[RexImperator]

This interview article seems like a decent overview:

https://www.salon.com/2008/04/28/ken_wilber/

Quote:


Where do you think the scientific worldview falls short when dealing with religion?


Conventional science has correctly dismantled the pre-rational myths but it goes too far in dismantling the trans-rational. The mythic and magic approaches tend to be pre-rational and pre-verbal, but the meditative or contemplative practices tend to be trans-rational. They completely accept rationality and science. But they point out that there are deeper modes of awareness, which are scientific in their own way.

What do you mean by trans-rational?

People at these higher stages of spiritual development report a “nondual awareness,” a type of awareness that transcends the dichotomy between subject and object. The mystical state is often beyond words. It is trans-rational because you have access to rationality but it’s temporarily suspended. A 6-month-old infant, for instance, is in a pre-rational state, whereas the mystic is in a trans-rational state. Unfortunately, “pre” and “trans” get confused. So some theorists say the infant is in a mystical state.

You are a longtime meditator. You’ve written about having sustained experiences of this nondual awareness. What does it feel like?

[Laughs] It’s very simple. It’s something that’s already present in one’s awareness but it’s so simple and so obvious that it’s not noticed. Zen refers to it as the “such-ness” of reality. [The Christian mystic] Meister Eckhart called it “thus-ness.” These states of consciousness are temporary, peak experiences. There’s no bliss. Rather, it’s an absence of any constriction, including feelings of bliss. The feeling is vast openness and freedom and lightness. You don’t have a sense that I’m in here and the world is out there.

You’ve said Buddhism is probably the esoteric tradition that’s influenced you the most. But you also criticize what you call “Boomeritis Buddhism.” What’s that?

What we found in the ’60s was that there was an overinfluence of feelings. Anti-intellectualism was rampant, and it continues to be rampant in a lot of meditative and alternative spiritualities. There’s a tendency to explain the trans-rational states in terms that are pre-verbal. So instead of a Big Self, you’re just experiencing a big ego. For heaven’s sake, this generation was known as the “me generation.”

So the irony is that Buddhism is supposed to be a practice where you get rid of your self, but it sometimes becomes all about yourself.

Exactly. If you’re caught in Boomeritis, you pay attention only to sensory experience. Mental experience is thrown out the door, and so is spiritual experience. It ends up being, inadvertently, all about yourself and your own feelings.

There’s an assumption that master contemplatives, people who can reach exalted states of enlightenment, are wonderful human beings, that goodness radiates from them. Do you think that’s true?

Nothing’s ever quite that simple. There are different kinds of intelligence, and they develop at different rates. If your moral development reaches up into the trans-personal levels, then you tend to be St. Teresa. But some, like Picasso, have their cognitive development very high but their moral development is in the bloody basement. We think someone is enlightened in every aspect of their lives, but that’s rarely the case.