Development runs from the prerational (infantile, magical, mythic) through the rational to the transrational (mystical, contemplative).
Development runs through three bands: prerational, rational, transrational.To an eye that hasn't sorted the sequence there are only two kinds of thing, rational and nonrational, so the first and third bands fall into one bin.Reductionism reads the transrational down as prerational. Wilber's example is Freud.Elevationism reads the prerational up as transrational. Wilber's example is Jung.The settled frame, with Wilber's own sentences. This is the shareable image.
Development runs from the prerational (infantile, magical, mythic) through the rational to the transrational (mystical, contemplative). The first and last are both nonrational, so they are easy to confuse. In Wilber's words:
"The essence of the pre/trans fallacy is itself fairly simple: since both prerational states and transrational states are, in their own ways, nonrational, they appear similar or even identical to the untutored eye."
Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995), ch. 6
The confusion runs both ways. Reductionism reads genuine mystical experience down as regression to infancy. Elevationism reads infantile or mythic states up as mystical union. "Freud was a reductionist, Jung an elevationist—the two sides of the pre/trans fallacy. And the point is that they are both half right and half wrong" (SES, ch. 6).
The two-bin "untutored eye" picture is this wiki's device for Wilber's sentence. More: The Pre/Trans Fallacy.
