AQUINO, Mary Michaela Grace L.

Ken Wilber
100242

Biography
Ken wilber was born in Oklahoma in the year 1949. He attended a premed course in
Duke University when he was 18, but dropped out to pursue his writing. In 1973, he penned
Spectrum of Consciousness, which was a book that integrated psychology and philosophy. His
writings from this point on would be greatly imbued by his philosophical beliefs, drawn from
both Eastern and Western philosophies. This book was rejected many times, until it was
published in 1977. The following year, he would contribute to the launch of a journal for
Transpersonal Psychology called “ReVision,” which was quite funny to me because that’s what
he ended up doing for quite a lot of his papers. In 1983, he marries Terry Killam who left him a
widow in 1989 due to breast cancer. Their relationship was the basis of his book, Grace and Grit.
In 1987, he moved to Colorado where he worked on the Kosmos trilogy and Integral Institute. In
the years following, he would pen numerous books for his Kosmos trilogy and revisions for
papers he had previously submitted to ReVision. In 1999, he finished Integral Psychology, and
subsequently wrote a Theory of Everything (2000), which this time sought to integrate
psychology, religion, business, and politics. In 2006, his previous work finds culmination in the
Integral Framework, in which he integrates the AQAL (All Quadrants, All Levels, All Lines, All
States, and All Types) model initially created in his 1995 work, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. This
model is composed of four quadants: Inidividual-Interior, Individual-Exterior, Collective-
Interior, and Collective-Exterior.

Basic Assumptions and Principles of his Transpersonal Theory

Holism
Nature is composed of numerous wholes that are subsets of bigger wholes. Trees
in a forest, forests in the Earth, Earth in a galaxy, galaxies in the universe. Much like this,
Wilber believes that our development as humans occurs in stages wherein earlier stages
represent a nascent phase of humanity that is primal, undifferentiated, or autistic, and that
eventually becomes transcended or shedded as we come into higher levels of
consciousness.

The Atman
For Wilber, he believes that there must be something more to humanity than
having an actualized sense of self. Do we labor for the entirety of our lives just to achieve
a more integrated self? If nature shows us that a whole entity can be part of something
much larger, then human consciousness should follow the same pattern. In this, he
believes that the trajectory of the development of our consciousness is geared to higher
planes of consciousness--the “TRANS” personal; that is, beyond the person and the
 constraints of our physical body. He believes that we are geared towards God. From my
understanding, he is not speaking of just the Catholic notion of God, but rather a supreme
being that could be called many names. This movement of our consciousness towards
unity with a greater being or greater conciousness is the Atman. The pinnacle of such a
movement is the realization that we human beings contain deeply within and beyond our
sense of self (Wilber called it the OverSelf) perfect unity. But for this to be achieved, we
must transcend over the various stages of consciousness, which he termed the “Great
Chain of Being”

Translation and Transformation

In his text, he compares and contrasts Translation and Transformation. From my
understanding, translation deals with particular features or characteristics present across
parallel or seemingly similar stages of consciousness that occur at different ends of his
spectral model. For instance, in the pleromatic phase-- a phase where humans are still
within the womb or our earliest days as neonates where we have no concept of time or of
space and where we merely survive from the nourishment given to us by our caretakers--,
we are inseparable from the mass of chaos that is the world. We are omnipotent in this
way, because we not affected by time or space, our needs are attended to, and we are only
existing. And later on, this omnipotence becomes translated into a Unity with the
universe when we have reached the opposite end of the spectrum (the Atman), where we
are again Formless and part of the Void, but now doing so with perfect consciousness.
Another example of translation is the imagination present within the Axial-Image Phase
and the imagination of the Centaur Phase. The Axial Image Phase is likened to Piaget’s
Preoperational Stage where a child’s mind is heavy with symbolism and magical
thinking. Meanwhile, in the Centaur Stage (Wilberian for the self-actualized person), is
also characterized by imagination and symbolic thinking. However, in this latter phase,
symbolism is not for the creation of imaginary friends or to understand object
permanence, but as vessels to fully understand parts of the self that are difficult to
confront on a daily basis.
If Translation is the movement of like-characteristics across different phases, then
Transformation is the transcendence of one phase from the previous one. For Wilber,
transformation is growth, much like how a snake molts and sheds its skin to get bigger; in
this sense, we shed the vestiges of previous phases, letting go of these and growing into a
state of consciousness. This upward movement may occur through the acquisition of
skills, like imagery and language.

Major Concepts
Great Chain of Being
Wilber used the concept of wholes being subsumed by larger wholes in the
universe to describe our consciousness. But this movement from a lesser form to a greater
 one is also a movement from a more primordial kind of matter (like how we are as
neonates) to a biological experience of life (like in the Freudian concept of oral and anal
stages of life), and from there to a more conscious or cognitive way of being as we learn
imagery and language and come to form an ego or a sense of self. From this
consciousness, we then eventually reach a state where we understand the totality of our
identity, or the summation of our personality, and achieve an actualized state. At this
point, past phases referred to an outwards movement or growth that is more attuned to the
world around us. But our consciousness does not stop at becoming whole or becoming
actualized. For Wilber, our consciousness eventually moves into a state of super and
supraconsciousness, but these phases are only achieved through an inward movement or
deepening of our understanding of the self.

Pathology
For Wilbur, pathologies are a result of repressing whatever it is that causes us fear
and anxiety. According to him, this repression restricts transcendence as it creates
something like a rip in the fabric of growth, the effects of which leads to mistranslations
of key skills and characteristics. Because we do not actually have these necessary skills
and characteristics, we encounter a feeling of being stuck in a phase, much like Freud’s
concept of fixation. But in Wilber’s conceptualization, we are not aware of this
happening. It comes to us as a feeling of something that is wrong, but we cannot quite put
a finger to, which is frustrating. We try to resolve this issue but we find ourselves unable
to do anything about it.

Development of Personality: The Outward and Inward Arc

The Outward Arc
Our consciousness begins as the pleromatic self, which occurs while we are neonates. At
this state, we receive nourishment from our caretakers in a very passive manner, and as we have
yet to fully form our brains, have no concept yet of time, space, or objects. Wilber described this
phase as that of being in paradise, just simply existing. As we grow older, our senses develop and
we come to an understanding that there is a me with a body and there is a world that is different
from that body. This phase is the Uroboric Self. Like the Uroboros, we are self-contained and
only know of our ourselves and that hunger we constantly feel as babies.
The typhonic self then emerges from this Uroboric Self. The Typhonic Self is divided
into three sub-phases: the Axial and Pranic Bodies, and Image Body. The former two phases are
lean more towards instinctual and impulsive bodily and emotional reactions to the world. Image-
Body meanwhile refers to a similar phase as Piaget’s preoperational stage, where we develop
object permanence. At this point, as we deal now in imagery, we have a concept of time. But this
is transient and dependent only on what we see and feel at present. It is also through this use of
imagery that Wilber says we have concepts such as the Good Mother and the Bad Mother, or the
Good Breast and the Bad Breast. This Typhonic period and from the very primitive pleromatic
self were also approximated by Wilber to reflect Erikson’s psychosocial stage of Trust vs
Mistrust.
As we grow older, we develop the capacity for language in the Membership Phase.
Wilber notes that this newfound skill allows us to create order in our days because we now have
the capacity to reconstruct imagery (like in our memories) or create them (such as when we
plan). Language allows us to move into a more cognitive and logical phase. It is through this that
we develop an understanding of what our parents are saying, which later on contributes to how
we introject their expectations, demands, rebukes, and even our very relationship with them as
their children. This stage reflect Erikson’s autonomy vs shame and doubt.
The next phase is the Mental Egoic Realm. He divides this into three: the early egoic
phase where the introjection occurs and which Wilbur places to be around the time when we
develop our superego, or through Erikson’s theory, initiative vs guilt; the middle ego around 7 to
12 years of age, where we must deal with industry or inferiority. Around this stage, Wilber
writes that the superego, fashioned from one’s relationships with parents and caretakers, is
capable of deciding which drives or needs remain to be satisfied or which are to be suppressed in
order to create personas or facades with which to face the world. At any point during this mental
egoic realm, these suppressions of parts of the self that are deemed threatening may occur. He
associates these suppressions to the Jungian concept of a shadow. In the late egoic phase which
occurs around 12 to 21 years, a person comes to master their various persona and begins to shed
all of these as he transcends and disidentifies in order to find a more authentic sense of self. It is
at this point that a person may be in Erikson’s Identity vs Role Confusion stage. In this search for
identity, the outward movement of the development of consciousness now ceases as it begins to
proceed towards the inner self.
In the next stage, the Centauric Realm, all lower levels become integrated. Wilber uses
the Centaur to represent how the bestial body is in perfect unity with the human mind. In this
stage and upon the seamless integration of all these lower levels, the person comes to understand
their full potential; in other words, they become self-actualized. With that, this individual can
now choose himself and be accountable for his decisions. He now has a will that is directed
towards a specific goal. Wilber incorporates here the concept of intentionality, the link between
the mind and the body. This willing gives rise to freedom, as this person can now do as he
pleases with full conviction and awareness of its consequences. This person now lives in full
authenticity. With this centaur, there is also an attitude of allocentrism, or the turning inward into
the self and re-exploration of the world. It’s as if they are looking at the world through fresh
eyes, capable of halting automatic perception and becoming more mindful of what is going on
around them. This Centaur or the authentic, self actualized, free person lives in the now. This
concept of the Centaur greatly echoes Maslow’s concept of self-actualization.

The Inward Arc

Wilber believes that our consciousness further develops beyond self-actualization and
into the subtle, causal, and ultimate realms. In these stages, he incorporates Eastern philosophies
as he finds that the Western ideologies constrain themselves to the bodily experience. This
movement into consciousness beyond the body was found to be the next logical step for our
growth, as he believes that we do continue to evolve. Nature did not labor for so long only for us
to remain within our bodies. If his assumption that wholes would be subsumed into greater
wholes, then the greater entity that could contain the self-actualized human being is God.
In his Subtle Realm, he divides into the low and the high phases. The low phase deals
with clairvoyance and out-of-body-experiences, astral projection, and knowledge or aura or
magic. This primary transcendence beyond the body manifests as mystical know-how. The high
phase of the subtle realm, it seemed, manifests as a religious and ecstatic experience, one with
bright lights and revelations of God that allow a person to identify with God in his many forms.
This now represents the moving into a deeper plane of consciousness, the Causal and Ultimate
Realm.
The Causal and Ultimate Realms are likewise split into two: the low phase and the high
phase. In the low phase of the Causal Realm, the different Forms taken by this identified God are
stripped away and the person finds that the final-God is in fact within their Self. The person in
the high causal realm has radically transcended all forms. Wilber calls this the Formless
Consciousness or Boundless Radiance. Here, one’s consciousness has become so intensified that
it has achieved a conscious unity with the world, quite different from the pleromatic unity felt in
the outward arc. This is the phase where one achieves the final transcendence as the World itself.

Major Uses and Limitations

Wilber’s theory is vast and certainly ambitious in its goal to integrate numerous fields
into one. However, its vastness opens itself to numerous lost readers. For Bidwell (1999), while
Wilber’s theory was enlightening in some respect and provided a holistic framework with which
to understand human consciousness, it was also difficult to truly understand as his language was
quite inconsistent throughout his theories. A possible explanation for this could be because of
how Wilber’s theories seemed to be constantly evolving as it expands. Bidwell does note that
Wilber’s theory has fleshed out the importance of mindfulness practices and meditation in
therapy, and has provided a language that accomodated a rather secular field, Psychology, and
religion. His theory also removed the spiritual experience in children, as one could only truly
experience spirituality when one is of a particular age and developmental maturity.
His theory also did not touch up much on the interpersonal relationships, when it could be
the basis of further psychological growth and not just mere introjection of objects (Bonde, 2009)
Wilber’s previous work found culmination in the Integral Theory, a work he engaged in
from 1999 to 2006. This framework integrated the AQAL model from Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
(1995), the elements of which provided a fundamental understanding of his work. This
framework he created was more applicable and practical. It found use in different fields such as
law, psychotherapy, and even music.
 The quadrants allow us to view the human being as being an individual with an interior
(subjective, intentional) and exterior world (behavioral, IT), and as part of a collective with its
own interior (Intersubjective, Cultural) and exterior (Interobjective, Social) world. This newer
version of this theory, as it was all-encompassing and comprehensive, created a framework that
could handle various aspects of reality (Esbjorn-Hargens, 2009). It acknowledged that a given
situation occurs because of multiple factors. The framework allows practitioners to explore or
trace which aspects of a person’s life contributes to that stressful situation and figure out ways to
resolve it across the five elements of AQAL.

Application
Therapy
In Wilber’s concept of pathology, pathology arises because a person repressed
something that has caused him fear. The process is very unconscious. For Wilber,
therapists could apply his theory of pathology by leading the client through these possible
repressions by giving him interpretations of their problems. Therapists should come to an
understanding of the client enough to identify and communicate the things that the client
may have repressed. In doing so, the client can confront these once-repressed fears,
anxieties, or even feelings, which he theorized would allow the client to move on and
transcend.
In the integral theory framework, its use in therapy maintained the same goal: to
explore inaccessible parts of the self. However, it was no longer constrained to
repressions, but extended to cognitive issues, the body, emotions, and even interpersonal
relationships. It is this face of his theory that has been extended to music therapy (Bonde,
2011; 2009).

Meditation
For Wilber, meditation is the means by which we come into a deeper
understanding of our self. He identifies that this can be used to help others handle
repressed emotions and experiences and allow them to confront these. However, it seems
that he differentiates this therapeutic use of meditation and that of the authentic
meditation that bridges one to higher planes of consciousness.

Forestry
The Slocan Valley Forest is a forest shared by very diverse cultural groups whose
belief were at odds with each other (Esbjorn-Hargens, 2009). The challenge was to create
an approach that could encourage all parties to work together, hence the integral
framework, which highlighted each groups’ concerns and cultural beliefs, and that these
were informed and practiced by these various groups in order to come up with a long
term solution that everyone could partake in.
Personal Insights
Levinas’ Il ya and concept of Other
Il ya or es gibt means the There Is. This notion of the there is is preconsciousness. At first
I didn’t understand what that meant, but reading through Wilber, it held more significance for
me. Levinas talks about il ya as the void of being--where we exist and we are, but we are just
that. Il ya, the There Is, is a kind of tension: of knowing, not knowing, of being here and there at
the same time, of being something in the nothingness. An existence that has yet to find meaning.
We are not alive, we are not subjects. We are simply creatures thrown into the world, part of this
mass of chaotic primordial entity, undifferentiated from everything, just like Wilber’s Pleromatic
Self.. But then as time passes, that sense of il ya ebbs as we grow boundaries: like a knowledge
of what is me, what is you, what is the rest of the world. Levinas says that subjectivity--the sense
of being an “I” which we can liken to Wilber’s consciousness-- arises from separation. In the
Wilberian theory, il ya can be mapped out across the Pleromatic and Uroboric selves, and that
slow, agonizing disappearance of the pleromatic, ignorant bliss in the Typhonic phase. Wilber
describes it agonizing, because we realize as we develop consciousness and language, how
mortal we are. Language brings with it syntax, order, and the notion of time. It emphasizes too
that we are so different from other people: Our use of pronouns would be a very basic example
of that.

I think that Wilber’s theory does not only describe the developmental stages of human
consciousness. I think it may really be more philosophical. I don’t think we have to be infants to
experience having a pleromatic sense of self. I think that when we become so entrenched in our
worries and probably become fixated on them, in time we lose sight of who we are. The past few
months for me have been quite pleromatic. A mass of chaos where I could not make heads or
tails of where I was, what I was doing, and why I was doing things. Everything was held in a
state of Il ya. Between work and school, my boyfriend and family, everything just blurred
together. I had absolutely no concept of time or of place. All I knew was that days flowed into
the next, that I received nourishment from my magical refrigerator, and that I just needed to
exist. To survive. The break in the chaos that provided sense to everything only happened just
this Thursday. Finally, I had a somewhat solid proposal for Research Seminar. I had changed
topics five times in the span of two months, wherein each topic came fully equipped with twelve
journals and paragraphs upon paragraphs of research. Each change occurred after I was told that
what I wanted was unfeasible.

Consciousness arrives when we discover that we are not simply beings in solitude, but
beings with other beings. And so we come to a concept of an Other. Wilber would then say at
this point that we have developed a sense of self and some form of mastery over ou bodies that
we realize where we begin as individual humans and end as members of a greater whole. When
we have a concept of self, we come to realize other people exist also. I particularly like this
concept, though a bit saddened that Wilber did not expound further on the social aspect of
consciousness. Thank the Maker for Levinas! According to Levinas, the encounter with the
Other is not always pleasant because it is through them that we realize how vulnerable we are.
Wilber echoes this concept as well. However, Levinas further expounds that it is this very
vulnerability that allows us to appreciate human contact. When we become vulnerable to another
person, we understand who they are and also understand who we are as they see us. At this point,
I think we have a couple of possible reactions to this newfound vulnerability in the face of the
Other: we can shy away, we can reject them or ourselves, or we accept them and ourselves,
which then grows into responsibility and eventually, care.

I had hoped to see more of this social aspect in Wilber’s work for the Atman, although he
did state that his work was more geared towards a deeper understanding of the self. But aren’t
we, social beings that we are, also come to a deeper understanding of self through other people? I
think it was this line of questioning that allowed him to expound further on the social aspect of
his theory in later work and revisions.
REFERENCES

Abbikini. (2011, November 29). Il ya. Retrieved October 27, 2017, from
https://leoandlevinaswalkintoabar.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/il-ya/

Bidwell, D. “Ken Wilber's transpersonal psychology: An introduction and preliminary critique.”

Pastoral psychology, vol. 48, no. 2, 1999, pp. 81–90.

Bonde, L. O. (2011). Health Musicing - Music Therapy or Music and Health? A model,
empirical examples and personal reflections. Music and Arts in Action, 3(2), 120-140.

Bonde, L. (2009). Steps towards a Meta-theory of Music Therapy? Nordic Journal of Music
Therapy, 10(2), 176-187. doi:10.1080/08098130109478030

Esbjorn-Hargens, S. (2009). An overview of integral theory: An all-inclusive framework for the

21st century. Integral Institute (1).

Spirituality & Practice. (n.d.). Retrieved October 27, 2017, from

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/explorations/teachers/view/139

Wilber, K. (1996). The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development (1st ed.).
Quest Books.