Any Ken Wilber Bums?

[Nikolai1]

There is some stuff I'd like to discuss if there are knowledgeable people out there?

 

Basically around the transition from First Tier to Second Tier thinking?

[Jetsun]

I have read most of his books, can't remember most of the detail though. Hope that helps  

[Sahaj Nath]

go ahead and discuss it! post your questions or ponderings or whatever. i'm pretty familiar with ken wilber's work, as well as the theories of maslow, kohlberg, carol gilligan, and clare graves, which are relevant to the topic of cognitive development.

 

don't know if i can answer what's on your mind, but i'd very much like to know what it is.  

[Michael Sternbach]

I read some Ken Wilber in the past. I'm no specialist, but if you could give an introduction, I would be pleased to see if there is something I can contribute to this discussion.

[Karl]

New Age fruit loop. NWO, Nietzsche superman stuff and nonsense. Get thee behind me Clinton and Gore. Humanist, Darwinism that should have been stamped out with the ending of the Nazis. He combined it with the Eastern Dharma to bring it to a new group of potential converts. Grab a bit of the old, blend it with the popular new and hey ho, the same old crap marketed under a new brand name.

 

That's just my reading of it of course.

[Nikolai1]

Second-tier thinking seems to be a perspective that transcends all the usual dichotomies: inner and outer, individual vs collective.  So it takes something very real seeming like say, the body, and describes as nothing more than a version of reality.  Our physicality is just one of a number of lenses that we use to talk about reality.

 

For starters, do peope think that this a view that can be simpy taught.  It has seemed to me that the human mind will naturally revert to one of the lines of one of the quadrants and that when people imagine they are being integral, they are probably not at all.

 

Like for me, being integral requires a huge amount of intellectual, emotional and spiritual development.  Like I my case, I'm aware that I am integral cognitively, but not practically or emotionally.  

 

So I wonder whether Wilber's movement, and all the courses and all the disciplines are probably a bit of an illusion?

 

What do we think?

[Jetsun]

I think if you look at Wilber himself he imagines himself to be integral, but I don't see much evidence for it, I see little evidence of much ego maturity and a lot of insecurity. I see someone who periodically recommends Guru's as being examples of modern advanced Integral devlopment, but almost without fail they eventually get revealed as abusers or immature. He early on endorsed Ali Da Samaraj as a great master, but when the reports of abuse come out he retracts his support; then he says Zen teacher Gempo Merzel is turning a new wheel of the Dharma, who is later exposed as sleeping with his students; Wilber always heavily endorsed Andrew Cohen as a perfect example of Integral development, but recently Andrew wrote an open letter saying that he lacks the maturity to be a teacher any more and was using spirituality to hide from his issues. So clearly Wilber lacks practical judgement and examples of people in the real world who actually fit into his model. 

[Karl]

That's where it ends up. Just another kind of practice predicated on the idea that ones own reality is defective and that there is a better way. Not withstanding, that if ones current reality is defective, then why should the new practice present a perfected one.

 

I've said before that spritual/philosophical unhappiness/unfullfiment is the bait by which these new age, radical, esoteric practices propagate. If you cannot discover the truth by marching directly towards it, then these practices will offer distractions that will require investigation until they are uncovered as fraudulent. The problem is that there are a legion of these temptations and ones own lifetime is incredibly short by comparison.

 

A good analogy is that you are already wearing the right pair of shoes, but you got them on backwards, with the laces undone and on the wrong feet. Al, that's needed is to put them on properly, tighten the laces and off you go. However, instead you prefer to visit a shoe shop which has no shoes that will ever fit you, but to cycle through the shelves in the hope something will. Every so often you find a pair that seem to fit, if you screw up your face to hide the pain they bring. It's only when the pain becomes sufficiently unbearable that you take them off and begin the hunt again.

 

It doesn't matter if I point this out of course, you are blind to your own shoes because they also cause you pain, so why listen to the idiot suggesting they are the right shoes, just on the wrong way around. The shop is full of shoes and surely a pair must fit better, so you will keep on trying.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Karl

[Nikolai1]

I think if you look at Wilber himself he imagines himself to be integral, but I don't see much evidence for it, I see little evidence of much ego maturity and a lot of insecurity. 

Wilber is a prodigy, a miracle.  He is undoubtedly the intellectual giant of the late 20th Century and ealy 21st.  What he accomplishes is immense, but yes, it's all intellectual.

 

I'll always be a fan.  I don't dislike Beethoven's music any the less because the man wrote concertos for Napoleon...and I cannot help but admire Wilber.

 

There is a need for intellectual growth in the spiritual path, and Wilber can be assistance.  But perhaps like you, I wonder if lots of his followers aren't really doing that intellectual work.  For me the process was difficult intellectually and emotionally agonising.  It's so easy to read a Wilber book, but it is surely no shortcut?

[Nikolai1]

Karl - Obviously people like you are one of Wilber's main targets so I'm not surprised that you don't go for him.  In his Spiral dynamics model he describes intellectual evolution, and for ease gives each pnase (or meme) a colour.

 

Beige - animal instincts geared towards procuring food, shelter etc.

 

Purple - The unseen or ideal is ackowledged in the form of spirtis, demons etc.

 

Red - Selfhood emerges, but it is not individual selfhood but tribal.  So this is where the subject/object split emerges but the subject is not individuated.

 

Blue - Ethical resposibility emerges, but it is not individual.  Ethics is strongly conservative.  It is doing wat your tribe has always done.

 

Orange - the emergence of individuality, individual will and individual power.  It is the phase of science and technology and the subjagation of nature and individual rivals.  Wilber specifically references Atlas Shrugged as a philsophy based on this level of intellectual development.

 

Green - Relativistic.  Your welfare depends on your neighbour's welfare.  All people are equal.  All their perspectives are equal.  the axioms of logic are an illusion, used to give the impression of infallibly true arguments.

 

The second tier is what comes when you realise that none of these perspectives are better than the other.  The flower of the apple tree is not better than the fruit.  But anyone still at the green level cannot help but think that their way is superior to the orange while the orange sees the green as a meaningless mush.

[Jetsun]

Wilber is a prodigy, a miracle.  He is undoubtedly the intellectual giant of the late 20th Century and ealy 21st.  What he accomplishes is immense, but yes, it's all intellectual.

 

I'll always be a fan.  I don't dislike Beethoven's music any the less because the man wrote concertos for Napoleon...and I cannot help but admire Wilber.

 

There is a need for intellectual growth in the spiritual path, and Wilber can be assistance.  But perhaps like you, I wonder if lots of his followers aren't really doing that intellectual work.  For me the process was difficult intellectually and emotionally agonising.  It's so easy to read a Wilber book, but it is surely no shortcut?

 

Yeah he has a good intellect, I don't personally rate him as high as you do, for example in the area of spirituality I consider Osho as having a greater intellect and a lot of Wilbers work is taken from Spiral Dynamics, but reading both of them did very little to actually improve the growth of my being or move me closer to awakening.

 

Wilber is a map maker, but for me at least where I am now, developing spiritually is more about letting go of all maps, ideas and points of reference as reality keeps showing me over and over again that you can't pin it down. Often the greatest intellectuals have the hardest time of letting go of their maps which they cling to for security in trying to understand a constantly changing reality. 

[Nikolai1]

Wilber is a map maker, but for me at least where I am now, developing spiritually is more about letting go of all maps, ideas and points of reference as reality keeps showing me over and over again that you can't pin it down. 

Yes.  Because I still ahve phases where I lose my confidence and I feel bewildered by the srange turn my mind has made, Wilber comes a relief and an affirmation.  I can imagine that there may come a time when it seems quite irrelevant to me personally...but there will alwys be hoardes who can be comforted as I was.

 

Intellectually I have passed from orange to green to yellow in the space of about 20 years.  Throughout the whole process I found less and less people able to understand where my thinking was heading.  i did the work enirely myself, by piecing together fragments from the whole of human thought.  Wilber did exactly the same, and when I observe the system he came up with it seems like a masterpiece.  There is a huge amount of human affinity and I still appreciate that.

[Karl]

Karl - Obviously people like you are one of Wilber's main targets so I'm not surprised that you don't go for him.  In his Spiral dynamics model he describes intellectual evolution, and for ease gives each pnase (or meme) a colour.

 

Beige - animal instincts geared towards procuring food, shelter etc.

 

Purple - The unseen or ideal is ackowledged in the form of spirtis, demons etc.

 

Red - Selfhood emerges, but it is not individual selfhood but tribal.  So this is where the subject/object split emerges but the subject is not individuated.

 

Blue - Ethical resposibility emerges, but it is not individual.  Ethics is strongly conservative.  It is doing wat your tribe has always done.

 

Orange - the emergence of individuality, individual will and individual power.  It is the phase of science and technology and the subjagation of nature and individual rivals.  Wilber specifically references Atlas Shrugged as a philsophy based on this level of intellectual development.

 

Green - Relativistic.  Your welfare depends on your neighbour's welfare.  All people are equal.  All their perspectives are equal.  the axioms of logic are an illusion, used to give the impression of infallibly true arguments.

 

The second tier is what comes when you realise that none of these perspectives are better than the other.  The flower of the apple tree is not better than the fruit.  But anyone still at the green level cannot help but think that their way is superior to the orange while the orange sees the green as a meaningless mush.

 

Meaningless twaddle.

 

Of course he basis his 'philosophy' on Atlas Shrugged. The sociopathic Neitzcshians all think the book is pointing to superman dominance. I've read many posts on philosophy sites by Neitzchians who think Rand was on the right path, but didn't go far enough. That's what you get for being a sociopath, when you only have a hammer, then every philosophy that suggests 'rugged individualism' is a nail. In essence he doesn't understand Rand any more than the collectivist socialists do, it just fits better with their world domination theories. Libertarians gravitate towards Rand without realising she rejects their ideology as equally as she does the communists.

 

Unless you begin to understand philosophy from the ground up, then you will simply parrot the texts. So, for you, then your belief is in the primacy of consciousness, so you must start there and build an entire non conflicting philosophical base from that axiomatic premise. You don't need anything else to do the work. I did that from the premise that existence exists. Rand for me is only a pointer and so her philosophy must be interrogated and examined to look for irregularities, fractures. To do that, then you must grow an identical philosophy from first principles and compare.

[Nikolai1]

Karl

 

So, for you, then your belief is in the primacy of consciousness,

I've tried to say to you many times that my belief is not the primacy of consciousness.  Consciousness - or mind - is just one half of a pair of opposites with matter as the opposite number.   I could not give primacy to either one of these.  There is no way in wich we can legitimately argue mind as the ontological reality with matter only a version of it.

 

All I know is that matter and mind are both concepts that occur.  My identity, if you want to calll it that, totally transcends mere conciousness.  I don't think you understand why I say this.  I think you read this as being more of the same 'Consciousness is Everything' stuff.

 

But let me tell me some more stuff...

 

I have had experiences where I have gained conscious knoweldge about things I never should have been able to know.  The knowledge was therefore prophetic and lets say, mystical.

 

I have also had experiences where it has felt very much like i have created circumstances through pure desire.  i say felt, because it felt that way but of course it cannot be demonstrated intellectually that my consciousness really did it.

 

So please try and understand what I'm doing.  Self-realisation leads to a kind of illusion, and this is that our consciousness is doing things that we have no way of explaining.  If you're wise, you learn to just accept the reality of the process without dogatically pigeon-holing it into some kind of philosphy.

 

Of course when we write, we have no choice but to give the impression that we are doing that.  But I am telling you: I do not fit into any of the philosophies that you can think of.

[Karl]

Wilber is a prodigy, a miracle.  He is undoubtedly the intellectual giant of the late 20th Century and ealy 21st.  What he accomplishes is immense, but yes, it's all intellectual.

 

I'll always be a fan.  I don't dislike Beethoven's music any the less because the man wrote concertos for Napoleon...and I cannot help but admire Wilber.

 

There is a need for intellectual growth in the spiritual path, and Wilber can be assistance.  But perhaps like you, I wonder if lots of his followers aren't really doing that intellectual work.  For me the process was difficult intellectually and emotionally agonising.  It's so easy to read a Wilber book, but it is surely no shortcut?

 

You are getting into some deep dark mind control stuff here.

Have you looked into Jose Arguelles, Rudolph Steiner, Huxley and Theosophy too ?

Giving a points system, stars, bands, colours is the traditional method of wiping and conformity. People get sucked into a graduation and believe it is success and achievement whilst they are actually being manipulated towards a goal.

 

Of course, this is an open forum and I know zilch about the people who live here or run it. However, it isn't inconceivable that there are some who have more sinister mindsets and aims.

[Karl]

Karl

 

 

I've tried to say to you many times that my belief is not the primacy of consciousness.  Consciousness - or mind - is just one half of a pair of opposites with matter as the opposite number.   I could not give primacy to either one of these.  There is no way in wich we can legitimately argue mind as the ontological reality with matter only a version of it.

 

All I know is that matter and mind are both concepts that occur.  My identity, if you want to calll it that, totally transcends mere conciousness.  I don't think you understand why I say this.  I think you read this as being more of the same 'Consciousness is Everything' stuff.

 

But let me tell me some more stuff...

 

I have had experiences where I have gained conscious knoweldge about things I never should have been able to know.  The knowledge was therefore prophetic and lets say, mystical.

 

I have also had experiences where it has felt very much like i have created circumstances through pure desire.  i say felt, because it felt that way but of course it cannot be demonstrated intellectually that my consciousness really did it.

 

So please try and understand what I'm doing.  Self-realisation leads to a kind of illusion, and this is that our consciousness is doing things that we have no way of explaining.  If you're wise, you learn to just accept the reality of the process without dogatically pigeon-holing it into some kind of philosphy.

 

Of course when we write, we have no choice but to give the impression that we are doing that.  But I am telling you: I do not fit into any of the philosophies that you can think of.

 

 

I don't understand what you are doing, you have that much correct. :-)

Your consciousness might be doing things you can't explain, but mine is completely coherent as the faculty I use to grasp reality.

Anyway I've said enough.

[Nikolai1]

Conspiracy theorising can never be proven or disproven.  When we truly see that, our whole interest in whether we are correct or deceived vanishes and our mindspace is freed in the process.

 

Phase 1 - The experts know best, we trust them.

 

Phase 2 - The experts might be wrong therefore ARE wrong.  People at this stage still can't hold contrasting perspectives.  They instantly switch from one to the other.

 

Phase 3 - The experts cannot possibly believe they are right.  They know the truth but deliberately mislead us.

 

Phase 4 - They must have a reason to mislead us.  It is power they want.

 

Phase 5 - We start to talk about new beliefs and encounter resistance.

 

Phase 6 - It starts to dawn on us that we simply do not know, and we lose interest. 

Edited February 9, 2016 by Nikolai1

[Karl]

Conspiracy theorising can never be proven or disproven.  When we truly see that, our whole interest in whether we are correct or deceived vanishes and our mindspace is freed in the process.

 

Phase 1 - The experts know best, we trust them.

 

Phase 2 - The experts might be wrong therefore ARE wrong.  People at this stage still can't hold contrasting perspectives.  They instantly switch from one to the other.

 

Phase 3 - The experts cannot possibly believe they are right.  They know the truth but deliberately mislead us.

 

Phase 4 - They must have a reason to mislead us.  It is power they want.

 

Phase 5 - We start to talk about new beliefs and encounter resistance.

 

Phase 6 - It starts to dawn on us that we simply do not know, and we lose interest. 

 

The facts are established, but the jigsaw might be impossible to assemble. The connections are there for all to see, I don't worry so much about a conspiracy, more I'm judging if something I'm being told by anyone is actually true or false. There are plenty of people who genuinely believe that what they are selling is great news (I was like that with NLP/NVC), but that doesn't necessarily mean that what they are saying is true either even if they have no dark agenda. I'm sure many in the CIA believe they are saving the free world.

[Michael Sternbach]

I agree with Nikolai about Ken Wilber being a great thinker. He doesn't provide all the answers as far as I'm concerned, and neither does anybody else. But he exemplifies what I am attempting myself, to find my answers wherever I may, from sources both external and internal, ever aspiring to fill out the template which is my own potential self. This is individuation. Nobody else can be a perfect model for myself, because there is nobody else who is just like me and has just the same telos. People like Wilber can give us an outline or map for our development that will work for us as far as it goes. The image of perfection they draw may serve as a guiding light, even if I see neither myself or its author or anybody else actually ever achieving it. I know of nobody who isn't or wasn't flawed; it looks like even the Buddha was sometimes opinionated and bad-tempered. Who cares? Even "flaws" have a reason for being. We don't need people to worship. We only need mirrors that reflect and help us amplify parts of ourselves. Sure enough, we will feel attracted to those who can be our mirrors during certain stages of our development. And sometimes, a fictional character is great for that. We can draw from them as you could from a real (but idealized) person. In either case, what we are dealing with is our own archetypes and their projection.

[Karl]

I'd go along with that. Pretty much my shoe shop analogy. Heck, I tried an entire shops worth until I figured it out. Rand was just another pair of shoes, but it taught me that the work we do on ourselves must be mentally derived. That we must actively think and think hard. The answer isn't going to fall into our heads, or to be discovered to have been there all the time had we stopped thinking. Neither can an answer be sought, if there is no existence from which an answer may come-all we can say then is that no answer is possible, that the very idea of an answer is a red herring, a ghost that will never be discovered and so we settle for the idea of no idea.

[Nikolai1]

Obviously admiring Wilber or his system of evolution without passing through it yourself is basically blue or orange thinking.  It's just setting someone up as an authority and then following it because that's the right thing to do.

 

The thing is: I genuinely don't think Wilber views his followers like that.  He makes comments.  He congratulates them on their open-mindedness, on their courage to be evolved.  He seems to assume they are all second-tier like him.

 

It's interesting because lots of gurus will be tarnished by the behaviour of the student, and yet the guru can be the last to see that his students aren't getting it.  The egoism of the guru is the belief that they are successfully transmitting their understanding.  It must be very hard to face the fact that you are quite useless, basically, and it is all down to the student doing their own work.

[Nikolai1]

I don't worry so much about a conspiracy, more I'm judging if something I'm being told by anyone is actually true or false.

If you're concerned about the truth, then there will be a part of you concerned that you are being deceived and this is the root of conspiracy theory thinking which is a form of psychosis.  We've all met people who have lost all trust and assume everything to be a distortion.  The latest outlet for this seems to be the Zika Virus and what that all means.  

 

If you have this firm need for truth, there will be a latency of psychosis.  The psychotic person is a person who believes in the truth, but has, for whatever reason, needed to coonstruct a truth that is congruent and commensurate with their feelings while being incongruent with societies favoured narratives.  If they are brought up to feel that they can't ever get it right, that they are damned if they and damned if they don't.  If one parent says one thing, and the other another thing - these are all the recipe for psychosis. The social isolation that so often precedes a psychotic episode, is the time when the new truths can take root in their mind.

 

We all in society believe in truth, this is perhaps the problem.  To recognise that truth is finally inaccesiible to us is liberating and frees to us to find truth in places deeper than intellectual theory.

[Karl]

Obviously admiring Wilber or his system of evolution without passing through it yourself is basically blue or orange thinking.  It's just setting someone up as an authority and then following it because that's the right thing to do.

 

The thing is: I genuinely don't think Wilber views his followers like that.  He makes comments.  He congratulates them on their open-mindedness, on their courage to be evolved.  He seems to assume they are all second-tier like him.

 

It's interesting because lots of gurus will be tarnished by the behaviour of the student, and yet the guru can be the last to see that his students aren't getting it.  The egoism of the guru is the belief that they are successfully transmitting their understanding.  It must be very hard to face the fact that you are quite useless, basically, and it is all down to the student doing their own work.

 

'You're just like me' is a very good way to encourage a person to follow you.

 

You have to do what you have to do and that's just the way it is. I would encourage you to think for yourself, but of course that is precisely what it appears to you, that you are doing. A expect a true Guru would only want the greatest happiness for his students and wish them to leave him as quickly as possible.

 

The point of education is to teach someone how they can educate themselves and not to fill their heads full of knowledge like some empty pot. Once they know how, then the rest is up to them. Until they know how, then they will always be after knowledge first. A good guru would refuse them knowledge. He would not suggest they are similar to him, he would recognise they were entirely different, neither woukd he create levels of attainment, or hoops through which to jump. When the student is ready he will be ready and he will know when that time is. The Guru will grin with joy at his leaving.

[Karl]

If you're concerned about the truth, then there will be a part of you concerned that you are being deceived and this is the root of conspiracy theory thinking which is a form of psychosis. We've all met people who have lost all trust and assume everything to be a distortion. The latest outlet for this seems to be the Zika Virus and what that all means.

 

If you have this firm need for truth, there will be a latency of psychosis. The psychotic person is a person who believes in the truth, but has, for whatever reason, needed to coonstruct a truth that is congruent and commensurate with their feelings while being incongruent with societies favoured narratives. If they are brought up to feel that they can't ever get it right, that they are damned if they and damned if they don't. If one parent says one thing, and the other another thing - these are all the recipe for psychosis. The social isolation that so often precedes a psychotic episode, is the time when the new truths can take root in their mind.

 

We all in society believe in truth, this is perhaps the problem. To recognise that truth is finally inaccesiible to us is liberating and frees to us to find truth in places deeper than intellectual theory.

I see it as what it is Nickolai. No more or less than that. It's pointless to say 'look out danger ahead' because the danger isn't visible, it's like a gossamer spiders web on which I place a few drops of dew. You might not see the web, but the droplets might give a clue that there is a web. Im an interested observer. If a fellow ignores my gesticulating and hollering about the hole he is about to walk into then that's what he does. The hole won't likely be so deep that he suffers permanently, occasionally perhaps it is fatal, but that's not my concern. I shrug and walk on until the next time I see a fellow hurtling towards a hole and shout a warning but I can't do much else. I'm not interested in discussing the depth, material, shape or the reason for the hole, it's passively intriguing like an interesting novel, but it's not going to make the hole any more obvious, the person will fall in anyway even after every detail has been discussed in vivid detail.

 

That you think the truth is inaccessible is the idea of no idea. In a sense it's giving up and admitting defeat but convincing yourself that it is better than thrashing around in ever decreasing circles of disappointment. The thing is, existence will kick in the door to your tidy little quiet place. Your mind will begin wondering if maybe there is a truth and then the process will begin all over again. You cannot shut it out, even when you think you have made a circle of logic from which the mind will forever circle like a plane over an airport, eventually the fuel runs out and landing becomes an inevitability.

 

You will know this to be true, even when you will endeavour to create more and more loops to stabilise the belief, you will still know it. There is no peace, no enlightenment in the form that you wish it. I know, I spent many years searching for the exact same thing.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Karl

[Brian]

I'd given no attention to Wilber until this thread. Anyone here familiar enough with AQAL to describe the nuances of the 3rd tier distinctions? The distinctions between indigo, violet and ultraviolet?