ALTERNATE REALITY in KEN WILBER; Mysticism as Science.

Ken Wilber is one of, if nor the, most thoughtful, articulate philosopher/visionary I have read. Certainly he has been the most influential thinker I have read in the 1990s. He has single-handedly developed the logical and philosophical underpinnings of the transpersonal, spliced it onto the recognized modes of consciousness thereby extending its spectrum; brought Perennial Philosophy into the 21^st century; developed the four-quadrant way of looking at the "great chain of being", clarified the difference between "pre" and "trans", and much more. He has sought to integrate the gains of the "ego" and rational and scientific into the chain; in fact he probably used the word "integrate" more frequently than almost any other. He has also tried to embrace almost all shades of opinions, preferring to see similarities in structure rather than differences in details. There is so very much I like and admire in him that it seems churlish talk about some of my objections.

Before I get to my main arguments, I should point out that despite Wilber's lifelong aim to integrate all his quadrants, he has not done so. To understand this, it is important to see the difference between a taxonomist and a true integrator. The first merely categorizes the diverse elements in a group, the second explains the reasons for the differences. Linnaeus was a taxonomist, Darwin (whether outdated or not) an explainer. To belabor this point: a diagram is not the same as an integration. I would like to illustrate the difference from the area of Physics. Merely showing magnetice lines, or a vector depicting electricity going one way and magnetism the other way is not integrating. Providing an equation, as Clark Maxwell did, that encompasses both is integration. Showing graphs in which one axis is space and the other time, as done in popular science books, is not integration, providing an equation and a theory behind it, as Einstein has done in his special theory, is integration. We now understand why the world appears the way it is, and have recipes (equations) for calculating cases for which the velocity of the object is close to the speed of light. In a similar fashion, showing and quantifying the equivalence of gravity and accelerated motion, as shown in Einstein's general theory, is integration. Without getting into details, the integration of the three forces, strong, weak and electromagnetic is true integration (at least as I define it), because the resulting theory has explanatory and predictive power. It explains how these diverse forces " crystallized out" after the Big Bang. Wilber's categorization is by far the best I have seen. He incorporates all important fields and shows how they fit in. I will never read a book without understanding which quadrant, which field, which wave it deals with. Wilber's achievement is superb. But whatever it is, it is not integration. At best, it is a blueprint that should be followed for anyone attempting true integration.

I also have difficulty with Wilber's fast and lose treatment of "Reality", something I am sure the British philosopher, Austin too would notice; my views can be found at http://home.att.net/~paul.hoffman1/Wilber.htm . Similarly, I am troubled by his unwillingness or inability to realize the "category mistake" involved in treating the mind as it were a similar entity to the body. I am sure Ryle too would make this onbservation. Wilber ties himself in a knot (or at least drives me crazy) with his efforts of "in" and "out", "higher" and "lower" (less so in these two). Is the mind inside the body? Is the mind higher or lower? Is the noosphere above the biosphere? His treatment is unpersuasive, since he is can not see that that the mind and body belong to different categories. Hence, one should no more ask which is higher or lower than one can ask about the color of electron.

Still and all, I am with Wilber most of the time. It is when he stretches beyond these points that I am less persuaded. The rest of this paper will deal with two items: Wilber's insistence that the paradoxes of philosophy like the Mind-Body problem will cease to be paradoxes after mystical practices, and his efforts to elevate contemplative practices to science.

As shorthand, I am responding to Wilber's preface to the most recent edition of Eye to Eye, although he has made identical arguments elsewhere, most notably in his Marriage of Sense and Science and even in TOE. In these works, he points out in his usual spirited (sic) defense of transpersonal consciousness that the most important questions about Reality, mind/body, one/many, and so on can not be solved by reason, the middle of the three modes of consciousness: matter, mind, and spirit. They can only be grasped, if that is the word, via meditative intuition. The answers are intuited but cannot be articulated. When they are, they lead to paradoxes, like Reality is not one, not many, neither not one not many, etc.

Before I go on, this is my first objection to his treatment, which takes this position as a starting point. Where is this written? He, of course, is philosophically driven to this position, having elevated mystical, mandalic consciousness to the pinnacle of awareness, and so has the perennial philosophic tradition. But that doesn't make it so.

There are several questions. Why are the most important truths only available to mystical contemplation? Why is it so that after they are made available through meditative techniques they cannot (must not?) be articulated to reason? And why is it automatic that the Kosmos, Reality, the Absolute must result in a paradox? After all, wouldn't it be just as likely that once the results are apprehended, they could be articulated? And that the results would not be paradoxical.

My hunch is that he and the tradition he is espousing have vested interest in elevating mystical, spiritual, meditative mode of knowledge, whose edge can only be demonstrated if Reality is indeed non-rational. It is not enough that it should not be revealed rationally; it must not be grasped rationally either. But reality need not be the way he says it is: Reality could be anything, it could be such that there is only one substance, or Spirit is only transcendental, or whatever. In my opinion, the fabled Oriental "Perennialists", and certainly Hegel and Plotinus, who were not meditators, derived their position first philosophically, and then tried to perpetrate it via teaching and practices. The Absolute, the Spirit, Void, was too big for them to grasp via intellect, so they had to come up with paradoxical terms to validate their gut-worldview. This has to have been the case with Hegel who was a philosopher. And probably with Plotinus.

The next point has to do with Wilber's elevation of the mystical practice to science. I do take his meaning and he does an honorable job. A creative job. Injunction, yes! But verification by the Sangha? No. On one hand he points out that practitioners verify the findings, but he also says that answers which don't accord with the views of the Sangha are culled out. Well, consensus is pretty easy this way. Einstein could never have come up or out with his theory is such a system, because his views would have contradicted by the prevailing view (scientific Sangha?). A poor Zen adept who arrives at a different Reality gets punched; of course, he will make sure henceforth to agree to the consensus. Furthermore, the meditators are heavily bombarded by sacred texts whose validity they are supposed to experience. Of course, they will do so. A truly independent test would be to take 100 intelligent ego-staged persons and have them meditate for three years. OK, they can be given injunction on how to concentrate on breath, candle, mantra, whatever. Check them three years later and collect their thoughts. If they reproduce Hegel, Aurabindo, Nagarjuna, if they even say that the Absolute is neti neti, or one taste, Wilber's point is more proven. Without such a confirmation, it is questionable. His statement that different traditions have come up with similar deep structure is only partly proof. After all, most Eastern traditions have direct lineage to a single common philosophy. Independent Western traditions admittedly don't. But even he has to shoehorn Plotinus, Eckhart, and Hegel to totally conform to the perennial philosophy. Besides, as I have pointed out, these thinkers have not arrived at their view via the meditative technique. His selective quotes from the New Testament and St. Paul are really poor; the few quotes are totally taken out of context.

Let us now grant all that Wilber is saying. A novice takes the injunction, goes through the practice, and experience Reality, can understand that Brahman is all, and all is Brahman, Nirvana is Samsara and vice versa, and that he is one with God and he is God, and there is no seer and seen, they are the same. What would this mean? To give an odious but apt analogy, assume we give the injunction: "drink 1 quart of alcohol. Then collect the experience". The result: the participants all see pink elephants. Does this mean that pink elephants are real? Not at all! It merely means that when human beings drink alcohol, they experience pink elephants. Their experience is reproducible, verifiable, and is real. But pink elephants are not. Similarly, most hash users have similar experience; the world has opened up, they can see and understand everything, they are omnipotent. But these are merely experiences.

In other words, experience and a level of consciousness is not the same as truth about Reality. The experience that one is God and consciousness that all is one does not make it so. The same way as one can not arrive at ontological facts by rational means; one cannot arrive at ontological facts by spiritual means, however attractive that would be to Wilber and his followers. One cannot become one with God by thinking or meditating his way into it, one can only have the experience of being so. Maybe that is all there is, like beauty and truth, and all we need to know. It is noble, beautiful, elevating, but ain't necessarily so. To rub this point in, assume there is a Satanic cult. Through its rituals the members think they are the Devil. (A bit like the Gaunillo's response to Anselm). I don't think they are the Devil. I do not even think there is one, though an objective review of Human History so far would go much farther in supporting that hypothesis than its opposite, that is a God, let alone a Spirit who somehow got unconscious and is working its way out of it through us.

Wilber's attempts in this field are noble failures. Magnificent, well-meaning efforts that fail to convince.