http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/04/28/ken_wilber/index.html
You are the river: An interview with Ken Wilber
The integral philosopher explains the difference between religion,
New Age fads and the ultimate reality that traditional science can't
touch.
Ken Wilber may be the most im****tant living philosopher you've never
heard of. He's written dozens of books but you'd be hard-pressed to
find his name in a mainstream magazine. Still, Wilber has a
passionate -- almost cultlike -- following in certain circles, as well
as some famous fans. Bill Clinton and Al Gore have praised Wilber's
books. Deepak Chopra calls him "one of the most im****tant pioneers in
the field of consciousness." And the Wachowski brothers asked Wilber,
along with Cornel West, to record the commentary for the DVDs of their
"Matrix" movies.
A remarkable autodidact, Wilber's books range across entire fields of
knowledge, from quantum physics to developmental psychology to the
history of religion. He's steeped in the world's esoteric traditions,
such as Mahayana Buddhism, Vedantic Hinduism, Sufism and Christian
mysticism. Wilber also practices what he preaches, sometimes
meditating for hours at a stretch. His "integral philosophy," along
with the Integral Institute he's founded, hold out the promise that we
can understand mystical experience without lapsing into New Age mush.
Though he's often described as a New Age thinker, Wilber ridicules the
notion that our minds can shape physical reality, and he's dismissive
of New Age books and films like "The Tao of Physics" and "What the
Bleep Do We Know." But he's also out to show that "trans-rational"
states of consciousness are real, and he's dubbed the scientific
materialists who doubt it "flatlanders."
Wilber's hierarchy of spiritual development -- and the not-so-subtle
suggestion that he himself has reached advanced stages of
enlightenment -- has also sparked a backlash. Some critics consider
him an arrogant know-it-all, too smart for his own good. His dense
style of writing, which is often laced with charts and diagrams, can
come across as bloodless and hyperrational.
When I reached Wilber by phone at his home in Denver, I found him to
be chatty and amiable, even laughing when he described his own recent
brush with death. He's a fast talker who leaps from one big idea to
the next. And they are big ideas -- God and "Big Self" and why
science can only tell us so much about what's real.
You've written that there's a philosophical cold war between science
and religion. Do you see them as fundamentally in conflict?
Personally, I don't. But it depends on what you mean by science and
what you mean by religion. There are at least two main types of
religion. One is dependent upon a belief in a mythic or magic dogma.
That is certainly what most people mean by religion. Science has
pretty thoroughly dismantled the mythic religions. But virtually all
the great religions themselves recognize the difference between
"exoteric" or outer religion, and "esoteric" or inner religion. Inner
religion tends to be more contemplative and mystical and experiential,
and less cognitive and conceptual. Science is actually sympathetic
with the contemplative traditions in terms of its methodology.
When you refer to mythic religions, are you talking about the kinds of
stories we read in the Bible?
Or any of the world's great religions. Laotzu was 900 years old when
he was born. According to the Hindus, the earth is resting on a
serpent, which is resting on an elephant, which is resting on a
turtle. Those kinds of mythic approaches aren't wrong. They're just
a stage of development. Look at [Swiss philosopher] Jean Gebser's
structural stages of development. They go from archaic to magic to
mythic to rational to pluralistic to integral and higher. Magic and
mythic are actual stages. They're not wrong any more than saying "5
years old" is wrong. It's just 5 years old. We expect there to be
higher stages. There was a time when the magic and mythic approaches
years ago were evolution's leading edge of development. So we can't
belittle them.
Where do you think the scientific worldview falls short when dealing
with religion?
Conventional science has correctly dismantled the pre-rational myths
but it goes too far in dismantling the trans-rational. The mythic and
magic approaches tend to be pre-rational and pre-verbal, but the
meditative or contemplative practices tend to be trans-rational. They
completely accept rationality and science. But they point out that
there are deeper modes of awareness, which are scientific in their own
way.
What do you mean by trans-rational?
People at these higher stages of spiritual development re****t a
"nondual awareness," a type of awareness that transcends the dichotomy
between subject and object. The mystical state is often beyond
words. It is trans-rational because you have access to rationality
but it's tem****arily suspended. A 6-month-old infant, for instance,
is in a pre-rational state, whereas the mystic is in a trans-rational
state. Unfortunately, "pre" and "trans" get confused. So some
theorists say the infant is in a mystical state.
Are you saying people with a rationalist orientation can't make these
distinctions?
I'm saying that when people look at mystical states, they often
confuse them with pre-rational states. People like Sigmund Freud take
trans-rational, oceanic states of oneness and reduce them to infantile
states of unity.
Why has the scientific worldview dismissed this trans-personal
dimension? For most intellectuals around the world, the secular
scientific paradigm has triumphed.
It's understandable. Historically, if you look at these broad stages,
the magical era tended to be 50,000 years ago, the mythic era emerged
around 5,000 B.C., and the rational era -- secular humanism -- emerged
in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an
attempt to liberate myth and base truth claims on evidence, not just
dogma. But when science threw out the church, they threw out the baby
with the bath water.
You can't prove a higher stage to someone who's not at it. If you go
to somebody at the mythic stage and try to prove to them something
from the rational, scientific stage, it won't work. You go to a
fundamentalist who doesn't believe in evolution, who believes the
earth was created in six days, and you say, "What about the fossil
record"? "Oh yes, the fossil record; God created that on the fifth
day." You can't use any of the evidence from a higher stage and prove
it to a lower stage. So someone who's at the rational stage has a
very hard time seeing these trans-rational, trans-personal stages.
The rational scientist looks at all the pre-rational stuff as nonsense
-- fairies and ghosts and goblins -- and lumps it together with the
trans-rational stuff and says, "That's nonrational. I don't want
anything to do with it."
So where does God fit into this picture? Do you believe in God?
God is a perfect example of how these two types of religion treat
ultimate reality. You asked, "Do you believe in God?" In exoteric
religion, it's a matter of belief. Do you believe in the kind of God
who rewards and punishes and will sit with you in some eternal
heaven? But in the esoteric form of religion, God is a direct
experience. Most contemplatives would call it "godhead." It's so
different from the mythic conceptions of God -- the old man in the sky
with a gray beard. The word "God" is much more misleading than it is
accurate. So there's a whole series of terms that are used instead by
the esoteric traditions -- super-consciousness, Big Mind, Big Self.
This ultimate reality is a direct union that is felt or recognized in
a state of enlightenment or liberation. It's what the Sufis call the
"supreme identity," the identity of the interior soul with the
ultimate ground of being in a direct experiential state.
It does raise the question of whether God -- or ultimate reality --
has some independent existence, or whether this is just a mental state
that our minds can conjure up.
That's right. One way we try to find out is by doing cross-cultural
studies of individuals who've had the experience of the supreme
identity and see if it shows similar characteristics. The most
similar characteristic is it doesn't have characteristics. It's
radically undefinable, radically free, radically empty. This formless
ground of being is found in virtually all esoteric religions around
the world. For the final test, take scientists with a Ph.D. who are
studying brain patterns and put them in a contemplative state of the
supreme identity and ask them whether they think that state is real or
just a brain state. Nine out of 10 will say they think it's real.
They think this experience discloses a reality that's independent of
the human organism.
Next page: What neuroscience will never measure
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