Aqalibrium

'If You Meet Wilber on the Road, Kill Him'

On the Importance ofIndependent Integral Research Frank Visser "Integral World" Reading Room

Evolutionary theory
In 1996 Wilber published his A Brief History of Everything, a popular treatment of his magnum opus Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, which had appeared just a year before. This massive tome was sub-titled "The Spirit of Evolution", suggesting that Wilber had discovered something that was at the core of the evolutionary process...

Wilber is content to give a sketchy caricature of the problem, use emotive language to persuade the reader that there's nothing of value to be expected here from science, and move on to his more spiritualized musings. Favorite among these is Wilber's declaration that "there's an Eros to the Kosmos", a force that drives us towards higher and higher states of being and complexity...

Postmodernism
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality was specifically written by Wilber to counter the prevailing postmodernist atmosphere in the academic world, which — in Wilber's version — declares everything of relative and equal value, except personal agendas and power plays. (More on that later)....

Meditation Research
Meditation is central to Wilber's view of spirituality, and on many occasions he claims that meditation can speed up your own development...

One should realize that Wilber is not a researcher himself, he deals with theories, not facts. When it comes to reporting about research, he rarely goes into the intricacies of empirical research...