........at the end of the day it may be that wilber’s faith and need to
believe in dualistic supernaturalism has turned out to be stronger than
his entire lifetime of thought that has sought to carefully integrate
disparate areas of human knowledge. a cautionary tale and sobering
observation on the nature of the human mind, indeed.
this has been evident in several key areas for me that i have pointed out in my online writings for several years:
1) his already mentioned highly questionable endorsements of gurus
who appear to be either psychotic/sociopathic (in the case of adi da) or
narcissistic/abusive (in the case of andrew cohen) and in all
likelihood charalatan in the case of this current trivedi dude.
2) this is related to what i think of as a boomer generation wishful
thinking around the naive acceptance of the concept of “enlightenment.”
ie: the special human being who has come to the special knowledge that
turns them into a divine presence/perfect teacher/all good
parent/representative of the transcendent absolute meaning and
intelligence behind all things (as well as the wishful thinking and
naive acceptance that the later exists!)
3) this is connected to the assertion of consciousness as primary to
the universe; when all of biology suggests that consciousness in any
meaningful sense only comes into being at the level of organisms – it is
not and cannot be possible at the level of either hydrogen molecules or
supernovas, as consciousness requires biological substrate and anything
we would call consciousness in a strong sense requires the beginnings
of a neural net/primitive brain. self-reflexive awareness only really
seems to come into being at the level of mammals – and what we think of
as truly complex, self-aware consciousness is a feature only of adult
human beings.
4) this relates also to what i have called a kind of “intelligent
design in drag” that is part of the metaphysics of integral theory – an
insistence that there must be some transcendent spirit at play in the
evolutionary process – just ’cause we like that idea and some ancient
big kahunas said so.
5) wilber has also opened the door to a lot of new agey crap with
some of his more recent work trying to integrate postmodern ideas that
can easily be interpreted as negating the objective world that exists
independent of subjective consciousness.
6) even though the 4 quadrant model is an amazing guide to valuing
interior, exterior, collective and individual ways of gathering
knowledge, i have long pointed out that the bias in the community (that
is supported by ken) overly values the upper left quadrant – or
subjective, individual, interior experience – and tends to critique most
forms of empirical inquiry as “reductive” – this has resulted in things
like neuroscience being undervalued in the attempt to hold onto a
mystical (and mystified) picture of consciousness as some absolute,
dualistic “spirit.” now it is resulting in completely overlooking the
definition and method of science and rushing to assert something
unproven, highly unlikely and frankly as fishy as the alleyway dumpster
behind a bad sushi restaurant.
all of this adds up for me to a set of unquestioned quasi religious
(hindu) beliefs that have always been assumed to be true by wilber
underneath all of the other wonderfully inquisitive and brilliant work
he has done.
i have been predicting that this kind of confusion and nonsensical
detour might happen in the integral institute and community in general
as these problematic aspects of the worldview unfolded further mistakes
in reasoning – BUT never would have guessed it would come from ken
himself in this glaringly delusional way….. wow.
