Table Of ContentSelected Books by Ken Wilber
A Brief History of Everything
Integral Life Practice
Integral Meditation
Integral Spirituality
The Integral Vision
The Simple Feeling of Being
A Theory of Everything
Contents
Introduction
Part One: A Fourth Turning of the Dharma
1. What Is a Fourth Turning?
2. What Does a Fourth Turning Involve?
An “Integral” View
Freedom and Fullness: WAKING UP and GROWING UP
Spiritual Intelligence versus Spiritual Experience
Summary
Understanding the “Culture Wars”
Shadow Work
Concluding Remarks
Part Two: States and Structures of Consciousness
3. The Fundamental States of Consciousness
States and Structures
States of Consciousness
States and Vantage Points
4. The Gross and Subtle States of Consciousness
The Gross (or Physical) State
The Subtle State
5. The Causal, Empty Witness, and Nondual States of Consciousness
The Causal State
The Supracausal Empty Witness or Consciousness as Such
The Nondual State
6. The Hidden Structures of Consciousness
The Importance of Structures of Consciousness in Spirituality
Ladder, Climber, View
7. The Structure-Stages of Development
Types of Spirituality
Spiritual Intelligence and Development in 1st and 2nd Tiers
Spiritual Intelligence and Development in 3rd Tier
Part Three: Dysfunctional Shadow Elements in Development
8. Shadow Work
Addictions and Allergies
The 3-2-1 Process
“Flourishing” and Journaling
More on Shadow Material
The 3-2-1-0 Process, or Spiritual Transmutation
9. Dysfunctions of the 1st-Tier Structure-Views
Overview
Infrared Archaic
Magenta Magic
Red Magic-Mythic
Amber Mythic
The Amber/Orange Mythic-Rational
Orange Rational
Green Pluralistic
10. Dysfunctions of the 2nd-Tier Structure-Views
Teal Holistic and Turquoise Integral
How Many Levels Are There?
11. Dysfunctions of the 3rd-Tier Structure-Views
Overview
Spiritual Bypassing
Indigo Para-Mind
Violet Meta-Mind
Ultraviolet Overmind
White Supermind
Conclusion
12. Dysfunctions of the Gross and Subtle States
Gross-State Dysfunctions
Subtle-State Dysfunctions
13. Dysfunctions of the Causal, Empty Witness, and Suchness States
Causal-State Dysfunctions
The Empty Witness Realm
Suchness Dysfunctions
Energy Malfunctions
Healthy and Unhealthy Drives
The Importance of Transference
Concluding Remarks on the Shadow
Part Four: Elements of an Integral Spirituality
14. Structures and States
Structures and Structure-Stages of Development
States and State-Stages (or Vantage Points)
15. Shadow Work, Quadrants, and Developmental Lines
Shadow Work
The 4 Quadrants
The 1-2-3 of Spirit
Developmental Lines (including Multiple Intelligences)
16. Miscellaneous Elements
Typologies
Polarity Therapy
Subtle Energy Dimensions
Network Sciences
Accelerated Developmental Approaches
The Technological Tie-In
The Miracle of “We”
A Higher “We”
17. Integral Semiotics and a New God-Talk
Integral Semiotics
Languages of the Divine
The Real Impact of Interior Thinking
Conclusion: The Evolution of Nonduality
Notes
Bibliography
Index
E-mail Sign-Up
Introduction
This is a book about what a possible religion of tomorrow might look like. It is
meant to apply across the field of the Great Traditions; I believe that all of them
will, in fact, most likely end up incorporating many of these elements into their
own fundamental teachings at some point, simply because the forces driving
toward such are so varied and far-reaching and, on balance, indeed make such a
great deal of sense.
Nonetheless, in this particular presentation, I have chosen one religion—that
of Buddhism—to use as a concrete instance, because specifics need to be given
as actual examples of what is directly involved, and that requires a real religion
to use as an example. I am not suggesting that Buddhism is somehow superior or
more advanced and thus more open to this (in fact, as only one example, there
are already a dozen books in print using exactly the same framework I will be
introducing here to create a similarly “futuristic” Christianity). So there is no
particular bias involved here; I believe any of the Great Traditions could be used
as examples, and versions of many of them (including Christianity, Islam,
Hinduism, and Judaism, as well as Buddhism) have already been presented
following the same suggestions made in this book to show what would be
involved in their own cases, with each of them indeed appearing to end up much
more inclusive, complete, and comprehensive (not to mention fitting more easily
with modern and postmodern developments, including those of basic science,
without violating any of their main teachings).
So if you hail from a different faith—or if you are yourself “spiritual but not
religious”—please work with me in the following pages and see how these
suggestions could apply to your own spiritual path, formally or informally, and
see if they don’t help address many problems that your approach may be facing
in today’s world. Just see if the suggestions I’m about to offer don’t make a
certain basic sense to you in many, many ways.
But we start with Buddhism. It has been close to three thousand years since
Gautama Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree and arose with his Enlightenment,
which marked the First Great Turning of the Wheel of Dharma (ultimate Truth);
some eighteen hundred years since Nagarjuna and his genius birthed the
Emptiness realization and the Second Great Turning; and some sixteen hundred
years since the half brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu made the Third (and final)
Turning of the Wheel of Dharma with the refinement of the Yogachara view.
And even looking at the wondrous developments of Tantra, especially as
pioneered in the great Nalanda University in India from the eighth to the
eleventh centuries CE, it has been close to a thousand years since something
profoundly new has been added to Buddha Dharma.
The world’s other Great Traditions find themselves in not much different
circumstances, most of them being anywhere from one to three thousand years
old. At the time that the major texts in all of these Great Traditions were first
written, people really did think the earth was flat and was circled by the sun;
slavery was taken to be the natural state of affairs, the way things were supposed
to be (and this was challenged by none of the traditions); women were second-
class citizens, if even that; atoms and molecules were unknown; DNA was
unheard of; and evolution crossed nobody’s mind.
And yet the world’s great contemplative and meditative systems—East and
West—looked into the minds, hearts, and souls of men and women and came up
with staggeringly astonishing discoveries, many as timelessly true and
profoundly significant today as they were two thousand years ago. After World
War Two, Jean-Paul Sartre was touring Stalingrad, scene of an epic battle
between the Russians and the Germans, where the Russians—finally, and barely
—defeated the Germans, at the cost of millions dead. “They were amazing,”
Sartre mumbled under his breath. “The Russians?” his aide asked. “No, the
Germans, that they got this far.”
That’s the only appropriate sentiment you can take toward these great adepts
and ancient sages—that thousands of years ago, they got this far; they saw into
the core of human beings and discovered, virtually each and every one of them,
the ultimate Ground of Being, not only of humans but of the entire manifest
universe. With no telescopes, microscopes, MRIs, or PET scans, they saw into
the very essence of an ultimate reality that not only anchored all of manifestation
but, when discovered, acted to radically free men and women from suffering
itself, and introduce them to their own True Nature, known by many different
names, but pointing to the same groundless Ground—Buddha-nature, Brahman,
Godhead, Ayn Sof, Allah, Tao, Ati, Great Perfection, the One, Satchitananda, to
name but a few.
Most of these traditions divided their teachings into two broad areas, often
called “exoteric” and “esoteric.” The exoteric was the “outer teaching,” meant
for the masses and the ordinary, and consisted of a series of tales, usually in
mythic form, and it was taught that those who believed them would live
everlastingly in a heaven with that tradition’s ultimate Being or God or Goddess.
But the esoteric teachings were the “inner teachings,” the “secret teachings,”
usually kept from the public and open only to individuals of exceptional quality
and character. These teachings weren’t merely mythic stories and beliefs; they
were psychotechnologies of consciousness transformation. By performing the
specific practices and exercises, an individual could reach an actual awakening
to his or her own True Nature, gaining a Great Liberation and ultimate Freedom
from the terror-inducing limitations of ordinary life and a direct introduction to
ultimate Reality itself. This Great Liberation was also known by various names
—Enlightenment, Awakening, moksha, kensho, satori, metamorphosis,
emancipation, salvation. In all cases, it was said to be the discovery of the
timeless and eternal, spaceless and infinite, Unborn and Undying, Unlimited and
Unfettered, the one and only One and Only, ultimate Reality itself. As Arthur
Machen’s fictional character Hampole so truthfully put it, of these esoteric
practices:
Some have declared that it lies within our choice to gaze continually upon a
world of equal or even greater wonder and beauty. It is said by these that the
experiments of the alchemists of the Dark Ages…are, in fact, related, not to
the transmutation of metals, but to the transmutation of the entire Universe.
This method, or art, or science, or whatever we choose to call it (supposing it
to exist, or to have ever existed), is simply concerned…to enable men [and
women], if they will, to inhabit a world of joy and splendour. It is perhaps
possible that there is such an experiment, and that there are some who have
made it.1
This experiment does indeed exist, and there are in fact many who have made
it—that’s what the esoteric Paths of the Great Liberation are all about. Many of
the original meditative schools that taught such practices are still flourishing to
this day. Zen Buddhism, as one example, has been training individuals to
discover their own Buddha-nature since the sixth century CE, when it was
brought to China from India by Bodhidharma; Tibetan (Vajrayana) Buddhism,
whose most famous follower is the Dalai Lama, was brought to Tibet in the
eighth century by Padmasambhava and others, and is flourishing to this day;
Vedantic Hinduism, one of the most sophisticated and philosophically astute of
the Paths of the Great Liberation, is alive and well in India; and numerous
contemplative schools exist in the West (from Jewish Kabbalah to Christian
contemplation to Islamic Sufism) and are still passing on this “knowledge which
is unto liberation.” All in all, they represent one of the great and extraordinary
treasures of human history.
But they are, the lot of them, becoming less and less influential in the modern
and postmodern world. One reason is that the only “religion” the West is
generally familiar with is the “exoteric,” “outer,” mythic-story type of religion,
which retains much of the often childish qualities of the age that produced it, and
becomes more and more embarrassing to modern men and women, silly even.
Moses really did part the Red Sea? God really did rain locusts down on the
Egyptians? Elijah really rose straight to heaven in his chariot while still alive?
We’re supposed to believe that stuff? It’s not exactly an easy sell in today’s
world, given that the same essential worldview can be produced by any five-
year-old child.
But another reason is that, in the one or two thousand years since these Great
Traditions were first created—and whose fundamental forms have not
substantially changed since that time—there has been an extraordinary number
of new truths learned about human nature, about the mind, emotions, awareness,
consciousness, and especially the growth and development of human traits and
qualities, not to mention the explosion in knowledge related to brain chemistry
and its functioning, things that the ancients simply had no way to know, and so
did not include in their otherwise so-impressive meditative systems.
But what if that which we have since learned in the past thousand years, even
the past fifty years, would actually affect how, for example, a person would
directly experience Enlightenment or Awakening? What if we have discovered
aspects of human awareness that most definitely determine how humans
interpret any and all experiences that they have, and what if these interpretive
frameworks, which will determine the different ways we directly experience
Enlightenment, not only exist, but actually grow and develop through over a
half-dozen well-documented stages during a human’s overall life—and that they
