Biography

Wilber was born in 1949 in Oklahoma City. In 1967 he enrolled as a pre-med student at Duke University and became inspired, like many of his generation, by Eastern literature, particularly the Tao Te Ching. He left Duke and enrolled in the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, completing a bachelor's degree in chemistry and biology and a master's degree in biochemistry.

In 1973 Wilber completed his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, in which he sought to integrate knowledge from disparate fields. After rejections by more than twenty publishers it was finally accepted in 1977 by Quest Books, and he spent a year giving lectures and workshops before going back to writing. He also helped to launch the journal ReVision in 1978.

In 1982 New Science Library published his anthology The Holographic Paradigm and other Paradoxesa collection of essays and interviews, including one by David Bohm. The essays, including one of his own, looked at how holography and the holographic paradigm relate to the fields of consciousness, mysticism and science.

In 1983 Wilber married Terry "Treya" Killam who was shortly thereafter diagnosed with breast cancer. From 1984 until 1987, Wilber gave up most of his writing to care for her. Treya died in January 1989; their joint experience was recorded in the 1991 book Grace and Grit.

Subsequently, Wilber wrote Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (SES), (1995), the first volume of his Kosmos Trilogy. A Brief History of Everything (1996) was the popularised summary of SES in interview format. The Eye of Spirit (1997) was a compilation of articles he had written for the journal ReVision on the relationship between science and religion. Throughout 1997, he had kept journals of his personal experiences, which were published in 1999 as One Taste, a term for unitary consciousness. Over the next two years his publisher, Shambhala Publications, released eight re-edited volumes of his Collected Works. In 1999, he finished Integral Psychology and wrote A Theory of Everything (2000). In A Theory of Everything Wilber attempts to bridge business, politics, science and spirituality and show how they integrate with theories of developmental psychology, such as Spiral Dynamics. His novel, Boomeritis(2002), attempts to expose what he perceives as the egotism of the Baby Boom Generation.

In 1987 Wilber moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he worked on his Kosmos trilogy and oversaw the work of the Integral Institute. Wilber now lives in Denver, Colorado, and works with Marc Gafni at the Center for World Spirituality, which he co-founded. Wilber has stated that he has a debilitating illness called RNase Enzyme Deficiency Disease.

Wilber's statement about his health

KEN WILBER

hi folks,

several people have asked about my health, so let me give a brief rundown on the situation.

the condition i have is called RNase Enzyme Deficiency Disease (i love the acronym: REDD). it is thought to be either fully or partially responsible for a host of illnesses, including multiple sclerosis, myalgic encephalomyelitis, ALS, inflammatory rheumatoid arthritis, Gulf War Syndrome, fibromyalgia, to name a few.

for a long time its contours were unknown, but there is now a definitive test (95% positive) and it is considered a discrete, well-defined clinical entity, although accurate information about it is rare, especially among physicians (to the extraordinary detriment of their patients).

the basic problem itself is straightforward: RNase is an enzyme produced by the human body when it is attacked by viruses or bacteria. as the name implies, RNase denatures messenger RNA wherever it find its. as it comes in contact with the invading virus or bacteria, it destroys its RNA and thus kills the invader. this is a very quick-acting defense mechanism, unlike the slower production of T cells, B cells, etc., which can take days or even weeks, and thus is one of the body's first lines of defense.

in REDD, the mechanism that produces RNase is damaged by any number of causes, the most notable being environmental toxins. in 1985, in incline village, north lake tahoe, there was what has now become a very famous outbreak of REDD, where over 200 people came down with it (i was one of the lucky 200. treya and i were in tahoe recovering from her latest round of intensive chemotherapy). a widely circulated hypothesis is that this outbreak was triggered by a local toluene spill, but nobody really knows. the disease itself, however, is not human-to-human transmissible.

once the damage is done, the body begins producing a shortened but highly active form of RNase (37 kD instead of 80 kD). this 37 kD RNase has no turn-off mechanism, because the body only recognizes the 80 kD forms. therefore, the body keeps producing this 37kD RNase, which then proceeds to attack the RNA in literally every cell in the body.

the test for this 37 kD RNase is positive in 95% of the patients identified with REDD, and 0.00% of the population at large, which is why it is considered a definitive test and a definite clinical entity.

one of the first things damaged by this defective RNase is the glutathione system, which is one of the body's major anti-oxidant systems. this leaves the body open to serious damage by its own free radical cascades. the areas most damaged are those that produce the most energy and free radicals, namely, the mitochrondria, or the small organelles in cells that produce all of the body's energy.

as the condition progresses, more and more mitochrondria are damaged and destroyed. in severe cases, the person is bedridden for the rest of their lives. many of the tahoe victims are still bedridden. that means literally, with around the clock professional care.

another system quickly damaged is the body's Th1 immune system, which is responsible for intracellular protection (i.e., protection against pathogens that attack inside the cell, like viruses and primitive bacteria such as mycoplasma). an opportunistic bug is defined as one that is already present pretty much everywhere (and is already crawling all over you), but only attacks when a portion of the immune system fails. in the case of REDD, the opportunistic viruses are hhv6,epstein barr, and CMV; and on the bacterial side, mycoplasma. over 70% of REDD patients have active hhv6, and over 60% have active mycoplasma infections. for the population at large, it is less than 3% for both of those.

those are the symptoms common to all forms of REDD. additional symptoms vary depending upon which other systems are hit hardest by the body's own free radical cascades. if brain tissue, the result is myalgic encephalomyelitis, functionally indistinguishable from MS (and MS patients also have >60% active hhv6 and mycoplasma). crippling forms of chronic fatigue, rheumatoid arthritis, Gulf War syndrome, and ALS have been linked to this cluster. although the condition is often still called cfids (chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome), it applies only to severely debilitating cases. yuppie depression it ain't.

the first phase of the illness lasts about 5 yrs, and comes to an end, ironically, when the body's capacity to synthesize protein is so badly damaged that it can no longer make any RNase, either. the person then enters a second phase, which lasts about ten years, where things are relatively quiet in terms of the illness itself, it's just that their physical activity is severely compromised and they live in what has been called a "functional bubble," often having only a few hours a day of walking-around time. fortunately, i had cultivated a lifestyle that never required a body (:-), so i had a pretty good middle ten years (roughly, all of the 1990s).

the third phase begins when the cumulative damage to various tissue systems starts to take a toll. basically, it just opens the body up to new attacks by the 37 kD RNase. every time you get an infection, cold, flu, or fever, your body produces interferon, which tells cells to start producing RNase—which in this case is, of course, defective. so more mitochrondrial damage, etc.

the basic symptom is "hypoxia," or lack of oxygen in the cells (due to damaged mitochrondria), so you feel like you are suffocating most of the time, and you're often bedridden around the clock (literally). also fortunately for me, this means mega meditation. it also means depression, sadness, and pain, not so much for the pain in this body, but the pain of what this body can't do.

weirdly, of course, my spirit-mind just keeps writing books, and during this last really severe period (the last half year), i managed about 800 really good pages. often written in bed, but no matter.

the central issue for me has never been the mitochrondrial damage per se, which i have always been able to handle fairly well, although it was nonetheless a total pain. (interestingly, REDD damages the aerobic system, and not so much the anaerobic system—which is why, although i didn't know it at the time, i stopped jogging and starting weight lifting….) rather, the central problem is when i get one (or two or three) of the opportunistic infections on top of the REDD. think of the worst case of flu you've ever had, subtract 80% of your energy, and that's sorta what it's like—but fortunately it only lasts for 6 or 8 months…..

much of this information (including the existence of the 37 kD RNase, extensive mitochrondrial damage, the 70+% infection rates with hhv6 and mycoplasma) has only been discovered in the last 5 years or so, which is why i previously didn't talk about it per se—i didn't know "it" was an it. i simply handled whatever it was and went on about my dharma.

some of you remember the really bad staph infection i had about 5 years ago. i did indeed have a staph infection, and at the time it appeared that was the culprit. but that never really made total sense, no matter what the doctors said, because staph doesn't cause those types of symptoms. looking back, it is now virtually certain that i had opportunistic mycoplasma (which can be killed by 6 to 12 months of dual antibiotics—the same antibiotics they coincidentally but fortunately put me on for the staph infection). so the reason i got better after about 8 months of antibiotics was not because it killed the staph, but the mycoplasma.

at any rate, starting last spring i began running a chronic fever, which really put me down in a rather unpleasant and prolonged fashion, with mitochondria croaking by the buckets full and me on oxygen (a very cool trip). i am now two months into a 6 month or longer course of dual antibiotics.

there are now tests for all 6 of the major opportunistic bugs that come along for this ride. because my problems have always been when one of those is added to the REDD, in the near future i will undergo tests for all these, so i can knock the little shitheads off one by one. compassionately, of course.

as for what specifically triggers the damaged RNase, nobody knows, although environmental toxins are a leading factor. i learned from a researcher last week that harvard thinks they found a retrovirus. if so, that's the most likely culprit. it's still not human-to-human transmissible, so i personally hope it is a retrovirus, since that would mean that there is at least the possibility that an hiv-like protease inhibitor cocktail could attack the actual cause of the illness. but we shall see….

let's pause for a fun one-minute rant: do i spend much time worrying about the "lesson" i am trying to teach myself by giving myself this illness? go fuck yourself. answer the question? treya and i spent 5 years listening to people telling her why she got cancer. all of them were telling her what she had spiritually done wrong in order for this to happen to her. problem is, none of them really agreed with each other, and only thing they had in common was a particular person's arrogant assumption that they knew what was really moving treya, or their deep fears projected onto treya and read back to her as the cause of her cancer. of course there are spiritual, mental, and emotional factors in all illness. if you want to know what mine are, ask me, don't tell me. if i want to know your opinion, i promise i will ask. otherwise, keep your projections to yourself, because i already have one frightened and confused asshole to deal with—me—and really, one is enough.

especially in my condition. (:-)

you can tell anybody you want about this illness, it's not confidential or anything. once i found out what it was, i've never kept it secret—although i often just say "it's that old staph infection," because the real story takes too damn long to explain.

sometimes i do well with it, sometimes not. much of the time i am fortunate, and there is radiant sahaj, with a painful body spontaneously arising in an ocean of blissful emptiness. at other times, there is just the painful body. in all cases, my I is free and radiant, but my me is fucked, and it's just a matter of which side of the identity street you want to play on.

what is not great is the physical things that i cannot do during active infections—which is why we had to call off the integral psych seminar and the ITP seminar. those things are by far the hardest for me to deal with, not being able to do that. i sometimes just think of this thing as a war wound i got when taking care of treya, and somehow that makes it easier to bear. but again, in so many ways i am extravagantly blessed beyond anything deserved—this mind intersects God's every and now and then, and even the angels weep.

thank you all very much for your kind wishes, prayers, taking and sending, and caring regard. honestly, when i rest as I-I, i am Free and Full, i promise you. physical bodily life is not so great, however, and i won't lie about that. it is sometimes more than i think i can bear. but right now i have everything i need, willow and the ii interns are here to help, marci is doing industrial strength reiki on me, and in any event, things are as they as they are, always.

i have been writing up a storm, on not-so-bad days. i finished vol 3 (now vol 2) of the kosmos trilogy—which is now about 1400 pages or so in all, which i will edit and hopefully condense a bit (or hell, just arbitrarily break it in two and put "volume 2" on the first pile and "volume 3" on the second). the last half of it will be appearing in a series of 4 or 5 150-page excerpts (which is the 800 pages i wrote during this recent episode in the last several months), of which excerpt A is already posted on the kw shambhala site (on integral methodological pluralism and integral post-metaphysics). but while i was editing excerpt B, i got sidetracked into this thing on perspectives that i mentioned to some of you. it's basically another book, and it's really outrageous, easily as cool as the SES stuff.

in fact, just like with SES, i now have yellow legal pads all over the place with the beginnings of an "integral calculus" that constructs a kosmos with perspectives instead of perceptions. part of it is an actual calculus, like g. spencer brown's laws of forms (which varela used in his autopoiesis theory), except brown used a flatland cosmology where subjects see objects, instead of first and second and third persons (holons) seeing each other. the latter gives you a real kosmos with real sentient beings having perspectives, not an agent starring blankly at a world of alien communions.

part of this theory also includes an actual integral calculus (mathematics) that is totally fucking mind blowing. anyway, i'm up to 120 legal pad pages, so maybe when i hit 200 it will be fleshed out…. i will pull it out as a separate book and try to get vol 2 edited, or at least the excerpts posted. as for the integral perspectives stuff, david deida was here visiting the last few days, and he got a pretty good overview of it. he definitely thinks it's beyond SES…. ask him about it. (if he tells you he was humoring the sick guy, keep it to yourself.)

anyway, fortunately i only need two fingers to type, so physical limitations haven't hurt me too much in that regard. and i have been putting in several hours a day with ecoisp—bob and tom are good enough to come over to the loft. the rest of the day, mostly in bed, meditating or agitating, depending on which side of the street.

needless to say, i hope that the combination of testing and treatments will get the opportunistic bugs under control. if so, i can resume a more active physical life, including meeting with core teams, i hope. if not, not. will keep you posted…..

again, thank you all for your love and concern. i honestly feel you with me, and together. much love, ken

22 October, 2002

The Rise And Fall of Ken Wilber

MARK MANSON

Ken Wilber is the smartest man you’ve never heard of. He’s a philosopher and mystic whose work attempts to integrate all fields of study into one single model or framework of understanding.

When I say, “all fields of study,” I mean that literally. Wilber believes that every field of knowledge contains at least one aspect of truth, no matter how small, and that reconciling disparate disciplines is a matter of integrating what’s right about them rather than discounting them for being partially wrong. As Wilber often puts it: “No one is smart enough to be wrong 100% of the time,” and therefore we should focus on what’s right and leave out the rest.

Neurobiology, Jungian archetypes, horticultural societies, hermeneutics, Hegelian dialectics, systems theory, Zen koans, post-structuralism, Vedantan Hinduism, capitalist economic systems, transpersonal states of consciousness, neo-Platonic forms — the list goes on and on — all explained and fit together neatly in one map of reality, what he semi-ironically calls, “A Theory of Everything.” Above all, he manages to explain it all in lucid and brilliant prose. You literally feel yourself getting smarter as you read him.

A intellectual prodigy as a child, Wilber was a Doctoral student at Duke University in biology when he quit his program in order to, as he put it, “sit in a room by myself and stare at a wall for five years.” He then went on a binge of studying eastern spirituality, religion, and psychology.

There’s not nearly enough room on this blog to do Wilber’s theory justice. But if you’ve got time and are up for an intellectual exercise, you can find a summary of his integrated psychological model, a brief overview of his AQAL model, and a long-form critique of his work here.

Of course, the best way to learn about his material is to go to the man himself. I recommend everyone begin with A Brief History of Everything followed by Integral Psychology and his masterpiece Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.

Instead of attempting to explain his work, I’ll instead outline a few of the most important ways that he’s influenced my own thinking:

1. Nothing is 100% right or wrong, they merely vary in their degree of incompleteness and dysfunction. No one or nothing is 100% good or evil, they just vary in their degree of ignorance and disconnection. All knowledge is a work in progress.
   
2. Leaps in evolution usually occur in a manner of “transcending and including,” not by wiping out what came before. For instance, the evolution to the developmental level of a single-cell organism did not wipe out molecules, but included them into a greater order of complexity. Wilber asserts that this pattern of evolution occurs with all phenomena. Rational thought did not eliminate emotion, but included it into a greater developmental level of consciousness. Industrial societies did not wipe out agriculture, but transcended agriculture into greater levels of efficiency and prosperity. If we’re going to truly evolve, we do so by including and integrating what came before into something greater, not by wiping it out.
   
3. Related to Point #2: the goal of spirituality is to transcend the ego, not to demolish it or repress it. Many spiritual leaders who claimed to have rid themselves of ego, it turns out, merely repress it. The results are horrible and sometimes tragic.
   
4. Wilber has a concept called the “Pre/Trans Fallacy” which states that people often mistake what’s pre-conventional (earlier phase of development) for being post-conventional (later stage of development) because neither are conventional. One example he uses is the New Age spiritual movements which glorify a return to an infantile state of acting purely on emotion and desire. They mistake these earlier, narcissistic emotional whims for spiritual experiences, since both emotional revelry and spiritual experiences are non-rational experiences. Since their emotional revelry is non-rational, and spiritual experiences are non-rational, they confuse the two. This concept can be applied in many areas of personal and social development.
   
5. Perception contains interior and exterior modalities, or Wilber’s solution to the Mind-Body Problem in philosophy. You can cut open someone’s brain, track the neurons firing when they think about a cat, but which is real, the neurons firing or the thought about the cat? It depends who you ask. The problem arises when one assumes that our thoughts and behavior are controlled by the physical assortment of neurons firing, it implies that our minds are not autonomous and that we lack free will. Wilber states that both the interior and exterior modes of consciousness are not only equally real, but reflections of one another. Indeed, research into neuro-plasticity (the ability to change the physical configuration of your brain through changing thought patterns and behavior) is beginning to back up this conclusion.
   
6. Hierarchies exist, but don’t necessarily mean moral superiority. There are higher levels of development and complexity, people of greater skills and talents, but that does not mean they are morally superior or more complete expressions of reality or that lower levels on the hierarchy should not be honored. For instance, nuclear science is a higher form of human understanding than voodoo magic or religious dogma, but Wilber argues that that does not mean one should be imposed onto the other. Each has its uses depending on where a person’s level of consciousness is.

The beauty of integrating ALL fields of knowledge into a single model is that that model has wide implications on EVERY field of study. Once you understand Wilber’s conclusions, it becomes apparent how his model and ideas could benefit everything from politics to science to psychology to spirituality.

A Movement Is Born

In 1999, coming off the success of his monster 1,000-page magnum opus Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and the model of consciousness and development it presented, Wilber started Integral Institute, a think-tank and academic institution to set the foundation to disseminate Wilber’s ideas to the world.

World famous leaders and thinkers such as Al Gore, Tony Robbins, Nathaniel Branden, Alex Grey, David Deida and Tony Schwartz gave ringing endorsements. Seminars and websites were created, conferences convened, it seemed a legitimate spiritually-infused intellectual movement was taking form and was soon to uproot conventional “non-integral” forms of thinking in science, academia, politics, and society in general.

Among Wilberites, there was a bursting enthusiasm. For his entire career, Wilber had been an intellectual recluse, turning down every interview and refusing to prescribe any sort of action or application of his model to the world around him. He spent more than 20 years in radio silence. But that was about to change. At the time, Wilber talked about the birth of a new integral zeitgeist which he believed would sweep through conventional thought and change how the world perceived itself. And we believed him. Wilber’s work had changed our lives, so naturally we couldn’t wait to see what the actual application of his model could do for society at large.

In early 2005, I excitedly attended an Integral Intensive weekend in Boston. Not only did I want to engage with other “second-tier” thinkers, but I wanted to somehow get involved and help promote Wilber’s ideas. As a lowly university student, I scrounged up almost of all of the money I had in order to go (to this day, it is the only self help seminar I’ve ever attended).

But upon arrival, my idealism took a punch to the gut. And although the weekend was an enjoyable experience and in some ways powerful, by the time I left, something didn’t sit right.

Great Light Casts A Great Shadow

At the weekend seminar, I couldn’t shake the feeling that what we were participating in was thinly-veiled self indulgence and little more. In hindsight, I think this was as much a branding problem (from a business perspective) as an organizational problem (social perspective). Integral Institute built their movement in order to influence academia, governmental policy, to get books and journals published, to infuse these ideas into the world at large. Yet, here we were, spending money to sit in a room performing various forms of meditation and yoga, having group therapy sessions, art performances, and generally going on and on about how “integral” we were and how important we were to the world without seemingly doing anything on a larger scale about it.

If you want to be a self-development seminar and motivate people, then be a self-development seminar and motivate people. If you want to be a formal institute and have serious effects on policy and academia, then do that. Don’t half-ass both and muddy them with gratuitous talks and performances. The irony in all of this was that Wilber’s integral framework applied to organizations and business and should have accounted for these branding issues, but didn’t. The ironies would soon continue to mount.

Following Wilber online, the conversation seemed to only become more and more insular. With an onslaught of problems in the world crying out for an integral perspective and solution — terrorism, the Iraq War, climate change, world hunger, financial crises — the silence coming from the Integral crowd was deafening. Major global and social issues were often only referred to in passing as descriptors for a certain level of consciousness development with the overarching implication being that “they” are not as highly developed as “we” are.

We’re “second-tier” thinkers. We’re going to change the world… as soon as we’re done talking about how awesome and “second-tier” we are.

Instead, most conversations involved esoteric spiritual topics, impulsive self-expressionism, and re-explaining the integral model in 4,102 different ways. For a philosophy based on including and integrating as much as possible, its followers sure expressed it by forming a nicely-sealed bubble around themselves.

Evidence of this came when Wilber’s critics popped up. Experts in many of the fields Wilber claimed to have “integrated” questioned or picked apart some of his assumptions. In Wilber’s model, he uses what he refers to as “orienting generalizations,” ways of summarizing entire fields of study in order to fit them together with other forms of knowledge. Wilber admits in his work that he’s generalizing large topics and that there is not consensus in many fields, but that he’s constructed these generalizations to reflect the basic and agreed-upon principles of each field of study.

Well, a number of experts began questioning Wilber’s choice of sources, and claimed that what he portrayed as consensus in some fields such as developmental psychology or sociology, it turned out there was still quite a bit of debate and uncertainty around some of Wilber’s “basic” conclusions. Often, what Wilber portrayed as the “consensus” of a certain field actually amounted to an obscure or minority position.

Critics also picked apart Wilber’s model itself, showing minor contradictions in it. And a number of people caught on to his shockingly meek understanding of evolutionary biology and his puzzling insinuations of intelligent design.

Wilber’s eventual response to many of these critics was nothing short of childish — a dozen-or-so page (albeit extremely well-written) verbal shit-storm that clarified nothing, justified nothing, personally attacked everyone, and straw-manned the shit out of his critics’ claims.

For many, that was the day the intellectual giant fell, the evolution stopped, the so-called “Einstein of consciousness” took his ball and went home.

From there, the integral movement began to sputter. Rabbi Marc Gafni, a spiritual leader whom Wilber aligned himself and even co-sponsored seminars with, was later indicted in Israel for child molestation. Despite this, Wilber and his movement refused to distance themselves or repudiate him. In fact, the whole integral scene doubled down, claiming that its critics were “first-tier thinkers,” and were coming up with lies in order to attack a greater, higher level of consciousness that it didn’t understand.

The seminars slowed to a crawl. Wilber’s health deteriorated greatly (he was diagnosed with a rare disease that keeps him bed-ridden). He stopped writing. Ten years on, despite developing some fans in academia (some in high places) Wilber’s work had yet to be tested or peer-reviewed in a serious journal. Much of his posting online devolved into bizarre spiritual claims (such as this one about an “enlightened teacher” who can make crops grow twice as fast by “blessing them”).

The brilliant scientist-turned-monk-turned-recluse-turned-New-Age-celebrity, whose ideas changed everything for so many people (myself included), devolved into the butt of another New Age joke. How the mighty have fallen.

A Cautionary Tale

Although flawed, Wilber’s integral perspective continues to be an inspiration in my life. I do believe he will be written about decades or centuries from now, and will be seen as one of the most brilliant minds of our generation. But as with most brilliant thinkers, his influence and ideas will be carried on by others in ways which he did not anticipate or plan.

Wilber’s story is a cautionary tale. His intellectual understanding was immense, as much as I’ve ever come across in a single person. He also tapped into some of the farthest reaches of consciousness, spiritual or not, that humans have self-reported. I do believe that. But ultimately, he was done in by his pride, his need for control and, well, ironically his ego.

The point is, if Wilber can succumb to it, any of us can. No one is immune. No matter how brilliant and how “enlightened,” we’re all animals.

Wilber was a baby boomer in the US through the 60′s and 70′s. He came up through many of that generation’s eastern spiritual movements. These movements were started by eastern teachers and subscribed to a dogma that an enlightened awareness could develop someone into a flawless individual, an immutable authority. Despite Wilber’s massive understanding of human psychology and consciousness, he never seemed to shake this dogma. It followed Wilber through his career and eventually manifested itself in himself. When he was younger, he notoriously followed Adi Da, a spiritual leader who was later found to be sexually abusing female followers. Yet he stood by him. Later in his career, he also aligned with Andrew Cohen, a spiritual leader who was found to be physically and emotionally abusing his followers. And again, he stood by him. Why? Because Wilber maintained they had genuinely reached the farthest limits of human awareness and understanding.

What Wilber taught me is that no depth of spiritual experience can negate our physical and primal drives for power, lust and validation. As primates, we’re wired to seek someone to look up to as well as to be looked up to by others. And that’s true whether we’re experiencing Godhead or bodhisattva or not. It’s inescapable.

Wilber also showed me that a brilliant mind does not necessarily make a brilliant leader. Wilber bragged in an interview that he never planned anything at Integral Institute, because planning would not represent a “second-tier” leadership. Despite massive funding, enthusiasm, brain power and demand, Integral Institute found a way to fail.

The grand irony here is that Wilber’s model itself, the Integral framework, accounts for and describes everything I said in the paragraphs above. Wilber failed in the exact ways his own model predicted. His model champions the idea of transcending the ego, not negating it. It calls for crowd-sourced intellectual rigor and peer-review. It goes on, at length, about the shadow self and how our unconscious desires sabotage our greater goals. It covers our primal and biological nature and how our lower impulses must be accepted and kept in check.

Yet he still succumbed to the same faults he warned us about.

David Foster Wallace states in his speech “This Is Water” that we all choose something to worship, whether we realize it or not. Wilber would say what we choose to worship is dependent on the stage or level of consciousness we’ve developed to. And he would be right.

But what he seems to have missed is that worshipping consciousness development itself,Wilber’s so-called “second-tier” thinking, leads to the same disastrous repercussions Wallace warned of: vanity, power, guilt, obsession.

No one is immune.

As humans, we have a tendency to cling to ideologies. Any positive set of beliefs can quickly turn malevolent once treated as ideology and not an honest intellectual or experiential pursuit of greater truth. Ideology does in entire economic systems and countries, causes religions to massacre thousands, turns human rights movements into authoritarian sects and makes fools out of humanity’s most brilliant minds. Einstein famously wasted the second half of his career trying to calculate a cosmological constant that didn’t exist because “God doesn’t play dice.”

Wilber’s brilliance will always be a part of me. But what he really taught me is this: There is no ideology. There is no guru. There is only us, and this, and the silence.