Meta-Genius: A Celebration of Ken’s Writings (Part 3)
Reflections on His Work through Its Many Positive Critical Reviews
This is the third and last installment of a celebration of Ken’s writings through a
collection of some of the many incredibly positive review articles and blurbs that Ken’s
work has garnished over the years. What started as a bit of a lark for us—it was just fun
reading these reviews, especially the really early ones—but the exercise turned into more
of a formal fete, a commemoration and thanks to Ken and all the integral pioneers who
have worked so hard to advance Integral Studies as far as they have come, often under
truly a vicious atmosphere toward anything integral. But persevere they did, often long
enough to see ideas for which they were once vilified now have the preponderance of
evidence supporting them and vindicating them.
As only one example, there is enough widely respected research and data now
available that the retro-Romantic ideal can finally be put to rest, that is, placed in its
coffin with a genuine respect but a firm goodbye. Evidence now indicates that, among
other things, a regressive U-turn does not occur in all, or even a majority, of people with
spiritual awakenings; children do not have a closer tie to nature than adults (in fact, just
the opposite, and by a huge margin; recent research shows that only 5% of children report
“nature-centric” thinking—and that 5%, which is still narcissistic, occurs just as often in
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 1
children in urban cities as in the rain forest; and the other 95% exhibit flat-out
anthropocentric and egocentric thinking).
And now, the last nail goes in that Romantic coffin: a research review by widely
respected MIT teacher Steven Pinker gives a summary of all of the major studies on
premodern and modern violence, and the conclusion is unmistakable: the nature, extent,
degree, and amount of violence in premodern times is staggeringly larger than in any
modern times (including the two World Wars). In fact, as Pinker summarizes the
evidence, “If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the
population that die in a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion
[2,000,000,0000] deaths, not 100 million”—that is, about 2000 times greater. In every
form of violence known to humans, the modern Western world is, compared to the past,
“the most peaceful moment of our species’ time on earth.”
Ken has been maintaining that for almost 3 decades, and he sees the greatest
decline in violence (or increase in peace and peaceful ideals) as beginning particularly
with the Western Enlightenment, an idea vehemently rejected by postmodernists of every
flavor. What does the latest data show? “The decline in violence [during the modern
period] is a fractal phenomenon,” meaning that this decline in violence with modernity is
“visible at the scale of millennia, centuries, decades, and years. It applies over several
orders of magnitude of violence, from genocide to war to rioting to homicide to the
treatment of children and animals. And it appears to be a worldwide trend, though not a
homogenous one. The leading edge has been in Western societies, especially England
and Holland, and there seems to have been a tipping point at the onset of the Age of
Reason in the early seventeenth century.” In other words, the Western Enlightenment.
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 2
That article is appearing in March 19 The New Republic, bastion of Leftist
thought, so it can’t be dismissed ideologically. And it still points out that “contra leftist
apologists, who celebrate the noble savage, quantitative body-counts… suggest that
pre-state [premodern] societies were far more violent than our own.” Another study, War
before Civilization, showed that your chances of getting killed by homicide in the area
now known as Illinois were 70 times higher in tribal times than modern times.
Pinker: “At one time, these facts were widely appreciated. They were the source
of notions like progress, civilization, and man’s rise from savagery and barbarism.
Recently, however, these ideas have come to sound corny, even dangerous…. But now
that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have
discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become
more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.”
So much for retro-Romanticism. But Ken always gave the Romantic notion its
own due (something Pinker doesn’t do), and pointed out the ways that the Romantics
were also right (e.g., there is indeed a Ground of Being, and we have become alienated
from it, but not in some historical past, but in the involutionary currents prior to
manifestation; and further, the Romantics are correct that bad things can indeed happen
during development—repression is a reality—and we need to take repression and its cure
seriously: but what is getting repressed is not God but id, and every single one of these
recent studies supports exactly that. So the Integral model integrates the partial truths of
both the growth-to-goodness and the recaptured-goodness views).
Pinker asks the obvious two questions: what is this force of worldwide growth-to-
goodness? And how did so many of intelligentsia get it so massively wrong? As for the
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 3
former, he gives four basic reasons that civilization is a progressive lessening of violence
or increase in peace (based on Hobbes, Payne, Wright, and Singer). Ken said that while
all of those are likely to contribute, the real and most fundamental reason is simple: Eros.
Eros as it appears in all four quadrants of the human holon, and that especially means the
drive to take more and more perspectives, because—and Pinker agrees with this part—
the more perspectives that humans take, the more precious others’ lives become and
therefore the less actual violence is committed. And it is this extraordinary Eros in the
Logos of the Kosmos that Ken has devoted his life to elucidating and explaining, and we
think it is fair to say that nobody has traced this Eros (with both its extraordinarily
developmental ups and horridly repressive downs) better than Ken. In literally dozens of
books, he has traced the historical and evolutionary contours of this “self-organization
through self-transcendence.” Pinker says that throughout our overall history of progress,
“We must have been doing something right. And it would be nice to know what, exactly,
it is.”
Might we suggest he read a few of Ken’s books? As part of this celebration, it is
fantastic for all of us that as every year goes by, more and more evidence accumulates in
favor of ideas that Ken first spotted and elucidated several decades ago. (Try Up from
Eden as a starter….)
As for how the leading intellectuals of the last 30 years could get so much of this
wrong, Pinker also gives several plausible reasons. The evidence, after all, is and was
very hard to miss. As only one example: “Social histories of the West provide evidence
of numerous barbaric practices that became obsolete in the last five centuries, such as
slavery, amputation, blinding, branding, flaying, disembowelment, burning at the stake,
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 4
breaking on the wheel, and so on. Meanwhile, for another kind of violence—homicide—
the data are abundant and striking…. On the scale of decades, comprehensive data again
paint a shockingly happy picture: Global violence has fallen steadily….”
How did the intelligentsia miss all that for the last 30 years? Pinker points
especially to one item, simple proximity. “As deplorable as they are, the abuses at Abu
Ghraib and the lethal injections of a few murderers in Texas are mild by the standards of
atrocities in human history.” And yet these proximate examples so upset us (inadvertent
proof of the denied progress, because in premodern times, those were pastimes), that we
can’t see beyond our own repulsion: that is, our modern sensibilities react to those, proof
of what we are trying to deny.
Another reason gets closer to the emotional heart of the matter: “Partly, it’s an
intellectual culture that is loath to admit that there could be anything good about the
institutions of civilization and Western society. Partly, it’s the incentive structure of
activism and opinion markets: No one has ever attracted followers and donations by
announcing that things keep getting better and better.”
Given the prevailing academic atmosphere, which penalized the truth, it took not
just real brains but real heart to take the stand that Ken did. By sticking to the truth, he
was often vilified, his books literally banned in some institutions and classes, papers
written on how he lacked all emotions and no compassion at all, and entire PhD theses on
how his horrid hierarchies were repressive—whereas that is a pretty good photographic
negative of the truth.
Part of the reason Ken was vilified is that he didn’t just point to the evidence, he
pointed to the likely reasons that the evidence was being hidden, distorted, or denied
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altogether. At the bottom of it was a classic pre/post fallacy giving rise to a genuine
pathology or dysfunction. These intellectuals nobly wanted to find a genuine ground of
Goodness (spiritual for the Romantics, secular for the Leftists), but in confusing
pre-rational with post-rational, and then looking to premodern tribal consciousness as a
role model for postmodern enlightened society, they opened themselves to every
prepersonal impulse imaginable, starting with narcissism and nihilism, and boomeritis
(pluralitis) was born. Pluralism is healthy green, pluralitis or boomeritis is unhealthy
green, or green post-formal infected with red pre-formal, and in that rampant dysfunction,
visible from May ’68 to the present, a truly postmodern nightmare was born (or what Ken
called “nihilism and narcissism: a postmodern tag team from hell”). And Ken suffered
the results of that nightmare as much as any genuine scholar writing during those dark
decades. He was brutalized by scholars and critics so close to their pathology that they
couldn’t see the data.
And now, coming straight out of places like MIT and The New Republic—to
mention only two—there keeps coming a stream of vindication and justification. We
mention all that because it makes all of the following reviews more understandable and
more to be appreciated: not just Ken, but the basic claims of these reviews themselves,
are essentially vindicated in so many ways (and we’re only mentioning one of them, the
nature of premodernity and modernity). It makes it all the easier to join in the celebration
when you’re celebrating something that is actually true, and that is exactly what we
believe we’re doing.
(And please, of course we recognize that Ken can and does make his share of
mistakes and untruths; but in the really big ideas and important issues, Ken has probably
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 6
the highest batting average of anybody writing today. This is why you can go back and
read his Collected Works, and perhaps 90% of what you find there, even material written
decades ago, is still basically correct. This in itself is pretty astonishing….)
Past 2 of this celebration covered Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality;
and its popularization, A Brief History of Everything. Part 3 covers the period of the
following works (essentially the books after SES, up to the present):
The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad (1997)
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)
Boomeritis: A Novel That Will Set You Free (2002)
A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science,
and Spirituality (2001)
The Simple Feeling of Being: Visionary, Spiritual, and Poetic Writings (2004)
Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and
Postmodern World (2006)
As we pointed out in the celebratory introductions to the first two parts, the
reviews and blurbs you are about to read are stratospheric: it is hard to find a living writer
who has had a larger number of hyperbolic accolades than Ken. If you’ve read the first 2
parts, you know what we mean, and you are likely very tired of hearing comparisons to
Hegel, Freud, Plato, William James, Plotinus, etc.…. We’ve already heard a few critics,
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 7
trying to rain on this celebratory parade, say that some of these quotes come from Ken’s
friends, so they don’t count. First, that’s not true for the vast majority of the quotes. But
second, even if it were true, think about it: if you were asked by a friend to write a review
of his latest book, and you do so merely as a courtesy for your friend, would you stake
your academic reputation by then comparing that book to Plato, or Freud, or Hegel?
Hmmmm? Okay then. Neither would Ken’s friends… unless they really, deeply,
thought they were true.
Why these off-the-wall accolades? We’ve thought about it a lot during the
gathering and posting of them. The simple and most obvious possible answer is, well,
because they’re true, and Ken’s oeuvre (his body of work as a whole), judged on the scale
of integral capacity (or the sheer number of truths—East and West, premodern and
modern and postmodern—that are included in his integral model), is indeed right up
there with the greatest systematic philosophers of any era, bar none—from Plotinus to
Vasubandhu to Hegel (can you think of a present-day model that even attempts to include
Freud to Buddha, Marx to Manjushri, Kant to Dogen, Plotinus to Padmasambhava?). It’s
what Charles Taylor, winner of the recent Templeton Prize, said of Ken’s books: “I've
tremendously appreciated [Ken’s] work. [He’s] managed to integrate so many things,
and to keep horizons open, where most of our culture keeps closing them down.
Keep up the magnificent work….”
And so at first we thought the reviews were just more-or-less true, and that was
that. And we still think that is the case, partly. But Charles Taylor hit on what we think
is especially behind the stratospheric accolades: it’s not just Ken’s brain, it’s Ken’s heart.
When Michael Murphy called Sex, Ecology, Spirituality an “enormously courageous
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 8
book from beginning to end,” that gets very close to it. People appreciate the honesty,
the guts, the courage, that it took—and takes—for Ken to write books that are not just
true and often beautiful, but also good, really good, in the best ethical sense. He is a
writer that you can trust to tell the truth (even when all around him are abandoning it),
and 9 times out of 10, he’s right. David Deida was correct in both directions: nobody
doubts Ken is a great man, but he is a good man, a really good man, and that comes
across in his writings. He’s up at 2am every single morning, at significant physical cost,
writing or 5 or 6 hours nonstop, an antennae plugged straight into Spirit, a lightning bolt
come to earth with more truth and goodness than a human body can contain, sometimes.
And yet he keeps going and going and going…. Even if you disagree with him, you’re
probably still reading him—because agree with him or not, he enormously clarifies any
topic he touches, and even if it just clarifies why you disagree with him, you’re likely
getting something out of it. This probably explains his unheard of book sales numbers, as
well: Sam Bercholz, publisher of Shambhala Books, said, “Ken’s fans love him, and his
enemies love to read him.” That pretty much sums it up.
So, the reviews you are about to read (along with Part 1—posted here—and Part
2—in your email inbox) are probably, taken as a whole, the most breathtakingly positive
reviews you can read of any living thinker, and most dead ones. And there’s probably
one last reason for that: Ken alone seems to give Eastern cultures as much respect as
Western ones: he is the first true world philosopher of our era, and since nothing much
was really known about the East until post-WW2, this really means that Ken is the first
true world philosopher in history.
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 9
So even if you disagree with Ken, please join us in this celebration of somebody
who has labored long and hard to deliver the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, as they
continue to change shapes and forms at different altitudes of evolutionary unfolding.
There is no pregiven world, only interpretations, but there are good and bad
interpretations—and good and bad interpreters—and Ken Wilber is arguably the finest
Kosmic interpreter alive. These reviews—which he earned anyway—are a way for us to
say thanks, more than we can say…. –The Editors
THE EYE OF SPIRIT (1997)
After Brief History, Ken wrote The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a
World Gone Slightly Mad. In it, you can see Ken battling the retro-Romantics in
several chapters, and succeeding gracefully. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder
of Jewish Renewal and arguably the world’s most respected Jewish contemplative, kindly
repeated that “The Kabbalah of the future will lean on Ken Wilber’s work.” This
book also contains Ken’s first sustained creation of an Integral Art and Literary
Theory (an essay reprinted as chaps. 4 and 5)—a theory referred to as “holonic
semiotics” or “integral semiotics”—which is updated in volume 2, although all of the
ingredients of these two chapters are still included (i.e., transcended and included).
That essay had originally been written at the request of the Wyeth family curators
for an art book of newly discovered Andrew Wyeth paintings (M. Severens, Andrew
Wyeth: America’s Painter, with an Essay by Ken Wilber), and many critics found it to be
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 10
one of Ken’s most beautiful pieces of writing. In fact, many of Ken’s finest essays have
been written as forewords or prologues to books or showings by major artists (e.g., Ken
wrote “To See a World” at the request of Anselm Kiefer, the greatest painter of his
generation, for a NY showing—it’s contained in One Taste; the Andrew Wyeth essay,
which was originally titled, “How Shall We See Art?”; several wonderful forewords for
Alex Grey; a masterpiece essay, “Eyes of the Soul,” for Philip Rubinov-Jacobson, and so
on). The book also contains the first Integral Feminism (all quadrants and all levels).
Finally, the last chapter (Always Already: The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present
Awareness) contains what we think are the finest pointing-out instructions for ultimate,
timeless, ever-present, Nondual awareness that you’ll ever find.
The book had a very broad appeal. Here is a review by a Christian newsletter
(Pathways), just to show the interesting ways that different individuals can legitimately
interpret material (we have put two of their reviews together, one after the other, without
otherwise editing them in any way, which might account for some repetition):
As many of you know, I am a committed, card-carrying Ken Wilber
aficionado--and not just because he endorsed my book, either. (You guys are so
cynical.) I have read almost all of his books, I’ve corresponded with him on a
couple of occasions, and I’ve talked about his philosophical and theoretical
approach to anyone who would listen for more than a decade.
Last year, for example, I reviewed two of his books in this column--The
Spectrum of Consciousness and A Brief History of Everything. So far this year, I
have taught a fifteen-week class on his life and work at the Center for
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 11
Contemplative Christianity and have integrated his theories on the evolution of
Spirit into a course in law and ethics that I teach at United States International
University in San Diego.
So why am I such a devotee of this elusive iconoclast who never gives
lectures or leads retreats, rarely grants interviews, and goes out of his way to
discourage anyone from considering him a spiritual teacher? Simple. I’m hoping
to guilt him into granting us an interview for Pathways.
Seriously, Ken Wilber is one of the most incredible thinkers and writers of
our time. As Jack Crittenden has written, “The twenty-first century literally has
three choices: Aristotle, Nietzsche, or Ken Wilber.” And Tony Schwartz, New
York Times writer and author of What Really Matters, has called Wilber “the
most comprehensive philosophical thinker of our times.”
Wilber does with aplomb what I have always wished I could do--integrate,
integrate, integrate! Yes, I intuitively understand that everyone knows something
about the Truth. Virtually every scientific paradigm, every serious philosophical
system, and every authentic spiritual tradition has something valuable—even
essential—to offer us in our quest to understand Spirit’s unfolding in the manifest
universe. Unfortunately, the scope of my (and most other writer’s) knowledge
and vision has always been too limited and my epistemological methodology far
too weak. Thankfully for all of us, Wilber suffers from neither of these
limitations.
Ken Wilber has a singular ability to understand and absorb vast stores of
seemingly contradictory information and to then synthesize this knowledge into a
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 12
compelling spiritual perspective of near-epic proportions. And he is able to do
this while avoiding the twin errors of monolithic universalism (which misses
the trees for the forest) and incoherent pluralism (which misses the forest for
the trees). As he says in his introduction to The Eye of Spirit, he has endeavored
to create an approach to knowledge that is “a genuinely universal pluralism of
commonality-in-difference.” Read more….
A PAUSE FOR SOME OVERVIEWS
Often in Ken’s career, there have appeared overviews which attempt to give a
summary of his books to date. We gave two of these in Part 1, which covered books up
to around the period of Atman and Eye to Eye. We’re going to pause here and give
around a half-dozen reviews covering up to the period of around The Eye of Spirit, plus
or minus a few books. Although there are many, we’ll select a sampling from around the
world. These are reviews by Brian van der Horst, living in Paris, whose review title is a
kick (“A Light in the Wilberness”); A. V. Ashok, from Hyderabad, India, which does a
good job of situating Ken’s works alongside the great pandits from India (Shankara, etc.);
Michel Bauwens, from Belgium, a restrained but highly laudatory overview from a
dialectical perspective, which is most perceptive; Edith Zundel, from Germany, which
situates Ken’s work very favorably with regard to the great Idealists (Ken has often been
compared to Hegel or Schelling, so what does a “real” German professor have to say?);
and finally, Frances Vaughan, from America.
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What can you say about a guy who can write a book a year and was called
the “Einstein of Consciousness” at the publication of his first book, written at the
age of 23?
If you haven’t heard about Ken Wilber yet, you will. His body of work is
prodigious. Brilliant. Genius. You could also call him the Darwin, or William
James, or Plato of our times. He has written dozens of books, and edited scads
more. There are 271 web sites on the internet discussing, eulogizing and
criticizing him. Psychological and philosophical masters like Huston Smith,
Michael Murphy, Rollo May, Daniel Goleman, Larry Dossey and Roger Walsh
variously call him the greatest thinker of our time, or call his magnum opus, Sex,
Ecology, Spirituality, one of the most important books ever published. Our own
Robert Dilts [of Neurolinguistic Programming] often seems to have been
influenced by him. And Robert McDonald, who is said to be trying to memorize
A Brief History of Everything, has been inspired to create a Wilberian-flavored
psychology called “psychoteleology.”
So what’s he got? What can Wilber contribute to our discipline? What is
worth knowing? Read more….
A. V. Ashok is from Hyderabad, India, whose university is often called the Harvard of
India. He teaches Literature, and is incredibly well-versed in philosophies East and West, and
also a published author in this own right.
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 14
Down the decades of the twentieth-century, the mystical wisdom of the East has
had a hypnotic appeal for many Western minds—like Heinrich Zimmer, Giuseppe Tucci,
Alexander David-Neel, Rene Guenon, Aldous Huxley, Carl Jung, Lama Anagarika
Govinda, Alan Watts, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell and Fr. Bede Griffiths. Today,
Ken Wilber is the brightest name in the East-West encounter. A young American (born
1949) of astonishing erudition, profound insight into the mystery of consciousness, and a
beautiful prose stylist as well, Wilber has produced a series of books that embody an
exceptional understanding of the Eastern spiritual and philosophical traditions, and a
syncretic sensibility integrating Eastern and Western thought—a pioneer in a truly
integral or world philosophy. Read more….
The following is from Michel Bauwens, Belgium, and particularly situates Ken in
relation to the dialectical (and Marxist) tradition. Bauwens is a careful and clear thinker,
and does not make claims lightly or frivolously, and yet his conclusion is unmistakable
(referring to SES): “Never have I come across a better overview of the laws of dialectical
logic including examples and also a list of the associated epistemological errors, not even
in the works of Hegel and Marx.”
On the back cover of the first book I ever read by Ken Wilber one of the
reviewers states: ‘What Freud is to psychology and Einstein is to physics, Ken
Wilber is to the study of consciousness.’ On the back cover of the more recent
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Mitch Kapor, co-chairman and founder of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, an eminent ‘digerati’, claims: ‘This book changes
everything.’ Yet despite the fact that a number of mortals - I amongst them -
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 15
consider Ken Wilber to be the most important thinker of this century (or even the
most important thinker of the next century), he is [still relatively unknown, a
situation that appears to be rapidly changing, as both the President and Vice-
President of the United States have publicly stated they are reading his work. But
he is] largely unknown…in philosophical circles and within the intellectual
establishment, certainly in Europe.
Thus this article attempts to explain his work and its significance. I have
chosen to present his works in the order in which I discovered them. Read
more….
From Bonn, Germany, this by Edith Zundel, from “Vom Tier zu den Gottern”
(Herder, 1997):
Ken Wilber doesn’t lecture at any university, he’s not found at congresses,
nor does he hold workshops or seminars. He’s a charming recluse, he likes pop
music, he’s an excellent cook and has a roguish sense of humour. His home is
situated on the outskirts of a university city in the Rocky Mountains; it contains a
vast number of books and offers a tremendous panoramic view. And this broad
overview is not limited to the external world. Having originally studied
biochemistry, Ken Wilber has since personally acquired an encyclopaedic
knowledge of humanistic and religious matters. The insights he has committed to
paper have made him famous well beyond the USA. Americans call him ‘the
brain,’ friends in the field consider him to be brilliant, and Jungian Marie-Louise
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 16
von Franz has described him as a ‘modern Thomas of Aquinas’ who is able to
oversee the sum total of the secular and spiritual knowledge of his era.
In the Middle Ages it might well have been possible to comprehend the
knowledge accumulated to date, but is the same kind of overview even remotely
possible today? Wilber himself is of the joking opinion that one would have to be
a foolhardy American to embark upon such an undertaking. One would also have
to have the intellectual capacity, memory and ability to view everything as a
whole that Ken Wilber has. In Wilber’s own system of thought this ability to
view everything as a whole is called ‘vision-logic’ (translators have used terms
such as ‘visionary logic’ or ‘perceptual logic’). In our postmodern information-
communication age, vision-logic is becoming increasingly important. However,
the most essential component in this undertaking is Wilber’s very earnest search –
a search that transcends rational thought and involves a great deal of meditation –
for the nondual, and his experience of and anchoring in the nondual. Read
more….
Frances Vaughan is a remarkable woman in every way. Among many
accomplishments, she is past president of the Association of Humanistic Psychology, past
president of the Association of Transpersonal Psychology, author of several books,
including the best-selling Awakening Intuition and Shadows of the Sacred. She does not
suffer fools gladly; and to virtually everybody who has ever spent time with her, she is
the embodiment of the Wise Woman.
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 17
The depth and scope of Ken Wilber’s vision is not easy for most of us to
encompass. Many of his critics take issue with the details of one small segment
or another, but never address his philosophical position as a whole. It seems that
there are few people who can challenge the over arching view that integrates so
many disciplines and perspectives.
For many years I have told students of…psychology that they must read
Ken Wilber if they want to know how transpersonal theory integrates psychology
and spiritual teachings from the world’s religions. No one is expected to agree
with everything he says, but they need to understand why his perspective is
important.
My own acquaintance with Wilber’s work dates back to 1975, when I was
an associate editor of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and we had the
privilege of being the first to publish his paper, “The Spectrum of
Consciousness.” When his book by the same title was published soon afterwards,
I realized what a great service he was doing for us all. His ability to articulate in a
clear and coherent manner the integral vision that many of us had been attempting
to formulate, with limited success, expanded the field of psychological and
spiritual inquiry to encompass a truly global view of the spiritual quest.
Wilber is undoubtedly one of the greatest thinkers of our time. His cross-
disciplinary syntheses encompass the psychology, philosophy and religion of East
and West, as well as sociology, anthropology and post-modern thought. In the
last two decades Wilber has been widely recognized as an outstanding
philosopher. Some people have compared him to Hegel, but to my mind he is
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 18
much easier to read! He has been hailed as the Einstein of consciousness studies,
and his work offers a healthy antidote to the dogmatic reductive thinking in many
disciplines. His contribution to psychology has been compared to that of
Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and William James. His brilliant and fundamental
reformulation of theories of human development and the evolution of
consciousness have earned him an international reputation and the respect of
scholars in a wide range of fields. I believe he offers a worldview that will, in
time, affect all of our academic, social, medical, religious and scientific
institutions.
In his work Wilber demonstrates an indomitable warrior spirit that
matches any adversary with fearless integrity. His dedication to service is evident
in his uncompromising commitment to doing the work that he feels called to do,
despite the arduous discipline that it demands. Through it all he remains open to
feedback and keeps a cheerful sense of humor about his own human foibles in
personal relationships. He has also demonstrated his willingness to revise his
ideas in response to new information, as evidenced by the evolution of his own
thinking whose phases he calls Wilber I, II and III.
When he responds to critics Wilber often reflects the tone of their own
remarks, and this leads some observers to feel that he can be unduly sharp.
However, it seems to me that he has demonstrated both wisdom and compassion
in his willingness to reply to critics that are familiar with only a small portion of
his work. His compassion may seem ruthless at times, but I know his heart is
open and he writes from experience as well as a prodigious amount of reading. I
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 19
have been a student psychology, religion and philosophy for nearly forty years
and, with the possible exception of the Dalai Lama, I have yet to meet or read
anyone who can match the laser-like quality of his intellect. Read more….
THE MARRIAGE OF SENSE AND SOUL (1998)
The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion is an
interesting book for many reasons. One is that Ken, with Shambhala’s blessings, decided
to auction the book to other publishers, simply because any seemingly religious
affiliation (e.g., Buddhist Shambhala) might hurt acceptance for its intended audiences,
one of which was the standard worldcentric atheistic liberal who wanted to believe in
Spirit but had nowhere to turn (conventional religion is mythic-membership amber,
which classical liberalism was born fighting; and as for postconventional and post-mythic
spiritual paths, there aren’t any, at least not widely known, hence most liberals are stuck
with no spiritual paths available to them. The book was aimed at them in particular).
So Ken traveled to New York, stayed at the Four Seasons hotel (thanks to Tony
Schwartz, author of What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America—whose last
chapter deals with Ken—and who also co-authored the biographies of Michael Eisner,
head of Disney, and Donald Trump—the Donald—and so knew how to get a few strings
pulled). Ironically, the auction came down to a neck-to-neck bidding war between Simon
& Schuster and… Random House (the distributor of all Shambhala books). Random
House won, and so Ken’s book was distributed by the same largest-and-finest distributor
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 20
on the planet—just like all his other books with Shambhala, except on the spine it said
“Random House” instead. This was basically hilarious.
(Ken’s books have been published by a variety of the finest publishers around,
from Quest to Doubleday to McGraw Hill. During the 1980s, as his friendship with
Shambhala founder-owner Sam Bercholz continued to grow, Ken transferred all of his
books to Shambhala, and now publishes strictly with them, with the rare exception such
as Random House. This is a terrific arrangement, because Shambhala is a highly
successful small publisher with all the freedoms associated with being an independent,
and yet they are distributed by Random House, which, as noted, has the largest and finest
sales distribution network of any publisher—the best of both worlds. The only publisher
that wouldn’t sell the rights to their Ken-books to Shambhala was Quest, Ken’s first
publisher, who had the foresight to pick up Spectrum when over 30 other publishers had
rejected it. Spectrum and Atman remain Quest books, which is totally fine with Ken,
representing his gratitude for a publisher who gave him his start. Quest, incidentally, was
good enough to make an exception for the Collected Works and allow Spectrum and
Atman to be reprinted therein. “God bless those good people,” is what Ken says, and we
certainly agree. A final factoid: During the period that Ken was practicing Zen in a
particularly intense fashion, he gave 50% of his royalties from No Boundary to the Zen
Center of Los Angeles, whose teacher was Maezumi Roshi, with whom Ken had a special
connection and gratitude. Among Maezumi’s students at the time were Bernie Glassman,
Dennis Merzel, and John Loori. John took the exquisite photo on the cover. Dennis went
on to become the creator of Big Mind process. Bernie went on to become founder of
Peacemakers, and Maezumi’s first fully transmitted Zen teacher. All three of them
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 21
became fully transmitted Zen teachers with their own large sanghas. See John, Dennis,
Bernie. Bernie Roshi was the first to be the lineage holder of the White Plum lineage of
Maezumi, the largest Zen lineage outside of Japan, then passed that on to Dennis Genpo
Roshi, who now holds it. Bernie Roshi and Genpo Roshi formed Vast Sky Institute with
Ken Wilber, to promote an understanding of Buddhism in America.)
Back to The Marriage of Sense and Soul: having it published by a “safe”
publisher such as Random House did allow politicians to approach it more openly. Bill
Clinton read it and wrote a 4-page handwritten letter about it. He gave the book to Al
Gore (they were both in office then, and Gore was gearing up to run). Al Gore read it
and called it “one of my favorite new books.” He told this to the New Yorker magazine,
which was then obliged to carry a column-long summary of the book (and a pretty good
one at that).
What is amazing to us is that, right after SES, you might expect an author to either
rest a bit, or even to start sliding downhill in terms of creativity and significance. But as
the quotes and reviews attest, Ken just kept climbing, with some sort of weird overmind
afterburner turned on all the time.
On the cover of the book is a quote from Deepak Chopra. You may like Deepak
or not, but he rarely says things like: “Ken Wilber is one of the most important
pioneers in the field of consciousness in this century. I regard him as my mentor.
He is a source of inspiration and insight to all of us. Read everything he writes—it
will change your life.”
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 22
“Nobody is integrating the sciences and spiritual knowledge with Wilber’s scope
and integrative power. The Marriage of Sense and Soul is certainly the best treatment I
have seen of this topic, and, like the other of Wilber’s books, promises to be history-
making.”
--Michael Murphy, cofounder Esalen, author The Future of the Body and
Golf in the Kingdom
“The Marriage of Sense and Soul handles this difficult topic as well as anything
I’ve seen. At one and the same time, it offers the reader philosophy with a tender heart
and spirituality with analytical rigor. After reading Wilber, it is impossible to imagine
looking at the world the same way again.”
--Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus and Second Life
“No one—not even Jung—has done as much as Wilber to open up Western
psychology to the durable insights of the world’s wisdom traditions. Slowly, surely,
book by book, Ken Wilber is laying the foundations for a genuine East/West integration.”
--Huston Smith, author, The World’s Religions
That quote from Huston Smith was on the cover of Sense and Soul, but Ken says
he thinks it was given about an earlier book, but either way doesn’t matter. It’s an
extraordinary comment by the world’s greatest authority on world religions. What is so
sad is how quickly America seems to have dropped its real interest in East/West
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 23
integration since the seventies and eighties. Certainly all the teachers at Integral Institute
and Integral Spiritual Center are pursuing it, but precious few others.
Ken, of course, has not ceased his pioneering and incredibly energetic efforts in
this regard. “You do surface patterns and deep patterns,” Ken said. “For deep patterns,
every sentence you craft has to be potentially true for all people, not just a chosen few—
must be worldcentric, not ethnocentric. Otherwise you’re just describing what you see in
the mirror each morning. We don’t need more of that micro-sociology right now, we’ve
had 3 decades of it. Of course it needs to be included—it gives you the surface
patterns—but it needs to be transcended-and-included in order to move from the era of
micro-analysis, as Jeffrey Alexander puts it, to the era of integration. Alexander also
words it: we need to move from doing just macro (grand theories)—which happened
during the 1950s and 1960s—to doing just micro (no metanarratives at all)—which
defined the 1970s to 2000—to doing macro-micro (or syntheses of both deep, grand
metanarratives and detailed surface pattern analyses)—which is just starting to emerge.
But we still have too many people doing just macro, or just micro, or just Western, or just
Eastern work, and the world continues to fall apart, big time….”
We asked Ken what he liked most about Sense and Soul, and he said, “I like a lot
of that book; it was personally very important to me, what with auctioning it and
everything. It was a real stepping out for me, going to New York and all. But as for the
book, if forced to pick one item, I’d say that Part II of the book, an overview of the
previous attempts at integration, gives as good summaries as you’ll find of Idealism,
Romanticism, and especially Postmodernism. So many people are confused by
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 24
poststructural postmodernism—and with a name like that, who wouldn’t be? But I
recommend the book for that section alone.”
What bothered him most about any of the negative criticisms? “Oh, that’s easy.
When I write a book, I always make the assumption that the reader has not read any of
my previous books and thus basically doesn’t know my work at all. And so the first
third of almost every post-SES book I do contains a summary of the Integral or AQAL
model. This is a courtesy, of course, and I don’t like doing it any more than people who
know my work like being dragged through what seems to them to be a mere ‘repetition’
of previous work. Often those critics stop reading some time during that first third, and
then write blistering criticisms about how I am just repeating myself. Even a well-known
theoretical reporter like Albanese says that I have been writing the same book since
Spectrum (!), which is the only book she apparently has actually read! Talk about
shallow research. But I’m referring to even the more competent critics who have
followed my work up to SES and beyond, but I don’t think they realize how important it
is that I give first-time readers the courtesy of explaining the model before I start using it.
If those critics would just hang in there, and read more than the first half of the book, they
will find what I think is some truly original and important ideas in the last half—as
demonstrated by the positive quotes y’all are posting. If you look on Amazon with
Integral Spirituality, for example, about half the quotes go on and on about ‘He’s
repeating himself’—and this is the book with the Kosmic address material, which is so
new it smells like the inside of a car that’s never been driven. But this is just punishing
me for extending that courtesy to new readers, I have to say. So that’s my major
complaint. Most of the other complaints are actually pretty minor, and have to do with
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 25
critics reading only one book and then criticizing the whole model. Usually their
criticisms are actually handled in other books—or at least addressed ;-) But what often
happens is that then another critic will quote that critic, and then off you go creating
urban myths that have little to do with me or my work. This is just fun with trolls and
troglodytes! [laughing] Serious criticism, positive and negative, is always welcomed, and
contrary to another urban myth, I get a lot of that and I take it very seriously—that’s how
and why I went from phase-1 to phase-2 to phase-3 to phase-4 to phase-5, and I hope to
knock off a few more phases before I go bardosville.”
Where did the title come from? “Oh, that’s from Oscar Wilde. Loosely
paraphrasing: ‘The only thing that will cure the soul is the senses. And the only thing
that will cure the senses is the soul.’”
Here’s a good, restrained, but very positive review of The Marriage of Sense
and Soul by Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, founder of Institute of Noetic Sciences
(IONS). Because it’s fairly short (3 pages) and succinct, we’ll include it all here:
The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion
Reviewed by Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, founder of Institute of Noetic
Sciences (IONS)…
“I enthusiastically endorse Ken Wilber’s formulation….”
A brilliant work by a gifted scholar, The Marriage of Sense and Soul
traces the tides, currents, and cross-currents of Western thought as the
philosophers of each era make their contribution to the evolution (and sometimes
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 26
de-evolution) of human knowledge. The fundamental enigma, of course, was and
is reconciling the knowledge gained from the senses with that from the more
ephemeral reaches of soul and spirit. Though laced by necessity with the
technical language of the philosophers that Wilber cites, this is a “must read” for
anyone who seriously questions human origins and our place in the cosmos.
Wilber uses “perennial wisdom” and the “Great Chain of Being” (GCOB)
as the starting point of knowing in pre-modern cultures. (Perennial wisdom is the
structure of enduring values, precepts, and morality found at the core of
traditional beliefs; the GCOB is a concept which expresses the idea that existence
manifests itself in a continuum from inanimate matter at one end to the godhead at
the other.) Wilber then devastatingly delivers the message that Western
civilization is the only major social order in history to have abandoned these
concepts for a dualism that consists of modern materialist science, which denies
spirituality, plus a premodern patriarchal deism, which denies significant meaning
to experiences of the flesh. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, many
contemporary writers (including myself) sometimes look to Descartes and
Newton as the point where modern science began to sweep aside many of the
mythological claims of religion. Wilber correctly inserts the seventeenth century
into the larger context. By doing this, he convincingly shows how premodern,
modern, and postmodern thought can be brought together to synthesize new
approaches to ancient questions.
A major contribution of Wilber’s work is the recognition that the GCOB is
too unidimensional for the complexity of modern inquiry, and the perennial
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 27
wisdom is too inwardly derived to contain the findings of modern science. Wilber
proposes that the GCOB be differentiated and expanded to recognize domains of
the internal and the external--as well as the individual and collective--thereby
providing four related groupings of human experience. These groupings are ways
to map experience, which must be properly accommodated in order to unify and
relate the totality of inquiry, both intuitive and sensory.
Wilber calls this expansion the “four quadrants,” which permits individual
focus on issues of “I,” “We,” and “It.” “I” and “We” pertain to the internal
knowing of the individual, plus the wisdom of the collective. “It” pertains to the
external (sensory/scientific) knowing about both individual things (atoms, cells,
organisms) and collective organizations (galaxies, families, societies). This
arrangement is a simple but elegant way to order inquiry about reality so that
distinctive patterns may emerge. In a slightly different context, the four
groupings may be seen to address facts, aesthetics, and morality; or, alternatively
put, the true, the beautiful, and the good.
Wilber also employs Arthur Koestler’s notion of holons; that is, that all
things are part of a larger grouping but also contain within themselves smaller
groupings. An example is atoms within molecules, within cells, within
organisms. The significance of Wilber’s use of holons is that science is just now
discovering that the universe consists not only of smaller organizations of matter
grouped into successively larger groups, but that these groupings are accompanied
by a quantum hologram at each level, which is nonlocal and carries the history of
each group. The importance of the quantum hologram is still little known to the
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 28
public; it will likely emerge as a major theory for understanding mystical
experience.
Another point that other writers (including myself) have also emphasized
is that science has demonstrated that “knowing” is directly associated with the
physical domain; it does not exist in isolation from the physical. This thinking
implies that there is an objective reality that we strive to know but that in some
ways interacts with our attempt to know it. It then becomes obvious that knowing
is not limited to external measurement, as has been suggested by those who hold a
very narrow definition of science. But also, knowing is not independent of the
physical.
After chronicling the waves of change produced by our predecessors
wrestling with knowing the mundane, communicating the aesthetic, and
explaining the divine, Wilber suggests a way to structure our understanding of
science, art, and religion. This formulation is based upon three strands of
knowing: injunction, apprehension, and validation. The injunction is a method for
obtaining a certain type of information; that is, “do this” in order “to know that.”
Apprehension is the gaining of data by performing the injunction. And validation
is checking the results with others of equal or greater skill at executing the
injunction. This protocol can be used to produce knowing at the external level of
thought as has been done by scientists for centuries and by mathematicians,
logicians, and philosophers for millennium, and at the more subtle levels of
esoteric perception as has been done by the great mystics. I enthusiastically
endorse Ken Wilber’s formulation as a protocol that can be applied across
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 29
the spectrum of external (science) and internal (Mathematical, logical,
aesthetic, spiritual) explorations. It is precisely the protocol that I
independently learned to use (but not so elegantly describe) as I moved my
exploration from outer space into inner space 30 years ago.
The downside of this method [for less integral approaches], as Wilber
correctly points out, is that science must put aside (as it is beginning to do) the
outmoded dogma that external, or sensory, knowing in its most narrow meaning is
the only valid way of knowing. Likewise, religion must put aside the dogma and
mythological studies that cannot withstand the scrutiny of independent validation.
The fact that science is already starting on this path is indicated by a seminal
scientific conference at Cambridge University in 1995 that emphasized the
“primacy of the first-person experience.” This phrase means that there cannot be
an objective observation without there first being a subjective observer. Whether
religions, singly or collectively, move significantly in the direction of setting
aside unverifiable myth and dogma will determine whether they become part of
the solution or remain part of the problem.
Here, as promised, is the one from Roger Walsh, who always does a superb job
with his overviews and assessments. Roger’s is longer and more for scholars, so click on
the “read more” if you would like to access it. Here are the first few paragraphs:
Science and religion, science and religion: their effects are everywhere.
How to reconcile these two great forces--which together are shaping our lives, our
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 30
cultures, and our planet--remains one of the great intellectual, social, and spiritual
challenges of our time.
Few perspectives seem as conflictual as those of science and religion,
which sometimes even try to completely deny legitimacy to each other. Some
fundamentalists decry science and technology as destroyers of religious values
while some scientists sneer at religion as a primitive relic of psychological and
social immaturity.
The worlds they offer us seem completely different. The great religions
assure us that behind apparent chaos and catastrophe there exists a deeper, truer
divine realm which is our true home. Science reports that behind chaos there are
only the meaningless, immutable laws of nature, or as Whitehead lamented,
“merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly.”
No surprise then that some of the greatest minds of the last few centuries
have wrestled with this question: how can we reconcile the picture of a
meaningless world offered us by science on the one hand, with the profound
human need for meaning and religion’s picture of a meaningful cosmos on the
other. No surprise also that this question would appeal to Ken Wilber, who in a
series of fifteen previous books spanning fields as diverse as psychology,
philosophy, anthropology, sociology, ecology, religion, and physics, has always
sought to integrate apparently conflicting perspectives in broad overarching
syntheses.
The present book follows Wilber’s usual pattern. It is broad ranging,
multidisciplinary, and integrative, and offers a synthetic vision of exceptional
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 31
scope. This review focuses primarily on the synthetic vision rather than on
critical analysis of selected building blocks. This because the novel vision is
obviously the most fascinating aspect…. Read more….
INTEGRAL PSYCHOLOGY (2000)
The next major book that Ken did was Integral Psychology, after a fun trip into
doing a journal for a year, published as One Taste (Michael Lerner: “When a great mind
like Ken Wilber’s starts freely commenting, you want to be there! Wilber’s brilliance
pours out on every page of One Taste—so it’s both fun and profound. His work models
what spiritual and intellectual life ought to be”).
Integral Psychology is a major comparison of over 100 developmental models
from around the world, premodern to modern to postmodern. The general similarities
and differences were telling indeed, and formed the basis of the first major, East-West,
integral psychological system the world has seen (consisting, of course, of
quadrant-dimensions, levels, lines, states, and types). Ken has continued to refine this
model, but its basic elements are as presented in this book, and anybody concerned with a
truly worldcentric psychology should check out this extraordinary book. The
professional critics agreed:
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 32
“Ken Wilber is a national treasure. No one is working at the integration of
Eastern and Western wisdom literature with such depth or breadth of mind and heart as
he.”
--Robert Kegan, Harvard Graduate School of Education, author
The Evolving Self and In Over Our Heads
“In ages to come, historians may well view Wilber’s work as the pivotal insight
that legitimized the return of consciousness and spirit to our age. For this exciting
page-turner, psychology owes him a millennial debt.”
--T George Harris, founding editor, Psychology Today and American Health
“In a single publication Wilber strides over the entire history of psychology to
create new and comprehensive strategies for human survival in the next millennium.”
--Don Beck, coauthor of Spiral Dynamics
“Integral Psychology is so all-encompassing, lucid, and well-written that Ken
Wilber deserves the recognition of having single-mindedly brought conceptual order to
psychology of the East and West.”
--Susanne Cook-Greuter, coeditor of Transcendence and
Mature Thought in Adulthood
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 33
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF KEN WILBER (2000)
You might remember something that a reviewer said of Ken’s fourth book, Up
from Eden: “Wilber writes with the crackling energy of a man who has the authentic
creative fire burning in him. As his canvas is so vast, one might expect his verve to falter
on occasion, for there to be awkward patches when his arguments grow a little thin and
uncertain. But not so. He moves confidently and unwaveringly on, casting a new and
thoroughly illuminating light into every area which he enters.” That was referring to the
sentences in one book, but you could apply the same idea to Ken’s books as a whole.
After writing (or coauthoring) 17 books at that point, you might expect his work would
have started to falter, that his later books would lose their “verve,” as that British
reviewer would have it. But, as we suggested, he seems to have some sort of overmind or
even supermind burner turned on, and it never seems to falter. At this point,
Shambhala/Random House did something that no other major author in history has had
done: they agreed it was time to bring out the first edition of Ken’s Collected Works, and
that is exactly what they did. There were 8 large volumes containing all 17 or so books
(a few of those were edited or coauthored books, and only the relevant material from
those were in the CW). All of the books were edited for this collection, and there were
lengthy introductions to all 8 volumes written by Ken. (By the way, there are now
another 4 volumes that are ready to be released, whenever Ken gets the time to edit
them!—bringing it to 12 volumes.)
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 34
BOOMERITIS (2002)
Ken had been working on a long and difficult book about postmodernism, its
many strengths and weaknesses. The book was originally titled The Pig in the Python,
and Other Gruesome Tales. The title refers to the Boomer generation, a huge bulge in
the demographic charts. At the last minute, in what he calls “one of the most colossally
idiotic ideas I have ever had,” he converted it into a novel called Boomeritis: A Novel
That Will Set You Free. The chapters in Pig became the topics of talks delivered by the
professors at Integral Center in the novel. He still plans on bringing out The Pig in the
Python at some point. In the meantime, Boomeritis hit the mark, even according to
conventional reviewers from Booklist to the San Francisco Chronicle. What everybody
got was the novel’s hilarious sense of humor, as well as its apt and searing criticism:
“Wilber, a hip and loquacious philosopher, turns to fiction to flesh out, as it were,
his provocative theories about humanity and the Boomers, the generation everyone,
including themselves, loves to hate. His erudition is matched by a parodic sense of
humor.” –Booklist
“Wilber, a brilliant and prolific philosopher, serves up some hilarious and cutting
commentary in Boomeritis. He hits the mark!” --San Francisco Chronicle
Besides being laugh-out-loud funny, Boomeritis was something else: it was a
profound and in-depth psychoanalysis (if that’s the right word) of an entire generation
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 35
(maybe integranalysis?). Simply reading the book can expose and significantly heal the
pluralitis (aka boomeritis) lurking or lingering in anyone’s psyche. As one critic put it, “I
loved every page, but it was very painful.” [KW note: “pluralism” is healthy green,
“pluralitis” is dysfunctional green, or extreme and absolutistic pluralism. This extreme
pluralism—which maintains all views are absolutely the same—is open to infection by
narcissism, since all views are allowed. Thus, under the extreme-green post-modern
banner, every pre-modern, pre-rational, preconventional, prepersonal, egocentric impulse
can parade. Green infected by red or magenta is pluralitis or boomeritis, named after the
first generation to be significantly infected by it—also known as the mean green meme,
or MGM. And yes, you can have the mean orange meme—aka scientific materialism—
and the mean amber meme—aka the Spanish Inquisition, and so on. But the MGM now
affects a significant portion of the intelligentsia, the academic elite, all humanities in the
universities, liberal social policies, and so on. Boomers were the first to have a large
percentage at green, and thus also dysfunctional green. Some reviewers continue to think
that green and the mean green meme are the same, so that I am critical of green in itself
and altogether, which is ridiculous. I have long sections in many books entitled things
like, “The Many Gifts of Green,” and I discuss and applaud them at length—things like
the civil rights movement, feminism, environmentalism, pluralism, and so on. It’s only
sick green, or dysfunctional green, that earns the appellation of “mean green.”]
Ken gave away the whole secret to the novel on pages 324-6, where a professor
discusses the 7 items of “the perfect postmodern novel”: things like the fact that in the
novel, the characters would all be flat and two-dimensional, reflecting the “only surfaces”
credo of postmodernism; the book itself would largely be about literary Theory, since that
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 36
is mostly what postmodernism is all about; it would mix fact and fiction without the
slightest concern, reflecting postmodernism’s claim that there is no real difference
between them, or between science and poetry, history and fiction, fact and fabrication;
and finally, with the 7th item, Ken gives the show away: “Seven, if you ever manage to
pull it off and get all seven of these into a novel, then, in keeping with the demand for
self-reflexivity, make sure you find a way to point out in the novel that the novel itself
has just pulled off the great postmodern feat. This would amount to bragging, thus
earning you extra points for boomeritis. Personally, I’m convinced that that this is too
much to achieve in one work—especially the demand to exemplify everything it
criticizes—and that is why the great postmodern novel will never be written. But if
somebody ever manages to pull it off, it would indeed be a heart-breaking work of
staggering genius.”
The last phrase (“a heartbreaking work of staggering genius”) is the name of
another novel, and thus mixing a real-life event with fiction is exemplifying again what
the book itself criticizes. In fact, it becomes obvious that Ken carefully designed the
entire novel to exemplify every single one of those 7 items, and that is the finishing touch
on its brilliance, excuse us for saying so. But we’re pointing this out because you can
read critics whose review took the entire novel literally, and, with all due respect, it’s
hilarious. If you look at the photo of the author on the book flap, it’s a photo taken of
Ken when he was 23 (!)—how could you miss that? Some critics commented on Ken’s
youth and on the photo showing the 23-year-old author, and congratulated one so young
for writing such a savvy book. Others simply criticized the author for writing flat
characters, two-dimensional motives, cardboard settings, etc., thus inadvertently
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 37
applauding the book for squarely hitting those 7 items. The author’s bio on the same
book flap claims that the author’s works have appeared in Wired, BlackBook, X/Y, Yearn,
MeatBeat, and Cosmopolitan. Ken’s work has appeared in none of those; and have you
ever heard of a magazine called Yearn or MeatBeat? This exemplified item number 2,
mix fact and fiction with no concern. And so the book goes….
(Some people know about another exemplification of item 2: having Stuart Davis,
who is a character in the novel, actually write his own words, which Ken then cut,
unedited, into the narrative. There is a particularly interesting side note on that: During a
10-day period that Ken was writing the overview of the italicized paragraphs in the
book—paragraphs that actually constitute a small manual of tantric sexual-spirituality,
and involve Ken and Chloe getting closer and closer to Spirit through their increasingly
intense love scenes, which Ken describes with both sincerity and hilarity—those
italicized sections are the real message of the book, and they start brief and, in the next-
to-the-last chapter, almost the entire chapter—well, during literally that same 10-day
period, Stu was having a real-life experience that paralleled in almost every way the
essential ingredients of the nondual tantric message that Ken was writing—namely, there
is a sexual yoga that can show you the very Face of Spirit, which is your own Original
Face, and can be seen shining in and through the eyes of your beloved in One Taste. So
Ken had Stu write out about 20 pages of what had happened to him, in detail, and Ken
used exactly those sections, written entirely by Stu, in the book—thus switching, yet
again, real characters and events with fictional characters and events. But many people
said that those were some of the most beautiful sections in the entire book, and Ken
agrees. But score another point for item #2!)
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 38
We asked Ken what he thought the actual pragmatic use of the book might be, and
he said, “If you even think you have any lingering narcissism, or egocentrism, either as a
Boomer or from having Boomer parents or teachers—or just any lingering narcissistic
subpersonalities left over from growing up—then read it. It will literally start to undo
those contractions by making them conscious. And that’s what I constantly hear the book
does for people. It goes into everything from the real meaning of ‘paradigm,’ the relation
of quantum mechanics to Spirit, the 100th monkey, etc., as well as the contributions and
problems with Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard—and helps you get any hidden pluralitis out of
your system. It really does seem to work, and that is what I most wanted to accomplish.
As you can imagine, the younger generations (X and Y) love the book, because they have
Boomer parents or teachers; but many of those parents and teachers also love it, if they
can get through the ‘it-was-very-painful’ part.”
A THEORY OF EVERYTHING (2000)
Ken noticed that some of the introductions to the 8 volumes of the Collected
Works were good summaries of his work, and so he took all 8 introductions, and they
became the basis of the 7 chapters of his next book, A Theory of Everything: An
Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality. It wasn’t a major
statement, but drawing his seminal ideas together in a brief and accessible form seemed
to hit home. Warren Bennis, the revered dean of business leadership, said simply, “This
is the book I’ve been longing for.”
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 39
“A soaring tour de force and daring exposition by one of America’s most
inventive thinkers. Don’t quit the search for an integral culture until you have given it a
whirl—and take this book with you as a sturdy guide.”
--Professor Harvey Cox, Harvard Divinity School
“Ken Wilber is one of the most creative spiritual thinkers alive today, and A
Theory of Everything is an accessible taste of his brilliance. Like a masterful
conductor, he brings everyone in, finds room for science and spirit, and creates music for
the soul.”
--Rabbi Michael Lerner, The Politics of Meaning
“Wilber’s integral vision offers readers the opportunity to make valuable
connections among disparate disciplines and—just maybe—to prepare themselves for a
brave new world.”
--Publishers Weekly
Those quotes, and many others like them, made it clear that, even though A
Theory of Everything was a compilation of CW intros, it beautifully captured the
overall excitement of a meta-genius at work—and most readers responded accordingly.
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 40
INTEGRAL SPIRITUALITY (2006)
We’ll say it again, because this is a celebration, damnit, so let’s get with the
party!: what’s so amazing is that Ken’s trajectory keeps transcending and including,
going higher and higher, deeper and deeper, wider and wider, including more and more—
Eros and Agape at work, from the overmind and even supermind, to this day, with the
proof being the pudding. Keep in mind that Ken wrote The Spectrum of Consciousness at
23, and basically has written (or co-written/edited) an average of a book a year ever
since. Most developmentalists will tell you that you can’t reach turquoise altitude (e.g.,
level 4.5 in Kegan, or autonomous/integrated in Loevinger, or cross-paradigmatic in
Commons-Richards, etc.) in any substantial fashion until you are in your forties or even
fifties. But as only one example, in the book Spiral Dynamics, when they were looking
for examples of turquoise, their highest level of worldview, what did they come up with?
Here’s their list from the book itself:
Where seen: Theories of David Bohn, McLuhan’s ‘global village,’
Gregory Stock’s Metaman, Rupert Sheldrake and morphic fields, Gandhi’s ideas
of pluralistic harmony, Ken Wilber’s ‘Spectrum of Consciousness,’ James
Lovelock’s ‘Gaia hypothesis,’ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘noosphere.’
Ken was at turquoise not when he was 50 but when he was 23 (!), and he went
straight up from there, to this day, which is why a case can be made that his work,
certainly starting with SES, has pushed into the overmind and supermind. You just can’t
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 41
do the kind of cross-paradigmatic work he does at anything lower: the proof, again, is in
the pudding, and what integral pudding it is!
As special as many people have felt his work has been up to Integral
Spirituality, it seems that—and we’re being very careful here, but something even more
extraordinary, something truly unheard of and novel, has apparently starting coming
through with what his students are calling “wilber-5” or “phase-5,” which began with
volume 2 of the Kosmos trilogy (several excerpts of which are posted on
KenWilber.com), and an even better example of which can be seen in Appendix II of
Integral Spirituality. The ex-abbot of Father Thomas Keating’s Snowmass
monastery—a brilliant and wonderful man, well-versed in East and West, named Michael
Abdo—probably put it best, referring especially to the Appendices: “This book
represents not only a breakthrough in the history of thought, but a breakthrough in
the history of thinking.” People have called it things like a mind-melt or a brain-melt, a
radical and absolutely unprecedented perception of the Kosmos and a methodology to
approach it. We’ll come back to Appendix II specifically in just a moment. First, the
book as a whole.
“Do you remember drawing your first awkward As and Bs and Cs, and how it
helped to ‘lift your nose from the page’ and try to take in the full sweep of a sentence?
Well, some of us are slow to learn that trick, and thus we never step back far enough to
see the whole picture. Not so, Ken Wilber. He doesn’t just lift his nose from the page,
he lifts himself up like the astronauts who reached a distance that allowed them to view
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 42
planet Earth as a whole. Getting acquainted with Wilber’s Integral Approach can be as
thrilling as seeing the first photograph of Earthrise over the moon’s horizon.
“From a distance things fall into new patterns that reconcile apparent
contradictions. A crucial task of our time is reconciliation between the wisdom of the
world’s religious traditions and the best in contemporary thought. For decades this has
been the central concern of my own work. Integral Spirituality offers a new and
promising framework for tackling this task and renews my hope… in a genuine
reconciliation.”
--Brother David Steindl-Rast, author Music of Silence and Gratefulness
“Integral Spirituality is a book that literally shatters spiritual confusion.
Eloquent, compassionate, and deeply helpful, it should be read by every practitioner and
lover of Spirit.”
--Swami Sally Kempton, author The Heart of Meditation
Sally Kempton, by the way, is a lineage-holder in Kashmir Shaivism, one of the
two or three most sophisticated psycho-spiritual systems in the world. She is a deeply
realized soul and profound teacher. Quite apart from what she says about Ken, her works
are highly recommended. But back to the responses:
“A work of inspired genius. As so often before, Wilber breaks new conceptual
ground in consciousness and spiritual studies, this time revealing clearly the important
difference between the states of consciousness explored by the classical spiritual
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 43
traditions and the stages of consciousness described by contemporary developmental
psychology. Integral Spirituality is a seminal work for 21st Century spiritual studies.”
--Jim Marion, author, Putting on the Mind of Christ
Integral Spirituality, as so many noted, even went beyond Ken’s previous
works—it was, as Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi put it, “Beyond anything that Ken
Wilber has written to this point….” As we are celebrating it, the man just keeps going
higher and higher and higher….
“Ken Wilber’s Integral Spirituality is possibly the most important spiritual book
in postmodern times. Step by step, with luminous clarity, he unites all spiritual traditions
without diluting the potency of any one lineage or tradition. Anyone serious about raising
the level of consciousness on this planet should read this masterpiece.”
--Roshi Dennis Genpo Merzel, author Big Mind, Big Heart
Genpo makes a crucially important point, one repeated by so many reviewers who
meet adequatio: Ken unites without diluting the particulars. According to work by, e.g.,
Commons and Richards, Deirdre Kramer, Robert Kegan, etc., individuals at green
altitude cannot see (conceive or perceive) the connecting links between paradigms, and
thus, being at the pluralistic wave, they view any attempt at spotting the patterns that
connect as being nothing but destroying the particulars by lumping or mushing them
together. That is categorically NOT what Ken does, as Genpo and Brother David and
Roger Walsh and Robert Kegan and Frances Vaughan and so many others who are at
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 44
turquoise or higher have noted (i.e., at cross-paradigmatic or higher in
Commons-Richards, Kegan’s level 5, Kramer’s stage 7 or ‘dynamic dialecticism,’ etc.).
There is no other way to say that. It is not meant to be disrespectful of reviewers
at green, but of reviewers at green who disrespect Ken’s work by fundamentally
misperceiving it. When any of us do that, we are “in over our heads,” and that fact needs
to be simply, respectfully, but honestly noted. We are dissing the misinterpretations, not
the individuals. But at turquoise or higher, starting with cross-paradigmatic cognitive
capacities, the patterns that connect start to come into view, and then, indeed, you can
see the Earth as a whole (while still spending as much time as you want studying any of
its parts and particulars in as much excruciating detail as you wish—using, of course,
Integral Methodological Pluralism—something most green reviewers tend to miss).
But this “seeing the Earth as a whole” is what so many people appreciate about the
radical and revolutionary nature of Ken’s AQAL approach: finally, a way to do exactly
that.
“Vast in scope, profound in depth, and far reaching in its implications, Integral
Spirituality is, quite simply, the most encompassing account of religion and spirituality
available in our time.”
--Roger Walsh, PhD, author Essential Spirituality and The Spirit of Shamanism
Notice another thing that Genpo has said. Ken’s unity-in-diversity approach
stresses both unity and diversity equally (Integral Methodological Pluralism, for
example, includes a minimum of 8 different methodologies, including
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 45
empiricism/positivism, hermeneutics, semiotics, autopoietic systems theory, cognitive
science, phenomenology, developmental neo-structuralism—do you know any other
approach that explicitly uses all of those not merely eclectically but as inherent aspects of
an integral system???). A pluralistic critic would expect Ken’s approach to “freeze the
mind” when it comes to other particulars and other approaches, but just the opposite is
true, if you’re at turquoise or higher. Genpo: “As a lineage holder [Genpo is the lineage
holder of the White Plum Zen lineage, the largest Zen lineage outside of Japan], I
particularly appreciate that Wilber has helped those of us who embody a tradition
embrace and love those of other traditions who are doing the same work—raising the
consciousness of this planet to a truly global vision.” The same notion of connecting,
healing, reconciling, seeing things whole: that is the vision that Wilber has represented
since his first book….
And now, for Appendix II. If you haven’t read it, please do so—but please read
the whole book first, or it won’t make sense, and it certainly won’t be a brain-melt (due
to the terminology that you need to first know—it’s not hard at all, just necessary). One
of the first things that people notice about this Appendix (and also the other two
appendices) is that it helps them understand the postmodern revolution, and how and why
they might still be trapped in the myth of the given, which postmodernism helped to
uproot. In fact, in Appendix III, Ken has a gentle criticism of some 20 modern writers
and spiritual teachers who are still caught in the myth of the given, even as they try to
teach liberation and enlightenment—but still being caught in some pervasive myths is not
generally thought to be liberating. But Ken gives almost a simple manual of how to
adjust one’s teachings—or one’s spiritual practice—so as to take advantage of the
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 46
important (if partial) truths of the postmodern revolution. After all, for the last three
decades, it didn’t dominate virtually all of the humanities for no reason….
Then Appendix II gets down to business. Since there is no fundamental or
foundational truth anywhere (believing otherwise is part of the myth of the given), then
any particular phenomena can only be located in reference to the sum total of all other
known phenomena at any given time. But all other phenomena appear differently to
different altitudes—there is a red worldspace, an amber worldspace, an orange
worldspace, a green worldspace, a teal worldspace, a turquoise worldspace, an indigo
worldspace, a violet worldspace, an ultraviolet worldspace…. Now, this is not subjective
idealism, nor is it extreme postmodern constructivism—in fact, although it includes the
perspectives that give rise to those worldviews, it negates their limitations, and can even
include a perspective of critical realism when it comes to the givens of this world—
EXCEPT the givens of this world appear differently to different altitudes, not because
they are merely discourses, but because they ex-ist with different contours at different
levels of (subjective and intersubjective) consciousness. The only reasonable way to
handle this is to take the highest expectable level of consciousness at any given time—in
today’s world, that is roughly turquoise—and then say that “the” world is best given by
an Integral Methodological Pluralism conducted at turquoise—or, in short hand,
turquoise science, turquoise morals, and turquoise art. (Of course, various researchers
can conduct research from, at, and/or about higher levels and states, they simply have to
identify them as such, which is part of IMP.) So, for example, if we say that the world’s
ecosystems are suffering considerable damage, that means, as seen by turquoise science
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 47
(unless otherwise indicated). This is a beautiful integration of realism (empiricism) and
constructivism (interpretation).
This is all encapsulated in the notion of Kosmic address. In order to “locate” any
phenomena, you have to indicate its location in relation to the rest of all known
phenomena. All known phenomena are found by a phenomenology of all levels and
states of consciousness, resulting in what Ken calls a giga-glossary (or giga-gloss). The
Kosmic address is simply the quadrant and level at which a particular phenomenon,
occasion, or event can be found. For example, Santa Claus is a magic-mythic figure
(magenta-to-amber level) seen as a 3rd-person if he is never met, and a 2nd-person if he is
talked to in fantasy (or actually shows up! ;-). The latter would be 2nd-person or Lower-
Left, magenta level: (Q/LL, L/magenta)—meaning LL quadrant (Q/LL) plus magenta
level (L/magenta). The square root of a negative one exists in an orange worldspace
seen in 3rd-person abstraction: (Q/UR, L/orange). Gaia as a nested holarchical system of
all gross systems is Quadrant Lower-Right and level turquoise (Q/LR, L/turquoise)—in
other words, that is where you will find Gaia. Or that is where you will find the square
root of a negative one. Or that is where you will find Santa Claus. If you are at a lower
level, or in a different quadrant or perspective, you won’t be able to see (perceive or
conceive) that occasion… period.
The same goes for occasions found in various states of consciousness, or
developmental lines, or types. Simply specify their Kosmic address (including all 5
elements or dimensions if necessary—quadrants, levels, lines, states, types), and you will
know what injunctions and enactments you must perform in order to bring forth the
specified occasion. This is what’s so radically new about this approach: it not only takes
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 48
the best of everything from constructivism to genealogy to realism to post-metaphysics, it
actually weaves them together in a way that does not dilute their truths, but makes them
believable by removing their absolutisms.
It is, indeed, an entirely new way to think: a breakthrough in the history of
thought, and of thinking. It is also the key to vertical development, to vertical
Enlightenment. Meditation remains the royal road to horizontal Enlightenment, but
taking the role of other—that is, integral perspectivism—is the royal road to vertical
Enlightenment. And Integralism asks us to do both, of course….
Ken has written over 1400 pages on volume 2 of the Kosmos trilogy, about half of
which has been posted on KenWilber.com (here). But that is the half that is more of a
summary of previous material recast in Integral Math Perspectives. But the other half,
yet to be posted, is more like Appendix II, and contains the truly radical material, so stay
tuned for that.
Here are the already-posted excerpts, although these are all first drafts and can be
expected to be tweaked in all sorts of ways (and notice that these excerpts were titled
specifically not to upset green, because Ken honestly is still reaching out to them):
Excerpt A—Introduction
Excerpt B—The Many Ways We Touch: Three Principles Helpful for Any
Integrative Approach
Excerpt C—The Ways We Are in This Together: Intersubjectivity and
Interobjectivity in the Holonic Kosmos
Excerpt D—The Look of a Feeling: The Importance of Post/Structuralism
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 49
Excerpt G—Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energies
Excepts E and F, which Ken is writing now, deal with what he calls the heart of
the book, namely, an entirely new linguistic meta-paradigm, Integral Semiotics. Due
date for volume 2? He’s not sure, there are four other books that are also almost
completed, and they each compete for his time. Please stay tuned….
Well, such is our celebration of Ken’s work. In this day of the Internet, the result
is often what Jürgen Habermas said it was: the most persistent voices, not the most
knowledgeable voices, dominate the culture and sub-culture, making quality discussions
somewhat rare and often dissed by the dominant. (The dominant culture immediately
jumped on Habermas: quelle surprise! ;-) Ken absolutely loves the Net and its various
cultures—after all, he choose the Net for his main form of live communication to the
world, IntegralNaked.org—but the fact is, if you are flying at turquoise or higher, you
will likely have found it very hard to locate a forum that resonated with your deepest
desires, values, and awareness. We are trying to start those at I-I, and the first that we
feel comfortable with is the AQAL Journal Forum, which will go live with Ken around
May 1 or so, and which you can access if you subscribe to that journal or if you are a
member of I-I. And of course there are integral bloggers who are not connected with I-I,
which we try to call attention to in Holons. But it can indeed be thin out there.
And if you are green, the fact is that you very well might have disliked the whole
experience of reading these reviews: it just cuts against the egalitarianism that is green.
That’s fine, this celebration is meant for those who can actually rejoice in the good
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 50
fortune of others, not immediately move to level them to their own conformity. And
rejoice we have done—we’ve had a blast assembling these reviews by some of the most
respected scholars, spiritual teachers, and intellectuals now working—and going back
some 30 years in Ken’s ever-widening, ever-Eros-ing career. Thank you if you joined us
in this celebration—if so, it says something wonderfully deep about you as well,
seriously.…
Much love and all good blessings and gratitude……….. The Editors
Copyright © 2007 KenWilber.com. All Rights Reserved. 51
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