[wouter hanegraaff] everyone is right__ frank visser's analysis of ken wilber
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8/11/2019 [Wouter Hanegraaff] Everyone is Right__ Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber
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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.
8/11/2019 [Wouter Hanegraaff] Everyone is Right__ Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber
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30/3/2014 "Everyone is Right": Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber, Wouter Hanegraaff
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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
8/11/2019 [Wouter Hanegraaff] Everyone is Right__ Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber
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30/3/2014 "Everyone is Right": Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber, Wouter Hanegraaff
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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.
8/11/2019 [Wouter Hanegraaff] Everyone is Right__ Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber
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30/3/2014 "Everyone is Right": Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber, Wouter Hanegraaff
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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
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30/3/2014 "Everyone is Right": Frank Visser's Analysis of Ken Wilber, Wouter Hanegraaff
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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.