Ego to Enlightenment: “Integral Spirituality” by Ken Wilber (Book Summary)

This is a book summary of Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World by Ken Wilber (Amazon).

🔒 Premium members have access to the companion post: Integral Psychology & Spirituality Synthesis: How to Develop Holistically (10+ Visuals)

Quick Housekeeping:

• All content in “quotation marks” is from the author (otherwise it’s paraphrased).
• All content is organized into my own themes (not the author’s chapters).
• Emphasis has been added in bold for readability/skimmability.

Book Summary Contents:

• Stages & States
• Subject & Object
• Realization & Enlightenment

Ego to Enlightenment: Integral Spirituality by Ken Wilber (Book Summary)

Stages & States of Consciousness

“Consciousness is not a thing or a content or a phenomenon. It has no description. It is not worldviews, it is not values, it is not morals, not cognition, not value-MEMEs, mathematico-logico structures, adaptive intelligences, or multiple intelligences. In particular, consciousness is not itself a line among other lines, but the space in which lines arise. Consciousness is the emptiness, the openness, the clearing in which phenomena arise, and if those phenomena develop in stages, they constitute a developmental line (cognitive, moral, self, values, needs, memes, etc.). The more phenomena in that line that can arise in consciousness, the higher the level in that line. Again, consciousness itself is not a phenomenon, but the space in which phenomena arise.”

Stages of Consciousness:

“Stages (and stage models) are just conceptual snapshots of the great and ever-flowing River of Life … This is not to say that stages are mere constructions or are socially constructed, which is the oppositely lopsided view. Stages are real in the sense that there is something actually existing that occurs in the real world and that we call development or growth. It’s just that ‘stages’ of that growth are indeed simply snapshots that we take at particular points in time and from a particular perspective (which itself grows and develops).”

• “Each of the developmental lines possesses levels (that unfold in stages or waves) … A ‘level of development’ is always a ‘level in a particular line.'”
• “Many researchers refer to developmental lines as developmental streams (and they call levels waves). Thus, ‘waves and streams’ instead of ‘levels and lines.'”
• “A major reason that the cognitive line is necessary but not sufficient for the other lines is that you have to be aware of something in order to act on it, feel it, identify with it, or need it … Cognition delivers the phenomena with which the other lines operate. This is why it can serve as an altitude marker of sorts … Research shows that your feelings, your art, your ethics, and your emotions, all will follow behind the cognitive line, because in order to feel something, you have to be able to see it.”

Developmental Lines & Life’s Questions:

• What am I aware of? (The cognitive line or cognitive intelligence is the response to that life question; e.g., Piaget.)
• Of the things that I am aware of, what do I call my ‘self’ or ‘I/me’? (Ego or self development line; e.g., Loevinger.)
• Of the things that I am aware of, which do I value most? (‘Values systems’; e.g., Graves.)
• Of the things that I am aware of, what is the right thing to do? (Moral intelligence; e.g., Kohlberg.)
• Of the things that I am aware of, what should I do in relation to you? (Interpersonal development; e.g., Selman.)
• Of the things that I am aware of, what holds ultimate concern? (Spiritual intelligence; e.g., James Fowler.)
• Of the things that I am aware of, what do I need? (Maslow’s needs holarchy.)
• Of the things that I am aware of, how do I feel about them? (Emotional intelligence; e.g., Goleman.)
• Of the things that I am aware of, which are the most attractive or beautiful? (Aesthetic line; e.g., Housen.)

States of Consciousness:

“What I experience in an immediate, 1st-person fashion includes, in addition to specific ‘contents’ or ‘immediate experiences’ (a feeling, a thought, an impulse, an image, etc.), what are often called ‘phenomenal states’ … States are directly available to awareness, under various circumstances.”

Vedanta’s 5 major natural states of consciousness:

• Waking, dreaming, deep sleep, Witnessing (turiya), and Nondual (turiyatita).

In addition to natural or ordinary states, there are altered or nonordinary states:

• Exogenous states (e.g., drug-induced) and endogenous states (which include trained states such as meditative states). Heightened states, ordinary or nonordinary, are often called peak experiences.

According to the great wisdom traditions, all men and women have available to them at least 5 great natural states of consciousness, all of which can be directly experienced:

• Gross-waking states, such as what I might experience riding a bike or reading this page or doing bodywork.
• Subtle-dream states, such as I might experience in a vivid dream, or in a vivid daydream or visualization exercise, as well as in certain types of meditation with form.
• Causal-formless states, such as deep dreamless sleep and types of formless meditation and experiences of vast openness or emptiness.
• Witnessing states—or ‘the Witness’—which is a capacity to witness all of the other states; for example, the capacity for unbroken attention in the waking state and the capacity to lucid-dream.
• Ever-present Nondual awareness, which is not so much a state as the ever-present ground of all states (and can be ‘experienced’ as such).

States interpreted by Stages:

“A person at any stage can have a peak experience of a gross, subtle, causal, or nondual state. But a person will interpret that state according to the stage they are at … When I say that a person will interpret a particular state or experience ‘according to the stage they are at,’ the more fleshed-out version is ‘according to the entire AQAL matrix’ operative at that time.”

• “You will interpret your meditative state experiences according to whatever stage you are at. Likewise, how you hold a View will itself be largely determined by whatever stage you are at … The point is that a person can have a profound peak, religious, spiritual, or meditative experience of, say, a subtle light or causal emptiness, but they will interpret that experience with the only equipment they have, namely, the tools of the stage of development they are at.”
• “This particularly includes ‘levels and lines’ in the UL—a person will interpret an experience based on their psychograph (which means a multitude of intelligences all operating at once, clamoring for recognition by the self). In the LL, cultural backgrounds and intersubjective contexts are decisive (and almost entirely preconscious). In the UR, neurophysiological parameters set an enormous number of interpretive frames. In the LR, social systems have almost as strong an influence as Marx claimed. None of these factors can be overlooked; all of them have a hand in how an individual will interpret any moment of his or her experience. It is the entire AQAL matrix, in every moment, that speaks in and through an individual.”
• “I can come out of a nondual state of awareness, and if I am green, I will interpret nonduality in green terms; if I am ultraviolet, then in ultraviolet terms. The same authentic state can be used to support any number of stages. This translation-downward of great spiritual treatises is a significant problem.”

Subject & Object

Pair with: 🔒Stream of Consciousness: What is the Subject-Object Relationship?

Subject-Object Relationship:

“The subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next stage … In direct 1st-person terms, it is not simply that the subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next stage, but that the I of one stage becomes the me of the I of the next stage … Not just ‘objects of a subject,’ but my objects of my subject (i.e., I become me or mine).”

• “Robert Kegan, echoing developmentalists in general, has pointed out that the fundamental process of development itself can be stated as: the subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next stage … As Gebser puts it, the self of one stage becomes the tool of the next.”
• “If I am at the red stage of development, that means that my I—that my subject—is completely identified with red, so much so that I cannot see red as object, but instead use it as subject with which and through which I see the world. But when I move to the next stage, the amber stage, then the red-self becomes an object in my awareness, which itself is now identified with amber—thus, my amber-subject now sees red objects, but cannot itself be seen. If red thoughts or red impulses arise in my I-space, I will see them as the objects of my (now amber) self.”
• “When you meditate, you are in effect witnessing the mind, thus turning subject into object—which is exactly the core mechanism of development (‘the subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next’) … The reason that state-meditation can help with vertical stage-development is that every time you experience a nonordinary state of consciousness that you cannot interpret within your present structure, it acts as a micro-disidentification—it helps ‘I’ become ‘me’ (or the subject of one state-stage becomes the object of the subject of the next)—and therefore helps with vertical development in the self line.”

Healthy Development/Transcendence:

Converts I into me (conversion of 1st-person subjective I into 1st-person objective/possessive me/mine); the definition of healthy ‘transcend and include’; healthy dis-identification, or healthy detachment, or healthy transcendence/transformation; dis-identifying with an owned self is transcendence.

• “A person might say, ‘I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts, I have feelings, but I am not my feelings’—the person is no longer identified with them as a subject, but stills owns them as an object—which is indeed healthy, because they are still owned as ‘my thoughts.’ That ownership is crucial.”
• “Healthy development and transcendence converts events in my subjective-I (which I am completely ‘identified with’ so much so that I cannot see them) into me or mine (which can be seen as an object of my next higher subject—I have transcended and included them: owned them AND transcended them).”
• “Healthy development and healthy transcendence are the same thing, since development is ‘transcend and include.’ The subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next, thus owning but transcending that subject, until—in an idealized sequence—all relative subjects and selves have been transcended and there is only the Pure Witness or the Pure Self, the empty opening in which Spirit speaks. More specifically, we saw that in each stage of self development, the I of one stage becomes the me of the I of the next stage. As each I becomes me, a new and higher I takes its place, until there is only I-I, or the pure Witness, pure Self, pure Spirit or Big Mind. When all I’s have been converted to me’s, experientially nothing but ‘I-I’ remains (as Ramana Maharshi called it—the I that is aware of the I), the pure Witness that is never a seen object but always the pure Seer, the pure Atman that is no-atman, the pure Self that is no-self. I becomes me until there is only I-I, and the entire manifest world is ‘mine’ in I-I.”

Unhealthy/Pathological Development:

Converts I into it (conversion of 1st-person subjective I into 2nd- or 3rd-person yours/his/theirs/it); unhealthy dis-identification, or pathological dissociation, or pathological transcendence, or repression; dis-identifying with a disowned self is double dissociation.

• “At any point in development, if aspects of the I are denied ownership, they appear as an it, and that is not transcendence, that is pathology. Denying ownership is not dis-identification but denial. It is trying to dis-identify with an impulse BEFORE ownership is acknowledged and felt, and that dis-ownership produces symptoms, not liberation.”
• “In the course of development and transcendence—whether horizontal or vertical—when the I of one stage becomes the me of the I of the next stage, if at any point in that ongoing sequence, aspects of the I are dis-identified with prematurely—as a defensive denial and dis-ownership and dissociation (which happens in the I before they become me, or truly transcended)—then they are split off from the I and appear as a you or even an it in my awareness (not as a me/mine in my awareness), and thus my object world now contains two entirely different types of objects: those that were once owned correctly, and those that were not. And those two objects are phenomenologically indistinguishable. But one of those objects is actually a hidden subject, a hidden I, a sub-agency (or in progressed cases, a subpersonality) that was split off from my I, and thus that hidden-I can never truly be transcended because it is an unconscious identification or an unconscious attachment (it can never be truly transcended because it cannot become a me of my I, because my I no longer owns it).”
• “In the early stages of a psychological development that should convert each I into a me, some of those I’s get dis-owned as its—as shadow elements in my own awareness, shadow elements that appear as an ‘object’ (or an ‘other’) but are actually hidden-subjects, hidden faces of my own I. Once dissociated, these hidden-subjects or shadow-its show up as an ‘other’ in my awareness (and as painful neurotic symptoms and dyseases). In those cases, therapy is indeed: Where it was, there I shall become. Where id was, there ego shall be—and then, once that happens, you can transcend the ego. But try transcending the ego before properly owning it, and watch the shadow grow. But if that identification has first occurred in a healthy fashion, then dis-identification can occur; if not, then dis-identifying leads to more dissociation.”

Realization & Enlightenment

“When it comes to the nature of enlightenment or realization, this means that a complete, full, or nondual realization has two components: absolute (emptiness) and relative (form). The ‘nonconceptual mind’ gives us the former, and the ‘conceptual mind’ gives us the latter … There is emptiness (and the formless mind), and then there is the manifest world (and the conceptual mind), and so the question is: what form in the mind will help both realize and express emptiness? Some form or view is there, like it or not, and so correct view has always been maintained as absolutely necessary for enlightenment.”

Nondual Realization:

“By definition, a nondual realization demands both ‘no views’ in emptiness and ‘views’ in the world of form.”

• “Emptiness itself is not created or co-created, but Form is, and Emptiness is coemergent with Form, therefore Nondual realization is in part interpretive.”
• “‘Cognition’ is actually derived from the root gni (co-gni-tion), and this gni is the same as gno, which is the same root as gno-sis, or gnosis. Thus, cognition is really co-gnosis, or that which is the co-element of gnosis and nondual awareness … In Sanskrit, this gno appears as jna, which we find in both prajna and jnana. Prajna is supreme discriminating awareness necessary for full awakening of gnosis (pra-jna = pro-gnosis), and jnana is pure gnosis itself. Once again, cognition as co-gnosis is the root of the development that is necessary for the full awakening of gnosis, of jnana, of nondual liberating awareness. So the next time you hear the word ‘cognitive,’ you might hesitate before labeling it anti-spiritual.”
• “Because emptiness and form are not-two, then not only is desire not an impediment to realization, it is a vehicle of realization; not only is intellectual thought not an impediment to realization, it is a vehicle of realization; not only is action not an impediment to realization, it is a vehicle of realization. Fundamental nondual awareness therefore involves nothing less than a joyous playing with the union of emptiness and luminous form, realizing the countless ways that the world of form, just as it is, is the Great Perfection in all its wonderment, and that the nature of the ordinary mind, just as it is, is the fully enlightened Buddha-mind. Hence simply resting in this ever-present, natural, effortless, easy, and spontaneously present aware emptiness, which is not other than the entire world of luminous form, is the Buddha’s unsurpassed way. Because this nondual awareness embraces the entire world of thought and desire and form, this nondual awareness leads to right compassion for all sentient beings. Right compassion leads to skillful means in helping all sentient beings. Skillful means, like all relative action, is completely paradoxical: just as I vow to gain realization, even though there is no realization (or even though I am already realized), skillful means recognizes that there are no others to liberate, therefore I vow to liberate them all. Buddhist nondual realization accordingly leads to a radiantly joyous embrace of the entire world of form, a deep compassion for all sentient beings, and a skillful means for helping all beings cross the ocean of suffering to the shore of ever-present and never-lost liberation.”

Enlightenment:

“Enlightenment is the realization of oneness with all states and all stages that have evolved so far and that are in existence at any given time.”

• “Enlightenment is becoming one with all states and all stages at any given time. Thus, moving through the major states of consciousness (gross, subtle, causal, nondual) is a crucial aspect of Enlightenment.”
• “To be fully Enlightened means to be one with—to transcend and include—all states and stages, and that means: All states and stages have been made object of your subject, all I’s have been made me of the next I until there is only I-I, and the entire world is your object resting easily in the palm of your hand. You have dis-identified with everything and become one with everything, transcending and including the entire Kosmos.”
• “In both cases, the subject of one (state or stage) becomes the object of the subject of the next—the I of one state or stage becomes the me of the I of the next, until all states and stages are object of your subject, all I’s have become me and mine of the great I-I, the open Emptiness in which Spirit speaks, the nondual suchness of the Godhead of this and every moment, the Supreme Self that owns the Kosmos arising as One Taste.”

Horizontal Enlightenment (becoming one with all states: gross, subtle, causal, nondual):

• “If you have realized a horizontal Enlightenment—if you have made all gross, subtle, and causal states the object of your Witness—that is, so to speak, half of Enlightenment.”

Vertical Enlightenment (becoming one with all stages at any given time in history):

• “If your vertical development is only at, say, orange, then you are one with all of the stages up to orange (you have already transcended and included magenta, red, amber, and orange), but there lie ahead of you, or above you, the structures of green and teal and turquoise and indigo and violet. . . . Those are actual structures of the Kosmos that exist at this time in history but that you have not yet traversed, that you have not yet become one with (or not yet transcended and included), and thus there are aspects of the universe itself that you simply have not yet become one with. Those structures (in this case, from green to violet) are rather literally ‘over my head,’ and if my development does not yet include those Kosmic structures, those levels of consciousness, those layers of Spirit’s own emanation, then I am not truly one with all of Spirit’s manifestations at this time in history—which are actually aspects of my own deepest Self—and thus I cannot claim to be fully Self-Realized.”

You May Also Enjoy:

• See all book summaries & book recommendations / reading list

• 🔒 Integral Psychology & Spirituality Synthesis: How to Develop Holistically (10+ Visuals)

• “Integral Psychology” by Ken Wilber (Book Summary)

• “A Brief History of Everything” by Ken Wilber (Book Summary)

• “A Theory of Everything” by Ken Wilber (Book Summary)

• “The Integral Vision” by Ken Wilber (Book Summary)

• 20 Tenets of Integral Theory: An Intro to the Philosophical Principles of Ken Wilber

• Human Development 101: What are Horizontal & Vertical Development?