[Wouter Hanegraaff] Everyone is Right__ Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber

8/11/2019 [Wouter Hanegraaff] Everyone is Right__ Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/wouter-hanegraaff-everyone-is-right-frank-vissers-analysis-of-ken 1/5

30/3/2014 "Everyone is Right": Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber, Wouter Hanegraaff

http://www.integralworld.net/hanegraaff.html

Wilber does not speak

with "the other", but

only to him.

“Everybody is right”, for

sure – but in the end it

is Wilber who decides.

"EVERYBODY IS RIGHT"

Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber

WOUTER J. HANEGRAAFF

Ken Wilber is an unknown

celebrity. This American

autodidact, born in 1949, has

currently published nineteen

books on psychology and

spirituality, which have beentranslated into more than

twenty languages. At his 50th

birthday, a beginning was made

with the publication of The

Collected Works of Ken Wilber ,

which now comprise eight

voluminous tomes. Wilber's

biographer and exegete Frank Visser comments that this makes

him “the most translated American author of academic works”.

Nevertheless, Visser's study, written in Dutch, is internationally the

first integral analysis of Wilber and his oeuvre, and was published

by a non-academic publishing house [the US edition, however, was

published by SUNY Press]. In university circles, interest in Wilber is

practically nil: few psychologists of religion or religious studies

scholars know his name, let alone that they have read his work. The

reason for this is not hard to find: Wilber approaches the

psychology of religion and the analysis of religion and culture froma decidedly “spiritual” perspective, based on specific mystical

beliefs; and his books are not published by prestigious University

Presses but by theosophical or otherwise esoterically-oriented

publishing houses. For an author with academic ambitions this is

fatal. Wilber is seen by psychologists and religious studies scholars

as a New Age author, from whom of course one cannot expect any serious

contribution to scholarly debate.





While such a reaction is understandable enough, there are in fact

arguments in favour of Visser's statement that Wilber writes “academic”

books. If one takes the trouble to study his oeuvre, one discovers a highly

intelligent and critical thinker, whose work is rooted in a thorough

familiarity with the professional literature of the psychology and

sociology of religion, and who decidedly intends to contribute to the

academic debate. The problem is that all this is done on the basis of

mystical-spiritual axioms, the truth of which, for Wilber, is beyond any

doubt. Can an “integral” psychology of rel igion, and an analysis of religion

and culture in all their dimensions, be based upon religious axioms

without losing its scientific credibility?

Wilber's first manuscript, The Spectrum of Consciousness, was rejected by

a large number of publishers; but when finally a Theosophical publishing

house decided to publish it, it was an immediate success. Wilber's basic

thesis was that human consciousness could be described as a spectrum

consisting of a large number of layers, which corresponded with a

spectrum of psychological schools and methodologies. Far from being

mutually exclusive, these psychologies were seen as complementary:

psychoanalysis is concerned with one layer of consciousness, behaviorism

with another, and so on. And what is more, according to Wilber these

layers of consciousness and their respective psychologies are ordered

hierarchically: with regard to the “highest” stages of the development of

consciousness, Western approaches are insufficient and we have to rely

on methodologies that have been developed in Eastern traditions such asHinduism, Buddhism en Taoism. In short, Western psychology finds its

culmination in Oriental mysticism.

However, having published The Spectrum of Consciousness, Wilber

eventually concluded that something was “terribly wrong” with his

theory. In his [third] book,The Atman Project , he transformed his rather

static scheme into a dynamic model of the development of consciousness,

and introduced a distinction between “prepersonal” and “transpersonal”

states of consciousness that would become essential to his later work. Heargued that psychologically regressive states are frequently confused with

mystical consciousness, and admitted that in his f irst book, he had himself

fallen into that trap. The mystic experiences “unity” (with God) because

he has transcended his fragmented personal consciousness: his

consciousness has become “trans”personal. The newborn baby, in

contrast, may experience “unity” (with the mother) as well, but has not

even reached personal consciousness yet: its consciousness is

“pre”personal. According to Wilber, many manifestations of New Age, but





also the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, for example, are based on a

“pre/trans confusion”: what is promoted as ultimate mysticism is in reality

infantile regression.

As could be expected, such convictions have not always been well

received by Wilber's “spiritual” audience, and this has made him a

controversial figure even in New Age circles. What is more, in his later

works he increasingly engaged in critical/rationalist polemics against the

irrational and anti-intellectual tendencies in New Age circles, but without

ever taking leave of his own mystical convictions. The intellectual stages

of development through which Wilber has passed are described by

himself as Wilber-1, Wilber-2, Wilber-3 and Wilber-4, and no doubt these

will be followed by a Wilber-5 [a prophetic comment]. These

developmental stages are characterized by an increasing emphasis on

sociological and political perspectives, in which his enthusiasm for the

philosophy of Jürgen Habermas should specifically be mentioned. Less

explicit, but equally important, is Wilber's debt to German idealism. In

his Up from Eden, he applied his model of the development of individual

consciousness to the historical development of human consciousness as a

whole, from prehistoric times up to the present; and although the name

of Hegel is seldom mentioned, Wilber has acknowledged that “his

[Hegel's] shadow falls on every page”.

In his eminently readable introduction to the life and work of Ken Wilber,

Frank Visser relies not only on his published works, but on personal

interviews as well. This is remarkable, because Wilber lives more or less

like a hermit, and prefers to communicate with the outside world only

through his books. Visser managed to become friends with Wilber and is

therefore in a particularly good position both to describe and to critically

evaluate the Wilber phenomenon. It seems to me he has succeeded very

well in regard to the former, but more could have been expected from the

latter, that is to say, the critical discussion.

In the final chapter of Visser's book Wilber is confronted, respectively,

with modern cognitive science, orthodox academic psychology, the

psychology of C.G. Jung, and the traditions of modern Theosophy and so-

called “traditionalism” or perennialism. In fact, however, this chapter is

not really a critical analysis of Wilber's ideas, but rather amounts to a

demonstration of how the American succeeds in refuting all criticisms in a

sovereign manner. In other words, Visser completely identifies with the

perspective of his hero, so that his book culminates in an apology of Ken

Wilber rather than a critical evaluation of his work.





Unfortunately Visser does not touch upon what is, at least in my opinion,

the most fundamental problem with Wilber's approach. Wilber's system

has a “totalitarian” character, in the sense that all existing psychological

and religious perspectives are assigned their proper place within an all-

encompassing metaphysical model. On page 270 Visser cites a long

passage from volume VIII of the Collected Works,where Wilber states that

he has only one rule: “Everybody is right”. With this he means that every

perspective contains a certain, although limited, amount of truth: Wilber's

goal is to demonstrate how all these limited truths mutually complement

one another within one all -encompassing scheme. Thus Wilber can state

that on his tomb stone, he would like to have the text “he was right, but

one-sided”. This sounds sympathetic, and it must indeed be granted that

Wilber's oeuvre is characterized by an ongoing process of critical self-

reflection, in which earlier points of view are continually nuanced or

revised.

However, the biggest problem with Wilber's approach is that it leaves no

possibility for a dialogue, based on equality, with those who have a

different religious perspective. Wilber does not speak with “the other”,

but only to him. “Everybody is right”, for sure – but in the end it is Wilber

who decides to what extent one is right, and to what extent one is in

error. All psychological and spiritual perspectives developed in the history

of humanity are neatly assigned their proper place somewhere within a

comprehensive hierarchy, but Wilber's own perspective is located at the

very top of the pyramid or even beyond, and it is from that supremeposition that the rules of the game are established. In my opinion, Frank

Visser therefore errs in stating that Wilber cannot be accused of Western

ethnocentrism. Visser in fact immediately refutes his own claim by adding

that Wilber's framework “has room for the idiosyncracies of cultures and

people, but only within the overarching context of a universal view of

consciousness and its development” (p. 283). But what is it that gives

Wilber the right to dismiss the idiosyncratic perspectives of those other

cultures as mere “peculiarities”, which can be generously tolerated on the

condition that they will be so kind as to conform themselves to Wilber's

“universal” and therefore evidently superior point of view? The answer is

clear: Wilber believes he has that right because his own perspective just

happens to be the most correct and complete one of all.

Wilber should better start looking for another text for his tombstone. In a

prepublication of his novel Boomeritis[1] (on the pathologies of his own

baby-boomer generation), it is telling with how much venom he rallies, in

an otherwise fascinating and sometimes impressive chapter about the





attack on the World Trade Center, against the cultural relativism of

postmodernists and deconstructivists: he even goes as far as to hold them

morally responsible for the catastrophe. My criticism of Wilber's

approach, as formulated above, concerns a point which is conveniently

but significantly left out of his anti-postmodernist polemic: the fact that

he never really seems to talk with “the other”, but always about him. It is

significant that the above-mentioned chapter consists of a group

discussion among people who, from the outset, already agree with the

foundations of Wilber's perspective, and then proceed to evaluate and

classify the perspectives of all other parties according to his hierarchy of

levels of development.

A certain lack of critical distance notwithstanding, Frank Visser's book can

be warmly recommended to all those who want to familiarize themselves

with Wilber's intellectual world. One need not agree with blurbs on the

back cover, according to which Wilber is “the long-sought Einstein of

Consciousness research”, to recognize that this passionate thinker

deserves to be taken more seriously than he has been so far. Wilber

believes that religion can only be understood by taking a religious point of

view onself, and that premise does make his theoretical edifice

incompatible with the very foundations of critical academic research. But

given the quality of that edifice, he deserves at least a place in the

pantheon of famous 20th century psychologists and scholars of religion

(one is reminded of Carl Gustav Jung, Rudolf Otto or Mircea Eliade) who

shared that same opinion and are nevertheless still objects of intensediscussion.

REFERENCES

[1] K. Wilber, The Deconstruction of the World Trade Center: A Date That

Will Live in a Sliding Chain of Signifiers, wilber.shambhala.com,

November 2001.

http://www.kenwilber.com/Writings/PDF/WTC.pdf

Documents

[Wouter Hanegraaff] Everyone is Right__ Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber