Ken Wilber

PART I | PART II | APPENDIX I | FOLLOWUP | APPENDIX II | NOTES

Follow-Up Questions

In a 1983 article inThe American Theosophist you called your approach the "Neo-Perennial Philosophy," to distinguish it from the anti-modern, anti-evolutionary versions. Do you still stand by that article?

Yes, I do still stand by that article. In fact, if you look at it, that article specifically defends only ONE item of the perennial philosophy: namely, the existence of the timeless, spaceless, formless Ground or unqualifiable Spirit as such. That article in itself is therefore a radical rejection of virtually everything the perennial philosophy has claimed. The title itself was an ironic put-down: you can't have a new version of that which claims to be unchanging!

However, that does not mean that all of the conclusions of perennial philosophy are necessarily invalid; it only means that they have to be re-assessed to include a modern and postmodern perspective and reconstructed in the light of Spirit's own ongoing evolution and development. That was the major point of that article, and it marked my break with the perennial philosophy as such. (That article is included as chap. 2 in The Eye of Spirit ).

Does that mean that between 1977 (with your first book) and 1983 you did embrace a version of the perennial philosophy, but you have stopped doing so?

Yes, that is basically right. But there are several items here that need to be treated separately.

First is the issue of a perennial philosophy itself: is it true that there is a set of doctrines, ideas, and practices that are essentially the same in all of the world's great wisdom traditions or religions? That is a very difficult proposition to demonstrate, obviously. Nonetheless, I believe that there are a handful of spiritual tenets that can indeed be found in most of the world's great religions. However, they are not "perennial," for they mostly appear only in those spiritual traditions that originated around 500 BCE. And even then, those original spiritual insights show a great deal of growth and evolution themselves (as I try to point out in the article you mention).

Thus, it is one thing to say: there are some extremely important spiritual ideas to be found in the various wisdom traditions. It is quite another thing to say: there is a group of spiritual ideas that can be found in all of the wisdom traditions and that is essentially identical in all of them. I definitely believe the first assertion; but I think the second assertion is much less accurate, although I think a few general items can be extracted if we are careful (Huston Smith does a fairly good job of this in Forgotten Truth , mostly because he states his conclusions in extremely general and abstract ways).

And yes, I used to be an unabashed subscriber to the notion of a perennial philosophy (until roughly, as you say, around 1983 or so--almost twenty years ago). I was raised and educated in the modern West and its rampant belief in flatland, where no levels of consciousness higher than the egoic-rational (or centauric) are even acknowledged. And so it came as a stunning revelation that, first of all, there are levels of consciousness higher than the egoic-rational, and second, many premodern cultures acknowledged these higher states and stages of consciousness. In fact, some of the great geniuses of premodern cultures had given sophisticated maps of these higher states and stages of consciousness development (at least as they appeared at that time). The best of these maps were actually based on direct experiential and phenomenological investigation--that is, they were based on good, deep science (Plotinus, for example), which is why their maps are still relevant and useful in today's world (even if the surface features have shifted considerably and need to be reconstructed in an AQAL fashion--"all-quadrant, all-level").

But all of these premodern investigations were set in a cultural context that was thoroughly mythic in its general features, and that cultural background unavoidably colored the interpretations, maps, and methodologies of even the greatest of sages and philosophers in those eras. And the less sophisticated philosophers were even more drenched in mythological assumptions--or assumptions based, not on direct evidence and experience but merely speculation and ontological implication.

For example, we saw (in Appendix 1) that the traditions often conceived the planes of reality as being the terrestrial, the intermediate, the celestial, and the infinite. These were usually believed to be actual territories existing "out there," populated with mythic beings walking around and talking and having experiences on a different type of actual, concrete territory. The Buddhist "six realms of existence," for example, are clearly of this nature. They are said to be actual places inhabited by hungry ghosts, titans, animals, demigods, angels, and so on.

Now, when modern Buddhist teachers look at those six realms, they almost always interpret them as actually referring to six major psychological states that humans can experience. Trungpa Rinpoche does this, for example, in his many books. He says that the hungry ghost realm actually means states of psychological jealously and envy. The titan realm actually means states of egoic inflation and narcissism. The god realm actually means states of meditative bliss, and so on.

Well, that is exactly a switch from metaphysical to critical--a switch from postulating these realms as separate ontological realities that can be known only by speculation, to seeing these realms as actually being structures of the perceiving subject --that is, as being psychological states of being that can be directly known and experienced by a shift in consciousness--and therefore directly investigated by a phenomenological science (or deep science) of shared introspection and confirmed by a reconstructive science of those who have demonstrated competence in those consciousness shifts.

Thus, some of the major tenets or ideas of the great wisdom traditions can still be generally valid, but only if they are reconstructed along modern and postmodern lines, just as Trungpa and so many other sophisticated present-day teachers (in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc.) are already doing. [12] My work is simply giving a philosophical foundation and methodology for doing so--for moving from a metaphysical to a critical, post-metaphysical, and more integral spirituality.

This is why I respectfully but firmly object to those theorists who summarize my work as a modern or postmodern version of the perennial philosophy. I understand why they do so, especially if they give a historical presentation of my ideas, but to do so misses the major shift that marked phase-3 and especially phase-4 of my work (namely, all the books that appeared after the 1983 article, and especially all the books that appeared after SES)--it is to miss the radical shift from metaphysical to postmetaphysical. Presenting my mature work as simply an updated version of the perennial philosophy guarantees that it will get the reception that Meister Hans-Willi gives it.

In your earlier work (esp. The Atman Project , 1980), you wrote: "Involution, or the enfolding of the higher in the lower, is the pre-condition of evolution, or the unfolding of the higher states from the lower" (p. 160-161), suggesting that the future evolutionary stages do not follow a random path, but mirror the steps of the stratified Kosmos. This is definitely a metaphysical point of view, isn't it?

Not in the technical sense, no. It would be metaphysical if it were postulated in an a priori fashion to be a reality that is known only by speculation, not by direct experience. But the existence of higher states of consciousness can be directly known, and thus the difference between the higher states and the lower states--a difference known as "involution"--can be seen based on direct phenomenological evidence and experience. Involution in these terms is thus a post-metaphysical conclusion based on direct experience, not a metaphysical postulate based on mental speculation.

But notice, what is directly experienced is simply the higher states and stages of consciousness development (and hence the difference between higher and lower can be immediately understood based on evidence or phenomenological data). But the idea that all of the specific stages themselves are enfolded in a process of involution is not directly experienced, nor can it be legitimately inferred by the reflective intellect based on evidence. All that is required by the deep science of contemplative evidence is that a gradient of potential transcendence is pregiven. This is the pregiven "stratification" that you mention, but in order for evolution to occur, it is not required that all of the precise steps be explicitly included in that stratification--the gradient alone is all that is required--what I previously called a morphogenetic field.

Let me give a very simplistic example: in order to walk down a mountain, it is necessary that you first walk up it. But the path up the mountain--the exact steps or stages--might not be the same as the path down the mountain. But one thing is the same: the height of the mountain is unchanged in either path, so if from the bottom to the top of the mountain is, say, 10,000 meters, then that is the same distance from the top to the bottom. Now you might end up walking down the mountain in a very uneven path, so that you eventually end up walking, say, 17,000 meters. But you still descended only 10,000 meters.

It is the same with involution and evolution. When Spirit throws itself outward to create the manifest world (starting with the Big Bang of the material level), all that is given is the gradient of 10,000 meters, which creates a vast potential that will pull all objects placed on the top of mountain downward. That pull is called Eros. Of course in this example the directions are reversed: we usually speak of Eros and evolution as an Ascent, but since gravity (representing Spirit) is downward for us, then in this example going up the mountain is involution and going down the mountain is evolution. Spirit creates the mountain, puts all of us on top of it, gives us a push (the Big Bang), and then gravity (or spiritual Eros) does the rest, although there are all sorts of different paths down the mountain, with all sorts of ups and downs and spirals and regressions and so on.

When I speak of "levels of reality" or "levels of consciousness" or "stages of development," what I basically mean is: how far down the mountain is a particular person at any given moment? Thus, we can for convenience divide the path down the mountain into ten stages, each of which is marked by a descent of 1000 meters. So to say a person is at "stage 4" simply means that they are 4000 meters down the mountain--but that does not tell us exactly how they got to 4000 meters. In some people it will be a straight and steady descent. Others will descend to 3000 meters, then go back to 2000 meters, then down to 4000. We can still refer to ten stages as perfectly real markers down the mountain because each stage simply means another 1000 meters of greater descent has occurred, however you got there. So we can also say that everybody that goes all the way down the mountain has gone through ten real stages. The "deep structure" of each stages simply means the depth of the descent at that stage, so that if you are at stage 7, it means that you are 7000 meters down the mountain, and everybody who is at stage 7 is also 7000 meters down (however they got there), and this is universally true for everybody--but each person's journey will have very unique features (and these will vary from culture to culture and from person to person ). And none of those steps were put there in involution. [13]

Now here is the final point: in the metaphysical version of involution, the mountain itself is created and is already pregiven. All of its contours and details are already created and are fully existing (although they are hidden or enfolded). We are placed at the top of the mountain, and as we descend we simply encounter items on the mountain that were already created and enfolded by Spirit. In the postmetaphysical version, however, all that is given is the potential gradient of 10,000 meters. The mountain itself is not given; rather, the mountain and its features are co-created as consciousness on the whole descends down the 10,000 meter gradient, and it is created by interactions in all four quadrants.

In the postmetaphysical version, there are still universals, and as previously suggested they are of two major types: (1) As consciousness on the whole descends the 10,000 meter gradient of transcendental potential, the mountain and its features are co-created by factors in all four quadrants, and once they take on form, they become Kosmic habits. Henceforth, all individuals starting at the top of mountain will have to negotiate these already-existing features (such as, for human beings living today: atoms, molecules, cells, organisms--and psychologically, the early stages of beige, purple, red, blue, orange, etc.--these are all now Kosmic habits that form the early stages of all subsequent development). And (2), individuals can still "jump down" the mountain and experience, say, a depth of 8000 meters, even though humanity on the whole is no further down than, say, 3000 meters. But even if an advanced sage "jumps further down the mountain," he or she will still experience that greater depth only in terms of his or her own four quadrants. But this still allows the pregiven reality of all ten stages of descent --all ten stages are fully present and fully available, because all 10,000 meters are fully pregiven. [14] But none of their surface features are filled in, for individuals or collectives; moreover, we don't know the exact path that the future stages of evolution will actually take for an individual or for the collective. Maybe the descent from 7000 meters to 6000 meters--in a particular individual or for humanity on the whole--will be straightforward and easy; maybe it will involve cataclysmic regressions and spirals. All we can say is that these potential stages do exist as a gradient of transcendental potential (i.e., the morphogenetic field represented by the general pull of gravity or spiritual Eros--or simply the capacity for systems to self-organize, if you wish to be more agnostic), but we cannot say anything about the actual form and contours until they unfold. [15]

I discuss this postmetaphysical version of involution more fully in the Introduction to Volume 2 of the Collected Works , which I will reprint below as Appendix 2 ("The Nature of Involution").

If Spirit is the only thing you have retained from the perennial philosophy, what does your view of the Kosmos look like?

No, I didn't say that Spirit was the only thing that should be retained from the perennial philosophy. I said that we should retain only those tenets that are compatible with good, deep science and that can be confirmed by a reconstructive science of those who have demonstrated competence in the postrational waves of development. As it turns out, many of the great premodern sages were already doing that--they had themselves already taken the critical turn, as I pointed out for Nagarjuna, Plotinus, Shankara, al Hallaj, St. Teresa, Eckhart, and so on. Therefore, numerous of their tenets, ideas, practices, and conclusions are already based on exemplars, injunctions, direct experiential data and evidence, and confirmation/rejection procedures, and thus those tenets are likely still valid today (even if their details need to be updated for the postmodern world). In fact, many forms of contemplative and meditative spirituality already follow those guidelines, and thus they are likely still valid--but the point is that they are at any event open to further critical testing; and if they pass those tests, they can and should be retained. [16] This is why I still sometimes refer to the perennial philosophy (as I did in The Marriage of Sense and Soul ), but not so as to uncritically accept the argument from authority, but only insofar as its tenets can (or could be) reconstructed in terms of both good deep science and reconstructive science. [17]

But when any contemplative endeavor steps away from its direct experiences and its empirical and phenomenological grounding, and slips back into its premodern metaphysical speculations (which actually represent lower levels of development and are regressive in their announcements), those speculations need to be meet with a severely critical attitude. For example, whenever a Christian monk moves away from direct contemplative experiences of transpersonal love and announces that only if you accept Jesus as your personal savior can you have this experience, then that claim must pass the test of good, broad science, and of course it fails miserably to do so, because that claim is a myth, a metaphysical assertion without evidence. On the other hand, a phenomenological experience of Christ consciousness might represent, say, an experience of 8000 meters down the mountain--a very "high" experience of a subtle realm--but if it is interpreted merely in the terms of the mythic level of consciousness--about 3000 meters down--then a postrational experience of a very real higher state is being (mis)interpreted in the terms of a premodern, prerational state, and that is what causes modernity to deny altogether the existence of deeper/higher realms than that of the egoic-rational.

But notice, even if we include all of those reconstructed tenets, practices, and conclusions from the world's wisdom traditions, we still will not discover any of the stages in the intersubjective realm (the Lower-Left quadrant), because those stages do not appear in any phenomenological investigation (they are uncovered only by intersubjective, developmental-structuralist approaches, which were discovered just a few decades ago). I explain this crucial point in "A Summary of My Psychological Model," which is posted at wilber.shambhala.com. Further, the perennial philosophy had no access to the modern scientific data about the Upper-Right quadrant (brain neurophysiology, neurotransmitters, etc.). Nor did the perennial philosophy have any understanding of the stages and detailed nature of the Lower-Right quadrant (techno-economic modes of productions, the history of social systems, etc.).

In other words, even an updated perennial philosophy is a severely limited worldview. And what the perennial philosophy did with the limitations and lacunae in its worldview was to fill those vacancies in understanding with metaphysical assertions. That's the real problem.

So if you deny all those metaphysical aspects, then what IS your ontology?

Well, as I said, I believe that all ten levels of reality-consciousness are real (the 10,000 meters are pregiven but unendingly open); [18] some of these waves have already emerged and stabilized as Kosmic habits--that is, as stable holons that have become the fundamental constituents of the World (such as, in the Right Hand, quarks, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms...; and in the Left Hand, prehension, sensation, perception, images, symbols, purple, red, blue, orange, green, yellow, turquoise, which are now available as general stages of human development, as far as reconstructive science can tell at this time). [19] The "four-quadrant" diagram that I often present is a simple representation of some of the ontological realities or holons that exist to date ( all of those holons exist independently of any particular human mind, although some of the intermediate-to-higher holons do not exist independently of human minds in general). Also, the higher levels that have not yet emerged at large are nonetheless present as real potentials, and every human being has access to them in altered states that access these major realms. Those levels/realms are realities, and they can emerge in stable fashion as developmental stages for any who wish to move ahead of humanity and climb further down the mountain of transcendental potential. Involution and evolution are real. And so on.... That is a very large "ontology," so to speak, but an ontology that is not ultimately divorced from some form of consciousness.

It is interesting that a Dutch philosopher, J.J. Poortman, who died in 1970, had a philosophy he called "twofold subjectivity" or "realism within idealism." He agreed with the mystics that ultimately everything existed in the consciousness of the Self ("there is nothing outside God"), but for us individual selves, there is a VAST reality around us, both in its visible and its invisible aspects. Paradoxically, this mystical philosophy leads to a firm support for scientific research, in all its aspects (physical, parapsychological, mystical).

Yes, I would generally agree with that view, very much. The important point is that nothing exists outside the consciousness of the Self, but for individual selves much of this reality remains unconscious (or remains a mere potential for them), BUT the consciousness of the individual and the consciousness of the Self exist along a single spectrum, and individual selves can develop to a consciousness of the transcendental Self and thus experience it directly. But that is a critical, not a metaphysical, proposition, and it can be tested by a good broad science and then confirmed by a reconstructive science of those who have demonstrated competence in postrational development. However, many of the ontological realities that I mentioned in the previous response exist outside of any individual mind at any given moment, which is why "quasi-independent realms of reality" must be retained in a postmetaphysical philosophy and spirituality. The major difference is, we postulate the existence of ONLY those realms that can be accessed by a developed human consciousness at some point (i.e., realms whose existence is tied as closely as possible to some degree of direct experience and evidence at all of the known stages of consciousness development).

Since you keep returning to the three states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep as foundational in your recent writings: many people are puzzled by the fact that according to the traditions dream (subtle) and sleep (causal) are somehow related to more spiritual states of being, contrary to the experience that they normally lead to more UNconsciousness--deep sleep being the ultimate state of unconsciousness. Can you throw light on this?

What we find in the contemplative traditions is that the three great realms of existence--generally called gross, subtle, and causal--are tied to three major states of consciousness--waking, dreaming, and sleeping. This is consistent with the critical turn that most of the contemplative traditions took about fifteen hundred years ago (namely, no realm of being is postulated to exist that cannot be accessed by consciousness of some sort).

Now, for the average or typical self, only the waking state is experienced in consciousness . The other two states--dreaming and sleeping--are indeed "less conscious" or even "unconscious." This also means that the typical self has access only to the gross realm of material reality. This conventional state is usually referred to as "ignorance," because the average self is ignorant of the deeper or higher realms and states.

However, if the self continues its growth and development, then its consciousness becomes stronger and stronger, so to speak, and eventually the self can enter the dream state and remain conscious throughout the dream. This is often called "lucid dreaming." A self that lucid dreams does not "pass out" in the transition from waking to dreaming, but rather remains awake in both states--and thus this self has access not only to the gross realm of material reality but a direct access to subtle states that are created only by the mind (and thus this self can investigate the inner workings of its mind more fully than can a person who passes out during the subtle states).

If consciousness growth and development continues even further, a person can remain subtly awake even during deep dreamless sleep. In fact, we now have substantial EEG evidence that this can occur (which is an excellent example of how we can combine good deep science with good narrow science in order to offer compelling evidence for the existence of these higher states). [20] In this case, the person can remain conscious in the waking, dreaming, and deep sleep state, and this gives the person access to types of experiences that present themselves as more significant, more real, and more valuable than the states confined only to the gross realm.

How do you know if that is true? How do you know that these deeper states appear "more real" and "more valuable"? Well, you take up the broad science of contemplation and check it out yourself. If you do not perform this scientific experiment yourself, then of course we are not obliged to listen to your opinion in this regard, since your opinion at that point is mere metaphysics, or thought divorced from actual experience and evidence. The claim that only the gross waking realm is real is a metaphysical claim that any genuine postmetaphysical thought must reject.

So the mystics maintain that these deeper states of dreaming and sleeping, if entered in consciousness, give us epistemological tools that show us dimensions and realms of reality that are "invisible" to the average self living in ignorance. According to these investigators, the deeper realms/levels of reality--the subtle and causal--give us the epistemological tools or modes of knowing that better disclose the realities of soul and spirit. In my example, if the average self of ignorance is at, say, 2000 meters down the mountain, then the dream realm entered in consciousness is 5000 meters down, and the deep sleep state entered in consciousness is 9000 meters down. There is a fourth state, of course--called "turiya"--that represents the fully conscious Self that is capable of witnessing (or remaining awake) through all three major states, and whose realization is generally considered enlightenment (or 10,000 meters down--whereupon you realize that the entire mountain itself and all of its levels is actually Spirit, and that in the manifest world the mountain itself just keeps on going down forever: evolution is unending, but you are one with its timeless Ground). [21]

I hope that my comments shed some light on these difficult issues. What is so exciting to me is that we who are living today have an extraordinary opportunity to take the very best of premodern, modern, and postmodern approaches to reality and include all of them in a truly integral approach that honors and includes the best of each. This is not only a generous move on our part, it has the best chance of opening our hearts and minds and souls to the incredible treasures that Spirit has so freely conferred on this radiant Kosmos.

Thank you all for participating in this discussion. And Hans-Willi: please take care of yourself, my friend.

PART I | PART II | APPENDIX I | FOLLOWUP | APPENDIX II | NOTES