Responding to an evaluation of Ken Wilber

Val Humpherson about 1 month ago (edited) Gosh! Where to start. My own teacher was a devotee of Sri Aurobindo, and I have taught trans personal psychological approaches to comparative spirituality including a brief dive into Wilber. I think he is wrong. I think Sri Aurobindo is wrong. I could say, how dare I criticise two giants of spiritual thinking, but somehow to me they seem to “miss the mark”. How? The best way I can explain my unease is that they mistake the map for the territory, mistake the philosophical interpretations and explanations for lived reality. To believe yourself defined and labelled as “the 2% higher, integral being” and to see others as “green” “orange” etc etc thinkers is to try to reduce the huge complexity of human individuality into boxes that you can use. As you say, maybe to self-aggrandise, maybe to exclude the “lesser beings” people and other life, maybe to control and direct others. Life is not reducible to models. Life escapes the edges, surprises and challenges us, throws curve balls. And it is wonderful that it does. Is the ten year old who talked to me this afternoon, full of excitement and fascination, reducible to a coloured label? Is his potential a known thing? Of course not. Who am I, or you, or Wilber to judge the “level”of development of any individual. It fails because it creates a model, a flawed model, and then judges within that flawed model. The truly individuated people I have met are beyond being interested in models, tbh. 22 Mark Collenburg Monteiro (3 Buddha Magi) Mark Collenburg Monteiro (3 Buddha Magi) YOU less than a minute ago Great comment. Wonderful to hear your reflection. Perhaps your thoughts lead me to recall my surprise at hearing Jung called a typologist. He posed an axis of some 4 qualities, thinking, feeling, intuition, X, with extroversion and introversion in some framework, and that people operate not as types, but along those spectral axes. Our ability to identify our operating elements, and principles, etc, as individuals gains in insights like that. The Buddha and his legacy, Wendt, James, Freud, Jung, et al and their legacy now with M Rosenberg articulating a range of proposed feelings and needs that characterizes individuals, for example. And beyond that, as G Vico had raised in "verum factum" and as Milton Erickson MD demonstrated in his brilliant and creative hypnotherapy that is one of Tony Robbins´ influences, at some level. Perhaps that´s where that individuation comes in, as Allport perceived, the current individual identity. Yet, insights like the emotions and thought caliber provide orientations into issues of interpersonal relating and strategies of communication and even counseling. Your comment reminds me that I´m recognizing the foundations of concepts even like "individuate" in the University-based system, the historical sociology of spirituality around that, and its roots and the necessary person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Gone, but not forgotten, and yet, apparently not gone in spiritual dynamics and the transcendent. I was reminded just yesterday that biologist N Tinbergen seems to have identified a useful modern version template of Levels of Explanation, after Aristotle, Aquinas, and Comte, for example, that has me appreciating Fritjof Capra´s Systems Theory of Life and its philosophical meaning. Don´t lose sight of larger meaning because of some antipathy. That´s the value of emotional and cognitive awareness. Jesus was no fundamentalist, and science is more faithfully rendered as "natural, or scientific, philosophy," with its social studies and moral, and Divine and Eternal philosophical partners. Spiritual-Religious experience plays an integral role in there, no less. Be well in all that, and I like to say, Stay blessed in Divine Love in the Nazareth-based spiritual-religious tradition of pluralist Western Civ. Bipolarawakenings Bipolarawakenings about 1 month ago (edited) Congratulations on the article Jules! Wilber’s work is extensive and you’ve done a marvelous job here introducing some of his most important concepts in a very succinct way. I agree with you that Jorge Ferrer’s critique of Wilber’s work is definitely coming from a postmodern, green perspective. I love the way you’ve highlighted so many of the problems that Wilber has had with postmodern consciousness. I also think that the risk of elitism in integral consciousness certainly exists. The key to being able to absorb what’s good about Wilber’s models is that, fundamentally, we are not talking about a power hierarchy but a hierarchy of ever widening compassion for beings. On a practical level, and speaking personally, I think the way to avoid elitism from an integral perspective is to remember that there are always other levels to develop, to heal and to grow and that there are always other beings (either in this dimension or higher dimensions) that are far more developed than we are. That understanding of higher spiritual intelligence can steer a person away from narcissism and towards deeper humility. Now does that happen in practice? Perhaps not always. There are many stories online of people talking about how Wilber himself can come off as quite elitist. And as you know he’s often associated with himself with some pretty fucked up gurus like Adi Da and Andrew Cohen. I’ve also found that the Wilber fans I usually nerdy guys. If I could offer one criticism of the work itself is that I think it’s highly developed on an intellectual level which is the exact opposite of Stan Grof’s work, which is deeply experiential. As a result I think there’s a big gap in Wilber’s work regarding the emotional dimension. 17 Mark Collenburg Monteiro (3 Buddha Magi) Mark Collenburg Monteiro (3 Buddha Magi) YOU 1 minute ago Nice observations. I have only vague familiarity with Wilber´s work myself. I have found that, like Evans the author, service is a powerful point of reference, with ecological sustainability and solidarity for socioeconomic justice and the alleviation of poverty in human rights key angles to use as a spiritual philosophical touchstone. Those disciplines draw on empirical thinking, and relate to historical sociological dimensions that relate all this to the seemingly trivial JC of Nazareth. For me, that´s like considering Einstein trivial for E=mc2, and the Social Gospel as trivial as the trivial FDR and Eleanor in their pro-social America and UN human rights visions. They are crucial parts of those dynamics, and JC was no fundamentalist. Nor is he worth forgetting. No matter that our emotional levels of understanding give us ways to understand his loving Commandments for Moses and God and his healing miracles in University-based ways. That is, most wonderfully of all, in his legacy of loving integrity despite the way people´s bio-psychosocial tendencies have created a serious hypocritical and worse imbalance as sustainability makes clear. I´ve glimpsed some of Grof´s ideas, and appreciate your reference to his experiential quality. I´ve tended to enjoy referring back to George Fox and his context as it combined various components wonderfully, without much formal education in Great Britain, with his rich spiritual experience that led to a reformed practice, unpublicized healing, community, women´s empowerment, and anti-slavery sentiment that anchored or led abolitionism, for starters. Like Einstein for e=mc2, the Quaker-Friends burst through when fervent activist groups like Greenpeace and Oxfam and their crucial roles are not perilously ignored. In fact with the driving force of emotional awareness in agape love. Stay good and well in Divine Love in the West´s spiritual-rel tradition of that has lead to rich solidarity-capable pluralism. &&& Casen Davis Casen Davis Casen Davis Truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing. CasenDavis.com 260 Followers about 6 hours ago I see your point. Maps chart the ever growing infinity of what is. Though maps become outdated quickly, they are certainly the fiber through which this creation gets woven. A number of good points. Love is key, which resonates curiously with a message from Nazareth, that blast from the past and everlast, or everlasting in its attribution. What am I finding? I´m finding that maps give us mutual intelligibility, they provide the language that helps us navigate the multiple layers that have been developed in all the areas, and contribute to the depth of our own individuated experience of spiritual growth and awareness. So, I´d ask, is it true that the maps "are no longer needed," or is it that they become the foundation of a higher awareness, and a useful resource in communication? Mark Collenburg Monteiro (3 Buddha Magi) Mark Collenburg Monteiro (3 Buddha Magi) AUTHOR less than a minute ago "the ever growing infinity of what is" - a stimulating perception. The Universe is expanding for the foreseeable future, and as far as we understand things now in the physical observations that science, i.e. natural, or scientific, philosophy, has been "mapping" in its domain. We are perceiving some impressive phenomena through the scientific community´s philosophical maps. What the ultimate significance of things like "Dark Energy/Matter" is, and the implications of the Big Bang creation singularity are differ in their current understanding from scientific philosophy´s widely undervalued cousins in the simple, but crystal clear map scheme of what Thomas of Aquinas called the lawful areas: Natural, Human, Eternal, and Divine. Noting science´s true nature as philosophy reverts it from its invisible human nature. As philosophy, "science" can be seen more clearly as part of a continuum, albeit a bumpy one. The social studies disciplines also have emerged, with the Eternal and Divine ones no less brought into a fold. Fritjof Capra has provided an especially dynamic and useful foundation, I find, in his Systems Theory of Life. He hasn´t mapped "infinity," so much as illuminated the sound relations in standard multidiscipoinary studies, which I think needs to be called philosophy, not "studies." I noticed the term "contemplative" being used, perhaps by Matt Fox, or R Rohr, and find it quite significant for representing the spiritual and introspective methodological approach. Thus, I´m not conscious so much of what´s "outdated," but more in the sense of the "fiber" metaphor that you intuited. Commercial technology and popular culture is certainly one thing. Addressing scientific materialism´s orientation to aggrandizing and imposing that view in everything is another. Finding the perspective that contextualizes the amazing realm of scholarship and the diversity of phenomena and their key distinctions is another. Thus, emergentism gets at key demarcation processes, say from physics to chem to bio. Well, can´t forget anthropology, psychology, etc. And that´s Capra work, in a nutshell, building on v Bertanaffly, basically. But, getting the inviolability of the social studies disciplines, and Divine/Eternal ones, by the sciences is key. I´m referring to what G Vico and scholars like M Weber and G Simmel clarified as antipositivism or interpretivism. Not infinity, but key, significant terms for corresponding phenomena. And then the source of all that "infinitude" of map-notions and phenomena? Emergentism helps clarify the existence of Orders or Levels of Reality. As you mention, the "creation." WL Craig´s philosophical work on the Kalam Cosmological argument gives that a nice treatment. It does tend to make scientific, usually secular, materialism itself outdated, although I´m linking it to my insights and interests in multidisciplinary studies to sounder foundations. As with Capra, the link to human rights and sustainability is key, as is the affirmation of Jesus as the very legacy of human rights and pluralism that are necessary to address sustainability. Then, Gandhi, Buddha, Lucretia Mott, Fannie Lou Hamer, and so on gain a new level of resolution. As do we. Best.