Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Ken Wilber

You are the river: An interview with Ken Wilber | Salon Life
There are at least two main types of religion. One is dependent upon a belief in a mythic or magic dogma. That is certainly what most people mean by religion. Science has pretty thoroughly dismantled the mythic religions. But virtually all the great religions themselves recognize the difference between “exoteric” or outer religion, and “esoteric” or inner religion. Inner religion tends to be more contemplative and mystical and experiential, and less cognitive and conceptual. Science is actually sympathetic with the contemplative traditions in terms of its methodology.

I’d call that a distinction without a difference.

While science may agree with the contemplative religions that, by doing “x”, “y”, and “z” you can still your thoughts and enter a state of profound physical and mental relaxation or focus, science and religion will ALWAYS disagree about the meaning of that state. To science it will — it MUST — be natural. To religion, it is usually supernatural.

Whether a religion involves running around burning incense and consecrating bread and wine or it involves sitting very quietly and “connecting with the Great Being” — it’s STILL all about the supernatural. Same stuff. Just different manifestations.

I’m a little familiar with Ken Wilber from a brief investigation I made a few years ago. I’d read something about him somewhere (maybe salon?) and thought he sounded interesting. What I discovered was a rather boring writer who was extremely good at over-complicating essentially simple ideas. Over-complication of that sort fools many people into believing someone’s really smart and profound and that’s apparently been the case for Wilber. He’s made his living doing it.

Conventional science has correctly dismantled the pre-rational myths but it goes too far in dismantling the trans-rational. The mythic and magic approaches tend to be pre-rational and pre-verbal, but the meditative or contemplative practices tend to be trans-rational. They completely accept rationality and science. But they point out that there are deeper modes of awareness, which are scientific in their own way.

Snicker! Oh, gee — it’s big of him to acknowledge that science has correctly dismantled the “pre-rational myths”. Thank you! Thank you, Ken Wilber! Science is so grateful for your stamp of approval! Bwahaha! “Trans-rational”, my ass. This is just Ken Wilber saying that his own personal fairy tale about what all his navel-gazing has brought him is different. It’s special.

The human capacity for self-deception knows no bounds.

Wilber then goes on to explain what he means by “trans-rational”. Essentially, people, if you’ve studied the Upanishads at all, you’ve already gone through this. The basic idea is that the dualism we see in the world is illusory. There is only one essential reality and “we” are “it”. (Even our language is based in the idea of dualism, so you have to kind of come at this sort of thing sideways.) Wilber has nothing new to say — just new ways of complicating simple ideas.

The rational scientist looks at all the pre-rational stuff as nonsense — fairies and ghosts and goblins — and lumps it together with the trans-rational stuff and says, “That’s non-rational. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

Right. They’re both NON-RATIONAL. The NON-RATIONAL has nothing to say to science.

Wilber may be comforted by separating his own brand of irrationality out from the rest of the pack by calling it “trans-rational” but, in reality, it’s all fairy dust. The only difference is that in the “pre-rational”, the fairies are pink and live up above the clouds. In the “trans-rational”, the fairies are invisible and live in your own head.

Big difference, eh?

Ken Wilber does the same sort of thing the Intelligent Design people do. He tries to bring respectability to his ideas by calling them scientific — and by blaming the scientific community’s rejection of his ideas on a supposed lack of sophistication in their thinking. ‘If they’d only open their minds to the profound scientific complexity of my philosophy, they’d see how it really IS scientific. Really! It is!’

Heh, heh… it’s the song of crackpots the world over.

Not that Ken Wilber is a crackpot. I’m sure he’s said plenty of interesting and even profound things over the years. He needs to accept, though, that what he’s dealing in is religion. It’s a form of religion that’s different from what we see in much of the United States, but it is religion nonetheless and it’s substantively no different from Catholicism or Wicca or any other religion.

This formless ground of being is found in virtually all esoteric religions around the world. For the final test, take scientists with a Ph.D. who are studying brain patterns and put them in a contemplative state of the supreme identity and ask them whether they think that state is real or just a brain state. Nine out of 10 will say they think it’s real. They think this experience discloses a reality that’s independent of the human organism.

All this tells us is that human brains are extremely similar in their capacity for assigning meaning to their experiences. This isn’t surprising. We are, after all, pattern-and-meaning-assigning creatures. It’s one of the talents that enabled our species to climb to the top of the current evolutionary pile. If this is Wilber’s “final test”,though, his theory is in big trouble.

It’s fascinating the language Wilber employs, though. “Real” versus “just a brain state”. Even he can’t resist the pull of thinking in dualistic terms! I’d say that the true monist wouldn’t even bother trying to talk about this kind of thing. But, then… he wouldn’t be able to make a living that way.

I’ll say it again: the capacity for human self-deception is amazing.