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Famous Ken Wilber Quotes

“Anything which is just born, which has just come into existence, has no past behind it. Birth, in other words, is the condition of having no past. And likewise, anything which now dies, which has just ceased to be, has no future left in front of it. Death is the condition of having no future. But we have already seen that this present moment has both no past and no future simultaneously. That is, birth and death are one in this present moment. This moment is just now being born—you can never find a past to this present moment, you can never find something before it. Yet also, this moment is just now dying — you can never find a future to this moment, never find something after it. This present, then, is a coincidence of opposites, a unity of birth and death, being and non-being, living and dying. As Ippen put it, "Every moment is the last moment and every moment is a rebirth.”

DeathSpiritualityBirthPresent Moment
Book:No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth
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“An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct," the answer can only be, "All of them." That is, all of the numerous practices or paradigms of human inquiry — including physics, chemistry, hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, meditation, neuroscience, vision quest, phenomenology, structuralism, subtle energy research, systems theory, shamanic voyaging, chaos theory, developmental psychology—all of those modes of inquiry have an important piece of the overall puzzle of a total existence that includes, among other many things, health and illness, doctors and patients, sickness and healing.”

PsychologyHealthIntegral Consciousness
Author:Ken Wilber
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“One has to die to the separate self in oder to find the universal Self or God […] as the mystics everywhere have repeatedly told us, it is only in accepting death that real life is found. (A Universe within, p. 79)”

EnlightenmentAwakeningLife And DeathSpiritual TransformationThe Path Of The BodhisattvaPerennial PhilosophyUniversal Self
Book:Grace & Grit: Spirituality & Healing in the Life & Death of Treya Killam Wilber
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“To the extent that you actually realize that you are not, for example, your anxieties, then your anxieties no longer threaten you. Even if anxiety is present, it no longer overwhelms you because you are no longer exclusively tied to it. You are no longer courting it, fighting it, resisting it, or running from it. In the most radical fashion, anxiety is thoroughly accepted as it is and allowed to move as it will. You have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, by its presence or absence, for you are simply watching it pass by. Thus, any emotion, sensation, thought, memory, or experience that disturbs you is simply one with which you have exclusively identified yourself, and the ultimate resolution of the disturbance is simply to dis-identify with it. You cleanly let all of them drop away by realizing that they are not you--since you can see them, they cannot be the true Seer and Subject. Since they are not your real self, there is no reason whatsoever for you to identify with them, hold on to them, or allow your self to be bound by them. Slowly, gently, as you pursue this dis-identification "therapy," you may find that your entire individual self (persona, ego, centaur), which heretofore you have fought to defend and protect, begins to go transparent and drop away. Not that it literally falls off and you find yourself floating, disembodied, through space. Rather, you begin to feel that what happens to your personal self—your wishes, hopes, desires, hurts—is not a matter of life-or-death seriousness, because there is within you a deeper and more basic self which is not touched by these peripheral fluctuations, these surface waves of grand commotion but feeble substance. Thus, your personal mind-and-body may be in pain, or humiliation, or fear, but as long as you abide as the witness of these affairs, as if from on high, they no longer threaten you, and thus you are no longer moved to manipulate them, wrestle with them, or subdue them. Because you are willing to witness them, to look at them impartially, you are able to transcend them. As St. Thomas put it, "Whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature." Thus, if the eye were colored red, it wouldn't be able to perceive red objects. It can see red because it is clear, or "redless." Likewise, if we can but watch or witness our distresses, we prove ourselves thereby to be "distress-less," free of the witnessed turmoil. That within which feels pain is itself pain-less; that which feels fear is fear-less; that which perceives tension is tensionless. To witness these states is to transcend them. They no longer seize you from behind because you look at them up front.”

SpiritualityTranspersonalThe Witness
Book:No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth
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“As simple as that sounds, it is nevertheless extremely difficult to adequately discuss no-boundary awareness or nondual consciousness. This is because our language — the medium in which all verbal discussion must float — is a language of boundaries. As we have seen, words and symbols and thoughts themselves are actually nothing but boundaries, for whenever you think or use a word or name, you are already creating boundaries. Even to say "reality is no-boundary awareness" is still to create a distinction between boundaries and no-boundary! So we have to keep in mind the great difficulty involved with dualistic language. That "reality is no-boundary" is true enough, provided we remember that no-boundary awareness is a direct, immediate, and nonverbal awareness, and not a mere philosophical theory. It is for these reasons that the mystic-sages stress that reality lies beyond names and forms, words and thoughts, divisions and boundaries. Beyond all boundaries lies the real world of Suchness, the Void, the Dharmakaya, Tao, Brahman, the Godhead. And in the world of suchness, there is neither good nor bad, saint nor sinner, birth nor death, for in the world of suchness there are no boundaries.”

SpiritualityNondualityKen Wilber
Book:No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth
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“Although one of the points of an Integral approach to any problem is to language that issue in a s large a number of levels as possible (Magic, Mythic, Rational, Pluralistic, Integral, and Super-Integral—and this includes the “conveyor belt” of spirituality), this doesn’t mean to cavalierly overlook Integral itself. The Integral level is a prerequisite for “Integral We” practices (although anybody can be invited to those practices; but realize that an “Integral” depth of the “We” will not be achieved in any group the majority of whose individuals are not themselves at Integral).”

Integral SpiritualityTranspersonal PsychologyKen WilberIntegral We
Book:The Fourth Turning: Imagining the Evolution of an Integral Buddhism
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“The difference between supermind and Big Mind (if we take Big Mind to mean the state experience of nondual Suchness, or turiyatita) is that Big Mind can be experienced or recognized at virtually any lower level or rung. Magic to Integral. In fact, one can be at, say, the Pluralistic stage, and experience several core characteristics of the entire sequence of state-stages (gross to subtle to causal to Witnessing to Nondual), although, of course, the entire sequence, including nondual Suchness, will be interpreted in Pluralistic terms. This is unfortunate in many ways—interpreting Dharma in merely Pluralistic terms (or Mythic terms, or Rational, and so on)—because it is so ultimately reductionistic; but it happens all the time, given the relative independence of states and structures at 1st and 2nd tier. Supermind, on the other hand, as a basic structure-rung (conjoined with nondual Suchness) can only be experienced once all the previous junior levels have emerged and developed, and as in all structure development, stages cannot be skipped. Therefore, unlike Big Mind, supermind can only be experienced after all 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-tier junior stages have been passed through. While, as Genpo Roshi has abundantly demonstrated, Big Mind state experience is available to virtually anybody at almost any age (and will be interpreted according to the View of their current stage), supermind is an extremely rare recognition. Supermind, as the highest structure-rung to date, has access to all previous structures, all the way back to Archaic—and the Archaic itself, of course, has transcended and included, and now embraces, every major structural evolution going all the way back to the Big Bang. (A human being literally enfolds and embraces all the major transformative unfoldings of the entire Kosmic history—strings to quarks to subatomic particles to atoms to molecules to cells, all the way through the Tree of Life up to its latest evolutionary emergent, the triune brain, the most complex structure in the known natural world.) Supermind, in any given individual, is experienced as a type of “omniscience”—the supermind, since it transcends and includes all of the previous structure-rungs, and inherently is conjoined with the highest nondual Suchness state, has a full and complete knowledge of all of the potentials in that person. It literally “knows all,” at least for the individual.”

Big BangIntegral ConsciousnessSupermindThird TierBig Mind
Book:The Fourth Turning: Imagining the Evolution of an Integral Buddhism
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“Finally, in terms of overall spiritual intelligence—which we have been briefly tracking—on the other side of the leading edge of evolution we have 3 or 4 higher, at this point mostly potential, levels of development, including levels of spiritual intelligence. Individually, their basic strcture-rungs are referred to as para-mind, meta-mind, overmind, and supermind; collectively, they are called 3rd tier. What all 3rd-tier structures have in common is some degree of direct transpersonal identity and experience. Further, each 3rd-tier structure of consciousness is integrated, in some fashion, with a particular state of consciousness (often, para-mental with the gross, meta-mental with subtle, overmind with causal/Witnessing, and supermind with nondual, although this varies with each individual’s actual history). Previously, in 1sst and 2nd tier, structures and states were relatively independent. One could have a state center of gravity at gross and yet structurally evolve all the way to Integral without fully objectifying the gross stage (i.e., fully making it an object, fully transcending it). But beginning with the 3rd-tier para-mind, whenever you experience that structure, you also implicitly or intuitively understand or experience the gross realm as objectified, which means that state is intimately connected to the structure at this level, which gives rise, or can give rise, to expanded states such as nature mysticism (this can be experienced at earlier levels but not inherently, and is interpreted according to the Views of those lower levels; but at this level becomes an inherent potential). Likewise, because of the conjunction with the gross state, this level often carries variations of the realization that the physical world is not merely physical, but is rather psychophysical in its true nature. This can also evoke flashes of higher state presences, such as Witnessing states or even nondual. And so on with the subtle state and meta-mind; causal/Witnessing and overmind; and nondual Suchness and supermind. Those states are all “minimally” connected to those structures, in the sesne that, for example, a person at meta-mind might have already and previously moved his or her state center of gravity to subtle, but if not, the person cannot proceed beyond the meta-mind without doing so at this point. And likewise with causal/Witnessing and overmind; and nondual Suchness and supermind.”

WitnessingIntegralIntegral SpiritualityIntegral ConsciousnessSupermindThird TierOvermindIntegral Psychology
Book:The Fourth Turning: Imagining the Evolution of an Integral Buddhism
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“A Super-Integral Spirituality has all the features of an Integral Spirituality, plus, among other things, an inherent conjunction of each stage with a given state, giving all of its stages a transpersonal or spiritual flavor (at least the possibility of either gross nature mysticism, subtle deity mysticism, causal formless mysticism, or nondual Unity mysticism). These mystical states are, of course, available to virtually all the lower 1st- and 2nd-tier stages, although there are likely some significant differences in 3rd tier, given its inherent conjunction of structures and states.”

MysticismIntegral SpiritualityIntegral ConsciousnessThird TierSuper Integral Spirituality
Book:The Fourth Turning: Imagining the Evolution of an Integral Buddhism
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“Thus, unlike the previous Pluralistic View, the Integral View is truly holistic, not in any New Age woo-woo sense but as being evidence of a deeply interwoven and interconnected and conscious Kosmos. The Pluralistic View, we saw, wants to be holistic and all-inclusive and nonmarginalizing, but it loathes the modern Rational View, absolutely cannot abide the traditional Mythic View, goes apoplectic when faced with a truly Integral View. But the Integral stages are truly and genuinely inclusive. First, all of the previous structure-rungs are literally included as components of the Integral structure-rung, or vision-logic, a fact that is intuited at this stage. Views, of course, are negated, and so somebody at an Integral View is not including directly a Magic View, a Mythic View, a Rational View, and so on. By definition, that is impossible. A View is generated when the central self exclusively identifies with a particular rung of development. Somebody at a Rational View is exclusively identified with the corresponding rung at that stage—namely, formal operational. To have access directly to, say, a Magic View—which means the View of the world when exclusively identified with the impulsive or emotional-sexual rung—the individual would have to give up Rationality, give up the concrete mind, give up the representational mind, give up language itself, and regress totally to the impulsive mind (something that won’t happen without severe brain damage). The Rational person still has complete access to the emotional-sexual rung, but not the exclusive View from that rung. As we saw, rungs are included, Views are negated. (Just like on a real ladder—if you’re at, say, the 7th rung in the ladder, all previous 6 rungs are still present and still in existence, holding up the 7th rung; but, while you are standing on the 7th rung, you can’t directly see what the world looks like from those earlier rungs. Those were gone when you stepped off those rungs onto higher ones, and so at this point you have all the rungs, but only the View from the highest rung you’re on, in this case, the 7th-rung View.) So a person at Integral doesn’t directly, in their own makeup, have immediate access to earlier Views (archaic, magic, mythic, and so on), but they do have access to all the earlier corresponding rungs (snsorimotor, emotional-sexual, conceptual, rule/role, and so on), and thus they can generally intuit what rung a particular person’s center of gravity is at, and thus indirectly be able to understand what View or worldview that person is expressing (magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, and so on). And by “include those worldviews” what is meant is that the Integral levels actively tolerate and make room for those Views in their own holistic outreach. They might not agree fully with them (they don’t do so in their own makeup, having transcended and negated junior Views), but they intuitively understand the significance and importance of all Views in the unfolding sweep of evolutionary development. Further, they understand that a person has the right to stop growing at virtually any View, and thus each particular View will become, for some people, an actual station in Life, and their values, needs, and motivations will be expressions of that particular View in Life. And thus a truly enlightened, inclusive society will make some sort of room for traditional values, modern values, postmodern values, and so on. Everybody is born at square 1 and thus begins their development of Views at the lowest rung and continues from there, so every society will consist of a different mix of percentages of people at different altitude rungs and Views of the overall spectrum. In most Western countries, for example—and this varies depending on exactly how you measure it—but generally, about 10% of the population is at Magic, 40% at traditional Mythic, 40%-50% at modern Rational, 20% at postmodern Pluralistic, 5% at Holistic/Integral, and less than 1% at Super-Integral.”

IntegralIntegral SpiritualityIntegral ConsciousnessPluralistic
Book:The Fourth Turning: Imagining the Evolution of an Integral Buddhism
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“Human beings have a variety of intelligences, such as cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, musical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, and so on. Most people excel in one or two of those, but do poorly in the others. This is not necessarily or even usually a bad thing; part of Integral wisdom is finding where one excels and thus where one can best offer the world one's deepest gifts.”

PeopleWorldHumansTwoHuman BeingsEmotionalOffersFindingsMusicalIntelligenceVarietyBad ThingsEmotional IntelligenceCognitive
Book:The Integral Vision: A Very Short Introduction to the Revolutionary Integral Approach to Life, God, the Universe, and Everything
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“To be "integrally developed" does not mean that you have to excel in all the known intelligences, or that all of your lines have to be at level 3. But it does mean that you develop a very good sense of what your own psychograph is actually like, so that with a much more Integral self-image you can plan your future development.”

MeanDoeSelfLinesLevelsKnownPlansDevelopmentVery GoodIntelligenceOur FutureYour FutureGood SenseFuture Development
Book:Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World
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“My opinion is that we have, in the person of Da Free John, a Spiritual Master and religious genius of the ultimate degree. I assure you I do not mean that lightly. I am not tossing out high-powered phrases to 'hype' the works of Da Free John. I am simply offering to you my own considered opinion: Da Free John's teaching is, I believe, unsurpassed by that of any other spiritual Hero, of any period, of any place, of any time, of any persuasion.”

BelieveMeanPersonsSpiritualI BelieveReligiousMy OwnOpinionTeachingMastersGeniusHeroPeriodsDegreesUltimatePhrasesOfferingPersuasionHypeSpiritual Masters
Author:Ken Wilber
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“Meditation was invented as a way for the soul to venture inward, there ultimately to find supreme identity with Godhead. Whatever else it does, and it does many beneficial things, meditation is first and foremost a search for the God within.”

WayFirstsDoeSoulMeditationIdentityExcellenceSupremeInwardVentureBeneficial
Book:Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber
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“Art. Its definitions are legion, its meanings multitudinous, its importance often debated. But amid the many contradictory definitions of art, one has always stood the test of time, from the Upanishads in the East, to Michelangelo in the West: art is the perception and depiction of the sublime, the transcendent, the beautiful, the spiritual.”

ArtBeautifulSpiritualPerceptionArt IsTestsImportanceWestDefinitionsEastSublimeContradictoryTranscendentLegionDepictionTest Of Time
Author:Ken Wilber
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“Art is a window to The Infinite, and opening to the goddess, a portal through which you and I, with the help of the artist, may discover depths and heights of our soul undreamed of by the vulgar world. Art is the eye of the spirit, through which the sublime can reach down to us, and we up to it, and be transformed, transfigured in the process.”

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Author:Ken Wilber
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“It is often said that in today's modern and postmodern world that the forces of darkness are upon us. But I think not; in the Dark and the Deep there are truths that can always heal. It is not the forces of darkness but of shallowness that everywhere threaten the true, and the good, and the beautiful, and that ironically announce themselves as deep and profound. It is an exuberant and fearess shallowness that everywhere is the modern danger, the modern threat, and that everywhere nonetheless calls to us as savior.”

ThinkingWorldSaidTodayBeautifulForceDarkDarknessModernDangerThreatProfoundHealSaviorPostmodernShallowness
Book:Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition
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“Raindrops are beating, a large puddle is forming, there on the balcony. It all floats in Emptiness, in purest Transparency, with no one here to watch it. If there is an I, it is all that is arising, right now and right now and right now. My lungs are the sky; those mountains are my teeth; the clouds are my skin; the thunder is my heart beating time to the timeless; the rain itself, the tears of our collective estate, here where nothing is really happening.”

IfsHeartWatchesSkyTearsMy HeartRight NowMountainHappeningsRainSkinsCloudsTeethEmptinessCollectivesEstatesTimelessThunderLungsFloatsTransparencyHeart BeatRaindropsPuddlesBalconiesHeart Beating
Book:One Taste
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“For what we don't realize today is just what the typical self of every previous stage failed likewise to comprehend: this is not the highest and greatest mode of consciousness which can be attained - there lie ahead the realms of the superconscious and the pitiful ego, by comparison, is as a speck of nothingness.”

SelfTodayLyingRealizingConsciousnessStageEgoHighestRealmsComparisonNothingnessTypicalPitifulSpecks
Book:The Collected Works of Ken Wilber: The Atman Project ; Up from Eden
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“In the dream state, the mind and soul are set free to create as they please, to imagine vast worlds not tied to gross sensory realities but reaching out, almost magically, to touch other souls, other people and far-off places, wild and radiant images cascading to the rhythm of the heart's desire.”

PeopleWorldMindHeartSoulStatesDreamRealityDesireImaginePleaseRhythmReachingReach OutTiedGrossRadiantSensory
Book:Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World
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“But the real intent of my writing is not to say, you must think in this way. The real intent is to enrich: here are some of the many important facets of this extraordinary Kosmos; have you thought of including them in your worldview? My work is an attempt to make room in the Kosmos for all the dimensions, levels, domains, waves, memes, modes, individuals, cultures, and so on ad infinitum.”

ThinkingWayWritingImportantRealCultureIndividualLevelsRoomsExtraordinaryIncludingWaveDimensionsAdsDomainWorldviewFacetsMemes
Book:A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality
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“What good is it to continue to focus on the exterior technological wonders before us - from indefinite life extension to computer/mind interlinks to unlimited zero-point energy to worm-hole intergalactic space travel - if all we carry with us is an egocentric red-mem Nazis and KKK? Do we really want Jack the Ripper living 400 years, zipping around the country in his hypercar, unleashing misogynistic nanorobots? Exterior developments are clearly a concern; how much more so are interior developments - or lack there of.”

IfsWantYearsMindCountryEnergySpaceWonderFocusDevelopmentComputerRedConcernHolesZeroTechnologicalNaziExtensionsUnlimitedInteriorsWormsExteriorSpace TravelEgocentricJack The RipperUnleashingKkk
Book:A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality
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“I'll tell you what I think. I think sages are the growing tip of the secret impulse of evolution. I think they are the leading edge of the self-transcending drive that always goes beyond what went before. I think they embody the very drive of the Kosmos toward greater depth and expanding consciousness. I think they are riding the edge of a light beam toward a rendezvous with God.”

ThinkingSelfLightSecretConsciousnessGreaterGrowingEvolutionDepthEdgesImpulseRidingSageExpandingBeamTranscendingRendezvous
Book:A Brief History of Everything
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“The Witness is a huge step forward, and it is a necessary and important step in meditation, but it is not ultimate. When the Witness or the soul is finally undone, then the Witness dissolves into everything that is witnessed. The subject/object duality collapses and there is only pure nondual awareness, which is very simple, very obvious.”

ImportantSoulSimpleStepsMeditationSubjectsAwarenessObjectsHugePureUltimateObviousWitnessCollapseDualityUndoneSteps Forward
Book:Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber
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“All sentient beings - all holons in fact - contain Buddha-nature - contain depth, consciousness, intrinsic value, Spirit - and thus we are all members of the council of all beings... And the ultimate objective truth is that all beings are perfect manifestations of Spirit or Emptiness”

FactsSpiritValuesPerfectConsciousnessTruth IsMembersUltimateDepthObjectivesManifestationEmptinessCouncilSentient BeingsPerfect ManIntrinsic ValueBuddha NatureObjective Truth
Book:The Essential Ken Wilber
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