The Rise and Fall of Ken Wilber

6/3/2016
TheRiseAndFallofKenWilber
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MARK MANSON
Personal Development That Doesn't Suck
THE
RISE
AND
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FALLi OF KEN l
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The Rise And Fall of Ken Wilber

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WILBER
June4,2012 14minuteread byMarkManson
en Wilber is the smartest man youve never heard

of. Hes a philosopher and mystic whose work
attempts to integrate all elds of study into one
single model or framework of understanding.
When I say, all elds of study, I mean that literally. Wilber believes that
every eld of knowledge contains at least one aspect of truth, no matter how
small, and that reconciling disparate disciplines is a matter of integrating
whats right about them rather than discounting them for being partially
wrong. As Wilber often puts it: No one is smart enough to be wrong 100% of
the time, and therefore we should focus on whats right and leave out the rest.
Neurobiology, Jungian archetypes, horticultural societies, hermeneutics,
Hegelian dialectics, systems theory, Zen koans, post-structuralism, Vedantan
Hinduism, capitalist economic systems, transpersonal states of consciousness,
neo-Platonic forms the list goes on and on all explained and t together
neatly in one map of reality, what he semi-ironically calls, A Theory of
Everything. Above all, he manages to explain it all in lucid and brilliant prose.
You literally feel yourself getting smarter as you read him.
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An intellectual prodigy as a child, Wilber was a Doctoral student at Duke

University in biology when he quit his program in order to, as he put it, sit in
a room by myself and stare at a wall for ve years. He then went on a binge of
studying eastern spirituality, religion, and psychology.
Heres a video of him stopping and starting his brain waves using different
forms of meditation:
Ken Wilber Stops His Brain Waves
I discovered Wilber when I was 19. That same year I read his books, all 15 of
them. They were dense, but it was a watershed moment in my intellectual and
personal growth. Discovering him was truly conscious-expanding. After
understanding his model, the rest of the world felt simpler. Also, I had a very
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powerful spiritual experience when I was a teenager, but could never reconcile
any sort of spiritual practice or belief with scientic knowledge and rigor.
Wilber did that for me. Hes been one of the most inuential thinkers, if not
the most inuential thinker in my life.
Theres not nearly enough room on this blog to do Wilbers theory justice. But
if youve got time and are up for an intellectual exercise, you can nd a
summary of his integrated psychological model here, a brief overview of his
AQAL model here, and a long-form critique of his work here.
Of course, the best way to learn about his material is to go to the man himself. I
recommend everyone begin with A Brief History of Everything followed by
Integral Psychology and his masterpiece, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality .
Instead of attempting to explain his work, Ill instead outline a few of the most
important ways that hes inuenced my own thinking:
1. Nothing is 100% right or wrong, they merely vary in their degree of
incompleteness and dysfunction. No one or nothing is 100% good or evil,
they just vary in their degree of ignorance and disconnection. All
knowledge is a work in progress.
2. Leaps in evolution usually occur in a manner of transcending and

including, not by wiping out what came before. For instance, the
evolution to the developmental level of a single-cell organism did not wipe
out molecules, but included them into a greater order of complexity.
Wilber asserts that this pattern of evolution occurs with all phenomena.
Rational thought did not eliminate emotion, but included it into a greater
developmental level of consciousness. Industrial societies did not wipe out
agriculture, but transcended agriculture into greater levels of eciency
and prosperity. If were going to truly evolve, we do so by including and
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integrating what came before into something greater, not by wiping it out.
3. Related to Point #2: the goal of spirituality is to transcend the ego, not to
demolish it or repress it. Many spiritual leaders who claimed to have rid
themselves of ego, it turns out, merely repress it. The results are horrible
and sometimes tragic.
4. Wilber has a concept called the Pre/Trans Fallacy which states that
people often mistake whats pre-conventional (earlier phase of
development) for being post-conventional (later stage of development)
because neither is conventional. One example he uses is the New Age
spiritual movements which glorify a return to an infantile state of acting
purely on emotion and desire. They mistake these earlier, narcissistic
emotional whims for spiritual experiences, since both emotional revelry
and spiritual experiences are non-rational experiences. Since their
emotional revelry is non-rational, and spiritual experiences are nonrational, they confuse the two. This concept can be applied in many areas
of personal and social development.
5. Perception contains interior and exterior modalities, or Wilbers solution

to the Mind-Body Problem in philosophy. You can cut open someones
brain, track the neurons ring when they think about a cat, but which is
real, the neurons ring or the thought about the cat? It depends who you
ask. The problem arises when one assumes that our thoughts and behavior
are controlled by the physical assortment of neurons ring. It implies that
our minds are not autonomous and that we lack free will. Wilber states
that both the interior and exterior modes of consciousness are not only
equally real, but reections of one another. Indeed, research into neuroplasticity (the ability to change the physical conguration of your brain
through changing thought patterns and behavior) is beginning to back up
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this conclusion.
6. Hierarchies exist, but they dont necessarily equal moral superiority.

There are higher levels of development and complexity, people of greater
skills and talents, but that does not mean they are morally superior or
more complete expressions of reality or that lower levels on the hierarchy
should not be honored. For instance, nuclear science is a higher form of
human understanding than voodoo magic or religious dogma, but Wilber
argues that this does not mean one should be imposed onto the other.
Each has its uses depending on where a persons level of consciousness is.
The beauty of integrating ALL elds of knowledge into a single model is that
the model has wide implications on EVERY eld of study. Once you
understand Wilbers conclusions, it becomes apparent how his model and
ideas could benet everything from politics to science to psychology to
spirituality.
A MOVEMENT IS BORN
In 1999, coming off the success of his monster 1,000-page magnum opus, Sex,
Ecology, Spirituality, and the model of consciousness and development it
presented, Wilber started Integral Institute, a think-tank and academic
institution to set the foundation to disseminate Wilbers ideas to the world.
World-famous leaders and thinkers such as Al Gore, Tony Robbins , Nathaniel
Branden, Alex Grey, David Deida and Tony Schwartz gave ringing
endorsements. Seminars and websites were created, conferences convened. It
seemed a legitimate spiritually-infused intellectual movement was taking form
and was soon to uproot conventional non-integral forms of thinking in
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science, academia, politics,

and society in general.
Among Wilberites, there
was a bursting enthusiasm.
For his entire career, Wilber
had been an intellectual
recluse, turning down every
interview and refusing to
prescribe any sort of action
or application of his model
to the world around him. He
spent more than 20 years in
radio silence. But that was
about to change. At the time,
Wilber talked about the birth of a new integral zeitgeist which he believed
would sweep through conventional thought and change how the world
perceived itself. And we believed him. Wilbers work had changed our lives, so
naturally we couldnt wait to see what the actual application of his model could
do for society at large.
In early 2005, I excitedly attended an Integral Intensive weekend in Boston.
Not only did I want to engage with other second-tier thinkers, but I wanted
to somehow get involved and help promote Wilbers ideas. As a lowly
university student, I scrounged up almost of all of the money I had in order to
go (to this day, it is the only self-help seminar Ive ever attended).
But upon arrival, my idealism took a punch in the gut. And although the
weekend was an enjoyable experience and in some ways powerful, by the time I
left, something didnt sit right.
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GREAT LIGHT CASTS A GREAT

SHADOW
At the weekend seminar, I couldnt shake the feeling that what we were
participating in was thinly-veiled self-indulgence and little more. In hindsight,
I think this was as much a branding problem (from a business perspective) as
an organizational problem (social perspective). Integral Institute built their
movement in order to inuence academia, governmental policy, to get books
and journals published, and to infuse these ideas into the world at large. Yet,
here we were, spending money to sit in a room performing various forms of
meditation and yoga, having group therapy sessions, art performances, and
generally going on and on about how integral we were and how important
we were to the world without seemingly doing anything on a larger scale about
it.
If you want to be a self-development seminar and motivate people, then be a
self-development seminar and motivate people. If you want to be a formal
institute and have serious effects on policy and academia, then do that. Dont
half-ass both and muddy them with gratuitous talks and performances. The
irony in all of this was that Wilbers integral framework applied to
organizations and business and should have accounted for these branding issues,
but didnt. The ironies would soon continue to mount.
Following Wilber online, the conversation seemed to only become more and
more insular. With an onslaught of problems in the world crying out for an
integral perspective and solution terrorism, the Iraq War, climate change,
world hunger, nancial crises. The silence coming from the Integral crowd was
deafening. Major global and social issues were often only referred to in passing
as descriptors for a certain level of consciousness development with the
overarching implication being that they are not as highly developed as we
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are.
Were second-tier thinkers. Were going to change the world as soon as
were done talking about how awesome and second-tier we are.
Instead, most conversations involved esoteric spiritual topics, impulsive selfexpressionism, and re-explaining the integral model in 4,102 different ways.
For a philosophy based on including and integrating as much as possible, its
followers sure expressed it by forming a nicely-sealed bubble around
themselves.
Evidence of this came when Wilbers critics popped up. Experts in many of
the elds Wilber claimed to have integrated questioned or picked apart
some of his assumptions. In Wilbers model, he uses what he refers to as
orienting generalizations, ways of summarizing entire elds of study in
order to t them together with other forms of knowledge. Wilber admits in his
work that hes generalizing large topics and that there is not consensus in many
elds, but that hes constructed these generalizations to reect the basic and
agreed-upon principles of each eld of study.
Well, a number of experts began questioning Wilbers choice of sources. And
as for the claims that what he portrayed as consensus in some elds such as
developmental psychology or sociology, it turned out there was still quite a bit
of debate and uncertainty around some of Wilbers basic conclusions.
Often, what Wilber portrayed as the consensus of a certain eld actually
amounted to an obscure or minority position.
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Critics also picked apart Wilbers model itself, showing minor contradictions
in it. And a number of people caught on to his shockingly meek understanding
of evolutionary biology and his puzzling insinuations of intelligent design.
Wilbers eventual response to many of these critics was nothing short of
childish a dozen-or-so page (albeit extremely well-written) verbal shit storm
that claried nothing, justied nothing, personally attacked everyone, and
straw-manned the shit out of his critics claims.
For many, that was the day the intellectual giant fell, the evolution stopped, the
so-called Einstein of consciousness took his ball and went home.
From there, the integral movement began to sputter. Rabbi Marc Gafni, a
spiritual leader with whom Wilber aligned himself and even co-sponsored
seminars, was later indicted in Israel for child molestation. Despite this, Wilber
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and his movement refused to distance themselves or repudiate him. In fact, the
whole integral scene doubled down, claiming that its critics were rst-tier
thinkers, and were coming up with lies in order to attack a greater, higher
level of consciousness that it didnt understand.
The seminars slowed to a crawl. Wilbers health deteriorated greatly (he was
diagnosed with a rare disease that keeps him bed-ridden). He stopped writing.
Ten years on, despite developing some fans in academia (some in high places),
Wilbers work had yet to be tested or peer-reviewed in a serious journal. Much
of his posting online devolved into bizarre spiritual claims (such as this one
about an enlightened teacher who can make crops grow twice as fast by
blessing them).
The brilliant scientist-turned-monk-turned-recluse-turned-New-Age-celebrity,
whose ideas changed everything for so many people (myself included),
devolved into the butt of another New Age joke. How the mighty have fallen.
A CAUTIONARY TALE
Although awed, Wilbers integral perspective continues to be an inspiration
in my life. I do believe he will be written about decades or centuries from now,
and will be seen as one of the most brilliant minds of our generation. But as
with most brilliant thinkers, his inuence and ideas will be carried on by others
in ways which he did not anticipate or intend.
Wilbers story is a cautionary tale. His intellectual understanding was
immense, as much as Ive ever come across in a single person. He also tapped
into some of the farthest reaches of consciousness, spiritual or not, that
humans have self-reported. I do believe that. But ultimately, he was done in by
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his pride, his need for control and, well, ironically his ego.
The point is, if Wilber can succumb to it, any of us can. No one is immune. No
matter how brilliant and how enlightened we are, were all animals.
Wilber was a baby boomer in the US through the 60s and 70s. He came up
through many of that generations eastern spiritual movements. These
movements were started by eastern teachers and subscribed to a dogma that an
enlightened awareness could develop someone into a awless individual, an
immutable authority. Despite Wilbers massive understanding of human
psychology and consciousness, he never seemed to shake this dogma. It
followed Wilber through his career and eventually manifested in himself.
When he was younger, he notoriously followed Adi Da, a spiritual leader who
was later found to be sexually abusing female followers. Yet he stood by him.
Later in his career, he also aligned with Andrew Cohen, a spiritual leader who
was found to be physically and emotionally abusing his followers. And again,
he stood by him. Why? Because Wilber maintained they had genuinely reached
the farthest limits of human awareness and understanding.
What Wilber taught me is that no depth of spiritual experience can negate our
physical and primal drives for power, lust and validation. As primates, were
wired to seek someone to look up to as well as to be looked up to by others.
And thats true whether were experiencing Godhead or bodhisattva or not.
Its inescapable.
Wilber also showed me that a brilliant mind does not necessarily make a
brilliant leader. Wilber bragged in an interview that he never planned anything
at Integral Institute, because planning would not represent a second-tier
leadership. Despite massive funding, enthusiasm, brain power and demand,
Integral Institute found a way to fail.
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The grand irony here is that Wilbers model itself, the Integral framework,
accounts for and describes everything I said in the paragraphs above. Wilber failed
in the exact ways his own model predicted. His model champions the idea of
transcending the ego, not negating it. It calls for crowdsourced intellectual
rigor and peer review. It goes on, at length, about the shadow self and how our
unconscious desires sabotage our greater goals. It covers our primal and
biological nature and how our lower impulses must be accepted and kept in
check.
Yet he would succumb to the same faults he warned us about.
David Foster Wallace states in his speech This Is Water that we all choose
something to worship, whether we realize it or not. Wilber would say what we
choose to worship is dependent on the stage or level of consciousness weve
developed to. And he would be right.
But what he seems to have missed is that worshipping consciousness development
itself, Wilbers so-called second-tier thinking, leads to the same disastrous
repercussions Wallace warned of: vanity, power, guilt, obsession.
No one is immune.
As humans, we have a tendency to cling to ideologies. Any positive set of
beliefs can quickly turn malevolent once treated as ideology and not an honest
intellectual or experiential pursuit of greater truth. Ideology does in entire
economic systems and countries, causes religions to massacre thousands, turns
human rights movements into authoritarian sects and makes fools out of
humanitys most brilliant minds. Einstein famously wasted the second half of
his career trying to calculate a cosmological constant that didnt exist because
God doesnt play dice.
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Wilbers brilliance will always be a part of me. But what he really taught me is
this: There is no ideology. There is no guru. There is only us, and this, and the
silence.
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6/3/2016

Personal Development That Doesn't Suck

The Rise And Fall of Ken Wilber

en Wilber is the smartest man youve never heard

An intellectual prodigy as a child, Wilber was a Doctoral student at Duke

2. Leaps in evolution usually occur in a manner of transcending and

5. Perception contains interior and exterior modalities, or Wilbers solution

6. Hierarchies exist, but they dont necessarily equal moral superiority.

science, academia, politics,

GREAT LIGHT CASTS A GREAT

DID YOU LIKE THIS ARTICLE?

RELATED ARTICLES YOU MAY LIKE -

SUPPORT THE SITE AND GET

TermsandConditions / PrivacyPolicy / Affiliates / Contact / Subscribe / Login

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