Ideas

The Neo-perennial Philosophy

Wilber's major theoretical accomplishment has been to create what he calls the Neo-perennial Philosophy by integrating Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy with a theory of spiritual evolution. Wilber's writings are ultimately attempts to describe how spirit, or ineffable nondual awareness, changes through time.

Some (namely, the Croatian esoteric philosopher Arvan Harvat) have noted that attempting to integrate a thoroughly nondual approach like Zen with an evolutionary view is ultimately impossible: if your model includes everything, how can it change? Wilber's response is that his theory is actually a 'rational reconstruction of a trans-rational state of consciousness'. In effect, Wilber concedes the ultimate futility—from a rational perspective—of his quest. His writings point beyond the rational to the mystical.

Holons and The Twenty Tenets

According to Wilber, reality does not consist merely of matter, or energy, or ideas, or processes. Instead, it consists of holons. A holon is a whole/part—it is a whole that is at the same time a part of a larger whole. Thus you are made of parts, like your heart, your brain, etc. Yet you are also a part of your society. Everything from quarks to galaxies to theories to poems to mice to a human being is a holon.

In his book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evoution, Wilber outlines approximately twenty tenets [1] that characterize all holons. These tenets form the basis of Wilber's nondual model of consciousness.

AQAL

AQAL (pronounced aqual) is the core of Wilber's work. AQAL stands for All Quadrants, All Levels, but equally connotes All Lines, All States and All Types. Wilber's thesis is that, in order to give an inclusive, balanced and fair account—that is, an integral account—of anything, the account must be AQAL. Thus we must explain what Wilber means by Quadrants, Levels, Lines, States and Types.

Quadrants

Each holon has an interior perspective (an inside) and an exterior perspective (an outside). It also has a individual perspective and a collective (or plural) perspective. If you map these into quadrants, you have four quadrants, or dimensions: the interior individual, the exterior individual, the interior plural, and the exterior plural. Wilber sometimes calls these quadrants, referring to the chart [2], respectively, as upper-left (or UL), upper-right (UR), lower left (LL), and lower right (LR).

To give an example of how this works, consider four schools of social science. Freudian psychoanalysis, which interprets people's interior experinces, is an account of the interior individual dimension or quadrant. B. F. Skinner's behaviorism, which observes the apparent behavior of organisms, is an exterior individual account. Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics is a school of thought that interprets the collective consciousness of a society, and is thus an interior plural perspective. Economic theory examines the external behavior of a society.

Thus all four pursuits—psychoanalysis, behaviorism, philosophical hermeneutics and economics—offer complimentary, rather than contradictory, perspectives. It is possible for all to be correct, and necessary for a complete account of human society. Wilber has integrated these four areas of knowledge through an acknowledgment of the four fundamental dimensions of existence.

Lines, streams, or intelligences

Are you more highly developed in certain areas than in others? According to Wilber, all holons have multiple lines of development, or intelligences—in fact, over two dozen have been observed. They include cognitive, ethical, kinesthetic, emotional, musical, spatial, logical-mathematical, etc. One can be highly cognitively developed (cerebrally smart) without being highly morally developed, and so forth.

Levels or stages

The concept of levels follows closely on the concept of lines of development. The more highly developed you are in a particular line, the higher level you are at in that line.

Many criticize the strict hierarchical (or patriarchical) nature of Wilber's conception of the level. But consider, for example, that sub-atomic particles are composed of quarks. Atoms are made of sub-atomic particles, molecules are made of atoms, cell organelles are made of molecules, etc. This similar to how Wilber conceives of levels. One must attain the lower levels before the higher levels because the higher levels are constituted by the lower level components.

The simplest categorization that Wilber uses contains four levels:

Body (or gross realm; Buddhist Nirmanakaya)
Mind (or subtle realm; Buddhist Sambhogakaya)
Soul (or causal realm; Buddhist Dharmakaya)
Spirit (or non-duality)

Within each of these, there are sub-levels (e.g., along the cognitive developmental line):

gross realm
- instinctual
- tribal (Piaget's sensorimotor stage)
- egoic (Piaget's pre-operational)
- mythic (or mythic-membership morality) (Piaget's concrete operational)
- rational (Piaget's formal operational)
- pluralism (early vision-logic)
subtle realm
- integral (middle vision-logic)
- holistic (late vision-logic)
- psychic (from Grk. psyche, "soul")
causal realm (that which causes, or gives rise to, manifest existence)
nondual

Another broad organization of the levels contains three categories:

pre-personal (subconscious motivations)
personal (conscious mental processes)
trans-personal (integrative and mystical structures)

This organization displays more of Wilber's synthesizing ability. Freudian drives, Jungian archetypes, and myth are pre-personal structures. Empirical and rational processes are personal levels. Transpersonal entities include, for example, Aurobindo's Overmind and Plotinus' nous. The unique strength of Wilber's approach is that, under this methodology, all of these mental stuctures--subconscious, rational, mystical--are considered legitimate and complimentary, rather than competing in a zero-sum conceptual space.

States

A state is basically a level that is only attained temporarily. Once you have unlimited access to a state of consciousness, then it is a permanent structure, or a developmental level.

States of consciousness include: waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep, and nondual. (In the mystical traditions of which Wilber is a part, these four states correspond to four realms: gross, subtle, causal, and nondual.) Thus it is theoretically possible for someone at a low cognitive level—a newborn, for instance—to have an advanced mystical state.

Types

These are valid disctions that are not covered under Wilber’s other dimensions. masculine/feminine, introvert/extrovert, the eight Enneagram categories, and Jung’s archetypes, among innumerable others, are all types in Wilber's schema. Wilber makes types part of his model in order to point out that these distinctions are different from, and in addition to the already mentioned distictions: quadrants, lines, levels and states.

The Pre/Trans Fallacy

Wilber has given a name, the pre/trans fallacy, to a common misinterpretation of both his theory and of psychological development. Basically, the pre/trans fallacy is mistaking regression for growth. Wilber's writings depict how individuals (and societies) develop beyond the mature ego to a more holistic stage. Philosophical Romantics tend to interpret this as a return to an earlier, primordial stage. But that is not what Wilber calls growth--that's regression. Later, transpersonal stages are more encompassing--they include more perspectives. Earlier, pre-personal stages do not--they are more infantile, and ego-based.

Interestingly, Wilber characterizes his early work as falling victim to the pre/trans fallacy (see Wilber's Five Stages).

Influences

Wilber's conception of the Perennial Philosophy is influenced by the post-metaphysical, non-dual mysticism of Advaita Vedanta, Zen Buddhism, Nagarjuna, Plotinus, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, Sri Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi.

Wilber's conception of spiritual evolution or psychological development is typified by Aurobindo, the Great chain of being, German idealism and by developmental psychologies like those of Jean Piaget, Abraham Maslow, Erik Erikson, Lawrence Kohlberg, Howard Gardner, Clare W. Graves, Robert Kegan and Spiral Dynamics.

Wilber's other major influences include: Tibetan Buddhism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jean Gebser, and Erich Jantsch. He is conversant with the philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Jürgen Habermas.

Wilber has in turn influenced scores of new age and religious writers. His works have also been read by several musicians, including Stuart Davis, Ed Kowalczyk, and Billy Corgan.

Although few academics are currently aware of Wilber's writings, Charles Taylor, one of the most important contemporary North American philosophers, has acknowledged Wilber's importance. (In Sex Ecology Spirituality, Wilber had frequently cited Taylor's work.) The slowness of academic philosophers to warm to Wilber's work is undoubtedly due to its mystical nature, and to Wilber's association with the New Age movement.

Wilber's Five Phases

Wilber himself identifies five phases [3] in the evolution of his ideas. According to Wilber, subsequent phases do not negate earlier phases, but transcend-and-include earlier phases, incorporating them into a deeper and more integrated whole.

Quotations

"In other words, all of my books are lies. They are simply maps of a territory, shadows of a reality, gray symbols dragging their bellies across the dead page, suffocated signs full of muffled sound and faded glory, signifying absolutely nothing. And it is the nothing, the Mystery, the Emptiness alone that needs to be realized: not known but felt, not thought but breathed, not an object but an atmosphere, not a lesson but a life." ―"Foreword", in Frank Visser's Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion, 2000

"I have one major rule: everybody is right. More specifically, everybody—including me—has some important pieces of the truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace." ―"Introduction", Collected Works of Ken Wilber, vol. VIII, p. 49

Bibliography

The Spectrum of Consciousness, 1977
No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth, 1979
The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development, 1980
Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution, 1981
The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes: Exploring the Leading Edge of Science, 1982
A Sociable God: A Brief Introduction to a Transcendental Sociology, 1983
Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm, 1984
Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists
Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development (co-authors: Jack Engler, Daniel Brown), 1886
Spiritual Choices: The Problem of Recognizing Authentic Paths to inner Transformation (co-authors: Dick Anthony, Bruce Ecker), 1987
Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life of Treya Killam Wilber, 1991
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, 1995
A Brief History of Everything, 1996
The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad, 1997
The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader, 1998
The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion, 1998
One Taste: The Journals of Ken Wilber, 1999
Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy, 2000
A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality, 2000
Speaking of Everything (2 hour audio interview recording), 2001
Boomeritis: A Novel That Will Set You Free, 2002
Kosmic Consciousness (12 hour audio interview recording), 2003

External links

Primary Sources and "Authorized" Websites

Shambhala Publications' Ken Wilber site
Integral Institute
Integral Naked
"An Integral Spirituality" an essay on Beliefnet.com by Wilber.
"An Integral Theory of Consciousness", an essay by Wilber.

Sites of Friends and Fans of Wilber

The website of What Is Enlightenment? print magazine, founded by guru Andrew Cohen, and heavily influenced by Wilber and his associates.
Integral World, a website by Frank Visser. Known as "The World of Ken Wilber" prior to a particularly cantankerous dispatch from Wilber.
The Manifest, an e-zine about, and for, the integral movement.
"Ken Wilber is a Fraud", an essay by David Deida

Critiques

"The Atman Fiasco", an unedited but coherent and scathing critique by Arvan Harvat of one of Wilber's early books, The Atman Project.
"Bald Ambition: A Critique of Ken Wilber's Theory of Everything", an introductory chapter to Jeff Meyerhoff's book.