Ken Wilber's - Sistemul

8/10/2019 Ken Wilber's - Sistemul

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mystic and realises one's identity with the Absolute Reality. The different strata or divisions are each

associated with different psychoanalytical methods, as shown in the diagram above.

The interesting thing about this diagram is that - at least to myemanationistway of thinking (and

I'm sure others - including Wilber himself in later developments of his thought would say likewise) - is

that it is upside down. The Godhead (cum Collective Unconscious) is at the bottom, which consciousness

emerging from and eventually returning to it. No wonder Ken Wilber calls this his romantic phase.

Looking back now on this early stage of the development of his ideas, he says that as with many romantic

philosophers and Jungian psychologists, he saw spiritual growth as a return to an edenic condition which

existed in the past, but which has been lost during the process of development and culturalisation.

Baby and Bathwater

Even so, Wilber may have been inflexible in rejecting his early ideas. As Stephen Dinan points

out

Grof has found that authentic regression into the deepest layers of traumas, blocks, and neuroses

is vital to healing and further growth. In this respect, his model of development aligns more with Carl

Jung or Michael Washburn, who see adult development as a process of spiraling through origins to

reaccess lost potentials of the psyche: a descent and return. The world of children, and especially fetuses,

is charged with an enlivening numinosity (sacredness), something adults typically lack.Stephen Dinan Post-Modern Monk and Modern Shaman: The Theories of Ken Wilber and Stan

Grof,Originally appearing in The Inner Door

It is difficult to know how authentic this childhood or fetal numinosity is. I would tend to be

extremely sceptical of it, inasmuch as (in Grof's work, profound as it may be) it is filtered through the

lense of adult consciousness enhances or altered through psychotropic drugs, hypnotic recall, free

association, and so on). Small children, like animals, live in a world of the immediate present, of

sensation and association and strong feelings, but that doesn't mean they are necessarily spiritual or

mystical (or conversely that they aren't, it doesn't matter either way. But the fact that the experience is so

widespread mean sit must amount to something. As a pheonomeologist I accept the validity of all

expriences first, and then fit them into a unified theory later.

Christian de Quincey in his paper, "The Promise of Integralism", in the Journal of Consciousness

Studies (Vol. 7 No. 11/12 [2000]), sees Wilber's rejection of his early work as one of the indicators of his

rejection of "the ontological significance of feeling....For Wilber, feelings are a lure for "regressive"

Romantics who hark back to some mythical golden age." This criticism however is part of a larger"war"

between Ken Wilber and the California Institute of Integral Studies, where the teachings of Grof and

Washburn (which are in keeping with Wilber-I) are favoured

See also Gerry Goddard, Perspectives in Transpersonal Theory, for more on the Wilber - Grof

controversy, and an attempt at synthesis

It should however also be emphasised that, despite holding some differences of understanding,Wilber doesn't reject Grof. To quote:

"Stanislav Grof is one of the world's greatest living psychologists. He is certainly a pioneer in every sense

of the word, and one of the most comprehensive psychological thinkers of our era. Fortunately, Stan and I

are in substantial agreement about many of the central issues in human psychology, the spectrum of

consciousness, and the realms of the human unconscious."
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Phase 2 - The Pre-Trans Cycle of Being (1980-1982)

The Life Cycle

Inspired by Tibetan Buddhism and Sri Aurobindo, Ken Wilber makes a radical break from hisoriginal psycho-cosmology of Spectrum of Consciousness, and in The Atman Project (1980), Up From

Eden (1981), A Sociable God (1983) and Eye To Eye (1983) proposes a paradigm of the Cycle of

consciousness and psychological development, from totally pre-personal to completely transpersonal.

Instead of the ego lifting its repression of the unconscious, Wilber focused primarily upon the Great

Chain of Beingwith an unveiling anevolutionarypantheism in which each successive stage follows upon

and includes the capacities of those that preceeded it, while transcending their weaknesses (this is to bea

standard themethroughout Wilber's later formulations). Unfortunately, hemisunderstood Sri Aurobindo,

and his experience then, as now, was based on a more monistic Advaitin realisation. He also still retains

the Jungian and Freudian concept of a primordial psychic unity right at the beginning; there is no real

conception of an original Absolute, despite the apparent emphasise on involution and evolution.

Wilber's Critique of the Romantic-Jungian position.

In 'The Atman Project' Wilber points out that theJungianand Jungian-based concept of the pre-

rational and pre-natal collective unconsciousbeing identical with the transpersonal Absolute of the

mystics is actually a confusion of two different realities. Here he makes a good point - I remember how

shocked and surprised I was (when in my early twenties) for example to learn that Jung considers the

Pleromaof theGnosticsas the same as the depth of the collective or racial unconscious. Since the 19th

century, Westerners have tried to explain away theeasternconcept ofLiberationorEnlightenment,and

the "oceanic" mystical experience, as a sort of return to the experience of the womb, or - in the Jungianparadigm, a more primitive strata of consciousness. And Wilber was the first western thinker to critically
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reject this assumption (rather than just intuitive saying - as I did - what a lot of crap), by distinguishing

between what he called prepersonal stateswhich exist prior to the formation of the individual ego, and

transpersonal statesin which the individual ego has been transcended. The confusion of the two he calls

thepre/transfallacy. He would elsewhere describe this as "the confusing of pre-rational states and trans-

rational states simply because both are non-rational." Spiritual growth is now seen as an evolutionary-

developmental process from preconsciousness through mature ego to ego-transcendence and self-

enlightenment.

The outward arc and the inward arc

Wilber's central thesis is the "pre-trans" cycle of involution and evolution (or the outward arc and

the inward arc as he terms it). This is the idea that in it's development the psyche - whether a newbornhuman infant or a prehistoric hominid evolving greater intelligence, or the beginnings of myth and

civilisation - begins in a state of undifferentiated unconscious universalism. From there it passes through

stages of increasing individualisation and ego-development (outward arc) whereby it is able to recognise

itself as a separate entity. Only after having attained this state is one able to progress on the mystical path

and transcend the ego in order to consciously return to the undifferentiated One (inward arc).

Although presented as an objective analysis, his thesis is actually rather a reinterpretation of the

myth of cosmological cycles. Indeed there are some fascinating parallels between his own stages and

those of Rudolph Steiner.

Interestingly, there is also a strong parallel withArthur M Young'sTheory of Process,although

that is not surprising as Young was in part inspired by (among many other things) theosophical ideas

(although not to the same degree as Steiner)

Wilber's cyclic sequence is described in the following stages:

the Pleromatic stage

the Uroboric stage

the Axial and Pranic stage- Early Body Ego

the Image Body Self- Late Body Ego

the Verbal-Membership stage
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the Mental Egoic stage

the Biosocial stage

the Centauric stage

the low Subtle

the high Subtle

the low Causal

the high Causal

the Ultimate (=the Absolute Reality)

His follow-up to The Atman Project - a book called Up From Eden - in which he presented a

historical linearisation of his sequence of planes of consciousness - was a disappointment. I found it

presented a very simplistic and rigid view of the evolutionof consciousness, albeit no worse than the

clockwork cosmologies of Blavatsky, Leadbeater, Steiner, and Meher Baba. It is certainly easier to

simply categorise planes of consciousness then to describe the organic evolution and transformation of

that consciousness though the various planes.

A Critique of Ken Wilber's Pre-Trans thesis

Although Ken Wilber's map of consciousness contains many fine and profound elements, there are also

points of weakness too, which arise when his theory is accepted as a literaldescription of the evolution of

consciousness. Just to list a few (you can findmore here):

1.

The Pre-Trans theory means that children are unable to have genuine mystical experiences (that is

only possible he claims after the development of the adult ego). But there is plenty of evidence

that children can and do have mystical (transpersonal) experiences no different from those of

adults. (I read an interesting paper that points this out, giving examples, unfortunately I don'thave it at hand - when I dig it up I'll put the reference on this page)
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2. again, it is assumed that because infants cannot talk they exist in an amorphous state of

undifferentiated unity with their environment (a fallacy that dates back toFreud).

3. the same assumption is made regarding animals.

4. it is also assumed that human evolution and civilisation proceeds from magical-animistic to

mythical to rational-scientific (an old Victorian chestnut, with embellishments by Julian Jaynes

The Bicameral Mind)

5. it is further assumed that "magical" thinking is considered inferior (pre-) to rational thinking,

rather than understood as mentation pertaining to a different strata of existence.

In short, whereas Ken Wilber's powerful intellect and wide grasp of facts are not disputed, his actual

conclusions are both simplistic and unpersuasive. Worse, they are not amenable to disproof as they ignore

all facts that contradict them. According to the Pre-Trans paradigm it is not possible for a child to have

genuine mystical experiences, because they are still at the "Pre" stage, and have not yet developed a full

ego and then graduated to "trans". However, T. Armstrong, (1984) "Transpersonal experience in

childhood" the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 16(2), 207-230 and more recently Jayne

Gackenbach Childhood Experiences of Higher States of Consciousness: Literature Review and

Theoretical Integrationboth refer to transpersonal mystical experiences among children. confirms this in

more detail. All this makes Wilber's methodology seem very dubiousThe point is that Wilber's theories constitute a popular paradigm in of the Transpersonal

Psychologyand New Paradigm movements. Moreover, as a myth, his theory with its various stages is

extremely interesting, and may refer to actual phenomena regarding the evolution of consciousness on

subtle (etheric and/or psychic) planes. Wilber'spre-stages mimic those ofRudolf Steiner,except Steiner

gives his stages a literal objective cosmological relevance, whereas Wilber understands them as

psychological. The fact that there are such parallels indicates that Wilber is certainly ontosomething. It's

just that his observations have no more, and no less, relevance than those of Steiner, Edgar Cayce, and

others. Personally I think what all these individuals are describing are transformations within the subtle

physical of the Earth, which is a really interesting and profound topic. Only, because we are dealing

with metaphysical,rather than physical, realities, things are hard to pin down and hence are interpreted

differently according to where the propounder is coming from. Steiner uses a theosophical mythology,

Cayce a quasi-Christian mythology, andJung,Jaynes, and Wilber a quasiscientisticmythology.

Phase 3 - Multiple Development and Holographic Mind (1983-1987)

This is more a transitional stage between the Pre-Trans Cycle and the AQAL paradigm than a

complete phase of philosophy. Inspired by the western developmental models of Piaget and others, and

educational psychologist Howard Gardner's research into multiple lines of personal development, Wilber

rejects the idea of a single homogenous and simplistic process of self-development from pleromatic toabsolute. Instead, he sees the different aspects of the personality mature along several lines of

development (cognitive, emotional, moral, psychosexual, interpersonal, spatio-temporal, social, spiritual,

and so on) For example, the emotional development may be more advanced than the mental, or vice-

versa.

It is also at this period that Wilber adopts the paradigms of 'Holographic Mind' taught by the

Human Potential Movement, based on the teachings of Arthur Koestler. In this incorporation of

Koestler's thought into the Wilberian paradigm, evolution is now understood as a holarchy, in which each

layer is a whole (holon) that is part of a greater whole, and each successive level - from matter to body to

mind to Spirit - encompasses and includes the former.
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Phase 4 - All Quadrants All Levels (1995-2001)

Thefirst formKen Wilber'sunified theorytook was of a bifurcating Spectrum of Consciousness

supported by a an underlying Ground of Being. This then gave way to a very different diagram - the

involution-evolution pre-trans cycle.The final stage or metamorphosis of his cosmology, and the most

sophisticated, is the holon-quadrant

The Big Three

In 1995 Wilber published his 800 page opus Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. The core of its argument

was a call to integrate "the Big Three"--the big three of art, morals, and science; or the Beautiful, theGood, and the True; or I, we, and it; or first-, second-, and third-person dimension. These are each

associated with a pronoun:

"Sir Karl Popper's 'three worlds' (subjective, cultural, and objective); Plato's the Good (as the

ground of morals, the 'we' of the Lower Left), the True (objective truth or it-propositions, the Right

Hand), and the Beautiful (the aesthetic beauty in the I of each beholder, the Upper Left); Habermas' three

validity claims (subjective truthfulness of I, cultural justness of we, and objective truth of its).

Historically of great importance, these are also the three major domains of Kant's three critiques: science

or its (Critique of Pure Reason), morals or we (Critique of Practical Reason), and art and self-expression

of the I (Critique of Judgment)."An integral theory of consciousness;Journal of Consciousness Studies,4(1), pp.71-92, 1997

Here we see Wilber's representation of the four quadrants, with the characteristics of intentional

(individual subjective) , neurological (individual objective), cultural (collective intersubjective) and

social or socio-economic(collective interobjective). In addition, each has its own pronoun, the personal

pronouns for the interior quadrants (individual subjective being "I" and the collective subjective "We" or

"You"), and the impersonal (including a plural "it") for the exterior ones.
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Or in other word Arts (Upper Left), Morals (Lower Left) and Science (Upper and Lower Right );

the True (Upper and Lower Right ), the Good (Lower Left) and the Beautiful (Upper Left); and Self

(Upper Left), Culture (Lower Left), and Nature (Upper and Lower Right).

And indeed anyone who has studied comparitive esotericism may have many examples of Archetypal

triads. These might range from the theological trinities of many religions (Egyptian, Hindu, Christian,

etc), to the early Vedantics (Being, Consciousness Bliss), Samkhyans (three gunas), Neoplatonists

(Abiding, Precession, Return; and Being, Life, and Mind, etc), Gnostics, Kashmir Shaivites, Tantriks

(three main nadis), andTaoists(three Tan Tiens), to twentieth century esotericists likeSteiner(Thinking,

Feeling, Willing, three streams of evolution, and the Three Fold Commonwealth), Gurdjieff andOuspensky (Law of Three), and many others have done. However it seems to the present author that

Wilber's triads don't match the conventional ones. The two left-hand quadrants are often similar -

corresponding to Steiner's or Jung's feeling principle (Arts and Morals, or the Beautiful and the Good).

The two right ones which he groups together correspond to the thinking principle. There is a match here

with some of the polarities in Stan Gooch's Total Man. So it is not a true triad, but rather a quaternity,

which indeed is the basis of Wilber's system.

The Holarchy

This Phase of Wilber's work, further refined in follow up works likeEye of Spirit(1997),Integral

Psychology (2000) and the grandly but appropriately named A Theory of Everything (2000), Wilber's

edifice reaches its maximum complexity, with the development of a so-called "integral theory of

consciousness." Here he incorporates the physical, neurological, social, cultural, philosophical, and
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spiritual dimensions of human consciousness, creating an even more detailed map than his earlier ones,

known as AQAL - all quadrants, alllevels.

This all-embracing worldview is based on the wholistic interplay of four distinct but

complementary and interrelated, interweaving realities, each with its own set of correspondences.

Essentially this is the mandala of traditionalcorrespondence systems,but updated to the modern western

secular multi-specialised world. Just like theGreek elementswhich matched hot and cold, wet and dry,

Wilber contrasts individual and collective, interior and exterior.

Each quadrant even has its ownGreat Chain of Being,although Wilber himself rejects the latter

term.The Great Chain is perhaps a misnomer. It is not a linear chain but a series of enfolded spheres: it

is said that spirit transcends but includes soul, which transcends but includes mind, which transcends but

includes body, which transcends but includes matter. Accordingly, this is more accurately called "the

Great Nest of Being."

Ken WilberWaves, Streams, States, and Self--A Summary of My Psychological Model (Or, Outline of

An Integral Psychology)

In other words "a nested hierarchy of Spirit", or more accurately, "a nested holarchy of ever more

embracing spheres of existence" [Reynolds,Where's Wilber At?p.8], each higher of which includes the

ones beneath it. Here Wilber breaks with the Perennial Traditionof Huston Smith,Fritjof Schuon, andothers; considering them too hierarchical; although there are also big problems with his own

interpretation.In any case, Wilber interpretsArthur Koestler's concept of theholon,which along with the

Four Quadrants replaces the Chain of Being as the basis of his metaphysics

"the world is not composed of atoms or symbols or cells or concepts. It is composed of holons"

A Brief History of Everythingp.21.

According to Koestler, a holon is both itself a whole while at the same time being a part of a

larger whole, so that reality becomes a series of nested Holons. But unlike Koestler, Wilber describes the

characteristics of holons in terms of vitalism and teleology. Holons have drives to maintain their

wholeness and their partness, they are units ofconsciousness.This Consciousness is diffused through all

four of their quadrants.

"consciousness actually exists distributed across all four quadrants with all of their various levels

and dimensions. There is no one quadrant (and certainly no one level) to which we can point and say,

There is consciousness. Consciousness is in no way localized in that fashion. It is true that the Upper Left

quadrant is the locus of consciousness as it appears in an individual, but that's the point: as it appears in

an individual. Yet consciousness on the whole is anchored in, and distributed across, all of the quadrants

intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social. If you "erase" any quadrant, they all disappear, because each

is intrinsically necessary for the existence of the others."

Eye of Spiritp. 273

Thus all the four quadrants are simplyfour interrelated aspects of a single

holonThe AQAL Holon
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A fundamental concept of the

AQAL is that a holon cannot be reduced to

any one of the four quadrants with the

exclusion of the others. Doing so results in

a partial and incomplete view of reality, as

indicated by the one-sidedness of views

that base themselves on only one quadrant,

and doubt the validity of the other

quadrants. Wilber applies the term"flatland" to those situations or systems of

knowledge when the Left Quadrants

(Subjective) are ignored in favor of the

Right Quadrants. I read somewhere that

there is also a corresponding "wonderland"

to when the Right Quadrants (Objective)

are ignored in favor of the ones on the Left,

but this has never been verudfied. It's a

great term though, so I might as well adoptit. While Wilber's formulation is original,

he is by no means the first to present this

insight; as Stan Gooch was saying very

much the same thing 20 years earlier, in his

book Total Man. Gooch's System A

corresponds to Flatland/Right Quadrants, his System B to the Left Quadrants (what I call Wonderland).

Tied in with quadrants and holons is a detailed array of structures, levels,lines,and waves, designating

the various evolutionary and psychodevelopmental stages that make up the "Great Nest of Being"

" "Structure" indicates that each stage has a holistic pattern that blends all of its elements into a

structured whole. "Level" means that these patterns tend to unfold in a relational sequence, with each

senior wave transcending but including its juniors (just as cells transcend but include molecules, which

transcend but include atoms, which transcend but include quarks). And "wave" indicates that these levels

nonetheless are fluid and flowing affairs; the senior dimensions do not sit on top of the junior dimensions

like rungs in a ladder, but rather embrace and enfold them (just as cells embrace molecules which

embrace atoms). These developmental stages appear to be concentric spheres of increasing embrace,

inclusion, and holistic capacity."

Ken Wilber Waves, Streams, States, and Self--A Summary of My Psychological Model (Or,

Outline of An Integral Psychology)

Moreover, as the diagram indicates, each higher holon includes the ones beneath it, and is itselfincluded in the ones above it. The whole thing is summed up in the following cosmological diagram

Graphic from Wake Up, The AQAL Matrix Has You:

AQAL Matrix Revolution
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But while impressive, this diagram also contains a lot of arbitrary assumptions, and there are

many inconsistencies between quadrants and levels, and indeed in Wilber's entire holistic AQALphilosophy,as explained here

It is at the Wilber-IV phase that he proposes 4 stages of his own writings, and critiques his earlier

work. As he later explains, "the earlier books (are only)...useful in forming the subcomponents of a more

integral theory." [Wilber, forward to Frank Visser, Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion 2003]. Of these

earlier books, Phase I, which he calls his Romantic-Jungian stage, is the result of his own Pre-Trans

fallacy, whilst Phase II with its Involution-Evolution cycle he sometimes refers to as (among other

things) the Aurobindo/Wilber model [Eye of Spirit], thus associating his ownmisreading of Aurobindo

with Aurobindo himself.

Wilber uses the word "integral" - meaning "to integrate, to bring together, to join, to link, to

embrace. Not in the sense of uniformity...but in the sense of unity-in-diversity, shared commonalities

along with our wonderful differences" [A Theory of Everything] to describe his philosophy. In 1999 some

Sri Aurobindo followers expressed concern at Ken Wilber using the term "Integral Psychology" as a title

for one of his new books, as this term has already been used by the Aurobindo community to refer to a

spiritual/esoteric/occult psychologybased on the teachings ofSri Aurobindoandthe Mother.In the 1960s

Swami Satchidananda had also adopted the Aurobindoan term "Integral Yoga" for his own completely

unrelated teaching). However, it seems that Wilber himself had actually adopted the term from Swiss

cultural historianGene Gebser(1905-1973) as early as the mid 1970s [Where's Wilber At?p.28 n.8]

Wilber's definition is much more limited thanmy use of the term,because he is concerned here

only with one aspect, all--inclusiveness, and does not consider (at least not in his definition) the other,equally important aspects of evolutionary transformation (although this is implicit in his own
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developmental model) andDivinisation(which he denies in favour ofold-fashioned Daist and Buddhist

nonduality)

Wilber-IV and AQAL marks the beginnings of Wilber's Postmodernism, and postmodernistic

techniques of criticism are enthusiastically applied to all fields of knowledge. Through his model, Wilber

claims to have deconstructed the compartmentalized, disconnected worldview of science (objective),

religion (subjective), and ethics (intersubjective) and replaced it with a more unified integrated one, with

each area of knowledge going in one of the quadrants. Each quadrant has its own validity claim, its own

relative, partial, but still totally authentic truth. With each type or knowledge there are specific types

types of evidence and validation procedures. Thus he says...Propositions in the Upper Right are said to be true if they match a specific fact or objective state

of affairs: a statement is true if the map matches the territory - so-called objective truth representational

truth and the correspondence theory of truth)...

In the Upper Left quadrant, on the other hand, a statement is valid...if it authentically expresses a

subjective reality...not just truth but truthfulnessorsincerity...

In the Lower Right quadrant of interobjective realities, the validity claim is concerned with how

individual holons fit together into interlocking systems; truth in this quadrant concerns the elucidating of

the networks of mutually reciprocal systems within systems of complex interaction...(the) functional fit.

In the Lower Left quadrant, on the other hand, we are concerned not simply with how objects fit togetherin physical space, but how subjects fit together in cultural space. The validity claim here concerns the

way that my subjective consciousness fits with your subjective consciousness, and how we together

decide upon those cultural practices that allow us to inhabit the same cultural space...in other words,

concerns the appropriatenessorjustnessof our statements and actions (ethics in the broadest sense).

An integral theory of consciousness

This is shown in the following diagram:
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The above represents a very profound approach, which can serves as contributing to the

foundation fora new universal science.The only thing I would disagree with is, why only four types of

validity claim? Yes I know this is tied in with the four-quadrant model, but one could equallyposit seven

(corresponding toChristopher Hill's Phoneix Evolution), seven or twelve (as in classical astrology), or

more realities or perspectives of consciousness, each with their own truth and justification.

A bigger problem however with Wilber's ideas is his inability to incorporate esotericism,

metaphysics, and occultism. For this reason I consider Wilber and his school (which includes the

Mainstream Integral Movement) to pertain to the holistic, rather than the esoteric-gnostic, stage of

transformation of consciousness and society. This limitation in Wilber's thinking would becomeprogressively more marked in his later,"Post-Metaphysical" phase

In the late part of this present phase though, Wilber publishes Integral Psychologywhich

integrates over a hundred different psychologies and models of the levels of consciousness, East and

West, premodern, modern, and postmodern; and the grandly but appropriately named A Theory of

Everything, in which he proposes the intriguing idea of the "Human Consciousness Project" (A Theory of

Everything, p. 7). This would involve the mapping of consciousness found in cross-cultural variations of

the Great Chain or Nest of Being, the Four Quadrants, and the "waves and streams" of consciousness of

the Spiral Dynamics of Clare Graves, Don Beck and Christopher Cowan, to create an "all-level, all-

quadrant" model of consciousness, equivalent to, or even greater than in scope and importance, theHuman Genome Project.

Phase 5: Integral Post-Metaphysics (2001-present)

With each successive iteration, it seems that Ken Wilber's metaphysics becomes more complex,

more elaborate, perhaps even profound, but also more unwieldly. The originalGreat Chain of Beingthat

defined his early thinking even from the start has become lost in a maze of quadrants, levels,holons,

lines, states, and types that constitutes the mature Wilber IV. Now Wilber adds kosmic habits,

methodological perspectives, perspectives on perspectives, and altitude. And although his supporters

claim that Wilber does indeed propound a single unified system of knowledge, seamlessly integrating all

aspects of science and spirituality, art and culture, ancient and modern knowledge, one could also say the

opposite (see critiques of Wilber's"AQAL" cosmologyand ofphilosophical methodand Arvan Harvat's

review/critique.These same criticisms, directed at Wilber IV, do I feel apply equally to Wilber V.

Since I first posted this page more than five years ago, back in 2004, what was then called Post-

Metaphysical AQAL, and is now calledIntegral Post-Metaphysics, has become the official philosophy of

the mainstream integral community. Its most important features are: the rejection of Huston Smith's

perennialist metaphysics (itself based on Vivekananda Neo-Hinduism and Guenon-Schuon

Traditionalism), and apostmodernistrejection of objective reality (which is dismissed as a "myth of the

given"), in favour of emphgasis on perspectivesThe rejection of metaphysics continues Wilber's earlier trend of rejecting a Perennialist Great

Chain of Being,in favour of a moreMahayana Buddhistic"emptiness" (shunyata)teaching, inspired by

the Madyamika (Nagarjuna) and Yogachara schools [Brad Reynolds, Where's Wilber At?p. 14]. This

marks the increasingly postmodernist flavour of Wilber's work, a movement towards the exotericand the

secular,as the promised metaphysical synthesis of Wilber IV did not deliver the union of One and Many

that one might argue should be at the heart of every grand esoteric synthesis.

The impression I get from readingBrad Reynolds on-line chapter, is that Wilber V represents a

transformation in Wilber's own personal outlook, a spiritual breakthrough or leap to a higher level. But,

as Wilber himself pointed out in his Wilber IIIphase, and in his critique of his guru Adi Da, not all

developments of the various components of the being proceed at the same pace. So whilst Wilber's

spiritual development might have progressed (at least this is the impression I have from reading Brad
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Reynolds' hagiography of him, in that I did contact a spiritual energy when reading it, but perhaps I was

just picking up the psycho-spiritual energy and would probably contact the same energy when reading

any devotional material; although I don't know enough to make a definite unbiased statement), the

intellectual position remains strongly intellectual, and at leats as far as external writing goes, exotyeric

and non-gnostic

One thing I dolike about Wilber's current Post-Metaphysics is his emphasis on "perspectives". It

took me a while to get this, but when I did it really made sense (not the convoluted "integral

mathematics", but the basic idea). Indeed, I incorporated it into my own current version of Integral

Metaphysics.To me it fits perfectly with theJaininsight ofanekantavadaWilber's problem unfortunately is that he throws the baby out with the bathwater. Recognising

certain unnecssary intellectual abstractions of non-gnostic metaphysics and trying to attain a sort of

Buddhistic nonduality purity (through his enthusiasm for Nagarjuna), he ditches authentic esoteric or

gnosticmetaphysics as well. But without metaphysics, there cannot beemanationorplanes of existence,

so Wilber shifts his focus to a here-now evolutionary view based on Rupert Sheldrake's notion of

morphogenetic fields and formative causation, applying it now to all four quadrants. Ironically, I

remember reading once in an issue of ReVision (maybe a quarter of a century ago) where Wilber was

dismissive of Sheldrake because the latter does not have a proper hierarchy of being!

Ken Wilber diagram on "The Inheritance of the Past in All Four Quadrants"

from Excerpt A: An Integral Age at the Leading Edge- Part I. Kosmic Karma: Why is the Present a Little Bit Like the Past?

Phase V also sees Wilber retain and further develop his and Don Beck's revised version of Spiral

Dynamics,using it as a paradigm for human evolution. He also writes a curious novel attacking baby

boomers (of which he himself is one), and further works on his Integral Institute, which has now

established a number of new projects likeIntegral Universityand the rather hip-soundedIntegral Naked

(although if you expect to find sexy young new paradigm philosophers doing tantric practice in the

altogether you'll be disappointed).

It remains to be seen whether Wilber's current shift away from cosmology, to social commentary

and working in the pragmatic world, will be the last word, or whether he will develop a further novel new

system (Wilber VI so to speak) to add on to the corpus of his previous work.

From what I have read of and about Ken Wilber, I would have to say the latter.
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Some diagrams pertaining to Integral Post-Metaphysics

The above diagram (fromIntegral Spiritualityand frequently reproduced) shows Wilber's altitude

scale; this being the latest iteration of hisGreat Nest of Being.The colours are supposed to be based on

thechakrasand represent, Wilber says, a teaching three thousand years old (Integral Spiritualityp.66). I

don't mean to take a cheap shot, but ironically for someone who is so critical of the "Green"New Age

meme, Wilber doesn't seem to realise that therainbow spectrum of chakrasis not much more that about

thirty years old; the earliest refernce I know of is Christopher Hill's Nuclear Evolution; an elaborate

Integral theory that predates Wilber's AQAL by several decades and deserves to be written up on Khepernet, if and when I ever get around to it. Hill's book seems to have had little or no influnence on the wider

world, so Wilber's rainbow chakras are probably based on pop-Osho New Age websites.

I won't go into Wilber's misinterpretation of Sri Aurobindo under the cognitive line, the interested

reader is referred to my earlier page on the subject, and essay on Integral World.Although these two

essays were written before I had seen Integral Spirituality, my criticism here remains as solid as ever. I

actually started writing an academic page, in which I provided a very indepth analysis of just one or two

passages from Sri Aurobindo, to prove thatHigher Mindhas nothing to do with Vision-Logic (and vice-

versa). Either I will eventually puvblish this in a journal, or else I'll publish it on the web.

For the rest though, it's an intersting diagram. While simplistic and railroading all these different systemsintoa single developmental spectrum, I tend to look more favourably now at Wilber, or at least some of

his work, than i used to.
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The above diagram shows Wilber's eight Integral Methdological Perspectives. there is nothing

wring with this diagram; i.e. it does not misrepresent things the way his altitude diagram tends to (I've

already mentioned Sri Aurobindo). But it isn't anything particularily gnostic or cosmological either.

Basically it's one possible and purely arbitrary formulation on perspectivism, no better and no worse than

any other. In itself it's fine, but it should never be taken as absolute classification.

Wilber's idea that "everything is perspectives" is basically inspired by Yogachara Buddhism; it

certainly is an interesting concept, and one possible reality (or one possible perspective), but it shouldn't

be thought to be the only possible explanation.

Ken Wilber's - Sistemul

Documents

Transcript of Ken Wilber's - Sistemul