Ken Wilber (b. 1949) is an independent American philosopher-psychologist and representative of the Transpersonal Psychology movement that followed the work of Abraham Maslow (see Maslow, Abraham). His books have been widely translated and he enjoys a strong following among both lay and academic readers. His debut The Spectrum of Consciousness established his reputation, and he has published over twenty books, including Up From Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution and A Brief History of Everything.
Wilber’s intellectual template is constructed primarily around Madhyamika Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, transcendental structuralism, and developmental psychology. In the 1980s he was associated with the controversial guru Adi Da (formerly Da Free John) and spoke in admiration of Da’s spiritual wisdom, yet in 1996 he publicly withdrew his support for Da and his community. Wilber acknowledges the influence of Da’s thought upon his own theory of stages of psycho-physical development.
His core theoretical framework includes a three-stage model of human development, moving from pre-personal to personal to transpersonal. He insists on a non-reductionist study of religion that recognizes different levels of spiritual engagement and is particularly critical of what he has named the ‘pre/trans fallacy’, the conflation of pre-personal mythical thought with transpersonal spiritual development. An outspoken critic of alternative spiritualities, he is nevertheless considered to be one of the key intellectual voices of the New Age Movement.
As a prominent apologist for a nondualist perspective, and for meditation as a genuine spiritual methodology, he has been criticized for neglecting cultural relativism and presenting an imported Western vision of meditation alongside an idealized view of ancient mysticism. Critics have also called into question his Atman project theory, inconsistencies in his ideas of the human, his use of the philosophia perennis and his representation of evolutionary theory.
Wilber lives in Colorado, USA and has spent much of his life in relative solitude, occupied with writing and studying rather than public teaching. In 1998 he founded the Integral Institute, a non-profit think-tank offering consultancy and training in ‘Integral Studies’, based on discussions with a number of late twentieth century thinkers including Francisco Varela, Robert Forman, Jeanne Achterberg and Deepak Chopra (see Chopra, Deepak).
