Transcending and Including the Ego
Some years ago I caused something of a scandal when I pointed out that the original Sanskrit root of the word “Yoga,” meant “Union,” and that the objective of the spiritual path was not to get rid of the ego and of our imperfections, but instead to embrace and transform them.
Much later I discovered that I was not alone in my understanding:
“Transcending the ego” thus actually means to transcend but include the ego in a deeper and higher embrace, first in the soul or deeper psychic, then with the Witness or primordial Self, then with each previous stage taken up, enfolded, included, and embraced in the radiance of One Taste. And that means we do not “get rid” of the small ego, but rather, we inhabit it fully, live it with verve, use it as the necessary vehicle through which higher truths are communicated. Soul and Spirit include body, emotions, and mind; they do not erase them.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
“The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader.” (Ken Wilber)
Timeless Awareness
“Organismic awareness is what we, on the Ego Level ordinarily, but clumsily, refer to as seeing, touching, tasting, smelling and hearing. But in its very purest form, this “sensual awareness” is non-symbolic, non-conceptual, momentary consciousness. Organismic awareness is awareness of the Present only you can’t taste the past, smell the past, see the past, touch the past, or hear the past. Neither can you taste, smell, see, touch or hear the future. In other words, organismic consciousness is properly timeless, and being timeless, it is essentially spaceless. Just as organismic awareness knows no past or future, it knows no inside or outside, no self or other. Thus pure organismic consciousness participates fully in the nondual awareness called Absolute Subjectivity.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
Tasting Oneness
Some of Ken’s most beautiful writing proves that he has really tasted Oneness:
“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 (American Philosopher, 1949-)
A Step Closer
“Each stage of psychological growth is a step closer to God.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
“The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development” (Ken Wilber)
Shaking the World
“Saint Teresa was a great contemplative? Yes, and Saint Teresa is the only woman ever to have reformed an entire Catholic monastic tradition (think about it). Gautama Buddha shook India to its foundations. Rumi, Plotinus, Bodhidharma, Lady Tsogyal, Lao Tzu, Plato, the Baal Shem Tov–these men and women started revolutions in the gross realm that lasted hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years, something neither Marx nor Lenin nor Locke nor Jefferson can yet claim. And they did not do so because they were dead from the neck down. No, they were monumentally, gloriously, divinely big egos, plugged into a deeper psychic, which was plugged straight into God.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949- Revolution)
“One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality” (Ken Wilber)
The Timeless Self
“The Self doesn’t live forever in time, it lives in the timeless present prior to time, prior to history, change, succession. The Self is present as Pure Presence, not as everlasting duration, a rather horrible notion.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
“Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber” (Ken Wilber)
Transcendence Restores Humor
“Transcendence restores humor. Spirit restores humor. Suddenly, smiling returns.
Too many representatives from too many movements even many good movements, such as feminism, environmentalism, meditation, spiritual studies seem to lack humor altogether. In other words, they lack lightness, they lack a distance from themselves, a distance from the ego and its grim game of forcing others to conform to its contours.
There is self-transcending humor, or there is the game of egoic power. No wonder Mencken wrote that “Every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow citizens, usually by force; this messianic delusion is our national disease.” We have chosen egoic power and politically correct thought police; grim Victorian reformers pretending to be defending civil rights; messianic new paradigm thinkers who are going to save the planet and heal the world. They should all trade two pounds of ego for one ounce of laughter.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
“One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality” (Ken Wilber)
Holons
As a young student I was very taken with Arthur Koestler’s concept of “Holons:” processes or things that are both individual and part of a greater whole.
Here Ken Wilber talks about them in more detail:
“A holon is a whole that is part of other wholes. For example, a whole atom is part of a whole molecule, a whole molecule is part of a whole cell, a whole cell is part of a whole organism, and so on…. The universe is fundamentally composed of holons, wholes that are parts of other wholes.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy
Infinite Spirit and Total Enlightenment
“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.
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. 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.
Rather, Spirit, and enlightenment, has to be something that you are fully aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now… We are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don’t recognize it. We have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
“Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber” (Ken Wilber)
Mind, “Energy” and Soul
“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 )American Philosopher, 1949-)
