In 1972, Ken Wilber wrote his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness. He was twenty-three years old, working as a dishwasher, studying Zen by mail with several roshis, and writing in his spare time.
Since then, Wilber has become one of the leading theoreticians in the field of transpersonal psychology; he’s been described by one writer as “the Einstein of the consciousness movement.” As an author, scholar, and accomplished meditator, Wilber’s goal has been to integrate western psychology and eastern spirituality, in order to develop a unified field theory of consciousness, drawing elements from the world’s great religious and philosophical traditions.
Wilber’s books include No Boundary, The Atman Project, Up from Eden, Eye to Eye, A Sociable God, and, most recently, Transformations of Consciousness, co-authored with Jack Engler and Daniel P. Brown. The former editor of the journal ReVision, he is currently general editor for the New Science Library for Shambhala Books.
In 1983, Wilber married Treya Killam; immediately after the marriage she was diagnosed as having breast cancer. For several years, Wilber put all other work aside in order to help his wife fight her illness. She died earlier this year.
The following interview — a composite, distilled and edited from several interviews — originally appeared in The Quest (P.O. Box 270, Wheaton, IL 60189) and is reprinted with permission.
— Ed.
The word paradigm has been used a lot in the past decade. What exactly is a paradigm?
The term was introduced about thirty years ago by sociologist Thomas Kuhn, in a very influential book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. A paradigm, as Kuhn used the term, had a very precise meaning. He did not use it the way most people do now, as a type of “super-theory” or “worldview.” Instead, Kuhn said, paradigms are subtle, profound, far-reaching — and they are unconscious. You don’t even know the paradigm exists until it is challenged by its successor. So a paradigm is a set of unconscious cognitive principles and assumptions that define what type of data you are even able to see in the first place.
Most people would say that Freud introduced a new paradigm to psychology, meaning a new overall theory or a new map or approach. For Kuhn, however, Freud did not bring in a new paradigm. Most psychologists in the 1890s and early 1900s were talking about sexuality, hypnosis, hysteria. They had all read Nietzsche on instinctual repression and Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious. The idea of dynamic repression had already been introduced and elaborated. Freud put it all together in a new way, and came up with some new theories, but he didn’t fundamentally alter the types of data accepted.
What would be an example of a paradigm change?
From classical physics to quantum mechanics. There were several sets of data in existence that classical physics and mechanics could not account for at all. In fact, this data — blackbody radiation and the photoelectric effect, for example — contradicted classical physics. If you accepted the data, then classical physics was wrong. So, in practice, you ignored the data; it didn’t fit the accepted paradigm. Quantum mechanics accepted the data — that was the paradigm change — and then built theories to successfully account for it.
Still, you don’t toss out classical mechanics entirely in favor of quantum mechanics. You can’t build a bridge with quantum mechanics. So new discoveries supplement previous ones; they do not, as Kuhn imagined, replace them. In other words, science does not advance by paradigm shifts as defined by Kuhn. There is an empirical accumulation of scientific facts, and although scientific revolutions definitely occur, they are not as Kuhn first defined them. In the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn acknowledged that scientific advances have a “tree-like” or “branch-like” structure; in other words, they are cumulative, not paradigmatic.
Does this mean that paradigms don’t exist?
Not in the sense given them by Kuhn. But then there’s the general or loose sense by which most people now use the term, meaning a type of super-theory or worldview.
You suggest that different worldviews emerge and then dissolve as we evolve up the spectrum of consciousness or the great chain of being.
Yes, that’s right. Each stage of development, each evolutionary move up the great chain of being, introduces new dimensions of existence, new modes of knowing, new desires, fears, perceptions, modes of space and time, motivations, moral sensibilities, and so on. So I’ve tried, in several books, to trace out exactly the type of worldview that is most characteristic of each stage of development.
Would you explain this, stage by stage?
I usually describe a simple version of the great chain — matter, mind, and spirit — or a slightly expanded version, including matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit. Each of those levels divides into several sub-levels.
The material level I’ll leave as just one level for this discussion. You could, however, divide it into subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, and so on, but this isn’t necessary here. In human beings, the material level includes the physical body — its physiology, biochemistry, nutrition, muscular and skeletal system, and so on.
I divide the body level into three sub-levels: sensation, perception, and impulse or emotion. Because these are still fairly low levels of development, we tend to share them with other animals. For example, we share sensation and perception with reptiles and amphibians, and we share rudimentary emotions (“paleoemotions”) with other mammals. This is why, in the triune model of the brain, the two lowest levels are called the reptilian brain and the paleomammalian brain. The third and highest, the neocortex, is distinctly human, or mental — which is our next level, mind.
Mind is divided into five sub-levels — image, symbol, concept, rule, and meta-rule. An image is a mental representation that more or less looks like an object. For example, if you close your eyes and form a mental image of a tree, that image looks more or less like a real tree. It’s a fairly simple mental operation — the simplest, in fact. Images start to emerge, in an infant, at around seven months. Thus, so far, we have matter, sensation, perception, emotion, and image (or the beginning of cognition).
Next up in the mental dimension is symbol. A symbol, unlike an image, is a non-pictorial representation, usually but not always verbal, that denotes an object without looking like it. For example, I name my dog Fido, but the word “F-I-D-O” does not look like the real Fido at all. Yet the word does very effectively denote Fido. Thus, it’s a harder — and higher — mental task than forming simple images. Symbols start to emerge in the infant at around eighteen months, with the word “no.”
Next are concepts, which denote not just one object, like Fido, but a class of objects, like “dog.” “Dog” refers to all possible and actual dogs; it refers to a class. This is a concept: it doesn’t just denote, it connotes. Concepts start to emerge at ages three to four.
Next is a rule. A rule is not just a symbol or a concept. It is an operation — what Piaget called “concrete operational thought.” An operation would include things like adding, dividing, multiplying. Rules also involve an understanding of social rules and roles we are expected to play. So rules are very important. They begin to emerge at around age seven in most children.
Finally, in the mental realm, there is meta-rule, or what Piaget called “formal operational thought.” Formal operational thought operates on rules and mental objects. It is thought about thought. It’s abstract, but it’s also very dreamy, in the sense that it can envision all sorts of possibilities. Most important — and this is crucial — it has perspective. It can put itself in someone else’s shoes; it has a tolerant and pluralistic outlook; it can perform experimental work (the first structure that can do so); and it can be highly introspective. This is, roughly, what we would call “rationality” or “reason.” In most people, it emerges between eleven and fifteen years of age.
At this point, I add a stage. You can think of it as the highest of the mental or the lowest of the soul. I call it the “existential” or the “centaur” level. This level is marked by “vision-logic,” or unifying logic that operates on formal operational thought, and thus produces comprehensive and inclusive and wholistic systems. The previous level, the rational, tends to be divisive and analytic, but this level is inclusive and additive. I call it “centaur” because it is the first level where the “human” mind and “animal” body — ordinarily at odds — are integrated into a single whole, as in the mythic centaur. This is the first level where, to quote Loevinger, “mind and body are both experiences of an integrated self.” That integrated self is the centaur.
Now we shift into the soul dimensions. I divide the soul realm into two major realms, the psychic and the subtle. The psychic is the beginning of genuinely transcendental or spiritual development. Paranormal events can occur here, but they don’t have to. The psychic dimension is simply the beginning of spiritual involvement, whatever form that might take. The psychic dimension operates by vision. While vision-logic must laboriously reason out wholistic connections, vision sees the connections almost instantly.
Then, we have the subtle dimension itself. The subtle is the home of the archetypes, in the Platonic, Buddhist, and Augustinian sense. It is also the realm of audible illuminations, spiritual illumination, experiential realms of ascended knowledge, and expanded awareness. This is the soul proper, the highest point of individual identity, beyond which lies total release of the knot of the soul into absolute spirit itself.
And that’s the final level, the level of spirit. I call it the causal level, since it is the cause and support of all the lesser levels. Sometimes the causal is described, by the various traditions, as being the ultimate level itself, completely unmanifest and formless. But at other times it is taken to be merely the subtlest level of manifestation, containing all the subtler archetypes, and pure spirit lies beyond the causal. Context alone can tell you which use is intended.
The map you have just given us is not your “invention.”
It is a kind of “master template,” based on most of the world’s great religious and psychological systems. It takes each system, compares and contrasts it with the others, and then uses each to fill in the holes or gaps in the others. The result, I believe, is a pretty comprehensive system of cross-cultural validity, or at least plausibility.
Now will you go into the different worldviews or paradigms of each of these levels?
Each level has a different perspective on reality. I often use the metaphor of a ladder: every rung has a different view of the surrounding area. If you climb a big ladder, you get a “higher” angle on the world with every rung. That’s exactly what happens in development, psychological as well as historical. The major worldviews, in ascending order, are the archaic, the magic, the mythic, the rational, the existential, the psychic, the subtle, and the causal. These are correlated with the levels of development. If you have only matter, sensation, perception, emotion, and image — the lowest levels — then your worldview is archaic. If you add symbols and concepts, your worldview shifts to magic. Add rules, or concrete operational thought, and magic gives way to mythic. Add formal operational thought, and mythic gives way to rational. Add vision-logic, and the rational gives way to the existential. Next is the psychic (with vision), then the subtle (with archetype), and finally the causal (with unmanifest).
So each of the major stages of development has its own peculiar and distinctive worldview or paradigm. Everyone knows what it’s like to go through a paradigm shift, because at each stage of an individual’s growth and development, he or she goes through one. The average adult has already gone from the archaic paradigm to the magical paradigm to the mythical paradigm to the mental or rational paradigm. Catastrophe is always right around the corner, and that is why there are so many casualties along the way. The entire Freudian psychology, for example, is nothing but an understanding of the first two or three major paradigm shifts in the psyche, which occur in childhood, and an understanding of how those revolutions get messed up, and how developmental snarls continue to wreak havoc in the adult.
Let’s start with the archaic worldview and work up.
OK. The archaic is marked by its dim awareness of dualities — subject versus object, or inside versus outside. There is no evidence, for example, that the infant can tell where its self ends and the environment begins. The infant is one with the mother, one with the world. This is not a mystical state. The mystical state is being one with all the rungs in the ladder — material, emotional, mental, and spiritual. The archaic state is just a material fusion, just a union with the first rung.
This dreamy immersion in physical nature was probably the state of “dawn man,” and is probably behind all the Eden myths of being one with nature in a kind of physical paradise. Of course, it is the paradise of ignorance, not of enlightenment, and that Eden must be surrendered before any growth or development can occur.
When you give up magic and myth, and your comfortable and smug scientific rationality, then where will you be safe? Who or what will protect you? You have given up all the consolations of childhood and adolescence, but have not yet discovered the refuge of higher spirituality and genuine mysticism.
When the archaic is surrendered, then the magical emerges.
Yes. And in modern-day individuals, if the archaic is not surrendered — if there is a fixation at the archaic stage due to repeated trauma or frustration or physiological malfunction — then the result is some type of psychosis, such as schizophrenia. You can’t tell where your body stops and the chair starts, you hallucinate, the boundary between self and other collapses, and so forth. There is nothing paradisiacal about this at all.
But for most people, between the ages of two and four, the archaic winds down and the magical worldview begins to emerge. It does so simply because symbols and concepts begin to emerge. The young child awakens as a separate individual — not in the sense of an introspective person, but in the sense of a bodily self-sense differentiated from the environment in general and the mother in particular.
Why is it called “magical”?
Because the self and the physical world are just barely differentiated; they remain very close and “magically involved” with each other. The images and symbols that represent things are often still fused and confused with the things they represent. In voodoo, for example, sticking a pin in a doll is the same thing as hurting the actual person. This is the basis of “magic.” To manipulate a symbol is to magically control or manipulate the object it represents.
Also, there is a lot of narcissistic grandiosity at this level. Because the self was just recently “one with” the world, it thinks it can control or lord over the entire world. As Margaret Mahler put it, “Narcissism at its peak!” As in magical stories, you can fly through the air, you can zap people just by pointing your finger at them, you can materialize anything you want out of thin air, and so on.
But don’t you believe in miracles?
Sure. But actual miracles are rare, and we have to account for the billions of occasions where people think they can fly but can’t. That’s magic. In the early years of growth it’s natural, normal, and perfectly healthy. It was also perfectly healthy for grown men and women 200,000 years ago, when magic was the highest level that evolution had reached. But today, if this structure is not surrendered — if it is repeatedly traumatized or frustrated, or if there is a physiological malfunction — then the result is some emotional problem from a class known as “borderline,” meaning borderline between psychosis and neurosis.
What about the mythic level?
In most children, the magic structure subsides and the mythic begins to emerge at ages five to seven, with the emergence of the next basic structure, the “rule” or “role” structure — the concrete operational structure. A fascinating shift occurs at this point. The self is continually learning to differentiate itself from the environment, with greater and greater clarity. So its narcissism and omnipotence continue to decrease. The self no longer thinks that it can order the world around, or fly, or materialize things. So it transfers that magical belief to real or imaginary figures in the environment. I can no longer move the world around, but God can! So a whole panoply of gods and goddesses and spirits and demons — all understood in a terribly concrete fashion — come onto the scene.
Also, myth often has a narrative structure, unlike magic. Magic is dominated by impulse and images, with a few symbols and concepts, so it tends to be present-centered. You do magic, but you tell myths — they are often stories. The self tells stories and understands itself by its stories, because of the roles it has and the rules it follows. So magic is “poof!” and myth is “Once upon a time. . . .”
So you disagree with Jung’s belief that myths are essentially religions?
This is a very complicated issue. Let me just say that I believe Jung confused transrational archetypes with pre-rational mythic forms, and this confusion distorted his entire understanding of spirituality. But that really is another story.
I’m talking about the concrete-mythic structure of development. And while some spiritual insights might be expressed through the mythic structure, by far the largest portion of the mythic structure is pre-rational, concrete, non-spiritual, and non-transcendental — and that’s what I’m referring to now. If the mythic level is not surrendered — if it is traumatized or frustrated — the result is various types of neurosis.
Neurosis is an unconscious myth; it’s a false and distortive story you subconsciously tell yourself, such as “I’m no good, I’m worthless. If I do that, God will punish me. If I desire sex, I’m bad and should feel guilt. The forces that be are going to punish me for this.” Neurosis is all the pain and anxiety and guilt and depression that we generate by telling ourselves false and distorted stories, or myths. This is why the cognitive approach to most neurosis is so effective: you find out the stories or myths that people are telling themselves and, using reason — the next higher stage — you disrupt the myths. You demonstrate that they simply are not true, that the preponderance of evidence clearly shows they are false.
This can be hard, because we neurotics are attached to our myths, and we’re fearful of giving them up. “Neurosis is a private religion,” said Otto Rank. The mythic idea is that God will get us if we stop believing. What’s more, if you dig deeply into most of your myths, you’ll often find little leftover seeds of magic as well. You think, “I hate that person,” and if the next day that person drops dead of a heart attack, you feel terrible. To the magic structure, a thought is the same as a deed.
Magic and myth will never go away entirely; the point is not to be dominated by them. When myth — as I am using the term — starts to dominate, neurosis is not far behind.
How does the rule/role mind support the mythic structure?
Technically, a rule is a sophisticated cognitive operation; for example, multiplying numbers or dividing them.
Could you give some other examples?
If you take a child of seven or eight — someone who has just developed the rule mind — and you tell him A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, the child will be able to tell you that A is therefore greater than C. The pre-operational or magic child cannot do that. Or take this: if you get a short, fat glass and a tall, thin glass, fill the first glass with water, then pour that water into the second glass, the pre-operational child will say the tall glass has more water, even though the exact same amount is in both glasses and he’s standing right there watching. He does not have a rule that allows him to mentally conserve volume. The mythic child does, and will immediately tell you that both glasses have the same amount of water.
And what about “roles”?
If you take a pre-operational (or magical) child, and put a ball that is half red and half green between you and the child, with one color facing the child, and then ask him what color he sees, the child will tell you what color he’s looking at; say, red. You then turn the ball halfway around, and the child correctly says, “Green.” The child knows that the ball has two colored halves. Now, with the green half still facing the child, you say, “What color am I looking at?” and the child will say, “Green.” In other words, the child cannot mentally put himself in your place — he cannot take the role of other.
But when the rule/role mind emerges, around age seven, the child will immediately give the right answer. The child’s moral sense switches from “impulsive” or “whatever I want” to what is called “conformist” or “conventional.” This is due to the emergence of the rule/role mind.
OK, now we come to the rational worldview?
The rational worldview, yes. Now we usually think of the mythic structure as wildly imaginative and dreamlike, and the rational level as dry and unimaginative. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. The mythic structure, despite all its gods and goddesses, its demons and spirits, is in fact very concrete and literalistic. It believes these myths as a matter of concrete fact, not as symbolic and visionary. Moses really did part the Red Sea, Christ really was born of a virgin, God really did rain bread down from heaven, and so on.
You can see this not only in the world’s great myths, but in the very actions of the mythic child. Put three glasses in front of him, each containing different clear liquids, and tell him, “Two of these liquids, when mixed together, will turn red. How can you find the right two?” The mythic child will carefully and laboriously go through each combination of two liquids. He will sit there and actually mix the various liquids together. But a formal operational child, age fifteen or so, will simply tell you, “I’d try A with B, then A with C, then B with C.” In other words, he can mentally picture all the possibilities. Unlike his mythic predecessor, he can dream up solutions and not have to do them in concrete fact.
It is in adolescence that real dreaming and youthful idealism first appear — seeing all the possibilities, all the “what if”s. This is a major cognitive revolution, the overthrow of concrete myth for symbolic reason and nonliteralistic dreaming. This is meta-rule.
Why then do we think that myth is so freeing, or has so much freedom, if in fact it is so bound and tied to the concrete?
Because we look at it from the vantage point of reason. That is, we take the freedom of reason and mix it with the fantastic aspects of myth, and the result is a romantic notion of myth as imaginative, free, and transcendental. But when you are actually in the mythic structure, it’s nothing of the sort. It’s hardheaded, concrete, and unimaginative. It’s fundamentalist.
What about the rational structure itself?
As I have said, it’s the first structure to understand possibilities, or “what if” and “as if” statements — technically, this is called “hypothetico-deductive.” This is the structure that discovered science, medicine, and physics, because it is the first structure willing to experiment. Furthermore, it is self-reflective and introspective. It is the first structure strong enough to look at itself, at least in some aspects. This can be frightening. Finally, it understands perspective, or pluralism. It understands that “truth” is not always cut and dried — a concrete event with only one way to look at it — but that it is based on one’s perspective and is open to different interpretations. A keen sense of interpretive truth comes into existence.
This does not happen in the mythic structure because its capacity for perspective is just beginning. It can take the role of others, but it cannot equally hold and balance them all in mind, which is what rational perspectivism does. This is why mythic believers — fundamentalists, for example — simply will not allow any truth other than their own. They simply cannot say, “All religions offer different and valuable perspectives on God.” They can only say, “My way is absolutely the only way.” And they actually think they’ll be eternally damned if they don’t believe that. It’s extremely dangerous and belligerent.
Spiritual development is not a matter of mere belief. It is a matter of actual, prolonged, difficult growth, and merely professing belief is meaningless and without impact. It’s like smoking for twenty years, then saying, “Sorry, I quit.” That will not impress cancer.
If you get stuck at the archaic level, you risk psychosis; at magic, borderline; at mythic, neurosis. What happens if you get stuck at the rational?
By and large, nothing, because the rational is the stage that evolution at large has now reached. So most people stop there. No higher structure — psychic or subtle or causal — will automatically start to emerge. If you want to go beyond the rational, you’re on your own. You have to fight, and work, and struggle mightily.
If you surrender the rational worldview, what replaces it?
You could regress, which often happens. You resurrect some sort of concrete myth or belief system, and hang on to it for dear life. As the joke has it, “I’ve given up looking for truth, now I’m just trying to find a good fantasy.” Whenever the good reason and goodwill of men and women are battered, look out, because the myths come running in to replace them.
What if development continues to go forward, not backward?
If you do move forward, you go beyond an exclusive belief in rationality. Rationality itself can remain, and has some important tasks to do — you’re not just stuck in it. If you surrender the purely rational paradigm, a more existential-humanistic worldview starts to emerge.
This has three very specific and unmistakable characteristics. One is the mind-body integration or organismic unity I mentioned earlier: the centaur. Developmental studies have repeatedly confirmed a mind-body integration at this point.
Two, it is marked by what I have called “vision-logic.” At the rational level, remember, for the first time we can take account of possibilities, we can experiment, we can dream of alternatives, we can actually imagine different and possible worlds. Now vision-logic adds up these possibilities, and sees them in a wholistic or visionary fashion. Sri Aurobindo called it the “higher mind,” which can “freely express itself in single ideas, but its most characteristic movement is a mass ideation, a system or totality of truth-seeing at a single view; the relations of idea with idea, of truth with truth . . . self-seen in the integral whole.”
Three, this level has a conspicuously “existential” flavor. Vision-logic adds up all the possibilities, and what it finds is that life is a brief spark in a totally uncaring universe. In a sense that’s absolutely right. You see, when you give up magic and myth, and your comfortable and smug scientific rationality, then where will you be safe? Who or what will protect you? You have given up all the consolations of childhood and adolescence, but have not yet discovered the refuge of higher spirituality and genuine mysticism. So there is a certain brave “man is the measure of all things” attitude about this stage.
Most important, this stage demands that we come to terms with our finitude and mortality. No parental god will save us from death. We have to face that by ourselves, completely and totally alone. This is why the existentialists said that “God is dead.” The mythic god is dead. This is also why the existentialists define “inauthentic” as characterizing someone who — in the words of Martin Heidegger — “has not the constant and profound realization of lonely and unexpected death.”
The existentialists therefore offer profound analysis of the “immortality symbols” we use to deny our death, to avoid awareness that, as William James put it, the skull will in fact grin at the banquet. The existentialists — from Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Dostoevski to Karl Jaspers, Martin Buber, Paul Tillich, and Rollo May — bring great sanity to human affairs.
So the existential level, in a sense, makes way for higher or spiritual development, even if, at that level, it looks like spirit doesn’t exist at all.
Actually, the rational and existential levels combine to strip us of childish and adolescent approaches to spirit. They clean out the magical and mythical notions of spirit as a cosmic parent who doles out reward for belief or eternal damnation for disbelief. You can be at the existential level and still believe in spirit. You might, for example, believe in mystical Christianity, which accurately reflects the subtle and causal dimensions.
But you are still going to have to strip away any remaining magical and mythical beliefs about spirit before you can actually progress into a more mature realization of spirit. And this is hard. If you get in a really life-threatening situation, you will probably find yourself bargaining with God. That’s magic and mythic plea bargaining. But that god no longer exists. You are praying to thin air. You have to realize this if you are to prepare for a mature and authentic relationship with spirit.
Nobody will save you but you. You alone have to engage your own contemplative development. There is all sorts of help available to quicken this development, but nobody can do it for you. If you do not engage this development, and on your deathbed you confess and scream out for help to God, nothing is going to happen. Spiritual development is not a matter of mere belief. It is a matter of actual, prolonged, difficult growth, and merely professing belief is meaningless and without impact. It’s like smoking for twenty years, then saying, “Sorry, I quit.” That will not impress cancer. Reality, in other words, is not interested in your beliefs; it’s interested in your actions — what you actually do, your actual karma. And this is why infantile and childish views of God, once appropriate, are so detrimental to mature spirituality.
It’s ironic that the existentialists are viewed as anti-spiritual, since they seem to be playing John the Baptist to Christ, preparing the way.
Yes. But remember that a fair number of extremely influential existentialists were (and are) what they themselves call “theistic existentialists.” And they are right on target. God has to be reinterpreted, not as a big Daddy or cosmic parent, but as the Ground of Being (in Tillich’s words) or radical Mystery (in those of Jaspers). They didn’t have a good understanding of contemplative development, so their views are limited to the existential level and its basic limiting structures. But as far as they go, they are right on.
“As far as they go” — I’ve noticed you use that phrase a lot when referring to many theorists.
Well, I think virtually every theorist has something important to tell us, and our job is to incorporate all these truths into a more encompassing vision. At the same time, many of them deny or ignore the higher stages of development and dimensions of reality, so their views are often incomplete. So I try to appreciate them as far as they go, and then supplement their insights with those of others who have gone further.
It has always struck me as odd that the existential level would lie right next to the psychic level. They seem so antithetical, so different, that I don’t see how psychological development could move smoothly from one to the other.
It does sound problematic. To tell you the truth, it used to bother me a lot. My model may even be wrong at this particular point. But I’ve come to realize that this is actually no different from what happens at other stages. It helps to look at another model, such as Loevinger’s stages of ego development, which are widely regarded as being fairly accurate, and which correspond exactly with the evolving worldviews I’m describing. Her stages are the symbiotic (archaic), the impulsive and self-protective (magical), the conformist and conscientious-conformist (mythic), the conscientious, individualistic, and autonomous (rational), and the integrated (existential).
Notice the shift, for example, from the self-protective to the conformist. These are diametrically opposed stances. You go from being a complete narcissist to being a complete conformist. Every child goes through that — usually within a six-month period. After you make that amazing switch — almost an about-face — and you become a nice conformist, then the next stage is up: the conscientious, the individualistic, the autonomous. Again, diametrically opposed — from slavish conformity to fiercely individualistic freedom of choice.
Far from being an oddity, the existential/psychic shift is simply another example of the “dialectic of development”: each level eventually runs into its opposite (what Hegel calls its “negation”); the thesis runs into its antithesis, and these are eventually combined (or transcended) in a new and higher synthesis. But that’s development. Each succeeding level has both something in continuity with its predecessor, and something extremely different. That’s what makes development so fraught with tension and conflict and anxiety.
Could you briefly discuss the moral sense of each of these stages?
People go through three major stages of moral development: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional. Those stages are, exactly, the magic, the mythic, and the rational. The pre-conventional moral stage is a type of Hell’s Angel morality — reality is what I say or wish it to be, I do whatever the hell I want, nobody messes with me, and so on. Something is morally wrong if and only if I get caught. This is called “pre-conventional” because it doesn’t recognize conventions or rules. It’s very narcissistic. This is exactly the magical structure.
All that changes at the mythic — or conventional — level.
The mythic level, with its rule/role mind, understands very clearly that there are roles to be imitated and rules to be obeyed, and it gladly goes along. In fact, it often goes overboard. It is so preoccupied with rules and roles, with “fitting in,” that it becomes virtually incapable of challenging the roles or the rules. It becomes, that is, a complete conformist: “my country right or wrong,” for example. Kohlberg calls this the “good boy/nice girl” stage; Loevinger, the “conformist” stage; Maslow, the “conventional” stage. This is exactly the mythic level, the concrete operational level. This is a fairly unimaginative structure, conforming to whatever is around it. It does not understand possibilities or alternatives or “what if”s.
One of the first types of religious experience that you have tends to be of nature mysticism. You’re sitting there, looking around, feeling perfectly isolated, alone, finite, and mortal, and maybe you’re looking at a sunset or something, and all of a sudden — wham! — you’re one with the sunset, one with the ocean, one with the whole scene. . . . Unfortunately, a lot of people stop here, or they over-idealize this pantheistic nature mysticism.
I see. The rational structure can envision possibilities, so it becomes post-conventional.
Precisely. Because the rational structure can conceive other ways than the present way of doing things, it can decide for itself whether the conventional way is the best. In Kohlberg’s post-conventional structure, one might end up following conventional morals or not. The point is that conventions are given critical scrutiny based on logic and reason, on universal principles of moral reasoning. This post-conventional stance is greatly helped by the rational structure’s capacity for introspection and self-reflectiveness. You can actually “look within” and decide what’s right or wrong, not just look without and do what others say. Most of our moral heroes — Thoreau, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. — are heroes to us precisely because they looked within and, hearing the sound of a different drummer, courageously marched to it. This is post-conventional at its awe-inspiring best.
Kohlberg added a final and highest stage, the “universal-spiritual.”
Yes. This is to his everlasting credit. The spiritual dimension is the next up, but these higher dimensions — psychic, subtle, and causal — are so rare that it’s almost impossible to get much data on them. So Kohlberg understandably just lumped them all together as “universal-spiritual.”
The psychic, the subtle, and the causal worldviews or paradigms remain. Can you fill those in?
Da Free John has written extensively on these three subsets of the overall spiritual dimension. As he points out, the worldviews of the psychic, subtle, and causal are, respectively, those of the yogi, the saint, and the sage. Or, as I have described it, there are three different levels of genuine spirituality or mysticism: nature (or psychic) mysticism, theistic (or subtle) mysticism, and non-dual (or causal) mysticism; these correlate with the yogi, the saint, and the sage.
Maybe we should take them one at a time.
OK. The yogic worldview is the first step beyond existentialism. It uses or strenuously develops the gross body and mind — exactly like existential-humanists do — but it does so in order to move beyond the gross body and mind toward the subtle dimensions of existence. All the yogic techniques — the pranayama, the hatha yoga postures, and so on — are ways to “yoke” the physical body-mind and begin to transcend it, get free of it.
But this is still a “beginner’s” stage of spirituality, and if there are actual mystical experiences at this stage, they tend not to be “vertical” transformations to subtle or causal levels, but rather “horizontal” expansions of awareness; in other words, finding a union with the manifest world of nature, and not actually finding a “higher world” in God and spirit. So the psychic level is typically the level of nature mysticism, and pantheistic mysticism, or a “horizontal religion,” a horizontal expansion, ecological expansion, oneness with the physical or natural world. Again, it’s correct and useful as far as it goes.
When you break through the existential level, one of the first types of religious experience that you have tends to be of nature mysticism. You’re sitting there, looking around, feeling perfectly isolated, alone, finite, and mortal, and maybe you’re looking at a sunset or something, and all of a sudden — wham! — you’re one with the sunset, one with the ocean, one with the whole scene. You realize, in a very concrete and real fashion, that there is most definitely something beyond your “skin-encapsulated ego,” as Alan Watts would say; you realize that there is a higher or spiritual and unified dimension, and that you partake of that union in your very being, that you are one with all of nature, all of what you see. This is usually a profoundly shattering and liberating experience, liberating you from the rational-existential knot of existence. This is the introduction to the spiritual dimension.
Unfortunately, a lot of people stop here, or they over-idealize this pantheistic nature mysticism. They tie it in with system theory and eco-feminism, and call the whole resultant confusion a “new paradigm.” The psychic dimension is a new paradigm, and moving from the rational-existential to the psychic is a major cognitive revolution, another dialectic of development, but it is just another moment on the way, and not some ultimate worldview. It should be appreciated and accommodated, and then quietly let go.
And then you move to the subtle level?
Ideally, yes. The subtle level is the worldview of the saint, and the source of theistic mysticism — the direct relation of the soul to God. There is still a dualism between self (soul) and other (God). So the soul communes with God; the soul finds a union — or even, temporarily, an identity — with God. But the soul remains intact and ultimately separate, communing with its higher or divine dimensions, or God.
The great advantage of the subtle level over the psychic level is that it understands that there is a spiritual dimension above or beyond mere nature, or what you can see with your physical senses. It is not just a union with the physical world, but also a union with the subtle world, which is invisible to the senses, invisible to nature. This is the transcendental mysticism of the saints. Saints have halos because the subtle level consists of “rings” — literally — of audible illuminations and divinity revealed as light, at and around the sixth and seventh chakras, or the crown of the head; so saints are universally depicted with halos of divine light around their heads. This is not symbolic; it is exactly what they perceive. It is a direct communion or union with the Divine.
Agree or not, that’s quite interesting. And finally, the causal?
The causal is the worldview of the sage; it is non-dual mysticism. Both the yogi and the saint, you see, are engineering higher experiences. As subjects, they are looking at the higher levels as objects. But the sage is not interested in experiences; the sage is not interested in being a subject looking at higher objects. The sage is interested in dissolving the subject altogether, transcending the subject-object dualism entirely, and thus in being liberated from the fate of being separate, which is necessarily a fate of pain, fear, separation, time, history, and death. The sage doesn’t want to see God — although there is nothing wrong with that — but the sage wants to get rid of the separate “seer” altogether.
This is why sages, unlike saints, are always depicted as completely average or normal or ordinary. Saints have light shining from their heads. They have paranormal powers, and people flock around them, trying to touch them. But sages largely go unnoticed. D. T. Suzuki used to sign his letters “wu shih,” which means “nobody special.” That’s the sage’s paradigm. Ordinary life, and ordinary reality, freed of the separate-self sense, is itself ultimate reality. “How wonderful, how transcendental this! I chop wood, I carry water,” goes one of the most famous Zen koans. Now sometimes sages will consent to teach, and go public — mostly out of compassion for you and me — and so they become “big deals.” But that is not what the sage is all about.
So the causal is non-dual mysticism, which finally and totally transcends the subject/object or self/other duality. This is the final paradigm shift, and as far as we can tell, the ultimate cognitive revolution. Hegel called it the return of spirit to spirit as spirit. Or, to use several Zen phrases: this is the Great Death of the separate-self sense; the Great Liberation; finding out who you are before your parents were born; seeing your Original Face. In Christian terms, this is the alpha and omega of all development.
But do you think the “final paradigm” is actually “final”? Do you think this realization — the realization of the sages, of the causal — is unchanging and forever invariant?
No. Hegel actually went from thinking that enlightenment was an end state, a final product, to seeing it as an eternal process. The great Japanese meditation master, Dogen Zenji, managed to pack virtually everything you can say about spiritual development into four lines. Dogen said, “To study Buddhism . . .” — but I’m going to take the liberty of changing the word “Buddhism” to “mysticism,” because that is what it really refers to — “To study mysticism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be one with all things. To be one with all things is to be enlightened by all things, and this traceless enlightenment continues forever.”
In other words, enlightenment is a process, not an end state, not a product. “And this traceless enlightenment continues forever. . . .” That is the testimony, the confession, of the world’s great sages. In that sense, and that sense only, you have the final paradigm, which continues forever as process. And it does not involve some sort of new-age hoopla and narcissism and me-ness and oh-boy. It involves wu shih — nobody special.
You’ve said that, historically, we’ve reached the rational stage of development. What are your thoughts on our collective movement into the next paradigm?
I know several people who are working on a “new paradigm,” in the sense of a new worldview. Jay Ogilvy and Peter Schwartz, for example, are working on a book tentatively called The Politics of Paradigms. They feel that we are at present undergoing a paradigm shift that is becoming apparent in all sorts of fields and disciplines. O. W. Markley and Willis H. Harman have published Changing Images of Man, in which they trace the historical development of various major worldviews. They, too, believe we are in the midst of a paradigm shift.
I am a great fan of Ogilvy and Schwartz, but I don’t believe anything like the consensus they are talking about exists in the various disciplines. I agree with Markley and Harman that we need a new image of man, and I roughly agree with what they think that image should be. It would be evolutionary or developmental; it would allow for higher and spiritual states of being. It would be inclusive rather than exclusive, eclectic in methodology, and would study subjective as well as objective states. It would include values, and would be hierarchical, comprehensive, and unified. But I do not think that this new image is having much impact — and won’t have for decades, maybe centuries.
The world is just now entering, fully and completely, the mental dimension. The great paradigm shift has already happened — it’s the Third Wave, the Information Age, the Computer Revolution. It will take us several hundred years to work through that, to collectively “peel off” the mental, before we are ready for a genuinely spiritual paradigm, a genuinely comprehensive and transcendental paradigm. So there is a new paradigm, in the loose sense, but it’s already happened — and it’s mental, not spiritual.
The sage is not interested in experiences; the sage is not interested in being a subject looking at higher objects. . . . The sage doesn’t want to see God — although there is nothing wrong with that — but the sage wants to get rid of the separate “seer” altogether.
Some people are suggesting that in fact your work describes the new paradigm. Dr. C. M. Kleisen has written that the view of reality you present would completely reshape science as well as our notions of creativity, intuition, imagination, and inspiration. He says it would be as revolutionary as the new ways of thinking in the time of Galileo. That sounds like the new paradigm to me.
What Dr. Kleisen says about the implications of these ideas is accurate, but that’s not the point. The point is that these ideas simply are not having a revolutionary impact on the entire world, nor are they likely to for centuries. Also, this is not so much “my work,” as my description of the perennial philosophy. I would love to see the world enthusiastically embrace this paradigm. I think it’s comprehensive, balanced, and sane, and does justice to the full spectrum of human existence. The perennial philosophy is simply a decent thing to believe.
But I do not think the world is ripe for collective spiritual anything. Some people, yes. But part of the implication of a paradigm is that it has a worldwide impact, at all levels, in all aspects, of society. If these ideas were adopted on a worldwide basis, there would be major and, I think, beneficial changes. The question is, will they be widely adopted in the foreseeable future? I don’t think so.
You’re saying, in effect, that the world’s not ready for a major spiritual shift.
I would just say that the world has other tasks that it must accomplish on the mental dimension before it can collectively move to the spiritual dimension. That’s not a put-down. The world has got to do what the world has got to do. We had to farm the physical — by learning agriculture and then industry — before we could collectively move to the mental. Now we have to farm the mental — information and computers and technology — before we go beyond it to the spiritual. All in its own time. Frankly, I think the world is moving along at a handsome clip.
