Wilber, Ken. \"Waves, Streams, States,

Wilber, Ken. "Waves, Streams, States, and Self -- a Summary of My Psychological

Model: (or, Outline of an Integral Psychology)." 2000. Shambhala.com.

http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/psych_model/psych_model1.cfm/

Ken Wilber attempts to offer what he calls a holistic approach to spirituality, integrating both neurological and more conventional spiritual models, in what he calls a synthesis of both mind and brain, East and West: "both mind and brain need to be included in a non-reductionistic way in any genuinely integral theory of consciousness" (Wilbur, 2000, p.1). "In order to facilitate such integration, this essay presents the results of an extensive cross-cultural literature search on the 'mind' side of the equation, suggesting that the mental phenomena that need to be considered in any integral theory include developmental levels or waves of consciousness, developmental lines or streams of consciousness, states of consciousness, and the self (or self-system)" (Wilber, 2000, p.1).

Mind usually refers to the idea that consciousness cannot be reduced to the physical, or brain and body aspect of consciousness. However, this quote also shows how Wilber continually gets bogged down in self-created definitions, such as waves and streams of consciousness, rather than makes a clear statement about how his essay will integrate theories of states of neurological awareness, such as sleep vs. wakefulness, with spiritual models that stress mind over body or brain in awareness. Wilber adds, in defense of his project: "Much of today's research into consciousness focuses on those aspects that have some sort of obvious anchoring in the physical brain, including the fields of neurophysiology, biological psychiatry, and neuroscience... [but] there seems to be an uneasy consensus that consciousness (or the mind) cannot be fully reduced to physical systems," and he attempts to answer the question of why this is the case (Wilber, 2000, p1.). The obvious answer might be that there are centuries of culture that treat human beings not merely as brains, but as minds. To this history Wilber offers his own integral theory of consciousness which he says fully encompasses brain, culture, and social systems in a three-fold system. Wilber calls himself a transpersonal therapist who denies the purely mind-based psychoanalytic mode of analysis, but does not reduce the human condition to pure anatomy.

His conception of the mind/brain relates ideas of structure, levels and waves. "Structure' indicates that each stage has a holistic pattern that blends all of its elements into a structured whole. 'Level' means that these patterns tend to unfold in a relational sequence...'wave' indicates that these levels nonetheless are fluid and flowing affairs' (Wilbur, 2000, p.1) Although this may sound vaguely scientific because of its use of taxonomy, he is really merely asserting that his 'theory' is all-encompassing and that it stresses the interconnectedness of mind and brain, hardly a completely new idea, given how long science and philosophy has been struggling with this division.

The reason that his theory sounds scientific is mainly his language, which makes use of metaphors of science: "with each senior wave transcending but including its juniors (just as cells transcend but include molecules, which transcend but include atoms, which transcend but include quarks)," as well as theology, when he says "these developmental stages appear to be concentric spheres of increasing embrace, inclusion, and holistic capacity (Wilbur, 2000, p.1). Although his analogy with atoms sounds scientific, Wilber almost immediately undercuts the scientific weight of his own analysis with his reference to the Great Chain of Being, an outdated Elizabethan view of the natural world, which suggested that the whole world was interconnected in a hierarchy, with the English monarch and God towards the top of the chain. Of course, Wilber does not mention this fact, merely uses the Great Chain to stress that the idea that 'everything is connected,' in his attempt to give historical authority to his research. But the fact that Wilber's most frequent citations are his own name, and his own articles, should be a red flag about the questionable nature of his essay, qualifications, and his status as a scientist.

Wilber also speaks of what he calls the "four higher or transpersonal states of consciousness, which I call psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual" (Wilber, 2000, p.2) He links these states to the mystical experiences of Christian saints like St. Teresa of Avila and also to Eastern mysticism: "The gross body/waking state supports the annamayakosha (the sheath made of food, or the physical mind), and the causal body/formless state supports the anandamayakosha (the sheath or consciousness structure made of bliss, or the transcendent mind)" (Wilber, 2000, p.2). Although this may be an attempt to show that he is well-read, this is just another way of stating that the physical body and what we call 'mind' (not merely brain) are connected, and that neurochemistry can produce a mystical state like Teresa's and even the transcendent mind is linked to states of the physical body and brain.

Wilber adds that different persons are at different levels of understanding of this truth. "Although a person at any structure or stage of development can have a profound peak experience the ways in which individuals experience and interpret these higher states and realms will depend largely on the level (or structure) of their own development" (Wilber, 2000, p.3). In other words, a person within a religious tradition may interpret a personal experience as mystical, while a scientist might interpret even his or her own experience as a product of biology. Wilber then shifts to a discussion of brain quadrant. He states that science has proven the neurological existence of altered states, such as religious states in the upper right quadrant (Wilber, 2000, p.5). Hence, both the scientist and the religious person are only half-right in their incomplete, single-minded definition.