Integral Psychology (Ken Wilber)
Integral Psychology (Ken Wilber)
Up from Eden, Down from Integral
[My 3-star Amazon Review (September 1, 2013) of “Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy†by Ken Wilber.]
I am a spiritual teacher-author, and even though I am not a fan of Ken Wilber's Integralism, I recommend his writings to my students. I suggest they begin their foray into "Wilber World" with "A Brief History of Everything," and if they find it to their liking, move on to "Sex, Ecology and Spirituality." Unless a student is interested in the history of psychology and psychological theories, I usually don't recommend "Integral Psychology," which offers little other new material, and, in my opinion, is not an enjoyable read because of its jargonized, quasi-academic style of writing.
I find Wilber a mixed bag, and because I disagree with much of what he writes, I see the bag as full of holes. Nonetheless, he's worth reading because he does uncover fertile new ground. But unfortunately, he doesn't dig very deep into the soil, and the non-cognoscenti, unable to perceive this, mistake him for an "Einstein of consciousness" when, to my mind, he's merely a pontificating Pandit lost in a superficial, liberal-progressive vision of spiritual and social reality.
I have written a book deconstructing Eckhart Tolle’s teaching, and I could write a similar-type book deconstructing Wilber's. But since this is just a review, I'll limit my critique of "Integral Psychology" to just several paragraphs.
I'll begin with Wilber's vertical, or hierarchical, model of the evolutionary development of human consciousness, the Great Nest of Being, a nested hierarchy which consists of progressive levels of wholeness--matter-physics, biology-life, psychology-mind, theology-soul (subtle), and mysticism-spirit (causal). And, as Wilber states, "[In the Great Nest of Being], Spirit is both the highest level (causal) and the nondual Ground of all levels."
I actually like Wilber's Great Nest of Being as a general model, with the subtle and causal levels gleaned from Hindu Advaita Vedanta. But Wilber doesn't understand the Vedanta causal level, or body, mistakenly conflating it with the Buddhist Dharmakaya (the omnipresent Truth "body" of transcendental Awareness). In reality, the causal body is the Anandamaya kosha (or Bliss "sheath") in Advaita Vedanta, which is the same divine Light-energy as the Buddhist Sambhogakaya (or Bliss body), Hindu Shakti, and the Christian Holy Spirit. The separation of an individual's soul (or consciousness) from the Bliss body, or Shakti, or Holy Spirit, or divine Light-energy, "causes" one's un-en-Light-enment; hence the Bliss body functions as a "sheath" which veils the Divine Self (or Buddha-nature), and thus is termed the "causal" body.
I'm an expert in mysticism, and I laugh at those, such as Jim Marion, author of "Putting on the Mind of Christ," who think Wilber is "one of the greatest and most brilliant spiritual teachers of all time." Wilber not only doesn't grok the Buddhist Trikaya, he also, mistakenly, conflates Spirit with emptiness. If Wilber grokked Hindu Sat-Chit-Ananda and Ayn Rand's Objectivist epistemology, he'd understand that emptiness, unlike Spirit, is not an Ontological Primary. Rather, it is an ontological zero, merely an epistemological term to describe Spirit's nature as formless.
Wilber understands that true spirituality, divine yoga, is about uniting the individual soul with universal Spirit, but surprisingly, he has very little to say about the human soul in this book. He doesn't mention Plato's canonical description of the soul - cognition, conation, affection - and he ignores yoga philosophy, failing to describe the soul as a collection of samskaras, or psychical seed tendencies, which sprout from the heart-region of the body and crystallize as thoughts in the brain. The human soul-matrix is the astral, or "star," body, which is reflected as one's etheric body, but Wilber, not a true esotericist, fails to venture into "deep soul" territory and consider the "root-structure" of the mind and its correlate etheric energy field.
In my opinion, there can be no Integral psychology without astrology, a nonpareil tool for understanding self, others, and relationships. But Wilber, partially buried in the very zeitgeist "flatland" he heavily criticizes, fails to acknowledge astrology as a valid tool for deciphering the root psychical tendencies, or "blueprint," of one's soul. But he buys into the enneagram (a ninefold typology of personality types), which unbeknownst to him, derives from astrology, which subsumes and transcends it as a system of human classification and understanding. Wilber also acknowledges Briggs-Myers personality types as a means to self-understanding. The four fundamental personality types in Myers-Briggs - feeling, sensation, intuition, thinking - correlate almost exactly with the four astrological-elemental types - water, earth, fire, and air - and a professional astrologer, which I was for a number of years, can assess the "elemental" constitution of individuals far better than the Myers-Briggs test. Finally, Wilber mentions the "ontological levels of the sefirot of Kabbalah," but he fails to mention the fact that each of the sefirots correlates with a planet, from which it derives its unique ontological qualities. In my book "Electrical Christianity: A Revolutionary Guide to Jesus' Teachings and Spiritual Enlightenment," I present an embryonic vision of Integral Psychology that differs markedly from Wilber's.
Wilber doesn't limit himself to psychology in "Integral Psychology"; he also pontificates on sociopolitics, using one of his favorite hierarchies - Don Beck's (Eight-Level) Spiral Dynamics - to explain the stages of human sociopolitical development.
First off, levels seven and eight of the Spiral Dynamics "evolutionary" political hierarchy are a complete joke - totally vague and nebulous New Age mumbo jumbo, inchoate crap not even worth deconstructing. Second, Wilber and Spiral Dynamics display their strong left-wing bias in level six. This level includes "postmodernism, egalitarianism, multiculturalism, subjective thinking, and decision-making through consensus." Postmodernism is utter drivel. The fact that Wilber gives any credence to this anti-philosophy is a black mark on his work. The placement of some of the other philosophies and/or orientations I've listed from level six bespeaks of a collectivist, or liberal-fascist, mindset. For example, "egalitarianism" and "multiculturalism" exemplify reductionism rather than integralism, because instead of emphasizing equal individual rights and opportunity for all citizens, they focus attention on special-interest groups rather than on the whole - the organic "melting pot" that a truly free America would naturally be. Finally, the core description of level six - "Sacrifice self-interest now in order to gain acceptance and group harmony" - could be the mantra for any communist or fascist state. I'm sure Hitler's Nazi party would have merrily chanted it, because my late father, a German Jew who escaped from Germany in 1936, told me as much. In sum, it is farcical to place the various spiral dynamics "sixth-level" philosophies and orientations above Rand's "fifth-level" Objectivism. Wilber makes it clear that he is Kantian-influenced Statist when he recommends "exercising educational, poltical and civic duties to family, town, state, nation, world" "Duty" is a dirty word to rational Objectivists; and the fact that Wilber and most of his acolytes are Obama supporters informs us that his "Progressivism" is of the liberal-fascist variety.
Wilber's emphasis on individual allegiance to "higher social orders" doubtless stems from his allegiance to to nested hierarchies, or "holarchies." Wilber writes: "A holon is a a whole that is part of other wholes. For example, a whole atom is part of a whole molecule, a whole molecule is part of a whole cell, a whole cell is part of a whole organism, and so on. As we will see throughout this volume, the universe is fundamentally composed of holons, wholes that are parts of other wholes. Letters are parts of words which are parts of sentences which parts of entire languages. A person is part of a family which is part of a community which is part of a nation which is part of the globe, and so on."
Where Wilber goes wrong with his holonic paradigm is in failing to differentiate between the metaphysically given and the man-made. Whereas whole cells, for example, have no choice about being "cogs" in the "machine of organisms, humans have free will and can separate themselves from family, community, and country. But the fact that Wilber uses the term "democracy" (a euphemistic term for "mob rule") rather than "republic" to describe the Enlightenment informs us of his collectivist sentiments. He is a New World Order Globalist - and it will be interesting to see what he says when the Powers that Be start implanting RFID chips into humans.
Wilber's Four-Quadrant "horizontal" model - the four quadrants of "the interior and exterior of the individual and the collective" - which complements his "vertical" Great Nest of Being model, is a useful paradigm for considering sociocultural reality from both an individual and collective perspective; but I don't view it as a seminal model that redefines the term "integral." Forty years ago, my first spiritual teacher, John Logan, criticized me for trying to "put everything into boxes." I can only imagine what his reaction would be to Ken Wilber's "boxing fetish."
Eventually, I'll write my own book on "Integral Psychology," and it will go beyond Wilber's "orienting generalizations" and fetishistic boxing and systematization. Until then, people can read the Pandit's dissertation on psychology and determine for themselves just how "Integral" it really is.
Up from Eden, Down from Integral
[My 3-star Amazon Review (September 1, 2013) of “Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy†by Ken Wilber.]
I am a spiritual teacher-author, and even though I am not a fan of Ken Wilber's Integralism, I recommend his writings to my students. I suggest they begin their foray into "Wilber World" with "A Brief History of Everything," and if they find it to their liking, move on to "Sex, Ecology and Spirituality." Unless a student is interested in the history of psychology and psychological theories, I usually don't recommend "Integral Psychology," which offers little other new material, and, in my opinion, is not an enjoyable read because of its jargonized, quasi-academic style of writing.
I find Wilber a mixed bag, and because I disagree with much of what he writes, I see the bag as full of holes. Nonetheless, he's worth reading because he does uncover fertile new ground. But unfortunately, he doesn't dig very deep into the soil, and the non-cognoscenti, unable to perceive this, mistake him for an "Einstein of consciousness" when, to my mind, he's merely a pontificating Pandit lost in a superficial, liberal-progressive vision of spiritual and social reality.
I have written a book deconstructing Eckhart Tolle’s teaching, and I could write a similar-type book deconstructing Wilber's. But since this is just a review, I'll limit my critique of "Integral Psychology" to just several paragraphs.
I'll begin with Wilber's vertical, or hierarchical, model of the evolutionary development of human consciousness, the Great Nest of Being, a nested hierarchy which consists of progressive levels of wholeness--matter-physics, biology-life, psychology-mind, theology-soul (subtle), and mysticism-spirit (causal). And, as Wilber states, "[In the Great Nest of Being], Spirit is both the highest level (causal) and the nondual Ground of all levels."
I actually like Wilber's Great Nest of Being as a general model, with the subtle and causal levels gleaned from Hindu Advaita Vedanta. But Wilber doesn't understand the Vedanta causal level, or body, mistakenly conflating it with the Buddhist Dharmakaya (the omnipresent Truth "body" of transcendental Awareness). In reality, the causal body is the Anandamaya kosha (or Bliss "sheath") in Advaita Vedanta, which is the same divine Light-energy as the Buddhist Sambhogakaya (or Bliss body), Hindu Shakti, and the Christian Holy Spirit. The separation of an individual's soul (or consciousness) from the Bliss body, or Shakti, or Holy Spirit, or divine Light-energy, "causes" one's un-en-Light-enment; hence the Bliss body functions as a "sheath" which veils the Divine Self (or Buddha-nature), and thus is termed the "causal" body.
I'm an expert in mysticism, and I laugh at those, such as Jim Marion, author of "Putting on the Mind of Christ," who think Wilber is "one of the greatest and most brilliant spiritual teachers of all time." Wilber not only doesn't grok the Buddhist Trikaya, he also, mistakenly, conflates Spirit with emptiness. If Wilber grokked Hindu Sat-Chit-Ananda and Ayn Rand's Objectivist epistemology, he'd understand that emptiness, unlike Spirit, is not an Ontological Primary. Rather, it is an ontological zero, merely an epistemological term to describe Spirit's nature as formless.
Wilber understands that true spirituality, divine yoga, is about uniting the individual soul with universal Spirit, but surprisingly, he has very little to say about the human soul in this book. He doesn't mention Plato's canonical description of the soul - cognition, conation, affection - and he ignores yoga philosophy, failing to describe the soul as a collection of samskaras, or psychical seed tendencies, which sprout from the heart-region of the body and crystallize as thoughts in the brain. The human soul-matrix is the astral, or "star," body, which is reflected as one's etheric body, but Wilber, not a true esotericist, fails to venture into "deep soul" territory and consider the "root-structure" of the mind and its correlate etheric energy field.
In my opinion, there can be no Integral psychology without astrology, a nonpareil tool for understanding self, others, and relationships. But Wilber, partially buried in the very zeitgeist "flatland" he heavily criticizes, fails to acknowledge astrology as a valid tool for deciphering the root psychical tendencies, or "blueprint," of one's soul. But he buys into the enneagram (a ninefold typology of personality types), which unbeknownst to him, derives from astrology, which subsumes and transcends it as a system of human classification and understanding. Wilber also acknowledges Briggs-Myers personality types as a means to self-understanding. The four fundamental personality types in Myers-Briggs - feeling, sensation, intuition, thinking - correlate almost exactly with the four astrological-elemental types - water, earth, fire, and air - and a professional astrologer, which I was for a number of years, can assess the "elemental" constitution of individuals far better than the Myers-Briggs test. Finally, Wilber mentions the "ontological levels of the sefirot of Kabbalah," but he fails to mention the fact that each of the sefirots correlates with a planet, from which it derives its unique ontological qualities. In my book "Electrical Christianity: A Revolutionary Guide to Jesus' Teachings and Spiritual Enlightenment," I present an embryonic vision of Integral Psychology that differs markedly from Wilber's.
Wilber doesn't limit himself to psychology in "Integral Psychology"; he also pontificates on sociopolitics, using one of his favorite hierarchies - Don Beck's (Eight-Level) Spiral Dynamics - to explain the stages of human sociopolitical development.
First off, levels seven and eight of the Spiral Dynamics "evolutionary" political hierarchy are a complete joke - totally vague and nebulous New Age mumbo jumbo, inchoate crap not even worth deconstructing. Second, Wilber and Spiral Dynamics display their strong left-wing bias in level six. This level includes "postmodernism, egalitarianism, multiculturalism, subjective thinking, and decision-making through consensus." Postmodernism is utter drivel. The fact that Wilber gives any credence to this anti-philosophy is a black mark on his work. The placement of some of the other philosophies and/or orientations I've listed from level six bespeaks of a collectivist, or liberal-fascist, mindset. For example, "egalitarianism" and "multiculturalism" exemplify reductionism rather than integralism, because instead of emphasizing equal individual rights and opportunity for all citizens, they focus attention on special-interest groups rather than on the whole - the organic "melting pot" that a truly free America would naturally be. Finally, the core description of level six - "Sacrifice self-interest now in order to gain acceptance and group harmony" - could be the mantra for any communist or fascist state. I'm sure Hitler's Nazi party would have merrily chanted it, because my late father, a German Jew who escaped from Germany in 1936, told me as much. In sum, it is farcical to place the various spiral dynamics "sixth-level" philosophies and orientations above Rand's "fifth-level" Objectivism. Wilber makes it clear that he is Kantian-influenced Statist when he recommends "exercising educational, poltical and civic duties to family, town, state, nation, world" "Duty" is a dirty word to rational Objectivists; and the fact that Wilber and most of his acolytes are Obama supporters informs us that his "Progressivism" is of the liberal-fascist variety.
Wilber's emphasis on individual allegiance to "higher social orders" doubtless stems from his allegiance to to nested hierarchies, or "holarchies." Wilber writes: "A holon is a a whole that is part of other wholes. For example, a whole atom is part of a whole molecule, a whole molecule is part of a whole cell, a whole cell is part of a whole organism, and so on. As we will see throughout this volume, the universe is fundamentally composed of holons, wholes that are parts of other wholes. Letters are parts of words which are parts of sentences which parts of entire languages. A person is part of a family which is part of a community which is part of a nation which is part of the globe, and so on."
Where Wilber goes wrong with his holonic paradigm is in failing to differentiate between the metaphysically given and the man-made. Whereas whole cells, for example, have no choice about being "cogs" in the "machine of organisms, humans have free will and can separate themselves from family, community, and country. But the fact that Wilber uses the term "democracy" (a euphemistic term for "mob rule") rather than "republic" to describe the Enlightenment informs us of his collectivist sentiments. He is a New World Order Globalist - and it will be interesting to see what he says when the Powers that Be start implanting RFID chips into humans.
Wilber's Four-Quadrant "horizontal" model - the four quadrants of "the interior and exterior of the individual and the collective" - which complements his "vertical" Great Nest of Being model, is a useful paradigm for considering sociocultural reality from both an individual and collective perspective; but I don't view it as a seminal model that redefines the term "integral." Forty years ago, my first spiritual teacher, John Logan, criticized me for trying to "put everything into boxes." I can only imagine what his reaction would be to Ken Wilber's "boxing fetish."
Eventually, I'll write my own book on "Integral Psychology," and it will go beyond Wilber's "orienting generalizations" and fetishistic boxing and systematization. Until then, people can read the Pandit's dissertation on psychology and determine for themselves just how "Integral" it really is.
