Ken Wilber

I've often thought of starting a thread on Ken Wilber in the Inspirations, Influences, Pandits and Exemplars board (he's been all four of those to me) - but he's played a big enough role in my life that it's hard to know exactly what to say about it. 

A caveat: I don't believe Ken Wilber is perfect, infallible, right about everything, or without human flaws and quirks; and let's keep in mind that he is, after all, “just some guy” - he's as human as all the other boys and girls the kosmos is pretending to be in this crazy dream we're having.

That said, he's been a tremendous teacher and inspiration for me in so many ways, and some of my closest and most transformative relationships have started in various integral forums that have sprung up around his work.

So thank you, Ken, for all you've done for me and so many others. Namaste.

Arthur

Re: Ken Wilber

There's a picture to go along with the above post, which doesn't appear to be displaying properly; it's in my Zaadz photo album here.

spiral out,
Arthur

Re: Ken Wilber

Trying to post picture:

Re: Ken Wilber

Thanks, Pelle - it still doesn't appear in my browser (I can see pictures posted in other threads though).  Anyway, thanks for trying and don't worry about it.

spirals,
Arthur

Re: Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber quotes from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber.  Any bold emphasis etc. is as it appeared on that webpage.  (The quotes in this post focus on the environment, in honor of the thread Pelle started on 4Qs and Climate Change.) 

~~~

• It is the integrative power of vision-logic, I believe, and not the indissociation of tribal magic or the imperialism of mythic involvement that is deperately needed on a global scale. For it is vision-logic with its centauric/planetary worldview that, in my opinion, holds the only hope for the integration of the biosphere and the noosphere, the supranational organization of planetary consciousness, the genuine recognition of ecological balance, the unrestrained and unforced forms of global discourse, the nondominating and noncoercive forms of federated states, the unrestrained flow of worldwide communicative exchange, the production of genuine world citizens, and the enculturation of female agency (i.e., the integration of male and female, in both the noosphere and the biosphere) — all of which, in my opinion, is nevertheless simply the platform for the truly interesting forms of higher and transpersonal states of consciousness lying in our collective future — if there is one.

• Gaia's main problems are not industrialization, ozone depletion, overpopulation, or resource depletion. Gaia's main problem is the lack of mutual understanding and mutual agreement in the noosphere about how to proceed with those problems. We cannot rein in industry if we cannot reach mutual understanding and mutual agreement based on a worldcentric moral perspective concerning the global commons. And we reach the worldcentric moral perspective through a difficult and laborious process of interior growth and transcendence.

Re: Ken Wilber

Here is a transcript I made a while back of an Integral Naked dialog in which Ken explains some unusual features of his cognitive style.  (The audio version is available to Integral Naked members here; note that you can sign on to Integral Naked for free the first month, and after that it's just $10/month to have access to an enormous amount of great audio and video material.)

Ken Wilber: Idiot Savant or Just an Idiot? 

Integral University Student: I have a logistical kind of question: how do you personally keep track of all the information – do you use notebooks, do you work a lot on the computer? Because there's so much information.

Ken Wilber: Yeah, I know. It's all in my head.

IUS: <laughs>

KW: That's all I can tell you. <laughs> I don't take notes, I don't have notebooks.

IUS: Really?

KW: I work on a computer and that's it. And then, I don't know why this is so, but it's almost like idiot savant, you know? I've read at at least a Ph.D. level in 23 disciplines.

IUS: Jesus!

KW: And I don't know. You hope it's something special, but I could just be a nut! <laughter> I'm not stupid, I'm aware that this is extremely weird and rare - and then you can reflect on what all that means. I think I did more of that when I was a young male, and those kinds of things were important, and people were calling you the next Hegel or something like that. And you know, you think that's great. That just has no meaning to me now; it's just what is, it's what's arising and my duty is to use it responsibly and communicate it to the best of my ability. And that part I do believe. I believe it's some sort of deep metaphysical rule that you're allowed to understand an important truth if you agree to communicate it. And I think if you don't you get sick, your soul gets really, really sick. So that's my main concern, how to handle this responsibly. That's what we're trying to do here, that's what we're trying to do at Integral University and Integral Institute in general; and I think what is really terrific about it is that, because a large part of what I'm doing is anchored in second and third tier, it's anchored in real structures of consciousness and in real states of consciousness. And so it's actually like stumbling on a new territory; it's not something I invented, it's something that I discovered. Turquoise territory, use that as an example – that's an actual substance in the universe, it actually exists, there's a place that exists, it has a kosmic address. It's just not lying around out there in a fixed way. It's brought forth and enacted by those who grow and develop to that level or structure of consciousness; and it's something that we're all bringing forth as we move into this territory – and I just stumbled on the place a little bit earlier, and just started [to] take notebooks about what I saw, writing about this extraordinary new territory. And y'all are landing on the same continent, and so we're all discussing this together; and that will start actually fleshing out that continent, incidentally. It's one of those weird wonderful things that it's a mountain that's already there but not quite. It's there as we climb it – it actually comes into being <laughs> but it's not just dependent on us, anybody that stumbles on that mountain will co-create it, because it exists. That's what's amazing about all this. Hopefully there's something special about what I'm doing, that I'm not just a nutcase.

IUS: <laughs>

KW: <laughs> But, you know, history makes that decision.

IUS: Yeah.

KW: Yeah. But usually I just have maybe 4 or 5 books open that I'm having to type quotes from, and that's about it; and I'll sometimes jot down notes about maybe the names of chapters or something but I don't have any notebooks of information or anything like that at all – and the thousands and thousands of books that I've read, for some reason I retain the information. It's not a photographic memory, because that's kinda useless, you have to understand the information. For some reason I retain the understanding of the information and so I can recall it – all of it, right back to when I was 18 and started doing this.

I also have an idiot savant level of pattern recognition. I'll tell you how this works, just very quickly, since you're asking how I logistically [do this]. If I am watching a movie or watching TV and there's a movie star or an actress in it; once I recognize a face, I can spot it from any angle – if you show me a corner of their ear from behind I'll know who it is – and at any age. People see me do this, they don't believe me until they see it, and it's weird. I'll go, “hey that's so-and-so at age 12” or something and they'll go “no no no” and we'll look it up and it is [that person]. Because I have that patten recognition if I'll read Jane Lovinger and two years later read Eric Jantsch and then years later read Robert Kegan or something I would instantly see how they fit. It just pops up in my mind, it's a strange thing; but because of that I would then write down the patterns that connect because that's what I see. I don't think these things through, I'm looking at them like I'm looking at a cup or a rock or a table – I'm just reporting what I see. The reason I write so quickly is I'm not thinking, I'm seeing or hearing or feeling; and so when I sit down to write a book the book is basically already done in my head and it usually only takes a matter of a month or so to write a book – there have been 2 or 3 exceptions but it's usually extremely quick, because it's already done; and the first draft is usually very close to the last draft.

So, is he special, or is he weird? Well, history will tell.

IUS: Well, we're grateful that you're around! <laughs>

KW: <laughs>

Another voice (Rollie?): Well it's obvious you're especially weird, Ken. <laughs>

KW: That sounds right! <laughs> Weirdly special.

~~~

Re: Ken Wilber

~~~

It is often said that in today's modern and postmodern world that the forces of darkness are upon us.  But I think not; in the Dark and the Deep there are truths that can always heal.  It is not the forces of darkness but of shallowness that everywhere threaten the true, and the good, and the beautiful, and that ironically announce themselves as deep and profound.  It is an exuberant and fearess shallowness that everywhere is the modern danger, the modern threat, and that everywhere nonetheless calls to us as savior.

Source: Sex, Ecology,Spirituality

~~~

The understanding of “evolutionary consciousness” is perhaps the most important thing lacking in spiritual practices today. Evolution means growth and development. This means that there are aspects of reality that have not yet arisen in our consciousness. But they will arise if we grow.

Ken Wilber

Source: Integral Naked - Integral Zen Seminar

~~~

Evolution occurs in the world of time and space and form, whereas Spirit's primordial nature is finally timeless and Formless, prior to the of evolution but not other to it. We do not find Spirit or Emptiness by reaching some evolutionary Omega point in time, but rather by stepping off the cycle of time and evolution altogether (or ceasing to contract into it).

Ken Wilber

Source: The Simple Feeling of Being : Embracing Your True Nature, Page: 109

~~~

“And so, please practice! Please let that be your guide. And I believe that you will find, if your practice matures, that Spirit will reach down and bless your every word and deed, and you will be taken quite beyond yourself, and the Divine will blaze with the light of a thousand suns, and glories upon glories will be given unto you, and you will in every way be home. And then, despite all your excuses and all your objections, you will find the obligation to communicate your vision. And precisely because of that, you and I will find each other. And that will be the real return of Spirit to itself.”
– Bodhisattvas will have to turn to politics, Interview with Frank Visser, 1995

Ken Wilber

 

~~~

Conscious means “having an awareness of one's inner and outer worlds; mentally perceptive, awake, mindful.”

So “conscious business” might mean, engaging in an occupation, work, or trade in a mindful, awake fashion. This implies, of course, that many people do not do so. In my experience, that is often the case. So I would definitely be in favor of conscious business; or conscious anything, for that matter.

Ken Wilber

Source: Foreword to The Spirit of Conscious Business, Fred Kofman

~~~

Conscious business–business that is conscious of inner and outer worlds–would therefore be business that takes into account body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature.  Put differently, conscious business would be mindful of the way that the spectrum of consciousness operates in the Big Three worlds of self and culture and nature.  This means very specifically that integral business leadership would use the tools that have been developed to best navigate and master self, culture, and world.

Ken Wilber

Source: Foreword to The Spirit of Conscious Business, Fred Kofman

~~~

To be “integrally developed” does not mean that you have to excel in all the known intelligences, or that all of your lines have to be at level 3. But it does mean that you develop a very good sense of what your own psychograph is actually like, so that with a much more Integral self-image you can plan your future development.

Ken Wilber

Source: Source: AQAL Journal, page 11, Vol. 1, No. 1

~~~

Human beings have a variety of intelligences, such as cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, musical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, and so on. Most people excel in one or two of those, but do poorly in the others. This is not necessarily or even usually a bad thing; part of Integral wisdom is finding where one excels and thus where one can best offer the world one’s deepest gifts.

Ken Wilber

Source: AQAL Journal, pp. 8-9, Vol. 1, No. 1

~~~

“So artists have to ask themselves, 'Is my art just a way of affirming my mediocre whiney-ass self, or am I up to the challenge of spiritual transformation, reaching for the higher self and a deeper art?'”

Ken Wilber

Source: http://alexgrey.net/essay/kenwilber.html

~~~

The ultimate metaphysical secret, if we dare state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two.

Ken Wilber

Source: No Boundary : Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth, Page: 462

~~~

It is flat-out strange that something–that anything–is happening at all. There was nothing then a Big Bang, then here we all are. This is extremely weird.

Ken Wilber

Source: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality : The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition, Page: 3

~~~

If a culture treats a particular illness with compassion and enlightened understanding, then sickness can be seen as a challenge, as a healing crisis and opportunity. Being sick is then not a condemnation or a moral judgement, but a movement in a larger process of healing and restoration. When sickness is viewed positively and in supportive terms, then illness has a much better chance to heal, with the concomitant result that the entire person may grown and be enriched in the process. ~ Ken Wilber ~

Ken Wilber

Source: The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader.

~~~

Re: Ken Wilber

But try as one might, one simply cannot reduce spirit to combinations and permutations of frisky dirt. And why this dirt would get right up and start writing poetry has never really been made clear by materialists of any flavor.

Ken Wilber

Re: Ken Wilber

Saw Invasion on a flight a few days ago.
Nicole Kidman's character mentions
Piaget, Kohlberg and Wilber in a conversation.
Calls them the developmentalists.
Thought that was pretty cool.

PS (the movie was just OK, get it on DVD).

Re: Ken Wilber

That is kinda cool.  :)

“The consolations are gone; the skull will grin in at the banquet; it can no longer tranquilize itself with the trivial. From the depths, it cries out to gods no longer there, searches for a meaning not yet disclosed, still to be incarnated. Its very agony is worth a million happy magics and a thousand believing myths, and yet its only consolation is its unrelenting pain - a pain, a dread, an emptiness that feels beyond the comforts and distractions of the body, the persona, the ego, looks bravely into the face of the Void, and can no longer explain away either the Mystery or the Terror. It is a soul that is much too awake. It is a soul on the brink of the transpersonal.” (Ken Wilber describing the “centaur” level of development, Sex Ecology Spirituality, p. 272)

spiral out,
Arthur

Re: Ken Wilber

hehe. yeah, you can watch the video snippet from this thread:

The Invasion of Maslow, Graves, and Wilber

~C

Re: Ken Wilber

In the following snippet from the Turquoise Shadows transcript, Ken Wilber addresses questions about his own shadow.

~~~

Arthur: How do you feel that relationships or being in sangha feeds into shadow work? Because I find myself that it's quite useful. In terms of being in a relationship or being in a sangha - an integral sangha or whatever - a group of peers I find can be good for working with shadow because you get triggered a lot [laughs].

Ken: Yeah.

Arthur: And that's helpful, I find. If you stay with the process of being in a relationship or being in a community like that - that's dedicated to Awakening - it can [help], even if you're not using a specific technique always - just by looking at that and working with it.

Ken: Yes, most of the people I hang with, who've been my friends for most of my adult life, are therapists or teachers. And we're always basically on each other's case, because it's very hard to have much of a shadow that doesn't get spotted by one of these folks. Because they come at it from so many different angles and that's their profession. They're professional shadow spotters.

A lot of what people call my shadow I find is their projected shadow. I have my own stuff like everybody does, but but it's almost never what people think. People make an assumption that I live only in my head just because I'm so cognitive, and that's just categorically not true! [laughs] The idea that I'm out of touch with my feelings, that's projected, that's absolute projected shadow. That's just nonsense! So you have to be really careful about that. My three root teachers have told me - without even really talking about any intellectual performance - all three of them have said that the strongest strength that I had was Big Heart - and we haven't even talked about intellectual, that's not how they relate to me. So I'm obviously a bright boy, [laughs] but the idea that I'm just this complete dissociated professor who can't find his own car in a parking lot is silly.

Arthur: Well, I think people see that because that's what you're usually talking about - the way you talk about things is very cognitive.

Ken: Well in areas where I'm being asked theoretical questions! It's quite different if we're doing actual shadow work or we're doing bioenergetic work, or we're doing meditation or anything like that - then it's really quite different. The fact is I'm actually fairly good at a half-dozen multiple intelligences. So it might appear that I simply live in cognitive because I do that fairly well, but that is not how I work, and I spend so much time [laughs] in feeling-attention of meditation too - much more than I have thinking - so the mind is actually suspended there.

One of the things that was very interesting for me when I started doing Integral Naked - because you know for almost twenty-five years I was a Rorschach blot because people hadn't met me, they never heard me talk, had no idea what I was like - and then [I] started doing Integral Naked, and then Kosmic Consciousness with Sounds True, and a certain kind of criticism of me almost dropped out, because the idea that I spent [laughs] all of my time angry and had no sense of humor and all that stuff, it just stopped! [laughs] And people were embarrassingly left with their own projections.

There are entire papers written on the fact that I couldn't accept Whitehead because I was out of touch with my feelings, and therefore couldn't relate to prehension, and [laughs] I mean seriously! This was actually published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, if you can imagine! And first of all, I love Whitehead and have used him quite a lot. [laughs] And the idea that I'm out of my feelings is just nonsense. You couldn't live for a year in the house with Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughan and get away with that. [laughs] They would chew you up and spit you out! So I've been really fortunate both to be the teachers of and be the student of enormous numbers of therapists and teachers, and I think everybody pretty much keeps themselves fairly clean.

When you get to spiritual thinkers something happens there, because in some of them there's a sealing-off, and there's a certain shadow work that almost stops getting done. In part it's because the more you have the feelings of One Taste, the less self-motivation - motivation to change - you have, because you can find that part of yourself that is always already perfect. Hopefully you've done a fair amount of work before [laughs] you have a lot of satoris because that can be a trap.

Arthur: Sure - that whole “spiritual bypass” thing, right?

Ken: It is, basically.

~~~

Re: Ken Wilber

I just have to say this, Arthur: that's great transcription. You and I were both on that call, and Ken, for all his Phenomenal Kosmic Powers, speaks something like Adyashanti speaks, with lots of digression and extraneous ums and stuff. You really captured the sense of that call.

Your Loving Wife,

Liz

Re: Ken Wilber

Liz: I just have to say this, Arthur: that's great transcription. You and I were both on that call, and Ken, for all his Phenomenal Kosmic Powers, speaks something like Adyashanti speaks, with lots of digression and extraneous ums and stuff. You really captured the sense of that call.

~~~

Thanks.  :)  Transcribing Adyashanti is excruciating; doing Gangaji transcription is a sweet dream in comparison - her diction is lovely - and Ken falls somewhere in the middle.  OK, to be honest he's closer to the Adyashanti side of the spectrum - but I love him anyway.  Doing a transcript is a great way to study material closely.

spirals,
Arthur

Re: Ken Wilber

Yeah, great job transcribing Arthur.
Eddie

Re: Ken Wilber

Thanks, Eddie.  :) 

I want to answer a question I've been asked a few times in PM's,

HOW TO TALK WITH KEN WILBER

For some time now there have been periodic conference calls with Ken Wilber offered through Integral Institute (I-I).  Last year I had the privilege of taking part in a few of the calls organized through Integral Spiritual Center discussing his book Integral Spirituality (ISC members can download PDF files of all the chapters here, and all of the calls are archived here.)

Currently I-I is hosting calls in association with the quarterly AQAL Journal.  If you have a “sponsor” membership ($20/month) you have access to all the issues (in PDF format) as well as all of the Integral Naked and Integral Spiritual Center material.

From the AQAL Journal webpage:

Re: Ken Wilber

A Spirituality That Transforms - Ken Wilber (from http://wilber.shambhala.com/)

Hal Blacker, consulting editor of What is Enlightenment?, has described the topic of this special issue of the magazine in the following way (although this repeats statements made elsewhere in this issue, it is nonetheless worth quoting at length, simply because of its eloquence, straightforwardness, and unerring good sense):

We intend to explore a sensitive question, but one which needs to be addressed the superficiality which pervades so much of the current spiritual exploration and discourse in the West, particularly in the United States.  All too often, in the translation of the mystical traditions from the East (and elsewhere) into the American idiom, their profound depth is flattened out, their radical demand is diluted, and their potential for revolutionary transformation is squelched.  How this occurs often seems to be subtle, since the words of the teachings are often the same.  Yet through an apparent sleight of hand involving, perhaps, their context and therefore ultimately their meaning, the message of the greatest teachings often seems to become transmuted from the roar of the fire of liberation into something more closely resembling the soothing burble of a California hot tub.  While there are exceptions, the radical implications of the greatest teachings are thereby often lost.  We wish to investigate this dilution of spirituality in the West, and inquire into its causes and consequences.

Re: Ken Wilber

Have we moved beyond the age of gurus?  (Kosmic Conscousness, Disk Eight, track 4)

Tami Simon: What about the idea that the ages of the gurus are over, and that as meditations come into the Western culture – a democratic culture – that, yes we need meditation mentors, but we don't need these hierarchical gurus that we don't question.

Ken Wilber: Yeah. Well I think…there's a basic ripeness about that, that the time of the gurus is gone in certain ways; but…that doesn't mean that everything about a guru is therefore unnecessary. Most of these great traditions that we're talking about – whether they're sufis or christian contemplative or zen or buddhist tibetan – really came about during the agrarian era, which is really two major technological epochs ago; and the very typical sort of political structure at that time was almost feudalistic. And so, in Tibet for example, a guru wasn't just what we would call, you know, the pastor at the local church, or your local rabbi or priest – the guru was often the major, the political leader, the educator, the priest, the rabbi, everything rolled into one, and if the guru said “jump,” you would sort of say, “how high?” I mean, it was just sort of a very, very complex office that a guru was serving. It was entirely appropriate that under those circumstances you would basically offer every aspect of yourself to the guru, and that was part of a very, very complex training that also had a cultural background that supported it – and…under those cultural conditions it wasn't harmful in a way that we today would think of it as harmful.

Nowadays, though, in democratic industrial and postindustrial egalitarian societies, that is a fish out of water to put it mildly; and a lot of the turmoil in the first couple of decades that the eastern traditions came into this country is that the gurus and teachers were coming out of these cultures and traditions where the guru was sort of everything – and then you come over here and that doesn't play in America. It's like, “are you kidding me?” We've got this incredibly individualistic, egalitarian culture. At the same time there are parts of it that, there's just no going back. There's a kind of democratic, egalitarian attitude that is going to mark this and most future forms of governance. So what you have to do is sort of scale the guru down, so to speak, in an appropriate way.

What you don't want to do is throw the baby out with the bathwater. And the problem, in this otherwise very necessary scaling down of the guru, is that we've shrunk the guru, you know, to really a minature version of what it's supposed to be. And we want to do that because a real guru or a real teacher threatens our ego; that's basically the whole essence here. And we're not talking about, [at] this point, the guru as some sort of domineering figure that tells you everything you're supposed to do. At some point any form of profound spiritual practice is a real trancendence of self, if you want to find some form of higher kosmic consciousness other than your mere egoic identity; and under those circumstances, the ego does not go gracefully or willingly. And so if you're just sort of hanging out and you're your own spiritual teacher, you're probably not going to go as far as you can on the path – because you just won't endure the torment, the difficulty, the embarassment, the profound pain of dying to your own separate self and your own separate identity. And under those circumstances, then you want a – by whatever name – spiritual teacher that's going to walk you though that. At some point there is a profound surrendering that goes on – again, it's not a dominating or domineering situation, but it's a profound letting go of your own absolute desire to be in charge, or be in control. That can happen in a spiritual teacher-student relationship in a very profound way.

Obviously there has to be checks and balances about it – there are certain things that you really can't do in those circumstances and they are very similar to the things that you cannot do if you are a psychoanalyst or psychotherapist. It's the same kind of relationship in a sense, and that has to be in place – you're not allowed to have sex with students, you're not allowed to take money in certain ways, you're not allowed to in any way make career choices for them, etc. etc. etc. But there comes a point where there has to be a profound surrendering of the separate self to that greater awareness and greater consciousness; and if a spiritual teacher is living that to you and transmitting that to you in an authentic way, then that's a very important component. That's not just a bunch of spiritual friends walking the path together holding hands! That's somebody who is enlightened and is fundamentally transmitting that enlightenment to you, as a demand, that you yourself awaken to that estate.

So my concern is that in necessarily and appropriately scaling down a guru, that we've scaled him out of existence; and we've replaced him with a kind of feel-good spirituality that let's us all rest in our own egoic self and nobody challenges us. So we have no rankings, no degrees of better or worse, higher or lower, no more enlightened or less enlightened – and then we're all equally unenlightened in a certain sense. <laughs> Nobody's challenged, nobody's threatened – and nobody's awakened. And so that's the sort of downside of what I call Boomeritis, which is kind of a “mush egalitarianism” that really prevents any form of growth or trancendence or depth of development.

Re: Ken Wilber

I was just reading

“Toward A Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energies”

http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptG/part1.cfm

And I can across this little comment;

“Forgive me for repeating myself, but the staggering brilliance of this scheme continues to just floor me. There are no other models even remotely like it in its explanatory capacities, and I have incorporated those aspects, virtually unchanged, in my own model of Integral Psychology.”

Well, we can't claim that Ken Wilber has any shortage of self esteem with a big E! A big 'ol pat on the back will do me just fine thank you! 


Fascinating stuff by the way : - )

Daniel

Re: Ken Wilber

Hi Daniel

When Ken makes the comment ”“Forgive me for repeating myself, but the staggering brilliance of this scheme continues to just floor me. ” in Part III of Excerpt G, he's referring to an explanatory scheme in Vedanta and Vajrayana; prior to what you quoted, he says (emphasis added):

I mentioned that we would go into the correlations of energies and consciousness according to the traditions such as Vedanta and Vajrayana; also the intricate topic of reincarnation or transmigration; and a finer taxonomy of subtle energies (involving family, genus, species).

      Start with the correlations. Both Vedanta and Vajrayana have a very simple but very powerful map of the relation of states of consciousness, levels of consciousness, and realms of bodies/energies. I believe this scheme is essentially correct, even when retrofitted in AQAL terms. Briefly:

      According to Vedanta/Vajrayana, there are three major states of consciousness, correlated with three major bodies (or mass-energy realms), and five major levels/structures of consciousness. The 3 states are waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. The 3 bodies are gross, subtle, and causal. The 5 levels/sheaths are the 5 koshas outlined earlier (gross material, emotional-pranic, mental, higher mental, overmental).

      The relationships, in the average person, are as follows: the waking state, which possesses a material consciousness, is correlated with (and supported by) a gross body/energy. The dream state—which contains (or can contain) the 3 levels of emotional, mental, and higher mental—is supported by a subtle body/energy. And the deep sleep state, which contains an overmental consciousness, is supported by a causal body/energy. See Table 2. (And note: the states and stages of consciousness are UL; the bodies/energies are UR.)

      The brilliance of this scheme [i.e. the Vedanta and Vajrayana scheme] is that it manages to relate structures of consciousness, states of consciousness, and energies in a simple, elegant fashion, a fashion that, in those essential respects, has yet to be improved upon.

Re: Ken Wilber

Ah ha, you are right Arthur. Tricky one! Not into voyeuristic masturbation : - )

Re: Ken Wilber

What a great guy, huh? All hail the king!


David

Re: Ken Wilber

love this thread arthur - nice selections!