Revisioning Transpersonal Theory by Jorge Ferrer is both well-written and of value. Ferrer reconsiders and reviews, and then recasts a number of useful insights into the inquiry and practice of transpersonal theory. For those new to transpersonal theory, this book will provide much useful information. For those who have studied transpersonal theory, the value will be in having what has already been discussed presented from a different perspective.

The book is written in two main sections: a deconstruction part and a reconstruction part. In the deconstruction section, Ferrer challenges what he considers three basic transpersonal presuppositions to inquiry. They are experientialism (the assumption that spiritual phenomena are solely individual inner experiences), inner empiricism (the assumption that transpersonal inquiry must be empirically grounded), and perennialism (the assumption that spiritual knowledge is universal).

In the reconstruction section, Ferrer argues that spirituality must be emancipated from experientialism and perennialism. For Ferrer, the best way to do this is via his concept of a "participatory turn"; that is, to not limit spirituality as merely a personal, subjective experience, but to include interaction with others and the world at large. Finally, Ferrer posits that spirituality should not be universalized. That is, one should not strive to find the common thread that can link pluralism and universalism relationally. Instead, there should be emphasis on plurality and a dialectic between universalism and pluralism.

I think Ferrer's condemnation of Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, Frances Vaughan, and Roger Walsh for viewing transpersonal practices as purely a subjective event is unfounded. While each of these investigators has explored and valued the subjective domain, they have also argued against trying to avoid daily life through subjective escapism.

Ferrer agrees with philosophers Jurgen Habermas and Max Weber that reality, at least for humans, is not to be found exclusively in the objective, empirical world, but also in the intersubjective world of shared values, goals, meaning, and the like, and in the intrasubjective world of the individual. Ferrer credits Ken Wilber with making these domains not only accessible to individuals, but also practical and applicable. This is, of course, Wilber's famous "four quadrant" model, which postulates that all occasions, without exception, have subjective, objective, intersubjective, and interobjective dimensions (or simply the "Big Three" of first-person, second-person, and third-person realities). Although the Big Three are not ideas new with Wilber—they are, for example, variations on the Good, the True, and the Beautiful—Wilber has done something that neither Habermas nor any other philosopher has done: give a believable, detailed ontology/epistemology that has these three dimensions enfolded in every actual occasion in the Kosmos, from atoms to apes to humans. Wilber is the first in history to develop a quadratic Kosmology.

And this means, especially, that each occasion (or holon) has a participatory dimension built into it, all the up, all the way down. This is a radically new and profound idea in philosophy, and is one of the virtues of Wilber's quadrant model.

(For the ways that this four-quadrant approach escapes the problems of Whiteheadian and other common intersubjective approaches, see Appendix A to "Do Critics Misrepresent My Position?," posted on this site.)

The point is that—as we will see throughout this review— Wilber's quadrant model easily escapes all three of Ferrer's major objections . In fact, as several reviewers have already pointed out, virtually all of Ferrer's proposed ideas can be found in Wilber's previous writings on the quadratic nature of holons. The major problem, however, is that Ferrer takes Wilber's "all quadrants, all waves, all streams" approach, borrows the "all quadrants" part and ignores the "all waves and all streams" aspects, leaving Ferrer with a truncated and inadequate model of both psychology and spirituality.

After giving a brief nod to the importance of Wilber's breakthrough quadratic formulation, Ferrer then does something odd, implying that the "participatory turn" is his own original contribution. While the term may be his creation, the process is not. In fact, the "participatory turn" is simply the general postmodern turn, pioneered particularly over the last three decades by hundreds of theorists around the world. Ferrer has simply taken this old pomo stance and applied it to his version of spirituality.

But the importance of this general postmodern turn is part of what originally impelled Wilber to create the quadratic approach. Accordingly, you can find this participatory turn heavily emphasized throughout SES and all subsequent books. Let me give only one example:

Many individuals intuit the Over-Soul (or higher) and yet unpack that intuition, interpret that intuition, in terms merely or solely of the Higher Self, the Inner Voice, the care of the Soul, interior Witnessing, the Universal Mind, pure Awareness, transcendental Consciousness, or similar such Upper-Left quadrant [personal, subjective] terms. And however true that aspect of intuition is, this unpacking leaves out, or seriously diminishes the "we" [intersubjective] and the "it" [objective] dimensions. It leaves out the social and cultural and objective manifestations; it fails to give a seamless account of the types of community and social service and cultural activity that are inherently demanded by a higher Self; it ignores or neglects the changes in the techno-economic infrastructures that support each and every type of embodied self...

The idea seems to be that if I can just contact my higher Self, then everything else will take care of itself. But this fails miserably to see that Spirit manifests always and simultaneously as the four quadrants [subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective domains] of the Kosmos: Spirit (at any level) manifests as a self in a community with social and cultural foundations and objective correlates, and thus any higher Self will inextricably involve wider community existing in a deeper objective state of affairs. Contacting the higher Self is not the end of all problems but the beginning of the immense and difficult new work to be done. ( SES, pg. 496).

There is Ferrer's "novel" participatory approach in a nutshell.

As Ferrer continues his deconstruction, it becomes more and more apparent that he lacks understanding of, and appears to be emotionally biased against, Ken Wilber's work. Let me give some examples.

Ferrer argues the majority of current transpersonal theorists wrongly apply empirical, objective scientific methods to the study of spiritual domains. He then provides an example of this, using a three-step approach Wilber presented in acquiring valid data: (1) perform an injunction (that is, conduct the experiment), (2) interpret the data, and (3) compare that interpretation with those of others who have completed the experiment (that is, consensual validation or rejection by a community of competent investigators). Ferrer condemns this approach as inner empiricism. But again, this completely overlooks Wilber's more nuanced, sophisticated, and inclusive view. It is true that Wilber does argue that there exists a broad empiricism—and therefore some aspects of spirituality can be investigated by a broad or deep science. Ferrer hastily jumps from that assertion to the absurd conclusion that Wilber is therefore claiming that all aspects of spirituality can be disclosed by science.

Once again, let us see what Wilber actually said on that topic:

But science—broad or narrow—is not, as I said, the whole story of deep spirituality. The broad science of the interior domains only gives us the immediate data or immediate experiences of those interior domains. Those experiences are the ingredients for further elaboration in aesthetic/expressive and ethical/normative judgments. Thus, even with broad science, we are not reducing the interiors to merely science (broad or narrow). Science, in both its broad and narrow forms, is always merely one of the Big Three [of art, morals, and science], and simply helps us investigate the immediate data or experiences that are the raw material of aesthetic and normative experiences. Charges that my approach is positivistic missed this simple point.

Thus, in Sense and Soul , I do indeed try to show that there is a science of the body realm (gross), the subtle realm (subtle), and the causal realm (spirit). But I point out that there is also the art of the body realm, the subtle realm, and spirit; and there are the morals of the body realm, the mind, and spirit. Thus, all of the manifest waves of the Great Nest have an I, we, and it dimension—that is, all of the levels actually have art, morals, and science. Hence, even if we expand science into the higher realms, as I suggest, science and its methods are still only "one third" of the total story, because the higher levels also have art and morals, which follow their own quite different methodologies (following their different validity claims, namely, truthfulness and justness, respectively).

Therefore, two points should be kept in mind: I have indeed suggested that we can legitimately expand science to investigate aspects not only of the body or sensorimotor realm (narrow empiricism), but also of the mind and spirit realm (the geist sciences). But even then, there are not only the sciences of the higher realms, there are the art and morals of the higher realms as well (or, more precisely, there are all four quadrants of the higher waves, each of which has a different methodology and validity claim: truth, truthfulness, justness, and functional fit).

Thus, even with an expanded definition of science, I never reduce the higher realms to science only, for there are the art and morals and science of the higher realms. And the art and morals have different specific methodologies than the sciences, as I clearly explain. A few critics proclaimed that in expanding science to include the higher realms, I was somehow reducing the higher realms to science.

Those four paragraphs nullify every single thing Ferrer said about Wilber's supposed positivism and empiricism. This is one of the many reasons that Ferrer's book is not a dependable account of the views he says he is criticizing.

In my opinion, Wilber's worldview is vastly more inclusive than the one Ferrer presents. Wilber actually promotes a plurality of ways for acquiring insights, including meditation, dream analysis, inner dialogue, witnessing, engaging fully in living and experiencing life, awareness of the here and now, embodiment of experience, compassionate self/other understanding, Gestalt processes, connecting fully with one's heart and mind at all levels and domains, the participatory nature of all spirituality, the intrinsic important of dialogical and translogical modes, community as a path and not just a context, intersubjectivity "all the way down," as well as engaging in physical practices, particularly those studied and presented by Michael Murphy in Future of the Body .

Ferrer favors an "enactive approach" to valid inquiry, which argues against an observer (subjective) viewing an event cognitively (objective) and describing it, and promotes the lived experience, which is a phenomenological experience for a person. For Ferrer, it is more important to gain private insight into the spiritual domains of life, instead of collecting consensual data. Wilber, also in SES, promotes the enactive approach and discusses it, as originally presented by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, but he does not remain limited to this view. Ferrer again ignores all of Wilber's writing on the enactive paradigm—both its positive and negative features. Wilber specifically endorses the general nature of the enactive paradigm, as he makes clear in numerous endnotes in SES, and as he repeats again in TOE:

Whenever I outline these three factors (injunction, illumination, validation) of a broad science, I always emphasize that the paradigm or injunction brings forth data, it does not just disclose data. This in keeping with various post-Kantian and postmodern positions that deny the "myth of the given." It is also in line with Varela's enactive paradigm. At the same time, as discussed in Sense and Soul , denying the myth of the given, in any domain, is not to deny certain objectively real or intrinsic features of domains. The idea that there are pure objects unaffected by perception and the idea that all realities are socially constructed are both lopsided, unsatisfactory notions. A four-quadrant epistemology steers between mere objectivism and mere subjectivism by finding room for an inherent balance of those partial truths. At the same time, due to the prevalence of extreme constructivist epistemologies, I often emphasize the objectively real components of many forms of knowing, since that is the partial but important truth that is most often being unfortunately denied. See John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (i.e., as opposed to the social construction of reality); the Introduction to The Eye of Spirit (CW7) ; and Boomeritis.

But Wilber also makes a series of very telling criticisms of the enactive paradigm, most notably that it has a hidden biologism that tends to (mis)interpret and reduce the enaction of intersubjectivity to that of interobjectivity. In the Collected Works edition of SES, Wilber gives a very dense 8-page endnote consisting of several extended criticisms of the enactive paradigm (subheaded: "Francisco Varela's Enactive Paradigm," pp. 734-741). In my opinion, Ferrer succumbs to the same problems and limitations of the enactive paradigm that Wilber carefully deconstructs.

As the book continues, Ferrer becomes ever more critical of—even hostile to—Ken Wilber's work. It starts to appear that this bitter hostility to Wilber—and consequent distortion of most of Wilber's central points—is being driven by personal or emotional factors on Ferrer's behalf—professional jealously, perhaps, or some attempt to gain prominence, not by merit of argument, but by tearing down somebody.

Wilber publicly left association with transpersonal theory in 1983. So, although Wilber's work includes concepts of transpersonal theory, it embodies a much wider perspective—including business practices, sociology, law, history, and psychology, including developmental psychology; medicine, cultural studies, integral feminism, and the physical and biological sciences, including quantum mechanics, anthropology, and evolution; literary theory, including semiotics, art theory, philosophy, and spiritual practices.

Ferrer does acknowledge that Wilber cannot be pigeonholed into any particular school, philosophy, or viewpoint, yet he categorizes Wilber as a structuralist and attempts to deconstruct the structuralist viewpoint Wilber allegedly holds. Ferrer's discussion of this issue appears to be deeply marred by a caricatured, even cartoonish depiction of structuralism (which seems to be based only on its early, cruder forms, such as that of Lévi-Strauss, a view long ago rejected by all neostructuralists). Although Wilber has incorporated some of the insights of developmental neostructuralism, Wilber cannot in any way be categorized as a structuralist. He has written often of the limitations and liabilities of structuralism in any of its forms, supplementing it with a multitude of other approaches and models.

In fact, Wilber openly states this perspective (structural) is only a partial contributor to truth, not the whole truth by any means. Also, in Ferrer's structural deconstruction process, he fails to acknowledge that Wilber also employs developmental psychology, both experimental and applied, sociology, systems theories, and eastern and western spiritual philosophies in this arena. The structuralist label for Wilber is just not appropriate. Let me provide you the actual words of Ken Wilber, who has commented on this very topic (and notice again how Ferrer's hasty generalizations of Wilber miss all of the subtleties of Wilber's clearly stated position). Is Wilber a structuralist?

Since both Atman and Eden use the terms "structure of consciousness" and "structuralism," some critics wondered what relation my ideas had to the structuralists, who at the time were ascendant in many cultural studies (although poststructuralism had, since May of 1968, been increasingly rearing its ravenous head). The answer is, the movement known as "structuralism"—associated with names such as Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, early Foucault, Lacan, aspects of Chomsky—was an important influence, but not overwhelmingly. It was merely one of several strands of cultural studies I was attempting to integrate, and it remains important to that degree. But most of the structuralists—linguistic, cultural, mathematical, and psychological—were working with structures that they believed were ahistorical (or synchronic), whereas I also wanted to include those aspects that were developmental or historical (diachronic). Likewise, most structuralists believed that structures were a priori givens of some sort (Kantian, Platonic, Hegelian, or Husserlian), but I believed that a priori structures were in fact the result of previous evolutionary history, but once they were laid down as a developmental habit, they were then basically a priori to subsequent development [see "Response to Habermas and Weis," on this site]. And finally, most structuralists felt that structures were autonomous units, whereas I believed that they also depended upon processes of relational exchange. For all those reasons, I could never be called a structuralist in any strict sense, although I attempted to integrate structuralism's enduring contributions.

In the opening pages of the Introduction to Collected Works, Volume 2 , Wilber gives a detailed historical review of structuralism and some of its important, if limited, contributions. Reading his meticulous overview—as well as reading the short quote above—it becomes apparent, once again, what is so problematic about Ferrer's entire approach: it lacks all subtlety, it lacks any granularity—it is based on a series of crude distortions of Wilber's complex and inclusive views, reducing them to a series of superficial straw-man arguments that Ferrer then attacks with considerable hostility.

For example, Ferrer criticizes Wilber for relying on Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn in order to demonstrate valid science, particularly for relying almost solely on the falsification principle of Karl Popper. The problem is, Wilber has not relied exclusively on Popper's falsifiability principle, nor on Kuhn's paradigm structures. For example, in A Theory of Everything , Wilber clearly states:

Although the fallibility criterion cannot stand on its own, as Sir Karl Popper believed, it is often an important ingredient in good science.... Of course, there are many realities that are NOT open to the fallibility test....

Ferrer again ignores (or is ignorant of) Wilber's actual stance, clearly stated in that quote, and again presents an absurd straw-man caricature, which of course is easy for Ferrer to boisterously knock down. For Wilber, the fallibility criterion is a tool, not the defining ground for valid inquiry. A careful reading of Wilber's Collected Works (Volumes I - VIII)—not just taking bits and pieces of a single book—is necessary to an understanding of Wilber's multiple perspectives of valid inquiry, which Wilber himself explicitly calls epistemological pluralism .

We have seen that Wilber's quadratic formulation easily escapes the first and second of Ferrer's three objections (Wilber's quadratic formulation escapes inner empiricism via participatory intersubjectivity all the way down; and Wilber's use of "broad science" is only part of a more integral approach to spirituality, not its sole ground). What of the third objection? The claim that Wilber is a "perennialist"? Once again, Ferrer's critique is both caricatured and obsolete. The post-metaphysical views that Wilber has developed over the last decade are not even mentioned by Ferrer (who doesn't even seem to be aware of them or their revolutionary nature). You can see some of this new approach outlined in "Response to Habermas and Weis" [posted on this site]. Wilber himself, for at least 15 years, has been a merciless critic of the perennial philosophy for many reasons: it lacks quadratic grounding, it is ignorant of evolutionary trends, it takes it own LL cultural background and identifies it with Divine mandate, it misunderstands Kosmic habits as eternal Platonic forms, and so on.

The only point of "perennialism" that Wilber seems to accept is the universal existence of waking, dream, deep sleep, and nondual states. So, once again, let us see what Wilber actually said. Is he a perennialist?

A few critics attacked Sense and Soul because they identified it with the "perennial philosophy," the idea of which they rather loathe. In fact, the pluralistic relativists, and the spiritual approaches based heavily on the green meme (see the Introduction to volume 7 of the Collected Works ), have for the past three decades aggressively attacked the very notion of a perennial philosophy. They tend to claim that there are no universal truths (except their own pluralistic ideas, which are universally true for all cultures), and they claim that the perennial philosophy, even if it does exist, is rigid and authoritarian (whereupon they often replace it with their own authoritarian, politically correct ideology). Nonetheless, I sympathize with many of the criticisms of the perennial philosophy. My extensive criticisms of the perennial philosophy can be found in The Eye of Spirit (CW7), The Marriage of Sense and Soul (CW8), Integral Psychology (CW4), One Taste (CW8), SES (CW6), and the Introductions to CW2, CW3, and CW4.

When critics identify me with the perennial philosophy, they fail to notice that the only item of the perennial philosophy that I have actually defended is the notion of realms of being and knowing, and then I only staunchly defend three of them: matter, mind, and spirit (or gross, subtle, and causal). I sometimes expand those realms to five (matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit), but I am willing to strongly defend only the former. That is, I claim that every major human culture, at least by the time of homo sapiens , recognized these three main states or realms of existence (as evidenced also in waking, dreaming, and sleeping [universally present in all humans]). That is almost the only item of the "perennial philosophy" that I have defended. Most of the other aspects of the traditional version of the perennial philosophy (as maintained by, e.g., Fritjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Henry Corbin, Seyyed Nasr, Huston Smith, Marco Pallis, Rene Geunon, etc.)—aspects such as unchanging archetypes, involution and evolution as fixed and predetermined, the strictly hierarchical (as opposed to holonic/quadratic) nature of reality, etc.—I do not believe are either universal or true, and I have sharply distanced myself from those theorists in that regard. One of the easiest ways for a critic to attack my work is to identify me with those theorists, and then attack the obviously incorrect nature of many of their ideas (ignoring the many places I have also criticized those traditionalist notions).

Although I have been a harsh critic of the perennial philosophy, I still believe that, especially in its most sophisticated forms, it is a fountain of unsurpassed wisdom, even if we have to dust it off a bit. It seems to me the sheerest arrogance to merely attack this fund of wisdom (especially in light of what is usually proposed to take its place); more appropriate for a genuine [integral approach] is a judicious blend of the best of premodern, modern, and postmodern, which is the explicit task of SES and all post-SES books.

Another troubling aspect of Ferrer's criticisms is his allegation that Wilber misinterpreted Nagarjuna's Middle Way Buddhist philosophy as a result of an exclusive reliance on T. R. V. Murti's The Central Philosophy of Buddhism . Again, this simply is not so. Ferrer apparently takes a single endnote from Wilber's SES (note 1, p. 691) and labels it the entire basis for Wilber's interpretation of the Nagarjuna's Middle Way Philosophy. A careful reading of the citation shows Wilber's selection of Murti as but one example of a broad selection of sources. But it is important to note that Ferrer applies his caricatured, straw-man approach to Murti just as he does to Wilber. David Loy, perhaps the finest interpreter and exponent of the nondual view represented by Nagarjuna, stated that Murti's treatment of Nagarjuna was the finest in the English language—and so of course Wilber would and should use Murti as part of a balanced interpretation; the failure to do so would be academically incompetent. Ferrer's interpretation of Nagarjuna, on the other hand, seems laced with politically correct platitudes and leftist political agendas. Besides, as Wilber himself has often pointed out, the only real way to understand Nagarjuna is to practice sitting meditation for several decades: "Emptiness" is not the philosophical construct Ferrer makes it out to be, but is a direct realization in awareness. Wilber bases his understanding of Emptiness on thirty years of Buddhist mediation (as did Nagarjuna). In sections where Wilber gives a direct, first-person, phenomenological account of nondual empty awareness—such as in the last chapter of The Eye of Spirit —you can tell that this comes from his profound and direct spiritual realization, and merely not a theoretical inference.

Incidentally, because Wilber always tries to present various sides of an argument, he also criticizes some of Murti's inaccuracies, but this is a subtlety Ferrer can't be bothered with. It would be of value for Ferrer to peruse the Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Volumes 1 - 8. He would find that Wilber also discusses Nagarjuna's Middle Way Philosophy in at least four of these volumes (Volumes 1, 2, 4, and 5) and has, in no way, restricted himself to Murti's perspective. And, by the way, Nagarjuna's perspective of not clinging to any extreme views and recognizing the non-absoluteness of theory is precisely what Wilber presents repeatedly throughout his works.

What can we conclude? On the deconstructive side, Ferrer's three major objections simply do not apply to Wilber's actual view. On the constructive side, Ferrer's own contributions are mostly warmed-over quadratic theory without benefit of waves and streams, leaving his approach truncated and inadequate by almost any measure of inclusiveness.

I asked Ken what he thought of Ferrer's book, and he emailed, "Jorge is one of the nicest, dearest souls you could ever meet. He's truly an amazing person. But I do believe that the view he is representing is basically a green-meme view of psychology and spirituality. I realize that that is exactly the issue being contested: can we really 'rank' views like that? And I realize that sensitive men and women can reasonably disagree on this delicate, difficult issue. At this point, in my opinion, it is simply a matter of personal inclination: if you resonate with green-meme values, you will resonate with Ferrer; if you resonate with second-tier values, you will not. At this point, no amount of argument, evidence, facts, or rhetoric will make you change your mind, which is fine. But I do believe that Ferrer's book basically marks the end of the transpersonal movement; with relativistic pluralism, no matter how dialectically presented, there is simply nowhere to go. Postmodernism is dying a slow and fitful death; increasingly scholars are moving from pluralism to integralism, in my opinion. The insuperable difficulties of Ferrer's book are a condensation of three decades of postmodern wrong turns, or so it seems to me."

Is there a way out? This is the topic of Wilber's Boomeritis, which I believe is due out in May.