Ken Wilber

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

Notes

[1] The "four quadrants" refer to the four dimensions of all actual occasions, namely, intentional, behavioral, social, and cultural. See A Brief History of Everything for an introduction to this idea.

[2] Spiral Dynamics is a model of human development based on the pioneering work of Clare Graves and formulated by Dr. Don Beck and Christopher Cowan ("Spiral Dynamics" is copyrighted by the National Values Center of Denton, TX, and is used here with permission). Spiral Dynamics is a reconstructive science of development that discovered that human beings pass through eight major stages or waves of development: beige (archaic), purple (magical), red (mythic), blue (mythic-rational), orange (egoic-rational), green (pluralistic), yellow (holistic), and turquoise (integral). Higher stages are postulated to be emerging at this time. See Integral Psychology for a critical discussion of Spiral Dynamics.

[3] The other major requirement is that of "transcend and include," in the Whitehead sense. That is, any future development must prehend (include) its past occasions, as well as introduce its own novelty (transcendence). This is covered in the twenty tenets (see SES).

[4] For example, the leading edge of collective evolution today is somewhere around the mature centaur (turquoise). Imagine a thousand years from now: perhaps 10 more levels/stages would have crystallized out of the subtle dimension of almost infinite possibilities. Those levels would have then become Kosmic habits (or stable holons) that would be re-used in all subsequent development beyond that point. The Spiral Dynamics of that time would then find that people go through 18 major waves of development. There is no upper "end" to evolution in the manifest world.

However, vis a vis spirituality, note that there are several "constants" that remain: at virtually any stage of development, a person can have a peak experience of the gross, subtle, or causal realms (because everybody wakes, dreams, and sleeps [see below]), and this would presumably be true a thousand years from now. Likewise, a person would still have access to the pure formless Self or Witness, which does not change because it is indeed formless (the causal realm)--that is, today's experience of the formless Self (or unmanifest absorption, Ayin, formless Urgrund, nirvikalpa samadhi, etc.) carries the self-given understanding that this timeless state, precisely because it is timeless and formless, is fully present at all points of time (much as the "wetness" of an ocean is fully present in all of its waves), and thus, IF that experience is true today, it is true at all points of time in the manifest realm. Therefore, if the formless Self exits today, it will exist a thousand years from now. Likewise, if one further discovered the union of the formless Self with all of manifestation (the union of Emptiness and Form), then one would have access to the ever-present Nondual (sahaj samadhi, turiyatita, etc.). Of course, the Forms of manifestation that exist a thousand years from now would be largely different, but the state of subject-object unity consciousness would be similar in that it is a union of the timeless unchanging Formless with whatever manifestation is present at that time. In other words, the ever-present and timeless existence of the formless Witness and the formless aspect of the Nondual allows somebody at virtually any stage of development to find some degree of realization and enlightenment (at least as a state, or further as a stage)--whether a thousand years ago, today, or a thousand years hence. These timeless, spaceless, formless aspects of Spirit, disclosed by direct experience in contemplative development, appear to be part of Spirit's ever-present grace....

[5] See Integral Psychology and The Eye of Spirit for a summary of this cross-cultural research in the stages of development.

[6] See Jack Crittenden's Foreword to The Eye of Spirit for a summary of this aspect of the integral approach.

[7] For a fuller account of the "universal ontology," see below, Part II, the answer to the question, "So if you deny all those metaphysical aspects, then what IS your ontology?" That answer involves those realities that I believe are universal.

But again, these universals are not metaphysical tenets merely postulated as a priori by the intellect, nor are they primarily deduced to be a priori by a type of transcendental criticism (a la Kant). Rather, in my view, these universal structures and patterns are in many ways open to direct phenomenological investigation, following a simple discovery of developmental studies: the a priori structures of one stage of consciousness become a posteriori experiences of the next stage of consciousness. That is, the embedded unconscious structures of one stage of development are largely a priori forms that co-create and co-structure the objects/phenomena of experience at that stage (but cannot themselves be experienced as phenomena--they help to structure phenomena). They are a priori because they themselves cannot be consciously experienced. However, because the subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next stage (in both micro fashion, described by Whitehead, and in macro fashion, described by Robert Kegan), then the subjective/a priori structures of one stage become objective/a posteriori structures of the next, and thus they can be more directly experienced and therefore more directly investigated by both good broad science and good broad reconstructive science. Thus, most of the universals postulated by my system are once again post-metaphysical. Of course, some metaphysical postulates are necessary for any complex system of thought (see note 16), but the more of those that can be tied to direct a posteriori experience, the better the chance of confirmed validity.

[8] To say that the higher levels/stages of consciousness can be accessed by deep science is not to say that these higher levels are only reached by science or that science reveals all of the essential features of these higher levels. Like all the levels of consciousness, each higher level has aesthetic, moral, and scientific features--or I, we, and it dimensions--that is, all levels have four quadrants. I am emphasizing here merely those aspects revealed by deep science. See chap. 4 in A Theory of Everything.

[9] This approach to values discloses at least three types of value: intrinsic value, extrinsic value, and ground value. See A Brief History of Everything for a discussion of these values.

[10] See, for example, Fowler's research (using a reconstructive broad science) of the stages of religious belief and faith. His work is summarized in Integral Psychology .

[11] Many of the enduring perennial philosophers--such as Nagarjuna--were already using postmetaphysical methods, which is why their insights are still quite valid. But the vast majority of perennial philosophers were caught in metaphysical, not critical, thought, which is why I reject their methods almost entirely, and accept their conclusions only to the extent they can be reconstructed, which my books attempt to do in several ways. See the following discussion for more on this theme.

[12] Great present-day spiritual teachers like Trungpa have intuitively made the shift from metaphysical to critical--but so did many of the earliest Buddhist teachers, simply because, as previously noted, the great shift from metaphysical to critical had already been made by the Buddhist genius Nagarjuna around 200 CE (and followed by the great Shankara for Vedanta). This is why so much of the work of these great geniuses--and others who took similar critical paths, such as Plotinus--still speaks (or at least can speak) to us of today, because they had all taken the critical and postmodern turn even in premodern times. This is why I have tried to incorporate so much of their work into my own system (by reconstructing it along AQAL lines). As I earlier suggested, many of the great premodern sages were already doing good, deep science of the higher waves of consciousness development, which is why it is important to always touch bases with these pioneers.

[13] All that is put there is the gradient of 10,000 meters--this gradient or morphogenetic field is the self-organizing capacity of the Kosmos--Eros by any other name.

[14] In my system, these pregiven realms for humans are represented primarily by the four (or five) great states of consciousness: waking (gross realm), dreaming (subtle realm), sleeping (causal realm), transcendent Witness (turiya or the fourth state), and ever-present Nondual suchness (turiyatita or the fifth and ultimate state). These pregiven realities represent, as it were, 2000 meters down, 4000 meters down, 6000 meters down, 8000 meters down, and 10,000 meters down or fully enlightened. The point is that these realities can be experienced because they are given potentials that are ever-present; however, as these states are converted to permanent traits or stages, they are filled in by realities in all four quadrants. None of this, however, is metaphysical speculation but reflective analysis on direct experiences.

For further aspects of these ideas, see the discussion of past actuals (or Kosmic habits) and future potentials in SES (endnote 17 for chap. 14 in the English version). See also the discussion of the relation of stages, which have to unfold in actuality, and states, which are pregiven, in "A Summary of My Psychological Model," which is posted at wilber.shambhala.com (see especially endnote 24).

[15] A few more points to qualify this simplistic example: in reality, there is no bottom to the mountain (i.e., there is no final level of ascending Eros)--the "highest" level is simply formless Emptiness, which is not really a level among other levels but the ground that is itself fully present at every level as the suchness or isness of that level. Evolution in the manifest realm, in other words, is potentially unending. Enlightenment is not finding the highest level but the ground of all levels, but that paradoxically occurs only at the higher levels of development. See the end of chapter 8 in SES for a discussion of this idea. See also note 4 above.

[16] A certain amount of metaphysical (or meta-theoretical) thinking is unavoidable in any system of complex thought, including scientific, because first principles are always assumptions without evidence (which is why not all scientific propositions are open to the fallibility principle [see A Theory of Everything , chap. 4]. The point is simply that, when engaged in unavoidable metaphysical thought, we tie as many of our metaphysical constructions as possible to the web of available empirical and phenomenological evidence.

[17] In addition to passing whatever tests we might suggest for critical aesthetics and critical morality. Remember that in this response I am focusing only on the scientific aspects of the higher realms, not on the aesthetics and morals of the higher realms, which cannot be reduced to scientific procedures. Each higher level has I, we, and it dimensions--art, morals, and science--and I am outlining merely the broad and narrow sciences of the higher realms, not the aesthetics and morals of the higher realms. There is always somebody who fails to notice this and then accuses me of positivism....

[18] As I said, the 10,000 meters can be divided and subdivided in any number of legitimate ways; I am using "ten levels" as a convenience. Other maps might have 20 levels of 500 meters each, and so on. All of them are real if they can be confirmed by a reconstructive science of those who have already made the descent.

[19] I am of course using the stages of Spiral Dynamics as a simple example of the interior holons for human development up to the average expectable level of development (centaur, turquoise). See Integral Psychology for a fuller statement of the waves and streams of development.

[20] See One Taste for examples of this.

[21] Of course, that realization is actually the "fifth" state of turiyatita or ever-present, nondual One Taste. See note 14.

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