Well, I've been - and still are - extremely busy on my book, Integral Metaphysics and Transformation.  As always, it's turned out much harder than I thought,. because my obsessive perfectionism won't let me just writre a basic rough intro.  Instead I have to revise and add more insights, more material.  Sometimes I end up reorganising stuff.  I had hoped to finish it before the end of this year, but that doesn't look likely now.

I can however promise you that, when it's finished, this will be an amazing book.  If anyone is intersted in reading some chapters, let me know.  Mostly I've been working on the subject of emanation, hypostases, involution.  I compare different teachings, as well as proposing my own synthesis.   The emphasis is esotericism, especially from the Integral Yoga perspective. 

So far I'm working with the idea of five major hypostases.  These are (with Sri Aurobindo's terminology in brackets for the first three)

o The Unmanifest Absolute Reality (Sachchidananda)
o The Manifest Absolute Reality (Supermind)
o The Noetic Reality (Overmind)
o The Nondual Reality (standard Enlightenment)
o The Prakritic Reality (the Cosmos, planes of existence, gross and subtle matter)

Readers familiar with the traditional meme of the "Great chain of being" or ontological spectrum will understand what is being described here.  More unusual, to those unfamiliar with Sri Aurobindo's insights, is that the "nondual" state of Enlightenment (normally considered the very highest state of consciousness, the Absolute Reality) has a relatively  low position, second from the bottom.  If this arrangement seems strange, especially to those used to the comparison tables and charts provided by Wilber and others, consider that none of the popular Gurus in the West, and none of the main writers and teachers in the Integral Movement so far, really understand what Sri Aurobindo actually taught (on my website I mention the misunderstandings of Adi Da, of Osho, and of Ken Wilber in this regard). 

This is in no way to criticise the sincerity of those Integralists who study Sri Aurobindo  from an intellectual perspective only.  But inevitably mistakes creep in, because Sri Aurobindo represnets a much higher level of consciousness then that attained by even the most enlightened in the cutting edge consciousness paradigm in the West.  Pop Gurus (1960s onwards), New Paradigm transpersonal psychology and spirituality (1970s onwards), the Integral Movement (1990s onwards),  and all the rest, go as far as the Nondual stage, but no further.  What is described here will be the esoteric perspective, based on Plotinus (another great teacher who has been misunderstood in the mainstream Integral Movement), Sri Aurobindo, and other teachings.
 
I also do refer to the Integral movement later in the book, when i talk about planetary transformation or global mindshift.  It is here that the Integral Movement comes into its own.  As mentioned in a previous blog post, i am now much more interested in collaboration, rather than criticism.  I have been meaning to write an essay showing parallels between Andrew Cohen's concept of evolutionary enlightenment and my own ideas, but haven't because I've been so busy on the book, which is my first priority here. 

In working on my book Integral Metaphysics & Transformation I've been brushing up on Plotinus and Ibn Arabi; because their insighst should be incorporated (especially since they are so little known and understood in the West today).   It's amazing coming back to this stuffa fter a period of several years (i last studied them when putting up the Keper pages); I now have these further insights from Sri Aurobinbdo, and everything appears ina  new light, with further levels of insight and meaning.

Yesterday and this morning I was been reading a book about ibn Arabi (he is too complicated to read straight, unless you want to devote years studying him), and been noticing amazing parallels with Sri Aurobindo, just as there are between Plotinus and Sri Aurobindo.  Not that i know enough to write in detail, it will be rather as just basic pointers,  Hopefully in the future others can make more detailed comparisons (just as comparisons made between SA and Teilhard, and Whitehead and SA too).   I've read one essay comparing Plotinus and Sri Aurobindo but didnt find it very inspiring.

Significantly, none of the other esotericists has the understanding of the Supramental Transformation of matter, that seems to be Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's great contribution.   Isaac Luria seems to be the only one, and even he (or rather his followers!) describe things very vaguely

But yeah, when reading Plotinus, Proclus, ibn Arabi, Kashmir Shaivism.... it is such amazing stuff, so profound and uplifting, it makes me wonder why I even bothered with the Integarl Movement and people like Wilber.  Not meaning to put the guy down; like i said in another blog post i am now more interested in cooperation rather than criticism; but compared to the summits of esoteric and mystical thought, it si so dull, so dry, so limiting

And then i had the answer.  Sure Ibn Arabi and Plotinus and the rest have far vaster and profounder insights, but they are so far above the average humanity that no real connection can be made.  And this is Wilber's contribution, and others in the New Paradigm, New Consciousness, and New Age movement, to present a dumbed down and materialistic  version, to serve as a bridge or link.  It's like emanation too; there is the original source, then the various layers or rings or spheres around it which convey the Light in a diminished manner, but which is still necessary for the niourishment and sustenance of lower (in the sense of material, phenomenal, manifest) beings.  Okay I'm playing fast and loose with the metaphor, but yeah, the idea is that people like Wilber and Cohen, the New Paradigmers, etc serve an important purpose, and in pave the way for a more complete understanding, even if this more complete understanding is far above their insights.

This raises the possibility of a truely integral society or culture, not just the Wilberina/Upper Tier Integral which is still exoteric, but an esoteric Integarl based on isnighst of esotericism and of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's profound and still unsurpassed Integral or Supramental Yoga.  it is not that the people in this society will have attained that level (when that happens it is the Divinisation of the World), but they are "informed by" (to use the Wilberian phrase) Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's teachings (and esotericism in general), in the same way that people in the Mainstream Integral Movement are informed by ideas proposed by Wilber and Beck.  How long will this take to come about?  Well we are talking about post-(IM Movement) Integral, and the Integral Movement itself is not properly developed (maybe in 10 years it will be).  So I don't know.  But if there is a process of spiritual ascent and a collective movement to Divinisation, then this may consitite a transitional stage (all this will have to go in my book as well  :-)