On ‘The Future of Spirituality’ by Ken Wilber

The Future of Spirituality — the audiobook On Amazon / Audible

Putting Things Together

I have a really good friend In Amsterdam, The Netherlands, whose nickname is Shepherd. When I asked him why such nicknames, he mentioned that he was always good at tying people together and keeping them peacefully aligned, much like a shepherd dog keeps animals in a herd.

When I first dove in into Ken Wilber’s integral theory with the audiobook “The Future of Spirituality”, I had a very similar feeling about him. With his frameworks and theories, Wilber tends to tie various spiritual theories in one non-contradictory and even consistent stack. If things are collected and shown in a way in which they don’t contradict to each other, they tend to make much more sense. This is the key power of integral theory to me.

Looking At Things In Stages

Another vital part of integral theory is developmentalism, that is, a tendency to put things into stages-of-development perspective. Just as human beings, groups, societies or organizations go through various stages of development, spiritual theories can (and probably should) be described as something very different at each moment of time of their development. Wilber puts things into perspective, making sure he maps various ways people grow with how their spiritual understanding develops.

In one example, Wilber explains how having the same religion among neighboring tribes in the very beginning of that religion development was nothing less than an instrument of peace-making: If you have the common God with that other tribe, you might start perceiving each other as children of the same mother or father. In which case, you are less likely to wage wars against them, since brothers are not supposed to kill each other.

Making Things Into Frameworks

It might be a bit tricky to feel at ease with how integralists tend to put everything (I mean, everything) in charts and matrixes. At some point, it just feels a bit too much to easily accept. But then, one should recall a reason for such simplifications: it is not to state the truth, it is to explain variety of spiritual thoughts in the most non-contradictory way.

Seeing Things Connected

In his books and lectures, Ken likes to mention a Zen Buddhism koan called ‘Original face’. In Wilber’s interpretation, it goes like this:

‘What did your face look like before your parents were born?’

I find this koan very though provoking, especially remembering how Marcus Aurelius, Erkhart Tolle, Michel Brown and other great mindfulness thinkers and practitioners emphasize very same idea of universal unity.

It makes me think of interconnectedness of all human (and not only human) beings — and this sense of being a part of a bigger whole creates a tremendous amount of hope, peace and joy. Which is, in the end, some core needs we as human beings have.