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Speaking of Everything
an interview with Ken Wilber • Boulder, Co Ken Wilbe

Excerpted with permission from the audio interview, Ken Wilber, Speaking of Everything, the first recorded interview that Ken has ever agreed to release to the public. The entire 2 CD interview can be purchased at Enlightenment.Com at http://www.enlightenment.com/shop/wilber.html.

Enlightenment.com (E.com:) So what would you most like to say to a younger version of yourself, that is, somebody just starting out exploring their interests in the fields of consciousness, subjectivity, psychology, philosophy, and the human experience. If you can go back to the dishwashing Ken just starting to write, would you give yourself some advice?

KW: Well, I do, in the novel, Boomeritis. Boomeritis is actually written by a twenty-year-old named Ken Wilber. The advice comes in the same two categories that we've been talking about, the relative and the ultimate, or the non-dual. For the ultimate or non-dual, the primary recommendation is to take up a spiritual practice and learn to cultivate that awareness which is not a change of state. It is ever-present noticing through all changes of state– waking, dreaming and deep sleep. There is this timeless, unchanging presence that is your actual birthright and your original face. The only way you can recognize that, because it's so utterly, utterly simple– the only way you can recognize it is to exhaust all of your other options, until literally it is the only thing left staring you in the face, and then you go, "Wow, that's embarrassing. I've only been looking at it for fifteen billion years now and I didn't quite recognize it."

Take up a spiritual practice. It can be vipassana, Zen, centering prayer, yoga– the shamanic material will work, but you really have to make sure you don't just get caught up in phenomenal passing states. A lot of nature mystics and shamanic states come and go. That's not the ever-present self. The ever-present self does not come, and it does not go. It's fully present right now, and it witnesses these states that come and go. If you merely get it associated with phenomenal states, that's fine, but it's not realization. See, you can do it through shamanic or nature mysticism but you have to be careful not to merely confuse some gross change in state with the unborn or the ever-present. So take up a spiritual practice and make that real. That's the only thing that will unravel the mystery of life and death and pain.

And while you're doing that, decide what you want to do in the manifest realm. If you have a little bit more balanced, integral approach in the manifest realm, not only will you be healthier and saner, but once you have had some sort of realization, and your realization deepens, you will have a bigger nicer guitar box to make a more resonant sound when you strike the chords of your soul and spirit. So if you're going into business, go into integral business. See how you can have an all quadrant, all level, all line approach to business. (This approach makes use of the 4 Quadrants: Upper Left– inner-individual or intentional, Upper Right– outer-individual or behavioral, Lower Left– inner-collective or cultural, and Lower Right outer-collective or social, as well as different Levels of development (from pre-personal to personal to trans-personal), and different Lines of development (e.g., intellectual vs. emotional vs. athletic development.) It's not that hard. Once you get into it it's actually fairly simple, though you do need to do a little bit of study. You can start with my books and follow up with thousands of other people past and present that are working on the integral approach.

E.com: So Ken, what do you love most about what you do?

KW: Well, a couple of things. There is an analogy I use– it's like a guitar. There are the strings on the guitar, and there's the box behind it that gives resonance to it. Whenever you awaken your own soul or spirit, that's like strumming the strings. That's actually where the sound comes from. The ultimate bliss and reward and awareness and understanding and truth and goodness comes when you strike those strings.

But another kind of satisfaction comes from having the box on the guitar resonate and give depth and expression to the sound that comes from the strings. What my writing does for me is, after I strike these higher chords through my own spiritual practice, my writing is the box behind it that can give it a resonance. It can flush it out. It can give it a manifest form that makes the sound even richer. The sound still comes from the strings, still comes from the soul or spirit– but the mind can be the box on the guitar, it can give expression to it. It's very very fulfilling in that sense.

So, I'm not trying to think my way into spirit. I made that very, very clear from the beginning. You have to do spiritual practice to get to the trans-rational. You cannot use the rational to get to the trans-rational. Spiritual practice gets you to the trans-rational. But once you have that, then you can get a rational expression too. You can also express it in dance, or painting, or poetry, and that's very important. But you can also give a rational expression to it.

I continue to find that enlightened teachers benefit from this kind of philosophy, because it gives them a bigger box for their guitar. If there’s this little, bitty, non-integral box behind the strings, when they strike them... well, even really great, realized teachers need an integral philosophy to be the box to express the music of their soul and spirit. This doesn't come with the territory. You have to do the work to understand all quadrants, all levels, all lines, and so on. And so what I enjoy doing is giving that kind of form to it, because it allows a more comprehensive expression of spiritual under- standing. So that part I like.

The other part I like is that it makes a difference in people's lives, and that's important to me.

E.com: When you're writing on a day-to-day basis, do you have flow states? Do you disappear into an altered work state– what John Lilly called it, something like your "working day satori." You go places like that?

KW: Yes. I'm very ambivalent about the actual process because it is very physically painful. I get in pretty weird states. I process information at a very, very spooky rate. It's really taken only a couple of weeks to write most of the books I’ve written. It never takes longer than about three weeks to write one. They generally are fully formed by the time I sit down and write. And the actual writing process is uncomfortable, because I will sometimes go around the clock, basically. It's a very very intense process.

E.com: It sounds like a purgative experience, and you don't have any choice but to be the vehicle through which this great writing happens.

KW: Because so much information is there, in order for it to be coherent, I have to stay in that working day satori. What I think is being in the non-dual state. It could be flow, but frankly, I think you can have flow on gross, subtle, causal and non-dual planes. This is a non-dual flow, there's no question about it. And it's very, very intense. So, it's not a favorite time for me, that part of it.

E.com: Hmm, that's interesting. So, everything has it's price.

KW: Yes, yes.


Ken Wilber is among the most widely published academic writers in the world today (20 books, with translations in 34 languages.) His unmatched integration of Western science and developmental psychology with Eastern spirituality has earned him comparisons to Hegel, Einstein, and William James. Contact him through Enlightenment.Com at http://www.enlightenment.com/shop/wilber.html.