Alex Grey and Ken Wilber take us on a breathtaking journey through five of Alex’s paintings — Gaia, Net of Being, Cosmic Christ, Light Walker, and Theologue — offering an intimate glimpse into the creative process, the nature of reality, and the unique capacity art possesses to awaken the viewer with a single glance.

In Praise of Alex Grey and Ken Wilber

In our media saturated world it is easy to waffle between two poles of evaluative numbness: excessive and uncritical praise, like that heaped on a celebrity; and the ennui of deadened indifference or scorn, hiding a secreted sense of one’s superiority.

It sometimes takes more than a moment of reflection to awaken from this collective slumber.

But it’s time to wake up.

For Alex Grey and Ken Wilber warrant our wide-eyed praise and appreciation.

Alex Grey might be the most significant artist alive. In a world gone postmodern, bereft of meaning and value, cut loose on a sea of irony and indifference, Alex is taking a stunning stand: there is a God, there is Spirit, there is a transcendental Ground and Goal of human development and unfolding. Higher realities are available to us, is the message of Alex Grey’s art… He has set himself the extraordinary task of depicting, in art, these higher truths and here encourages all artists to find their own unique means of serving art’s abiding mission.Ken Wilber

Alex: No contemporary visual artist has done more to explore and enact in his or her art the radiant and luminous trans-lineage worldspaces of what is actually coming to be.

Ken: No contemporary theoretic writer has done more to research and craft with such patience and care psychoactive maps of the trans-lineage worldspaces of what is actually coming to be.

Prior to Alex and Ken (and their generation) the collective sense of any sort of trans-lineage spirituality was murky. After them, and in no small way due to their efforts, this Way is now Cleared for those of us who come after.

Both are courageous pioneers of the visual and verbal disclosures of an emergent spirituality proper to our ever striving, evolving, and timelessly-at-peace Unique and True Selves. The great postmodern American artist Jasper Johns concluded his obituary for Marcel Duchamp in saying:

“He has changed the condition of being here [as an artist].”¹

We can say the same of Alex and Ken about what it can mean to be a spiritual realizer today.

A deep bow of gratitude to these two blessed souls – clear-sighted praise.

Which brings us to the crux—our inviting you to engage these artworks and the audio discussions about them with beginner’s eye and mind.

Written by Michael Schwartz
November 2011

¹ Jasper John, “Marcel Duchamp [1887-1968],” in Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, new edition, eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, 2003, p. 761 (originally: Artforum, November 1968, p. 6).