INTEGRAL WORLD MAILING LIST http://www.integralworld.net Newsletter Nr. 675 Amsterdam, September 9th, 2017 ‘EROS IN THE KOSMOS’ - Mechanism, Metaphor or Something Else? - FRANK VISSER I don't tell you anything new when I say that I have questioned Ken Wilber's views on biological evolution. Over the years, in many essays on Integral World I have looked at this issue from many different angles. In a nutshell, Wilber proposes an "Eros in the Kosmos", a quasi-natural force towards higher complexity, consciousness and compassion, which alone is able to explain these phenomena. Science, Wilber claims on many occasions, is incapable of doing just that, at least not fully. He has gone even so far as calling the common idea that the universe has a irreversible and widespread tendency to run down into a state of cold disorder—which is codified in the Second Law of Thermodynamics—a "ridiculous" idea. On the contrary, he claims, "simple observation" tells us that a rise towards complexity and higher order is ubiquitous in nature. And the new sciences of chaos theory and complexity, he claims, begin to explain that by their emphasis on the phenomena of self-organization. There is, he states, a cosmic "drive towards self-organization". In my essays on Integral World I have critiqued these notions as unscientific and largely unhelpful. My essays have met with various forms of criticism, both on Integral World and on Facebook. I would like to respond to these objections in the remaining paragraphs of this essay. It is remarkable that no-one in the integral community has felt the urge to either defend Wilber against my criticism, or use this opportunity to flesh out Wilber's position in more detail. Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/visser106.html THE SHADOW, CARL JUNG, AND INTEGRAL DEEP LISTENING - JOSEPH DILLARD Jung develops the concept of the shadow” for good and important reasons. For example, in “The Philosophical Tree”[2], he says, “A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbor.” Expanding on this approach in “Psychology and Religion” (1938). In Psychology and Religion: West and East.[3], Jung says, “If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against… Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world.” Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/dillard11.html