, of course, is the rest of the time. Because what happens when people are just experiencing higher states doesn't necessarily mean that much, or it is significant only to the degree that one is able to sustain the enlightened perspective throughout all changing states.

That perspective, of course, reveals to us a completely different way of seeing and understanding and, ultimately, even feeling. When an individual actually does evolve, miraculously they begin to feel from a higher or more impersonal dimension of themselves. They find it more and more difficult to relate emotionally from a merely personal place. But that's a big leap for most of us.

WILBER: You know, when Aurobindo talks about intuitive mind and overmind and supermind, it's very telling that he uses the word mind. Because you can also say that there are intuitive emotions, and over-emotions, and super-emotions. The same with motivation—there's intuitive motivation and over-motivation and super-motivation. So there are all those other lines of development that go up the hill with the mind line, or cognitive line. But we still find that the cognitive line is usually necessary for these other lines to stick. If you don't have intuitive mind awakened, and overmind awakened, and supermind awakened, the emotions won't stick up there—they'll come and go. And the higher motivations won't stick—they'll come and go.

COHEN: That's very true. That's why now, in my own work, I always put the greatest emphasis on the need to cultivate a very big perspective, and why I agree with you that we need a clear map of the territory that we are aspiring to leap into. Without that map or context, it's very difficult to make sense out of our own experience, especially as we begin to enter into higher states of consciousness. The experiences themselves, while soothing for the soul and liberating for the spirit, simply do not clarify the overarching developmental context in which they are occurring. That's one of the reasons that it's so common for people to continue to get lost again and again in the ego's limited perspective, even though they may have transcended it—seen and felt and known beyond it—many, many times. So to me, the ultimate purpose of a map is that it can help us to continuously orient ourselves to a higher, more enlightened context throughout all changing states.

WILBER: What happens in my work and what happens in yours is a little bit different, I think. I'm primarily trying to orient people to second tier as an integral base camp. You're trying to push them into third tier. So, what happens with me is that, as we were saying, a lot of people come who are talking second tier, but really have a first tier center of gravity. You're dealing with people who often have third tier experiences or realizations, but how to actually live it, in a way that includes first and second tier, is the rub.

COHEN: It's a big rub.

WILBER: People have experiences, but how they handle them, that's what you have to deal with. That's when people fall apart.

COHEN: Yes, because not everybody has what it takes to live up to what they have realized.

WILBER: And that's what you have to deal with as a guru. You're standing up as a guru, which takes courage; it takes a certain awareness; it takes a certain openness. Students regularly get offended and you have to deal with that. So that's a very difficult issue.

COHEN: Especially in this culture. So the big challenge is really being willing to make the effort necessary to stretch ourselves in order to learn what the higher-state experiences we have actually mean. Because often on an experiential level, we can go a lot further than we may yet be able to understand and interpret appropriately. As we've spoken about in the past, to make this leap to a higher-level interpretation is a very big thing. That's new territory.

WILBER: It's new territory, and it's a constant uphill battle, as you know.

COHEN: It is an uphill battle. But there's a point where one's center of gravity shifts in a fundamental way. We could say this shift would be the beginning of a genuine transformation or leap to a higher stage of development. The way I would describe it would be a shift in the balance of power within the individual from the ego to what I call the authentic self. When the balance of power shifts not less than fifty-one percent to the authentic self, a fundamental corner has been turned. Now the individual is able to wholeheartedly direct their energy to the evolution of consciousness because the resistance, the fundamental resistance, has been overpowered by the ecstatic compulsion to evolve that is the nature of the authentic self.

WILBER: I agree with that. I think percentage is the way to look at it. I really don't think it's problematic to say that I can have three or five or twenty percent old, conditioned stuff and I can have five or ten or twenty—or fifty-one—percent radically new stuff going on. They're not mutually exclusive. And I think that's what makes it so interesting for pioneers—they're poking their way into things that have never been seen before and shaking the old stuff off at the same time.

COHEN: Absolutely. There's no other way to do it. But when the balance shifts fifty-one percent to the authentic self, the individual is not a seeker anymore. Now they have become, to that degree, one with God or the evolutionary principle and that's what is driving them—even if they still have forty-nine percent to go.

WILBER: Yes. When fifty-one percent of them gets over the hill, in a sense it's downhill from there, but there are still a lot of bumps going downhill.

COHEN: Another way to describe it is like there's a tractor beam that is literally pulling one forward.

WILBER: Yes, that's a better way to look at it. But that path hasn't been grooved yet. We've talked about that part before in terms of the model that I'm developing on postmetaphysics, and I think we're in agreement on this. Some of these higher stages, even though the great sages have pioneered them, haven't really been laid down as Kosmic memories, or Kosmic grooves, the way first tier or even beginning second tier has. For example, most of the early stages of development have been around for thousands of years. And billions of human beings have gone through them so that now they are automatically part of development. They're as rutted as the Grand Canyon, which may go down a mile. But new stages—as stages, not as temporary ecstatic states—might be a yard or two deep, that's all that's been cut yet. And so, boy, it's hard to make things stick in that.

COHEN: Precisely.

WILBER: And anybody who's pushing into those stages is basically going out next to the Grand Canyon, taking a stick, and starting to dig another groove. But it's still a tractor beam of Spirit. It's still Eros. It's still the leading edge of spirit's own unfolding. And once fifty-one percent of you gets behind it, then you really do feel God is moving in you, and evolution is speaking through you, and Spirit is unfolding through you, consciously.

COHEN: That's what evolutionary enlightenment is all about.

WILBER: Working with all this is such a strange experience—I go back and forth. I get excited on the one hand because so much stuff is happening and it really is leading edge and it's wonderful. But then on the other hand, I look at what a tiny percentage of the population has actually reached these levels and it always sort of brings me back to earth.

COHEN: I know. Often I remind myself of that. Because sometimes I'm so wrapped up in what I'm trying to do and think it's so important—and I do believe that it is—but at the same time, in the big picture, it can suddenly seem so insignificant.

WILBER: And then on the other hand, you can get excited by remembering that Paul Tillich said that what we call the Renaissance was participated in by only about a thousand people.

COHEN: I've heard that. That's so exciting! Because a snowball can start rolling.

WILBER: Yes, when somebody pushes through. That's what they were doing in the Renaissance—pushing into the first modern values. They were really pioneering that stage of development and that spearheaded the creation of that Kosmic groove for the rest of us.

COHEN: Intuitively, it always feels that if a small but not insignificant number of people become stabilized in a new and higher perspective, something could explode.

WILBER: Absolutely. And for me that's a very galvanizing ethical realization.

COHEN: Ethical in what sense?

WILBER: Well, in the sense that every act you make on the leading edge becomes a groove that subsequent human beings will follow. Therefore, you want to do your best with every single breath you take.

COHEN: Amen!

WILBER: That's what we could call the evolutionary ethical imperative. You know, Immanuel Kant was famous for his “categorical imperative”—he said something was autonomous and ethical if the rule that governed your behavior was universal. So he said, “Act as if everything you do might actually become a universal rule.” Well, this is even a little bit stronger. If this is true, what you're doing is actually becoming a universal groove. Therefore, please act as if everything you do is creating that groove; please be the most ethical, the most responsible, the most authentic you can be with every breath you take, because you are cutting a path into tomorrow that others will follow.

COHEN: And if you cross that fifty-one percent threshold, that fact is something that you will intuitively be aware of.

WILBER: And that realization is ethically bracing.

COHEN: Yes. If we stick with it, our very motive eventually evolves. When we begin on the path, it's all about ourselves. But once we cross that threshold, it becomes more and more obvious that it never could have been. Our motive for transformation changes spontaneously and dramatically as we come to recognize that our own development has always only been for the sake of the evolution of consciousness itself. And it's not a romantic ideal. That's just all there is. That's where I believe a new moral context is going to come from.

WILBER: I do too. It starts at second tier, and it becomes a living reality at third tier. And it really is that realization that your every move, your every breath, your every thought is literally becoming a Kosmic habit or memory that humanity will follow. And you can do it wrong. I mean, history is full of examples of when a particular stage started out healthy and then got very unhealthy. That's why it's so bracing, because you can do it wrong as well.

COHEN: Absolutely. That's why it's so important that we do it right. Because the future really is depending on each and every one of us. When we realize this, the dawning recognition that “it really is up to me” becomes overwhelming. I call that the spiritual conscience, or higher conscience, which is the door to the future.