A Letter To Einstein

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  The following letter was written before Franklin wrote Pathways Through to Space. Perhaps it was Albert Einstein’s statement about mysticism that prompted Franklin to write.San Fernando, CA

January 11, 1931

Dr. Albert Einstein
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA

Esteemed Sir:

There has just come before my attention a brief statement of your beautiful mystical philosophy or Cosmic Religion and it has flashed into my consciousness with rather an overwhelming force that you have become the focal point for the expression of a true religious basis that has become a crying need in the Occident which can no longer be satisfied in its depths by the outworn creeds and forms of current religiosity.

It seems to me that Count Hermann Keyserling has correctly stated the problem when he said that the soul-need of the Occident in the present day that are intellectually or scientifically unsatisfactory. There has been a general intellectual awakening which has extended too far for large portions of mankind to be satisfied spiritually by forms that are intellectually crude or scientifically untrue. At the same time this intellectual enlightenment has not gone far enough to be safe save with the few.

In other words intellectual development has proceeded so far ahead of its necessary moral modulus that there is real danger of our present intellectual construction proving to be a Frankenstein monster turning upon and destroying its creator. The moral debacle of the recent Great War only too clearly shows the danger threatening our civilization. As Bertrand Russell put it, we are in a position where either we must rise much higher than ever realized in known history or we will fall much lower.

There is a question in my mind but that the spiritual principles enunciated by the Liberated Sages of the past are eternal and are adequate for every inner need of man. I refer to figures such as Gautama Buddha, Shankara, Jesus, Lao-tzu and others of similar grade of spiritual insight. But the old forms of expression of these immortal men are no longer vital today except with a limited number who are themselves more or less liberated. The need is, as I see it, for a new vehicle of expression that will be convincing to the form of intellectual consciousness which dominates the world today, especially the Occident. It is this need which it seems to me you are supplying as no one else does and perhaps as no one else can. This is true because of your unquestioned dominance in the key-science of all physical sciences.

Our need is in large part an effective language. I am not using the term “language” with its purely surface connotation of words, sentences, etc., but in the sense of a form adequate to carry significance to consciousness at its present stage of development. The poetic and imaginative forms of the Hindus were adequate in their setting, but they are not convincing to our modern scientific field. Yet at present it is impossible to get anything like an adequate vehicle for the expression of Significance without drawing upon the Sanskrit. This is for the reason that there are vast numbers of Sanskrit terms conveying shadings of meaning that are quite inexpressible in current English terms or in the forms of any European language. In my opinion the one exception to this statement is found in the field of mathematics.

As my own college studies centered on the domain of mathematic, especially in connection with it correlation with philosophy or metaphysics, I have had some realization of the profound mysticism which underlies the whole of mathematics and becomes especially marked in the field of the transfinite. It is literally true that it was through this antecedent training in mathematics that I was able to see the thought of men like Gautama Buddha and Shankara as a rational whole grounded in mystical profundity. I have no doubt that within mathematics lies the same underlying Wisdom which forms the common substance of all great Sages. Is it not possible, then, that somehow out of mathematics, or mathematics in combination with physical science we will find the adequate language to express mystical profundity in a form which will command both the attention and respect of our present externally intellectualized public? It is my conviction that such is the case and that you have become in a peculiar way the focal point for such expression.

I am not blind to the fact that there are other mystical modes which stand in a position that is complemental rather than consonant with the one you so well express. Count Keyserling, I should say, is the most prominent exemplar of this complemental mode that we see upon the Occidental horizon today. He views mathematics as the most external instead of the most internal mode of thought. At this point, I must confess that he irritates me. But none the less I find him creatively stimulating in a most profound sense and there is no doubt but that his consciousness is rooted well in the deeps of profundity.

Between the currents which you and he represent there is a striking incompatibility. Now as I look back over known instances of mystical and metaphysical realization I find the continuance of these two modes quite persistent. Thus the Krishna of Indian tradition has much in common with Keyserling while the exquisite rational spirit of Shankara is a continuation of the same fundamental line you have expressed. It seems to me that the significance contained in the presence of these apparently antithetical modes is that they are really complemental aspects of a primary Reality which in its own Being is essentially inexpressible. The keynote of these two modes seems to be expressed in a synthesis through Vitality, represented by Keyserling, and a synthesis through Intelligence, represented by you. Or to use terms I have found helpful, the first mode is rooted in Perception and the second in Apperception.

I find myself in the same profound harmony with your thought that I find when I read Shankara. It seems in both cases that I am reading the expression of my most inward realization, only in a thought language more beautifully finished than I am able to produce. Now, as I feel this fundamental sympathy with what you have said, I have presumed to write you relative to playing a part in nurturing that current that has found a fount in you. It is true that spiritual and mystical sources are original and therefore superior to any human authority. But those human units who can stand on this primary basis alone and unaided are all too few. The majority require an image to which to attach their faith until in time they also have grown the strength to stand alone.

The Buddhas and the Christ and the other Sages serve us in a twofold way. They bring us the precepts born out of the intimate union with Wisdom and also they themselves become concrete images to sustain and inspire men, the vast majority of us who are not yet freed. I suggest that you, more than any other in this day, stand in a position to perform this transcendent service. For you are a recognized master in just precisely the field that even the hardest minds among us must perforce respect. Hence you are peculiarly the basis in the West for the expression of that which the politico-religious Sage of present day India has called Satyagraha or “Truth-Force.”

I am well aware that every true Sage dreads to become himself a central figure or focus of attention of devotees. As Plato said long ago, the Sage ever seeks solitude and isolation from the rush of affairs. But in the name of the common good Plato proposed in his Republic to compel these very Sages to take the limning place in the forefront among men. For they alone who have reached that point of Wisdom where they fain would shun the focus of multitudinous eyes are alone able to sustain themselves effectively upon that altitude. It is not an easy place for the Sage but it affords opportunity for that perfect service which saves many a soul from that morass of despair of lost faith. And the science of today that has build such unexampled power over external nature on one side, has yet in a more serious sense proven a devastating destroyer for the many who through that very science have lost confidence in soul-sustaining Truth Force. Only he who stands strong in the graces of this same science can restore the inner Light which she seems to have destroyed in the eyes of many.

To be sure, no Sage after having once spoken can prevent his ultimate canonization as his uttered words become the public possession. If such a one would avoid this he must from the beginning seal his lips with silence. But you have spoken and your words have become at least a potential Light. I fain would add my part, however small it may be, to the end that that Light may become more fully recognized among men. In this I would value greatly your individual approval, however much you are unavoidably and impersonally already such an illuminating focus for all of us who have seen.

With the esteem that belongs only to the scholar who is also a Sage, I am

Most sincerely yours,

[Unsigned, probably a copy.]

Ken Wilber was quite young when he contacted Franklin. Currently he is well known for his several books. There are several groups studying his Teaching. Unfortunately, this letter arrived when Franklin wasn’t feeling well. Gertrude responded to Dr. Wilber to explain a lack of response.

September 26, 1974

Dear Franklin Merrell-Wolff,

My name is Ken Wilber and I am writing to you to share my enthusiasm of Consciousness without an Object. My research has for years drawn me along the lines you so forcefully explain in Consciousness, and I have long intended to write you of my enthusiasm for your work.

In fact, I have just finished a work on the same subject, and I feel our experience-thoughts so overlap that correspondence with you would prove most fruitful. The work is tentatively entitled The Spectrum of Consciousness, and it deals with what is rather clumsily referred to as the “manifestation” of objects “out of” Consciousness without an object (which I call Absolute Subjectivity).

I hate to burden you by “forcing” the ms [manuscript] on you, but I would like to send you a copy that you can read at leisure. I honestly feel that you would find it interesting, and I believe further that you would be one who better than anybody else could feel what I am humbly trying to write in words.

I ask to send you a copy of the ms because it looks as if I will have trouble getting it published. John White gave a copy to Arthur Ceppos of Julian [Press] who has apparently rejected it because it is “too difficult” for the average reader (so John [Lilly] informs me). No matter. Sooner or later it will be published—I am more interested in your comments on the ms if you feel so inclined, for I feel our correspondence can be a fruitful cross-fertilization of two fields of research with different aims but a common goal.

Sincerely,
Kenneth E. Wilber 

Source http://www.franklinmerrell-wolff.com/

Integral Semiotics

July 15th, 2013/ Integral Post

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Note: This is an excerpt from volume 2 of the Kosmos Trilogy, tentatively entitled Sex, Karma, Creativity—the first volume of which was Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. I have finally finished volume 2, and am doing all the horrid little details required to get a book ready for publication.
Right-click here to download full pdf.
The following deals with a topic I find essential: the nature of linguistic meaning—or semiotics—and how a truly Integral approach fundamentally changes how we understand this. One of the basic moves is to understand that the referent, or “real object,” being represented by any linguistic sign doesn’t exist “out there” in a single, pregiven, unchanging reality, but rather exists in a particular and specific worldspace—a particular quadrant, or level, or line, or state, or type—and can only be “seen” or “experienced” by yourself finding that particular worldspace and moving your consciousness to it.
Thus, a word like “dog” can be seen by virtually any sentient being with a brain and eyes, and it exists in the sensorimotor world. But what about “God” or “Buddha-nature” or “Spirit”? Those are simple signifiers like “dog”—that is, a material mark claiming to represent a reality. But that reality is not just lying around “out there” in a single, pregiven, sensorimotor world—and thus those referents have often been taken to be meaningless.
But my point is that they all, in fact, exist in a specific worldspace that can itself be discovered and experienced—such as the causal or formless state of consciousness, particular stages of meditation, specific peak experiences or altered states. When one is in those worldspaces—and not simply staring at the sensorimotor worldspace—then the actual referents (the “real phenomena” of each referent)—can be clearly seen or experienced. And this changes the nature and meaning of semiotics altogether, by asserting that any given referent of a particular signifier exists in a specific worldspace, and in order to experience that referent appropriately (if it exists at all), the subject must get itself into that particular worldspace, and only then look around for the referent.
Integral Semiotics offers a comprehensive map or framework of most of the known worldspaces available to humans, and thus offers a Map that allows us to understand the Kosmic Address of a particular referent, and hence know where to look for any referent indicated by a signifier. Since most of these worldspaces do not possess simple location or material form, they are likely to be denied reality by most realist, empirical, or behavioral schools—where in fact they are home of the vast majority of those things most humans hold valuable. Integral Semiotics is thus a matter, not just of linguistics, but of emancipation.
—Ken Wilber

Integral Semiotics

Ever since the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, about a century and a half ago, a general fact about language has become more and more obvious: language does not just represent the world, it co-creates it, or at least certain important aspects and ranges of it. Even those worlds that it does not directly co-create (much of the pre-human worlds, such as the atomic and molecular) nonetheless arise in a world that is known and interpreted through the linguistic structures present therein, and thus if not directly created by language, are irrevocably touched and tinged by it.
Which brings us to an integral theory of semiotics in general. As I have previously suggested in outline form, some of the pieces of the puzzle here include Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiology, which maintains that all signs indicating referents are composed of a material (or exterior) signifier and a mental (or interior) signified; Charles Peirce’s semiotics, which maintains that signs are not just dyadic (signifier and signified) but rather triadic (as he put it, “an action, or influence, which is, or involves, an operation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this trirelative influence not being in any way resolvable into an action between pairs”); speech-act theory of J. L. Austin and John Searle; communicative action theory of Habermas; developmental structuralism (e.g., Piaget); and traditional hermeneutics—to mention a prominent few. Although “semiotics” in the narrow sense refers to Peirce's approach to the topic (he invented the word), it is now common to use that term to refer to the entire field of linguistic signs and symbols.
Given the failure of the empiricist, positivist, behaviorist, realist, phenomenological, and representational paradigms to account for the generation of the many varieties of linguistic meaning, the central issue of semiotics (and knowledge in general) has become where exactly to locate the referents of utterances (and how does one deal with that?). This turns out to be incredibly important, because hidden within this topic is really how we determine ontology in general—what is real, and what is merely imagined, mistaken, or idiosyncratic. It even connects to whether we can prove the existence of God in any fashion.
To give a simple example, when I say, “I see the dog,” we can all look and point to the real dog, assuming it’s there. The real dog has simple location in empirical (or sensorimotor) space, and thus locating that referent is fairly easy—we simply point to the real dog and say, “There it is.” But when I say, “George is green with envy because John has already shown that he has more courage,” then where exactly are we to locate “envy” and “courage”? They don’t have simple location in physical space, and thus we can’t point to them empirically. We can’t “put our finger” on them.
Just so, we can’t put our finger on most of the referents of mathematics (where is the square root of a negative one?), nor poetry, nor logic, nor any of the virtues—we can’t point to honor or valor or compassion or spiritual knowledge.
Now we are not talking about the notion that all referents, when perceived or even imagined, have some sort of correlative activity in the brain, so that when I read the words “dog,” “square root of negative one,” or “God,” they each light up the brain in a particular way. Those brain activities are not the referents of those words. Because every activity of the human being has some sort of registrant in the human brain, to use brain activity as indicating the location of a referent is actually a massive tautology—all things equally register in the brain, even imaginary and fantasy images. Trying to prove, for example, that meditation is real by hooking meditators up to EEGs or fMRIs and noting the resulting brain pattern proves absolutely nothing, except that yet another phenomena has crossed the brain and lit it up, as all registered items do. Chasing down brainwave patterns when people meditate is one of the great red herrings of modern research.
Of course we need to do it, simply so the exact nature of the correlation between Upper-Left consciousness phenomena and Upper-Right brain phenomena can be mapped out. But we don’t want then to erroneously conclude, as all too often happens, that the brain is therefore the source, origin, and cause of consciousness. This is just another scientific materialistic colonialization of the lifeworld (the disaster of modernity), and furthers our actual knowledge not at all. What we are talking about when we speak of the location of referents is, in addition to brain activity, where in the overall world does the real referent or actual object exist? For most empirically-oriented philosophies (behaviorism to realism), this means “Where in the sensorimotor world does the object exist?”; or even, “Does it exist in the sensorimotor world?” (because if not, then it is usually held to be an unreal or simply imagined phenomena).
When we perceive an apple, and say “I see the apple,” and the brain lights up in a particular way, we do not conclude, “The apple only exists as a brainwave pattern; it otherwise has no reality.”  No, we conclude that the apple is a real object in the real world, and as the brain perceives it, it lights up in various specific ways. But what happens when we say the same type of sentence but a different referent, such as, when engaged in contemplation, “I see God,” and the brain again lights up in a specific way. Do we give to God the same reality we gave to the apple, and conclude that God is a real phenomenon in the real world, and the brain is lighting up as it sees this real item? No, in fact we don’t. In fact, we do just the opposite. We take whatever brainwave pattern we can find at the time—perhaps an increase in gamma waves—and we say, “When the brain produces excess gamma waves, then the subject will imagine that he or she is seeing God.” In other words, where with the apple the brainwaves are taken as extra proof that apples are real, with God, the brainwaves are taken as extra proof that God is just an imaginary object; it’s not real in the real world, but simply an imaginary product of certain brainwave patterns. What’s going on here? And I am suggesting the answer lies in the whole issue of semiotics.
Start with the fact that most of the important issues in our lives do not have simple location, but that does not mean they aren’t real or do not exist. It only means that they cannot be found in physical space with simple location: they cannot be found in the sensorimotor worldspace.
But in addition to the sensorimotor worldspace, there are the emotional, the magical, the mythical, the rational, the planetary, the holistic, the integral, the global, the transglobal, the visionary, the transcendental, and the transcendental-immanent worldspaces, to name a prominent handful. And all of those worldspaces have their own phenomenologically real objects or referents. A dog exists in the sensorimotor worldspace, and can be seen by any holon with physical eyes. The square root of a negative one exists in the rational worldspace, and can be seen by anyone who develops to the dimension of formal operations. And Buddha-nature exists in the causal worldspace, and can be easily seen by anybody who develops to that very real dimension of their own state possibilities.
But neither the square root of a negative one nor Buddha-nature can be seen in the sensorimotor world—and all the philosophies that take the material realm or the sensorimotor realm as the prime reality (or that take consciousness-free ontology as the basic given), will not be able to locate either of those, and will hence conclude they both lack a fundamental reality (unless they go out of their way to make an exception, as, for example, positivism does when it says that all that is real are things and numbers—but too bad for Buddha-nature or Spirit: just can’t be found in the realm of dirt or numbers and thus is unceremoniously erased from the face of the Kosmos.)
In other words, the real referent of a valid utterance exists in a specific worldspace. The empiricist theories have failed in general because they ultimately recognize only the sensorimotor worldspace (and thus cannot even account for the existence of their own theories, which do not exist in the sensorimotor worldspace but in the rational worldspace).
Ferdinand de Saussure, in his pioneering work on linguistics and semantics, divided a “sign” into two parts: first, there is the material mark (written or spoken), which is the “signifier.” All the words on this page are signifiers. Second, there is what comes to mind when you see or hear a signifier, which is called “the signified.” Thus, my dog Fido is the actual object or referent. The word “F-i-d-o” is a signifier, and what comes to your mind when you read “Fido” is the signified (neither of which is the actual object or referent being referred to—which is Fido himself).
The signifier (e.g., the material word “Fido,” “negative one,” or “Buddha-nature” as they are written on this page or spoken by a person) is the Upper‑Right, the actual material mark. The signified (that which comes to mind when you read the word “Fido” or “negative one” or “Buddha-nature”) is the Upper‑Left, the interior apprehension in consciousness. This is what Saussure meant by the material mark (signifier) and the concept it elicits (signified), both of which are different from the actual referent. And, Integral semiotics adds, the actual referent of a valid utterance, to the extent it is valid, exists in a given worldspace—it exists in some dimension of the AQAL matrix which is composed of actual phenomena in any number of quadrants, quadrivium, levels, lines, states, and/or types.
Because all signifiers are by definition material, they can be seen by any animal with physical eyes (my dog can see the physical marks on this page). But the signified can only be seen if the appropriate level of interior development has been attained. Thus, my dog can see the signifier “dog,” but that word has no meaning for him, no signified for him, and thus he cannot know what the referent of that word actually is. Likewise, a six-year old can read the words “the square root of a negative one,” but those signifiers don't have any meaning (nothing is signified), and thus the six-year old cannot grasp the actual referent (the mathematical entity that exists only in the rational worldspace).
Thus, because referents exist only in particular worldspaces, if you have not developed to that worldspace—if you do not possess the developmental signified—then you cannot see the actual referent. Thus, anybody can read the words (the signifiers) that say “Buddha-nature,” but if the person has not developed to the causal dimension, then that word will basically be meaningless (it will not elicit the correct signified, the developmental signified, the interior apprehension or understanding), and thus that person will not be able to perceive Buddha-nature, just as the six-year old cannot perceive the square root of a negative one.
Thus, other people, who have developed to the state-stage of the causal dimension, might forcefully maintain that Buddha-nature exists, Spirit exists, and that everybody possesses it, yet for those who have not developed to the stage of the causal dimension, the notion of “Buddha-nature” or “Spirit” will be “all Greek” to these people, it will be “over their head.”
Hence, all referents exist in specific worldspaces (i.e., in some location in the overall AQAL matrix); all signifiers exist in the material and empirical domain (Upper Right); and all signifieds are actually developmental signifieds, and exist in the Upper Left at some specific altitude (red, amber, orange, green, indigo, etc.).
But signifiers (Upper Right) and signifieds (Upper Left) do not exist in a vacuum. They each have their collective forms and correlates.  The sum total of the collective signifiers—the total form or structure that governs the rules and the codes of the overall system of material signifiers (which, as a collective material system of signifiers, is the Lower Right)—is simply syntax (or grammar), which determines the correct or acceptable fashion in which signifiers are placed in reference to each other.  And the sum total of collective signifieds—the overall actual meaning generated by cultural intersubjectivity (which, as a collective interior system of signifieds, is the Lower Left)—is simply semantics. It was Saussure’s brilliance to spot that the meaning of a sign is not determined by the sign alone, but by the total overall system of signs and the relation of a given sign to all the other signs, not merely its relation to its referent, which is largely arbitrary.
(Take the phrases “the bark of a dog” and “the bark of a tree”—the word “bark” possesses no inherent meaning, but rather gains meaning from the context of other signs in which it finds itself—it means something different in each context—whether it’s referring to the bark of a dog or the bark of a tree. Nor is there anything special about the word “bark”—virtually any word can serve in its place, and in different languages, they do. A few words actually sound—“onomatopoeia”—like the referent they are representing—“growl,” for instance, sounds roughly like the grrrrl sound made by an actual animal, and in these relatively rare cases, there is something of a mild internal connection between the signifier and the referent, but even then an entire system of other signs is required to convey that meaning.)
This gives us a chance to bring together the various semiotic schools I mentioned at the beginning of this summary. For example, by seeing that the signified (Upper Left) arises only in the space of the collective worldview or cultural semantic (Lower Left)—which will serve as the necessary background context for the individual interpretation—Peirce’s triadic and Saussure’s dyadic structure of the sign can be brought into close accord: Peirce’s sign is Saussure’s signifier (both nestled in a system of social syntax); Peirce’s object is Saussure’s referent (both existing in a particular worldspace); and Peirce’s interpretant is Saussure’s signified (both resting in a system of cultural semantics).
We can likewise find room in this integral approach for the important discoveries of postmodernism on the nature of the materialities of communication and the chains of sliding signifiers (Lacan, Derrida), and on the importance of transformative codes in selecting which signifiers will be deemed serious and which marginal (Foucault). Even more important, I believe, we can honor Paul Ricoeur’s “structuralist hermeneutics,” a bold (and partially successful) attempt to integrate formalist explication (structural system or syntax of Lower Right) with meaningful interpretation (cultural hermeneutics and semantics of Lower Left). Ricoeur: “If, then, the intention is the intention of the text, and if this intention is the direction that it opens for thought, it is necessary to understand the deep semantics in a fundamentally dynamic sense; I will hence say this: to explicate is to free [or expose] the structure, that is to say, the internal relations of dependence which constitute the static of the text [the formalist syntax]; to interpret is to set out on the path of thought opened by the text, to start out on the way to the orient of the text [deep semantics].”
In short, individual signifiers are Upper Right (material marks); signifieds are Upper Left (interior apprehensions); syntax or grammar is Lower Right (collective systems and structural rules of language accessed in an objective fashion); semantics is Lower Left (the actual referents of linguistic signs, referents which exist only as disclosed in particular worldviews or worldspaces). If we add ten or so levels of development in each of those quadrants, I believe we will have the beginnings of a truly comprehensive or integral theory of semiotics.

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Response to Critical Realism in Defense of Integral Theory

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The following are two long endnotes, and one excerpt, from my recently finished book, Sex, Karma, Creativity, which is volume 2 of the Kosmos Trilogy, whose first volume is Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.  They were written, in part, in response to recent articles on Critical Realism and Integral Theory, and, while appreciating certain aspects of Critical Realism, come out strongly in favor of Integral Theory.

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- See more at: http://integrallife.com/integral-post/integral-semiotics#sthash.bXN7PJyt.dpuf