Mysticism and the great chain of being One of Wilber's main interests is in mapping what he calls the "neo-perennial philosophy", an integration of some of the views of
mysticism typified by
Aldous Huxley's
The Perennial Philosophy with an account of cosmic
evolution akin to that of the Indian mystic
Sri Aurobindo. He rejects most of the tenets of
Perennialism and the associated anti-evolutionary view of history as a regression from past ages or
yugas. Instead, he embraces a more traditionally Western notion of the
great chain of being. As in the work of
Jean Gebser, this great chain (or "nest") is ever-present while relatively unfolding throughout this material manifestation, although to Wilber "... the 'Great Nest' is actually just a vast
morphogenetic field of potentials ..." In agreement with
Mahayana Buddhism, and
Advaita Vedanta, he believes that reality is ultimately a
nondual union of
emptiness and
form, with form being innately subject to development over time.
Theory of truth Wilber believes that the mystical traditions of the world provide access to, and knowledge of, a
transcendental reality which is perennial, consistent throughout all times and cultures. This proposition underlies the whole of his conceptual edifice, and is an unquestioned assumption. According to David L. McMahan, the perennial position is "largely dismissed by scholars", but "has lost none of its popularity". Mainstream academia favor a constructivist approach, which is rejected by Wilber as a dangerous relativism. Wilber juxtaposes this generalization to plain materialism, presented as the main paradigm of regular science. • "Interior individual/1st person": the subjective world, the individual subjective sphere; • "Interior collective/2nd person": the intersubjective space, the cultural background; For example, Wilber claims that
Freud and
Jung commit this fallacy. Wilber characterizes himself as having fallen victim to the pre/trans fallacy in his early work.
Wilber on science Wilber describes the state of the "hard" sciences as limited to "narrow science", which only allows evidence from the lowest realm of consciousness, the
sensorimotor (the five senses and their extensions). Wilber sees science in the broad sense as characterized by involving three steps: • specifying an experiment, • performing the experiment and observing the results, and • checking the results with others who have competently performed the same experiment. He has presented these as "three strands of valid knowledge" in Part III of his book
The Marriage of Sense and Soul. What Wilber calls "broad science" would include evidence from
logic, mathematics, and from the
symbolic,
hermeneutical, and other realms of
consciousness. Ultimately and ideally, broad science would include the testimony of
meditators and
spiritual practitioners. Wilber's own conception of science includes both narrow science and broad science, e.g., using
electroencephalogram machines and other technologies to test the experiences of meditators and other spiritual practitioners, creating what Wilber calls "integral science". According to Wilber's theory, narrow science trumps narrow religion, but broad science trumps narrow science. That is, the natural sciences provide a more inclusive, accurate account of reality than any of the particular
exoteric religious traditions. But an integral approach that uses
intersubjectivity to evaluate both religious claims and scientific claims will give a more complete account of reality than narrow science. Wilber has referred to
Stuart Kauffman,
Ilya Prigogine,
Alfred North Whitehead, and others who also articulate his
vitalistic and
teleological understanding of reality, which is deeply at odds with the
modern evolutionary synthesis. The essay is entitled "What is Integral Spirituality?", and contains several new ideas, including Integral post-metaphysics and the Wilber-Combs lattice. In 2006, he published "Integral Spirituality", in which he elaborated on these ideas, as well as others such as Integral Methodological Pluralism and the developmental conveyor belt of religion. "Integral post-metaphysics" is the term Wilber has given to his attempts to reconstruct the world's
spiritual-religious traditions in a way that accounts for the
modern and
post-modern criticisms of those traditions. The Wilber-Combs Lattice is a conceptual model of
consciousness developed by Wilber and
Allan Combs. It is a grid with sequential
states of consciousness on the x axis (from left to right) and with developmental structures, or
levels, of consciousness on the y axis (from bottom to top). This lattice illustrates how each structure of consciousness interprets experiences of different states of consciousness, including mystical states, in different ways. on his blog. A petition begun by a group of rabbis has called for Wilber to publicly dissociate from Gafni. Wilber is on the advisory board of Mariana Bozesan's AQAL Capital GmbH, a
Munich-based company specialising in integral
impact investing using a model based on Wilber's
Integral Theory. ==Influences==