Ken Wilber's World

So over the course of the past two weeks, I have been trying to get into Ken Wilber's world, see things from his perspective.  It has been a daunting task to say the least, but I am changed by it.  I am more aware of my own presuppositions and my own subjectivity than I have ever been before.  And I am better for it.  Perhaps this study will be the first step in a newfound passion for me: striving to swim with the new currents of American spirituality.  Maybe in the process I can get others to join me in venturing out into new territory. 

Why Study Ken Wilber? 

It is a difficult task to summarize the thought of Ken Wilber. His first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, was published in 1977. In between now and the present, he has written numerous books including A Brief History of Everything (1996), which was perhaps his most well-received book, and his most recent book, The Integral Vision (2007).

He has apparently become somewhat of a 21st century guru to the American public. Looking at those who have written about his thought and writings on Amazon (www.amazon.com) and on his own website (www.kenwilber.com), it is evident that people are responding to his thinking like someone responds to the thinking of a great spiritual leader. For example, someone wrote on Amazon: "Ken's creation of the 4 Quandrants brings enlightenment to the very concept of enlightenment, making way for a clear mind to identify the all-inclusive reality of transcending the ego and returning back into the oneness of Spirit WHILE living healthily, honestly, and with understanding in this world of form. ALL who have seen the light of their true being, even if only a glimpse, MUST read this book."  This review demonstrates the type of respect and admiration with which people are viewing Wilber.

What initially got me thinking about Ken Wilber was my reconnection with an old high school friend. He had contacted me sometime late in 2007, but we had once again lost touch. A few weeks ago, through the wonders of Facebook, he contacted me. We ended up speaking by phone and having some written dialogue over Facebook.  I soon found out that much of his thought and perspectives had been influenced by the thought of Ken Wilber.  Quickly I was realizing that Wilber was someone with whom I needed to familiarize myself.

Holons and God

Ken Wilber’s thought begins with his basic definition of a “holon.” For Wilber, everything exists as a “holon.” Essentially this means that everything is both a whole and a part. Wilber uses the scientific example of atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, and so on. Each one is both a whole and a part of a whole. Wilber states, “A molecule transcends and includes atoms.” By “transcends,” Wilber means that a whole is more than the sum of its parts. So, a molecule is more than the atoms of which it is composed.

Wilber goes on to attribute this concept of holons to culture and the functions of the world. This is similar to Richard Dawkin’s development of the concept of “memes,” or cultural units. Essentially, Dawkins, using the concept of evolution, argued that “memes” evolve very much like living organisms evolve. “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes, fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain.” According to Dawkins, these units of culture morph, become stronger, better, and more adapted to the world.

Dawkins applies this idea to the concept of God. In The Selfish Gene, he writes that the idea of a divine being arose a long time ago in the meme pool, probably originating “many times by independent ‘mutation.’” Attributing the evolutionary concept of “survival of the fittest,” Dawkins argues that the concept of God has had such “survival value” because of its “great psychological appeal.” One can see the foreshadowing of Dawkin’s most recent book, The God Delusion, in the following statement: “God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.”

Wilber disagrees with Dawkin’s atheistic conclusions about God. However, the connection between Wilber and Dawkins does demonstrate how Wilber has taken the concept of holons within science (cells, molecules, organisms) and applied it to ideas. In the evolution of ideas, Wilber sees the greater idea holons, or memes, as having greater depth and less span. Holons on a lower level have greater span, or are more numerous (i.e. there are more cells than molecules in the universe). Holons on a higher level have greater depth, or more levels, meaning they include more holons within themselves (i.e. an organism has greater depth than a molecule). So, when Wilber applies this conclusion to ideas, he is saying that ideas on a higher level include more levels, but are less numerous. If, for example, Wilber were applying this concept to the idea of God, Wilber would always stress that the higher holon, or the one with the greatest depth, is the one that includes all other ideas about God.

According to Wilber, in terms of God, the best holon we have at this point is “integral methodological pluralism,” which “finds room for premodern truths, modern truths, and postmodern truths, all in an integral framework not of conclusions, but of perspectives and methodologies . . . the only thing it alters is their claim to absoluteness, and any scaffolding (and metaphysics) meant to justify that unjustifiable claim.” So, for Wilber, his own integral model provides the holon with the most depth when it comes to God. This is because Wilber believes his perspective to transcend and include all other perspectives on God.

All Quadrants, All Levels

Ken Wilber’s thought centers upon the idea that there are four quadrants in existence: 1) interior-individual (upper left quadrant), 2) exterior-individual (upper right quadrant), 3) interior-collective (lower left quadrant), and 4) exterior-collective (lower right quadrant). The interior-individual quadrant represents the self and the consciousness of the individual. The exterior-individual quadrant represents the brain and organism of the individual. The interior-collective quadrant represents the culture in which the individual exists. The exterior-collective represents the social system and exterior environment in which the individual exists. So, for example, emotion exists in the upper left quadrant. Molecules exist in the upper right quadrant. Myths exist in the lower left quadrant. And tribes exist in the lower right quadrant.

For Wilber, all four quadrants exist within what he calls “Spirit in action.” He writes, “Since Spirit-in-action manifests as all four quadrants, then an adequate interpretation of a spiritual experience ought to take all four quadrants into account. It’s not just that we have different levels—matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit—but that each of these manifests in four facets—intentional [upper left], behavioral [upper right], cultural [lower left], and social [lower right].” For Wilber, each quadrant has its own conception of truth. The point, for Wilber, as will be discussed below, is to tap into the truth of each of the four quadrants.

Furthermore, Wilber argues that when one is evaluating experience, they must take into account all levels, or stages, of human growth and development—“at the further stages of consciousness evolution.” For Wilber, there are nine stages in the evolution of consciousness (all of these take place in the upper left quadrant): 1) sensoriphysical, 2) phantasmic-emotional, 3) representational mind, 4) rule/role mind, 5) formal reflexive, 6) vision-logic, 7) psychic, 8) subtle, and 9) casual.

And finally there is a tenth stage in which the individual can become one with Spirit, the Ground of All Being. In The Integral Vision Wilber calls this stage “overmind structure,” which is ultimately the tenth state of consciousness. It is the place in which the individual can become the sage, the enlightened one, one with the “Godhead beyond any God and Goddess, an Intelligence-Abyss from which all things issue in this moment.” For Wilber, this is the place in which you enter completely into non-duality where the physical and the spiritual become one and you are able to see the universe as a whole.

Again, the quadrants are important for Wilber here. The upper left quadrant says, “mind is reality” (idealism). The upper right quadrant says, “matter is reality” (scientism). The lower left quadrant says, “culturally constructed meaning is reality” (extreme postmodernism). The lower right quadrant says, “The web of life is reality” (systems theory, i.e. spiral dynamics). The “overmind structure” is the state of consciousness where the person tastes, touches, feels, and breathes the “infinite Reality existing behind, beyond, above, within, and as the entire manifest universe.” The “overmind structure” is not however, exclusive of the other nine states of consciousness. Rather, it transcends and includes all of these states. It is the holon with the greatest depth. It is the place where someone can exist seeing “all quadrants and all levels.”

For Wilber, when someone has reached the point where they can see “all quadrants and all levels,” they have reached “at-onement” with the Kosmos, or in other words they have become one with the known universe. For Wilber, this means seeing truth in all four quadrants and in all of the levels of consciousness. Furthermore, it means the removal of the separation between the “I,” subjectivity, the “We,” inter-subjectivity, and the “It,” “what is outside of us.” For Wilber, they are all Spirit, the very Kosmos itself. Wilber states, “When you are ultimately truthful with yourself, you will eventually realize and confess that ‘I am Buddha,’ I am Spirit. Anything short of that is a lie, the lie of the ego, the lie of the separate-self sense . . . The deepest recesses of your consciousness directly intersect Spirit itself, in the supreme identity. ‘Not I, but Christ liveth in me’—which is to say, the ultimate I is Christ.” In summary, Wilber’s integral map of the way to spiritual salvation points to the individual becoming one with the Kosmos, one with Spirit, one with God.

Is Wilber a Transpersonal Psychologist?

George Adams, who wrote a theistic critique of Wilber in The Journal of Contemporary Religion, acquiesces that Wilber does not place himself under the “transpersonal label.” Perhaps Wilber likes to think of himself as someone who is beyond labels. However, his thought seems to clearly fit within this field. Take Bryan Wittine’s five postulates of transpersonal psychology for example: 1) It is an approach to healing/growth that addresses all levels of the spectrum of identity—egoic, existential, and transpersonal. 2) It recognizes the therapist’s unfolding awareness of the Self and his or her spiritual world-view as central in shaping the nature, process, and outcome of therapy. 3) It is a process of awakening from a lesser to a greater identity. 4) It facilitates the process of awakening by enhancing inner awareness and intuition. 5) The therapeutic relationship is a vehicle for the process of awakening in both client and therapist.  See Bryan Wittine, “Basic Postulates for a Transpersonal Psychotherapy” in Existential-Phenomenological Perspectives in Psychology, ed. Ronald Valle and Steen Halling (New York: Plenum Press, 1989), 269-287 for more information.  Wilber's thought seems to fit nicely within this transpersonal framework.  However, Wilber wants to disavow any labels as he sees himself more as a "theorist of everything."

A Theistic Critique of Wilber

Adams argues that Wilber “fails to demonstrate why the non-dualist religious experience should be considered superior to the religious experience of theists, an experience which asserts and values the otherness of God.” It appears that Wilber has misunderstood the great theistic traditions, especially Christianity, which asserts that God is separate from, and totally other than the known universe, or in Wilber’s terms, the Kosmos.

In fact, all three of the monotheistic religions make distinct claims against any availability for the human being to become God. One need only look at the very first pillar of the faith in Islam, “none has the right to be worshipped but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s apostle,” to fully understand that Islam by no means would accept that human beings can or ever could become one with a divine Spirit. 

Christianity has dealt with the notion of human divinity in the form of Gnosticism. For Gnostics, a special knowledge existed that “involved awareness of the true heavenly origin of the spirit within, its essential divine nature as an offshoot of God’s own being.” This sounds very much like the thought of Wilber, but this idea has been deemed heretical by the entirety of Christianity throughout the course of history. Furthermore, the first of the Ten Commandments, “you shall have no other gods before me,” clearly proclaims that to worship anything as a god, or to call anything a god, that is not God is to commit idolatry. The Ten Commandments are authoritative for both Christianity and Judaism.

In all three of the major theistic traditions, God is other and separate from the created universe . . .

How Should We Respond?

So, how should Christians respond to Wilber?  It appears that Wilber has not taken the time to fully understand the Christian faith.  However, this does not mean that Christians should not act in love carefully understanding his thought and his perspectives.  

As I have read Wilber, I have grown.  I found much that is useful in his thought, especially the concept of the four quadrants.  Perhaps my next post will be framing the gospel of Jesus Christ in these terms.

But if nothing else, I have become a better listener to the emerging spiritualities of those around me.  Every Christian is a missionary and we are all called to listen to what is going on around us and respond appropriately with the gospel . . . unfortunately, many have forgotten to listen.

May we all listen well . . .