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Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber Quotes

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Ken Wilber is an American writer and philosopher, born on January 31, 1949. He is the founder of Integral Theory, which aims to integrate human knowledge, philosophy, psychology, and religion. Wilber's work covers a wide range of fields, including personal growth, spiritual development, and cultural studies.

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All Spirit World Self Consciousness Ifs Mind Awareness Way Mean Spiritual Doe Soul Spirituality Ego Real Emptiness Firsts Humans Taste Levels

Famous Ken Wilber Quotes

“To develop a more or less accurate self-image...is simply to gain a comprehensive awareness of those facets of yourself which you didn't know existed. And these facets are easily spotted because they show up as your symptoms.”

Knows Self Shows Awareness Gains Accurate Symptoms Comprehensive Facets

Author:Ken Wilber

“Organismic awareness is awareness of the Present only - you can't taste the past, smell the past, see the past, touch the past, or hear the past. Neither can you taste, smell, see, touch or hear the future. In other words, organismic consciousness is properly timeless, and being timeless, it is essentially spaceless.”

Past Consciousness Awareness Taste Smell Scent Timeless

Book:The Spectrum of Consciousness

Source: The Spectrum of Consciousness

“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.”

Important Soul Simple Steps Meditation Subjects Awareness Objects Huge Pure Ultimate Obvious Witness Collapse Duality Undone Steps Forward

Book:Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

Source: Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

“Anything you are exclusively attached to & identify with ends up distorting & limiting awareness.”

Author:Ken Wilber

“The point of the overall meditative path is to have Wakefulness (or Consciousness as Such) transcend and include all state-realms, so it ceases to "black out" or "forget" various changes of state (such as dreaming and deep sleep), and instead recognizes a "constant Consciousness" or ever-present nondual Awareness, the union (and transcendence) of individual finite self and infinite Spirit.”

Source: The Fourth Turning: Imagining the Evolution of an Integral Buddhism

“Bad Gardens copy, good gardens create, great gardens transcend. What all great gardens have in common are their ability to pull the sensitive viewer out of him or herself and into the garden, so completely that the separate self-sense disappears entirely, and at least for a brief moment one is ushered into a nondual and timeless awareness. A great garden, in other words, is mystical no matter what its actual content.”

“The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation.”

Giving Mind Asks Belief Meditation Awareness Tests Mere Experiments Laboratory

Book:Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

Source: Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

“Meditation, then, is not so much a part of this or that particular religion, but rather part of the universal spiritual culture of all humankind--an effort to bring awareness to bear on all aspects of life. It is, in other words, part of what has been called the perennial philosophy.”

Has Beens Philosophy Spiritual Culture Effort Meditation Awareness Particular Bears Aspect Universal Humankind Aspects Of Life

Book:Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

Source: Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

“As you you deeply into your own awareness, and relax the self-contraction, and dissolve into the empty ground of your own primordial experience, the simply feeling of Being-right now, right here-is it not obvious at once?”

Self Feelings Awareness Right Now Empty Obvious Relax Contractions

Book:The Simple Feeling of Being: Visionary, Spiritual, and Poetic Writings

Source: The Simple Feeling of Being: Visionary, Spiritual, and Poetic Writings

“Early morning, the orange sun is slowly rising, shining forth in empty luminous clarity. The mind and the sky are one, the sun is rising in the vast space of primordial awareness, and there is just this. Yasutani Roshi once said, speaking of satori, that it was the most precious realization in the world, because all the great philosophers had tried to understand ultimate reality but had failed to do so, yet with satori or awakening all of your deepest questions are finally answered: it's just this.”

Source: One Taste

“Conscious means "having an awareness of one's inner and outer worlds; mentally perceptive, awake, mindful." So "conscious business" might mean, engaging in an occupation, work, or trade in a mindful, awake fashion. This implies, of course, that many people do not do so. In my experience, that is often the case. So I would definitely be in favor of conscious business; or conscious anything, for that matter.”

People World Mean Matter Might Courses Business Cases Awareness Fashion Conscious Trade Favors Awake Occupation Engaging Outer Worlds

Author:Ken Wilber

“And through the opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity.”

May Moments Might Awareness Higher Connections Eternity Profound Opening Revelations Clearing

Book:The Simple Feeling of Being: Visionary, Spiritual, and Poetic Writings

Source: The Simple Feeling of Being: Visionary, Spiritual, and Poetic Writings

“It is not quite right to describe One Taste as a "consciousness" or an "awareness," because that's a little too heady, too cognitive. It's more like the simple Feeling of Being. You already feel this simple Feeling of Being: it is the simple, present feeling of existence.”

Feels Littles Feelings Simple Existence Consciousness Awareness Taste Cognitive

Book:One Taste

Source: One Taste

“You can indeed be aware of your body, but you can also be aware of your mind - you can right now notice all the thoughts and ideas and images floating in front of the mind's inward eye. You can, in other words, experience your mind, be aware of your mind. And it's very important to experience your mind directly, cleanly, intensely, because only by bringing awareness to the mind can you begin to transcend the mind and be free of its limitations.”

Mind Important Ideas Body Eye Awareness Fronts Right Now Your Body Limitation Inward Floating Thoughts And Ideas

Book:The Essential Ken Wilber

Source: The Essential Ken Wilber

“And whatever the form of your own resurrection, you will arise, driven not by the Great Search, but by your own Great Duty, your limitless Dharma, the manifestation of your own highest potentials, and the world will begin to change because of you. And you will never flinch, and you will never fail in that great Duty, and you will never turn away, because simple, ever-present awareness will be with you now and forever, even unto the end of the worlds, because now and forever and endlessly forever, there is only Spirit, only intrinsic awareness of just this, and nothing more.”

Source: The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad

“If Spirit has any meaning, it must be omnipresent, or all-pervading and all-encompassing. There can't be a place where Spirit is not, or it wouldn't be infinite. Therefore, Spirit has to be completely present, right here, right now, in your own awareness. That is, your own present awareness, precisely as it is, without changing it or altering it in any way, is perfectly and completely permeated by Spirit.”

Ifs Way Spirit Awareness Right Now Infinite

Author:Ken Wilber

“Furthermore, it is not that Spirit is present but you need to be enlightened in order to see it. It is not that you are one with Spirit but just don't know it yet. Because that would also imply that there is some place Spirit is not. No, according to Dzogchen, you are always already one with Spirit, and that awareness is always already fully present, right now. You are looking directly at Spirit, with Spirit, in every act of awareness. There is nowhere Spirit is not.”

Knows Needs Spirit Order Awareness Right Now Enlightened

Book:Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

Source: Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

“Further, if Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means, as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened. You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true enlightenment.”

Ifs Mean Ends States Would Be Spirit Awareness Eternal Enlightenment Regard Being True Enlightened Timeless

Author:Ken Wilber

“Great art grabs you, against your will, and then suspends your will. You are ushered into a quiet clearing, free of desire, free of grasping, free of ego, free of the self-contraction. And through that opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity; who can say otherwise, when time itself is supendend in the clearing that great art creates in your awareness?”

May Art Self Moments Might Desire Awareness Higher Quiet Ego Connections Eternity Profound Opening Revelations Great Art You Again Grasping Clearing Contractions

Author:Ken Wilber