Ken Wilber Quotes & Sayings

At the Integral stages of development, the entire universe starts to make sense, to hang together, to actually appear as a uni-verse - a "one world" - a single, unified, integrated world that unites not only different philosophies and ideas about the world, but different practices for growth and development as well. — Ken Wilber

There is nothing but God, nothing but the Goddess, nothing but Spirit in all directions, and not a grain of sand, not a speck of dust, is more or less Spirit than any other. — Ken Wilber

Conscious means "having an awareness of one's inner and outer worlds; mentally perceptive, awake, mindful." So "conscious business" might mean, engaging in an occupation, work, or trade in a mindful, awake fashion. This implies, of course, that many people do not do so. In my experience, that is often the case. So I would definitely be in favor of conscious business; or conscious anything, for that matter. — Ken Wilber

At the transpersonal level, we begin to love others not because they love us, affirm us, reflect us, or secure us in our illusions, but because they are us. Christ's primary teaching does not mean, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself," but "Love your neighbor as your Self." And not just your neighbor, but your whole environment. You begin to care for your surroundings just as you would your own arms and legs. At this level, remember, your relationship to your environment is the same as your relationship to your very own organism. At — Ken Wilber

Be the most ethical, the most responsible, the most authentic you can be with every breath you take, because you are cutting a path into tomorrow that others will follow. — Ken Wilber

Evolution does not isolate us from the rest of the Kosmos, it unites us with the rest of the Kosmos: the same currents that produced birds from dust and poetry from rocks produce egos from ids and sages from egos. — Ken Wilber

A Super-Integral Spirituality has all the features of an Integral Spirituality, plus, among other things, an inherent conjunction of each stage with a given state, giving all of its stages a transpersonal or spiritual flavor (at least the possibility of either gross nature mysticism, subtle deity mysticism, causal formless mysticism, or nondual Unity mysticism). These mystical states are, of course, available to virtually all the lower 1st- and 2nd-tier stages, although there are likely some significant differences in 3rd tier, given its inherent conjunction of structures and states. — Ken Wilber

We must forgive each other our arising, for our existence always torments others. The golden rule in the midst of this mutual misery has always been, not to do no harm, but as little as possible; and not to love one another, but as much as you can. — Ken Wilber

They are structures that we build every time we engage in a thought that's just a little bit higher than a thought we had a moment before, or an activity that's just a little bit more noble than the activity we engaged in a moment before. — Ken Wilber

The fundamental message is self-righteous, and it takes this form: 'T. S. Eliot is a homophobe and I am not. Therefore, I am a better person than Eliot.' To which the proper response is: 'But T. S. Eliot could really write, and you can't. — Ken Wilber

Increasing consciousness = increasing complexity. — Ken Wilber

What's my philosophy? In a word, integral. — Ken Wilber

The nondual universe of One Taste arises as a spontaneous gesture of your own true nature. — Ken Wilber

This transformation is already proceeding, and if we want to consciously find these evolutionary currents operating in our own being as well-if we want to consciously join Spirit-in-action-then the four quardrants can help us orient ourselves more effectively, can help us become more conscious of the evolutionary currents already flowing around us and through us and in us. — Ken Wilber

Starting with the Renaissance and running through the Enlightenment, there occurred what we might call "the great reversal." Suddenly, very suddenly, the Ascenders were out, the Descenders were in - and the transition was bloody, arguably the bloodiest cognitive transformation in European history. — Ken Wilber

Evolution occurs in the world of time and space and form, whereas Spirit's primordial nature is finally timeless and Formless, prior to the of evolution but not other to it. We do not find Spirit or Emptiness by reaching some evolutionary Omega point in time, but rather by stepping off the cycle of time and evolution altogether (or ceasing to contract into it). — Ken Wilber

Buddhist discipline is designed to transmute trishna, or egoic narcissism, into Karuna, Divine Narcissism; that is, to transmute self-love, which excludes love of others, into Self-love, which is love of others. — Ken Wilber

A natural hierarchy is simply an order of increasing wholeness, such as: particles to atoms to cells to organisms, or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes part of the whole of the next. In other words, natural hierarchies are composed of holons. — Ken Wilber

Because the amazing fact is that truth alone will not set you free. Truthfulness will set you free. — Ken Wilber

Hence, in shorthand, the meaning of a statement is the injunction of its enactment. No injunction, no enactment, no meaning. That is, mere metaphysics. — Ken Wilber

You have to know that there actually is a transcendental something, if you are going to free anybody from anything - if there is no beyond-the-given, there is no freedom from the given, and liberation is futile. — Ken Wilber

Sara is referring to the fact that extreme postmodernism has now slipped into a rather sad essentialism: you have to be a woman to know anything about women; you have to be an Indian to say anything about Indians; you have to be gay before you can explain anything about homosexuality. In other words, there is a regression from worldcentric to ethnocentric - identity politics alone rule, and extreme pluralism means none of us have anything in common anymore. In — Ken Wilber

The "Higher Self" camp is notoriously immune to social concerns. Everything that happens to one is said to be "one's own choice" - the hyper-agentic Higher Self is responsible for everything that happens - this is the monological and totally disengaged Ego gone horribly amok in omnipotent self-only fantasies. This simply represses the networks of communions that are just as important as agency in constituting the manifestation of Spirit. This is not Eros; this is Phobos - a withdrawal from social engagement and intersubjective action. All of this totally overlooks the fact that Spirit manifests not only as Self (I) but as intersubjective Community (We) and as an objective State of Affairs (It) - as Buddha, Sangha, Dharma - each inseparably interwoven with the others and interwoven in the Good and the Goodness of the All. — Ken Wilber

There is a phrase for this that has become quite common: "I'm spiritual but not religious." Polls show that some 20 percent of Americans identify overall with that phrase. And some polls have shown that, in the younger generation - those between eighteen and twenty-nine - this percentage explodes to an astonishing 75 percent!2 In other words, three out of four young individuals have a deep spiritual yearning that no existing religion is addressing. — Ken Wilber

It is flat-out strange that something-that anything-is happening at all. There was nothing then a Big Bang, then here we all are. This is extremely weird. — Ken Wilber

The Big Bang has made Idealists out of almost anybody who thinks. First there was absolutely nothing, then Bang! Something. This is beyond weird. Out of sheerest Emptiness, manifestation arises. — Ken Wilber

Like going to the dentist, where you write: "Dental appointment today. All of the dentists in Boulder are 'holistic.' They can't fill a cavity but they're good for your soul. Your teeth rot, but apparently your spirit prospers." — Ken Wilber

The adventure of awakening is among the most universal of human dramas. — Ken Wilber

Were you somebody different a thousand years ago? Will you be somebody different a thousand years from now? What is this One Self that is forever your own deepest being? Must you believe the lies of time? Must you swallow the insanity that One Spirit does not exist? Can you show me your Original Face, of which there is One and Only One in all the entire World? — Ken Wilber

If humanity doesn't destroy the planet first, which is always a possibility because as Spirit threw itself out there, that included free will. So, if we don't blow ourselves up first, soul will become as common of a mature development in adults as mind currently is and, eventually, Spirit will become the common experience for humanity. — Ken Wilber

The integral sage, the nondual sage, is here to show us otherwise. Known generally as "Tantric," these sages insist on transcending life by living it. They insist on finding release by engagement, finding nirvana in the midst of samsara, finding total liberation by complete immersion. — Ken Wilber

You cannot have exterior development without interior development to hold it in place. — Ken Wilber

If Spirit has any meaning, it must be omnipresent, or all-pervading and all-encompassing. There can't be a place where Spirit is not, or it wouldn't be infinite. Therefore, Spirit has to be completely present, right here, right now, in your own awareness. That is, your own present awareness, precisely as it is, without changing it or altering it in any way, is perfectly and completely permeated by Spirit. — Ken Wilber

To be "integrally developed" does not mean that you have to excel in all the known intelligences, or that all of your lines have to be at level 3. But it does mean that you develop a very good sense of what your own psychograph is actually like, so that with a much more Integral self-image you can plan your future development. — Ken Wilber

In other words, this world is not a sin; forgetting that "this world" is the radiance and Goodness of Spirit - there is the sin. — Ken Wilber

Da Free John's phrase kept running through my mind: "Practice the wound of love ... practice the wound of love." Real love hurts; real love makes you totally vulnerable and open; real love will take you far beyond yourself; and therefore real love will devastate you. I kept thinking, if love does not shatter you, you do not know love ... — Ken Wilber

The more I go into I, the more I fall out of I. — Ken Wilber

Gaia's main problems are not industrialization, ozone depletion, overpopulation, or resource depletion. Gaia's main problem is the lack of mutual understanding and mutual agreement in the noosphere about how to proceed with those problems. We cannot rein in industry if we cannot reach mutual understanding and mutual agreement based on a worldcentric moral perspective concerning the global commons. And we reach the worldcentric moral perspective through a difficult and laborious process of interior growth and transcendence. — Ken Wilber

The most striking feature of the perennial philosophy/psychology is that it presents being and consciousness as a hierarchy of dimensional levels, moving from the lowest, densest, and most fragmentary realms to the highest, subtlest, and most unitary ones. — Ken Wilber

The single greatest world transformation would simply be the embrace of global reasonableness and pluralistic tolerance the global embrace of egoic-rationality (on the way to centauric vision-logic). — Ken Wilber

Becoming a leader is the same as becoming a fully integrated human being, — Ken Wilber

Saving the biosphere depends first and foremost on human beings reaching mutual understanding and unforced agreement as to common ends. And that intersubjective accord occurs only in the noosphere. Anything short of that noospheric accord will continue to destroy the biosphere. — Ken Wilber

The Witness is a huge step forward, and it is a necessary and important step in meditation, but it is not ultimate. When the Witness or the soul is finally undone, then the Witness dissolves into everything that is witnessed. The subject/object duality collapses and there is only pure nondual awareness, which is very simple, very obvious. — Ken Wilber

God does not lie in our collective past, God lies in our collective future; the Garden of Eden is tomorrow, not yetsterday; the Golden Age lies down the road, not up it. — Ken Wilber

I went to Duke University in the medical track. And then I decided I wanted to do something more creative, so I switched to biochemistry at Nebraska. — Ken Wilber

The noosphere, not the biosphere, would determine rights and responsibilities. And these rights were not previously repressed, they were previously meaningless (they were not oppressed, they had simply not yet emerged). — Ken Wilber

As Hubert Benoit said, it is not the identification with the ego that is the problem, but the exclusive nature of the identification. When our self-identity expands beyond the ego, into the deeper psychic, then even into the Unborn and One Taste, the ego is simply taken up and subsumed in a grander identity. But the ego itself remains as the functional self in the gross realm, and it might even appropriately be intensified and made more powerful, simply because it is now plugged into the entire Kosmos. — Ken Wilber

The very desire to seek spiritual enlightenment is in fact nothing but the grasping tendency of the ego itself, and thus the very search for enlightenment prevents it. The 'perfect practice' is therefore not to search for enlightenment but to inquire into the motive for seeking itself. You obviously seek in order to avoid the present, and yet the present alone holds the answer: to seek forever is to miss the point forever. You always already are enlightened Spirit, and therefore to seek Spirit is simply to deny Spirit. — Ken Wilber

I'm not nearly the saint some of my fans imagine and I'm nowhere near the devil my detractors wish, so you simply take both of those with a grain of salt. — Ken Wilber

The understanding of "evolutionary consciousness" is perhaps the most important thing lacking in spiritual practices today. Evolution means growth and development. This means that there are aspects of reality that have not yet arisen in our consciousness. But they will arise if we grow. — Ken Wilber

The meaning of a statement is the means of its enactment. Once — Ken Wilber

And through the opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity. — Ken Wilber

Raindrops are beating, a large puddle is forming, there on the balcony. It all floats in Emptiness, in purest Transparency, with no one here to watch it. If there is an I, it is all that is arising, right now and right now and right now. My lungs are the sky; those mountains are my teeth; the clouds are my skin; the thunder is my heart beating time to the timeless; the rain itself, the tears of our collective estate, here where nothing is really happening. — Ken Wilber

I'll tell you what I think. I think sages are the growing tip of the secret impulse of evolution. I think they are the leading edge of the self-transcending drive that always goes beyond what went before. I think they embody the very drive of the Kosmos toward greater depth and expanding consciousness. I think they are riding the edge of a light beam toward a rendezvous with God. — Ken Wilber

Furthermore, it is not that Spirit is present but you need to be enlightened in order to see it. It is not that you are one with Spirit but just don't know it yet. Because that would also imply that there is some place Spirit is not. No, according to Dzogchen, you are always already one with Spirit, and that awareness is always already fully present, right now. You are looking directly at Spirit, with Spirit, in every act of awareness. There is nowhere Spirit is not. — Ken Wilber

I had my own test, better than Turing's: when a computer could genuinely convince me that it wanted to commit suicide. — Ken Wilber

There are several different meanings of the words religion and spirituality, all of which are important. The whole point about an integral or comprehensive approach is that it must find a way to believably include all of those important meanings in a coherent whole. — Ken Wilber

In fact, at this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the 'edge of history.' There would be a real New Age. — Ken Wilber

That all opposites - such as mass and energy, subject and object, life and death - are so much each other that they are perfectly inseparable, still strikes most of us as hard to believe. But this is only because we accept as real the boundary line between the opposites. It is, recall, the boundaries themselves which create the seeming existence of separate opposites. To put it plainly, to say that "ultimate reality is a unity of opposites" is actually to say that in ultimate reality there are no boundaries. Anywhere. — Ken Wilber

Prana is implicate to matter but explicate to mind; mind is implicate to prana but explicate to soul; soul is implicate to mind but explicate to spirit; and the spirit is the source and suchness of the entire sequence. — Ken Wilber

You are not the one who experiences liberation; you are the clearing, the opening, the emptiness, in which any experience comes and goes, like reflections on the mirror. And you are the mirror, the mirror mind, and not any experienced reflection. — Ken Wilber

Evolution goes beyond what went before, but because it must embrace what went before, then its very nature is to transcend and include and thus it has an inherent directionality, a secret impulse, toward increasing depth, increasing intrinsic value, increasing consciousness. In order for evolution to move at all, it must move in those directions-there's no place else for it to go! — Ken Wilber

This is a crucial point, because it alerts us to the fact that, no matter how high-minded, idealistic, or altruistic a cause might appear - from ecology to cultural diversity to spirituality to world peace - the simple mouthing of intense support for that cause is not enough to determine why, in fact, that cause is being embraced. — Ken Wilber

And scholars of the mystical, or esoteric, or inner teachings of the world's Great Traditions are fairly unanimous in saying that although the outer teachings of each tradition are considerably different, often even contradictory, the inner esoteric teachings, the teachings based not on beliefs but on direct spiritual experiences of Waking Up, show a remarkable similarity in what they say, which is why the mystics of virtually all the world's religions have great ease in understanding each other, even as their exoteric brethren argue themselves silly. — Ken Wilber

Further, if Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means, as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened. You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true enlightenment. — Ken Wilber

Meditation, then, is not so much a part of this or that particular religion, but rather part of the universal spiritual culture of all humankind
an effort to bring awareness to bear on all aspects of life. It is, in other words, part of what has been called the perennial philosophy. — Ken Wilber

In the dream state, the mind and soul are set free to create as they please, to imagine vast worlds not tied to gross sensory realities but reaching out, almost magically, to touch other souls, other people and far-off places, wild and radiant images cascading to the rhythm of the heart's desire. — Ken Wilber

The Yoga of the Dream State has always held to be one of the fastest, most efficient ways of reaching a plateau experience of subtle and causal realms, thus quickly opening the door to stable adaptation at - and transcendence of - those realms. — Ken Wilber

We cannot simply recommend love and compassion per se, for those unfold from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric, and do we really want an increase in ethnocentric love? — Ken Wilber

And Habermas: mutual understanding in unrestrained communicative action unfolded by rationality is the omega point of individual and social evolution itself. — Ken Wilber

This regard, a hotly disputed topic is whether the spiritual/transpersonal stages themselves can be conceived as higher levels of cognitive development. The answer, I have suggested, depends on what you mean by "cognitive." If you mean what most Western psychologists mean - which is a mental conceptual knowledge of exterior objects - then no, higher or spiritual stages are not mental cognition, because they are often supramental, transconceptual, and nonexterior. If by "cognitive" you mean "consciousness in general," including superconscious states, then much of higher spiritual experience is indeed cognitive. — Ken Wilber

For what we don't realize today is just what the typical self of every previous stage failed likewise to comprehend: this is not the highest and greatest mode of consciousness which can be attained - there lie ahead the realms of the superconscious and the pitiful ego, by comparison, is as a speck of nothingness. — Ken Wilber

The beauty of practice is that it transforms us so that we outgrow our original intentions - and keep going! Our motivations for practicing evolve as we mature. — Ken Wilber

The rational scientists - and "new atheists" - believe the "sensitive, caring" postmodern Pluralists are loopy and "woo-woo," and that the traditional religious fundamentalists are archaic, childish, and dangerous. The postmodern Pluralists think that both the Rational scientists and the traditional fundamentalists are caught up in "socially constructed" modes of knowing, which are culturally relative and have no more binding power than poetry or fashion styles; this "knowledge" gives the Pluralist an enormous sense of superiority (although in their worldview, nothing is supposed to be superior). And the traditional fundamentalists think that both the modern Rational scientists and the postmodern Pluralists are all unbelieving heathens, bound for an everlasting hell, so who cares what they think anyway? — Ken Wilber

What would it mean if there were a theory that explained everything? And just what does "everything" actually mean, anyway? Would this new theory in physics explain, say the meaning of human poetry? Or how economics work? Or the stages of psychosexual development? Can this new physics explain the currents of ecosystems, or the dynamics of history, or why human wars are so terribly common? — Ken Wilber

Was it someone else? Was it not you yourself? — Ken Wilber

I saw only the glory of green emeralds, and radiant buddhas walking everywhere, and there was no I to see any of this, but the emeralds were there just the same. — Ken Wilber

A language possesses utility only insofar as it can construct conventional boundaries. A language of no boundaries is no language at all, and thus the mystic who tries to speak logically and formally of unity consciousness is doomed to sound very paradoxical or contradictory. The problem is that the structure of any language cannot grasp the nature of unity consciousness, any more than a fork could grasp the ocean. — Ken Wilber

Thus, he says, those who would "eliminate from the universe" what they think of as "inferior beings" would simply "eliminate Providence itself," whose nature it is to "produce all things and to diversify all in the manner of their existence. — Ken Wilber

These two enormous forces - truth and meaning - are at war in today's world ... And something sooner or later has to give. — Ken Wilber

Sought a world philosophy-or an integral philosophy-that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details-that is finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos, a plausible Theory of Everything. — Ken Wilber

Boundary lines, of any type, are never found in the real world itself, but only in the imagination of the mapmakers. — Ken Wilber

We are part and parcel of a single and all-encompassing evolutionary current that is itself Spirit-in-action, the mode and manner of Spirit's creation, and thus is always going beyond what went before-that leaps, not crawls, to new plateaus of truth, only to leap again, dying and being reborn with each new quantum lurch, often stumbling and bruising its metaphyscical knees, yet always getting right back up and jumping yet again. — Ken Wilber

The first step toward a genuine theory of consciousness, I believe, is the realization that consciousness is not located in the organism. Rather, consciousness is a four-quadrant affair, and it exists, if it exists at all, distributed across all four quadrants, anchored equally in each.12 — Ken Wilber

Man, the mask of God, — Ken Wilber

I can focus on writing, or I can get lost in wonderfully fun but endless conversations and produce nothing new at all. I count on those people who enjoy my work to understand this. — Ken Wilber

In other words, all of my books are lies. They are simply maps of a territory, shadows of a reality, gray symbols dragging their bellies across the dead page, suffocated signs full of muffled sound and faded glory, signifying absolutely nothing. And it is the nothing, the Mystery, the Emptiness alone that needs to be realized: not known but felt, not thought but breathed, not an object but an atmosphere, not a lesson but a life. — Ken Wilber

Conscious business.. business that is conscious of inner and outer worlds.. would therefore be business that takes into account body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. Put differently, conscious business would be mindful of the way that the spectrum of consciousness operates in the Big Three worlds of self and culture and nature. — Ken Wilber

Of course it is fine to highlight any group that you feel is important. But it's becoming impossible to define that group as "oppressed," because now every group claims to be oppressed, and none admit they are oppressors. White males used to be the bad guys, but now even they have caught the fever. White males are no longer a single group that can be blamed for oppression, because most of them now claim to belong to an oppressed or marginalized group themselves: they are drug addicts, physically handicapped, alcoholics, were sexually abused as a child, victims of an absent father, abducted by aliens, or turned into "success objects" by women. They can't oppress anybody because they are too busy being oppressed themselves. Besides, — Ken Wilber

Meditation was invented as a way for the soul to venture inward, there ultimately to find supreme identity with Godhead. Whatever else it does, and it does many beneficial things, meditation is first and foremost a search for the God within. — Ken Wilber

The truth is an arbitrary, shifting, culturally relative, and historically molded phenomenon. — Ken Wilber

Matter begins evolving back to Spirit and, when it's reached, the whole process begins over again for the billionth time. — Ken Wilber

One's sanctions for truth and goodness are established largely by individual preferences. — Ken Wilber

There are a substantial number of actual victims - of slavery's aftermath, gay bashing, criminal assault, sexual discrimination, physical abuse - whose genuine grievances are trivialized by victim chic. That is the real tragedy. Van — Ken Wilber

Each band or level, being a particular manifestation of the electromagnetic spectrum, is what it is only by virtue of the other bands. The color blue is no less beautiful because it exits along side the other colors of a rainbow, and blueness itself depends upon the existence of the other colors, for if there were no color but blue, we would never be able to see it. — Ken Wilber

I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody - including me - has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. — Ken Wilber

As Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin knew, the future of humankind is God-consciousness. — Ken Wilber

All the Ping-Pong and pool tables, on-site chefs, Nerf hoops, and stereo systems cannot make up for the truth that some places work people like dogs. — Ken Wilber

To develop a more or less accurate self-image ... is simply to gain a comprehensive awareness of those facets of yourself which you didn't know existed.
And these facets are easily spotted because they show up as your symptoms. — Ken Wilber

That which one can deviate from is not the true Tao. — Ken Wilber