FromChapter 2: Spirit-In-Action

One thing that characterizes Ken Wilber’s integral vision is his skill in articulating the evolutionary dynamics of Spirit’s unfolding in time and through space. In the following selections, Wilber traces the choreography of the dance in which Heaven and Earth are engaged: how Heaven throws itself out of the Abyss creating Earth, and how Earth reaches ever upward toward Heaven. These selections reveal a dedicated exploration and straightforward explanation of this ebb and flow of the Divine cascading into and out of form. Whether discussing Ascent into the sky and Descent toward soil or Eros’s drive toward wholeness and Agape’s embrace of the many,Wilber always poetically describes the relationship between development and stillness: Spirit’s Longing to incarnate and Matter’s desire to be God.

Evolution is best thought of as Spirit-in-action, God-in-the-making, where Spirit unfolds itself at every stage of development, thus manifesting more of itself, and realizing more of itself, at every unfolding. Spirit is not some particular stage, or some favorite ideology, or some specific god or goddess, but rather the entire process of unfolding itself, an infinite process that is completely present at every finite stage, but becomes more available to itself with every evolutionary opening.
CW 7: A Brief History of Everything, 61

Emptiness alone, only and all, with an edge of extremely faint yet luminous bliss. That is how the subtle feels when it emerges from the causal. So it was early this morning. As the gross body then emerges from this subtle luminous bliss it’s hard to tell, at first, exactly where its boundaries are. You have a body, you know that, but the body seems like the entire material universe. Then the bedroom solidifies, and slowly, very slowly, your awareness accepts the conventions of the gross realm, which dictate that this body is inside this room. And so it is. And so you get up. And so goes involution, yet again. But the Emptiness remains, always.
CW 8: One Taste, 410

From Chapter 4: Passionate Words

In the following selections, Wilber as spiritual philosopher engages the most learned academics and enlightened sages by weaving humanity’s intellectual and spiritual history into a grand integral tapestry. As a result of being inundated with technical terms from countless academic disciplines, Wilber has created a common language through which all subject areas can communicate with each other. At its best, passionate philosophy—passionate words—is not merely an intellectual transmission from one mind to another. Rather, it shakes the very core of your being.

Never does Wilber shy away from the humanity behind the thoughts—both the darkest shadows of our animal nature and the brilliant light of our divine potential. The world’s collective knowledge—at all levels of depth—is included and expressed through the lens of vision-logic, which recognizes the holistic patterns and core links that fuel the integral vision. A philosophical adrenaline rush comes from discovering an utterly stunning unity within an ocean of diversity.

To have any meaning at all, philosophy must sizzle with passion, boil your brain, fry your eyeballs, or you’re just not doing it right. And that applies to the other end of the spectrum of feelings as well. Real philosophy is as gentle as fog and as quiet as tears; it holds the world as if it were a delicate infant, raw and open and vulnerable. I sincerely hope that if I have brought anything to this field, it is a bit of passion . . .

The one thing I do know, and that I would like to emphasize, is that any integral theory is just that—a mere theory. I am always surprised, or rather shocked, at the common perception that I am recommending an intellectual approach to spirituality, when that is the opposite of my view. Just because an author writes, say, a history of dancing, does not mean that the author is advocating that people stop dancing and merely read about it instead. I have written academic treatises that cover areas such as spirituality and its relation to a larger scheme of things, but my recommendation is always that people take up an actual spiritual practice, rather than merely read about it. An integral approach to dancing says, take up dancing itself, and sure, read a book about it, too. Do both, but in any event, don’t merely read the book. That’s like taking a vacation to Bermuda by sitting at home and looking through a book of maps. My books are maps, but please, go to Bermuda and see for yourself.
Foreword to Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion by
Frank Visser, pp. xii–xiv

Men and women, as the Christian mystics are fond of saying, have (at least) three eyes of knowing: the eye of flesh, which apprehends physical events; the eye of mind, which apprehends images and desires and concepts and ideas; and the eye of contemplation, which apprehends spiritual experiences and states. And that, of course, is a simplified version of the spectrum of consciousness, reaching from body to mind to spirit.
CW 7: The Eye of Spirit, 447

The ultimate metaphysical secret, if we dare state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two.
CW 1: No Boundary, 462