The cartography of inner space which includes the biographical, perinatal and transpersonal levels throws interesting light on the present confusion in the world of depth psychotherapy and the conflicts among its various schools. While in its totality such a cartography resembles none of the existing approaches, its various levels can be described quite adequately in terms of various modern psychological systems or ancient spiritual philosophies. I observed fairly early in my psychedelic research that an average patient during psycholytic therapy with LSD tends to move from a Freudian stage to a Rankian-Reichian-existentialist stage, and then to the Jungian stage (Grof 1970). The names of these stages reflect the fact that the corresponding conceptual systems seemed to be the best available frameworks for describing the phenomena observed in these consecutive periods of therapy. It also became obvious that no Western psychotherapeutic system was adequate to describe certain phenomena occurring in advanced stages of therapy or levels of psychedelic experience. Here, one had to resort to the ancient and Oriental spiritual philosophies, such as Vedanta, different systems of yoga, Kashmir Shaivism Mahayana Buddhism, Vajrayana, Taoism, or Sufism. It became altogether clear that the entire spectrum of human experience cannot be described by a single psychological system and that each major level of the evolution of consciousness requires an entirely different explanatory framework.
The same idea was independently developed by Ken Wilber and presented in a most articulate and well-documented form in Spectrum of Consciousness (1977), The Atman Project (1980), and Up From Eden (1981). Wilber’s concept of spectrum psychology involves a model of consciousness that integrates the insights of major Western schools of psychology with the basic principles of what can be called “perennial psychology”—an understanding of human consciousness that expresses the basic insights of “perennial philosophy” in a psychological language. According to Wilber, the great diversity of psychological and psychotherapeutic schools reflects not so much interpretation of, and opinion about, differences in the same set of problems or differences in methodology, as a real difference in the levels of the spectrum of consciousness to which they have adapted themselves. The major mistake of these discrepant schools is that each tends to generalize its approach and apply it to the entire spectrum, whereas it is appropriate only for a particular level. Each of the major approaches of Western psychotherapy is thus more or less “correct” when addressing its own level and grossly distorting when applied inappropriately to other bands. A truly encompassing and integrated psychology of the future will make use of the complementary insights offered by each school of psychology.
The key notion of Wilber’s model of the spectrum of consciousness is the insight of perennial philosophy that human personality is a multilevel manifestation of a single consciousness, the Universal Mind. Each level of the spectrum of consciousness that constitutes the multidimensional nature of a human being is characterized by a specific and easily recognizable sense of individual identity. This covers a wide range from the supreme identity of cosmic consciousness through several gradations or bands, to the drastically reduced and narrowed identification with egoic consciousness.
Since the publication of The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977), Wilber has revised, refined and further developed his model and applied it successfully to the development of individual human consciousness and human history. In The Atman Project (1980), he outlined a transpersonal view of both ontology and cosmology, integrating in a creative way many schools of Western psychology and systems of perennial philosophy. This encompassing vision covers the evolution of consciousness from the material world and the individual to Atman-Brahman, as well as the opposite movement from the absolute to the manifest worlds. The process of the evolution of consciousness, then, involves the outward arc, or movement from subconsciousness to self-consciousness, and the inward arc, or the progression from self-consciousness to superconsciousness. Wilber’s views on this subject and the concept of the Atman project are so important for the subject of this book that they deserve special notice.
Wilber’s description of the outward arc of consciousness evolution starts with the pleromatic stage, the undifferentiated state of consciousness of the newborn, which is timeless, spaceless, and objectless and does not know the distinction between self and the material world. The following uroboric stage, closely related to the alimentary functions, involves the first primitive and incomplete distinction between the subject and the material world. It coincides with the early oral period of libidinal development. The typhonic stage is characterized by the first full differentiation, which creates the organic or body-ego self, dominated by the pleasure principle and instinctual urges and discharges. This period includes the anal and phallic phase of libidinal development. The acquisition of language, and of mental and conceptual functions, marks the verbal-membership stage. Here the self differentiates from the body and emerges as a mental and verbal being. This process then continues into the mental-egoic stage associated with the development of linear, abstract, and conceptual thinking and identification with a self-concept. The ordinary personal development culminates in the centauric stage, a high-order integration of ego, body, persona, and shadow.
The level of the centaur is the highest level of consciousness acknowledged and taken seriously by Western mechanistic science.
Western psychiatrists and psychologists either deny the existence of any higher states, or use pathological labels for them. In the past, those individuals interested in knowledge of higher states of consciousness had to turn to the great sages and mystical schools of the East and West. In the last decade, transpersonal psychology has undertaken the complex task of integrating the wisdom of perennial philosophy and psychology with the conceptual frameworks of Western science. Ken Wilber’s work is a major accomplishment in this development.
Wilber’s model of consciousness evolution does not end with the centaur. He sees the centaur as a transitional form leading toward transpersonal realms of being that are as far beyond the ego-mind as the ego-mind is from the typhon. The first of these realms of consciousness evolution is the lower subtle level, which includes the astral-psychic domain. On this level consciousness, differentiating itself further from the mind and body, is able to transcend the ordinary capacities of the gross body-mind. Here belong the out-of-the-body experiences, occult phenomena, auras, astral travel, precognition, telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and related phenomena. The higher subtle level is the realm of genuine religious intuition, symbolic visions, perception of divine lights and sounds, higher presences, and archetypal forms.
Beyond the high subtle level lies the causal realm. Its lower level involves the supreme divine consciousness, the source of archetypal forms. In the higher causal realm, all forms are radically transcended and merge into the boundless radiance of Formless Consciousness. On the level of the ultimate unity, consciousness totally awakens to its original condition, which is also the suchness of all of existence—gross, subtle, and causal. At this point, the entire world process arises, moment to moment, as one’s own being, outside of and prior to which nothing exists. Forms are identical with the Void, and the ordinary and extraordinary, or the mundane and supernatural, are the same. This is the ultimate state toward which all cosmic evolution drives.
In Wilber’s model, cosmology involves a process that is the reverse of the above. It describes how phenomenal worlds are created from the original unity by progressive reduction and en-folding of higher structures into the lower. In this, Wilber follows exclusively the text of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Bardo Thödol, which describes the movements through the intermediate states, or bardos, at the time of death.
One of the most original contributions of Wilber’s work is his detection of essentially identical, or at least similar, principles and mechanisms behind the confusing diversity of the many stages of consciousness evolution and involution. His concepts of deep and surface structures of various levels of consciousness, translation versus transformation, different types of the unconscious (ground, archaic, submergent, embedded, and emergent), evolution and involution of consciousness, outward and inward arc, and disidentification versus dissociation, as well as redefinition of the terms “eros” and “thanatos,” will undoubtedly become standard elements of transpersonal psychology of the future.
However, most fundamental and revealing is Wilber’s concept of the Atman project. He succeeded in demonstrating most convincingly that the motivating force on all the levels of evolution (except that of the original unity of Atman itself), is a determined search by the individual for the original cosmic unity. Because of inherent restraints, this happens in ways that allow for only unsatisfactory compromises, which explains the failures of the project that lead to abandoning the levels involved and to transformation to the next stage. Each new higher-order level is another substitute, although closer to the Real, until the soul grounds itself in the superconscious all which it has desired all along.
Wilber applied the described model not only to individual development, but also to human history. In his book Up From Eden (1951), he offered nothing less than a drastic reformulation of both history and anthropology. Space prevents my doing justice to his unique contributions to transpersonal psychology, and the interested reader should resort to Wilber’s original books and papers. However, I shall outline briefly the areas in which my own work and the concepts I have described here differ from Wilber’s model in spite of otherwise far-reaching agreement.
Wilber has done extraordinary work successfully synthesizing seemingly disparate data from a vast variety of areas and disciplines. His knowledge of the literature is truly encyclopedic, his analytical mind is systematic and incisive, and the clarity of his logic remarkable. It is therefore somewhat surprising that he has not taken into consideration a vast amount of data from both ancient and modern sources—data suggesting the paramount psychological significance of prenatal experiences and the trauma of birth. In my opinion, knowledge of the perinatal dynamics is essential for any serious approach to such problems as religion, mysticism, rites of passage, shamanism, or psychosis. Wilber’s description of consciousness evolution begins with the undifferentiated pleromatic consciousness of the newborn and ends with the ultimate unity of the Absolute. His description of consciousness involution, following closely the Tibetan Book of the Dead, proceeds from the ultimate consciousness, the immaculate and luminous Dharmakaya, through the three bardo realms, to the moment of conception. The complexity of embryonic development and of the consecutive stages of biological birth receives no attention in this sophisticated system, which is elaborated in meticulous detail in all other areas.
Another major difference between my own observations and Wilber’s model involves the phenomenon of death. For Wilber, the concept of thanatos is associated with the transformation of consciousness from one level to the next. He equates dying with abandoning the exclusive identification with a particular structure of consciousness, which makes it possible to transcend that structure and move to the next level. He makes no distinction between dying to a developmental level and the experience associated with biological death. This approach is in sharp contrast with the observations from psychedelic therapy and other forms of deep experiential self-exploration, where memories of life-threatening events, including biological birth, represent a category of special significance.
This material clearly suggests that it is essential to distinguish the process of transition from one developmental stage to another from the birth trauma and other events that endanger the survival of the organism. The latter experiences are of a different logical type and are in a meta-position in relation to the processes that Wilber includes under the description of thanatos. They endanger the existence of the organism as an individual entity without regard to the level of its development. Thus, a critical survival threat can occur during embryonic existence, in any stage of the birth process, or at any age, without regard to the level of consciousness evolution. A vital threat during prenatal existence or in the process of childbirth actually seems to be instrumental in creating a sense of separateness and isolation, rather than destroying it, as Wilber suggests.5
In my opinion, without a genuine appreciation of the paramount significance of birth and death, the understanding of human nature is bound to be incomplete and unsatisfactory. The integration of these elements would give Wilber’s model more logical consistency and greater pragmatic power. Without this, his model cannot account for important clinical data, and his description of the therapeutic implications of his model will remain the least convincing part of his work for clinicians used to dealing with the practical problems of psychopathology.
Finally, I should mention Wilber’s emphasis on linearity and on the radical difference between prephenomena and transphenomena (prepersonal versus transpersonal, or preegoic versus postegoic). As much as I agree with him in principle, the absoluteness of his statements seems to me too extreme. The psyche has a multidimensional, holographic nature, and using a linear model to describe it will produce distortions and inaccuracies. This will be a serious problem for each description of the psyche that is limited to rational and verbal means.
My own observations suggest that, as consciousness evolution proceeds from the centauric to the subtle realms and beyond, it does not follow a linear trajectory, but in a sense enfolds into itself. In this process, the individual returns to earlier stages of development, but evaluates them from the point of view of a mature adult. At the same time, he or she becomes consciously aware of certain aspects and qualities of these stages that were implicit, but unrecognized when confronted in the context of linear evolution. Thus, the distinction between pre- and trans- has a paradoxical nature; they are neither identical, nor are they completely different from each other.
When this understanding is then applied to the problems of psychopathology, the distinction between evolutionary and pathological states may lie more in the context, the style of approaching them and the ability to integrate them into everyday life than in the intrinsic nature of the experiences involved. Detailed discussion of the above issues and some other questions that Wilber’s exciting and inspiring work raises must await a special presentation.