In this episode 16 chapters
- Five States of Consciousness
Ken recaps the integral framework and lays out the five major states found across contemplative traditions: gross, subtle, causal, turiya (the witness), and turiyatita (non-dual unity).
- Original Sin as Self-Contraction
The highest state is always already present, which is why the mystics speak in paradoxes.
- Spirit Plays Checkers With Itself
To manifest a world, spirit has to forget itself, the way you would have to forget your own moves to play checkers against yourself.
- The Catch-22 of Enlightenment
Seeking enlightenment assumes you lack it, which pushes it away, yet without any training you stay an ignoramus.
- Structures and States
Ken contrasts growing up through the six to eight structure-stages of spiritual intelligence with waking up through the four to five meditative states.
- From Dust to Shakespeare
Awakening is the summum bonum because it answers the mystery of why anything exists at all.
- Enlightened but Not Grown Up
Because waking up and growing up are relatively independent, fully awakened teachers can still be sexist, authoritarian, or predatory.
- The Seer That Cannot Be Seen
Pointing-out instructions for the witness: describe yourself, then notice the self doing the describing.
- Before Abraham Was, I Am
The witness lives only in the timeless now, which is eternity.
- On Having No Head
Using an object-focus exercise and Douglas Harding's headless way, Ken guides listeners to feel the looker dissolve until the room arises inside them.
- The Loving Witness
Christianity's distinctive gift is love, the emotional side of oneness.
- The Total Painting of All That Is
At the level of ultimate truth everything, Mother Teresa and Hitler alike, arises from the same ground and has to be accepted first.
- Unique Self, Unique Suchness
Ken explains how the one true Self is also uniquely yours through each person's perspective.
- Ego to Self to Suchness
Ken summarizes the path: disidentify from the seen self, rest as the effortless witness that refuses nothing, then let the looker dissolve into one taste.
- Spirit Chose to Dream
The gateless gate is both there and not there.
- States Are Free, Structures Are Earned
Unity consciousness can be experienced at any stage of growing up, so how inclusive your oneness and love are depends on growth.
Become a member to access the full episode
Start building your big picture mind & support the global emergence of Integral consciousness
“Integral Life is the most important and globally-relevant platform for the leading edge of Integral consciousness evolution”
– Eugene P.
Ken Wilber offers a guided tour through the layers of the Christian mystical experience, pointing the way toward the innermost heart of Christ Consciousness.
The unique teachings of Jesus Christ can help us become a living conduit of love — a love that is at once radically transcendent and immediately immanent; a love that itself reflects the sacred union of heaven and earth. This, after all, was one of Jesus Christ’s most important messages to humanity: that we are all of two natures, both fully human and fully divine.
As a mountain cuts into the sky without ever actually touching the sky, and the heavens embrace the earth without ever touching the earth, Jesus understood that only love can possibly bridge the immeasurable gap between the two — that only within God’s most sacred heart can both our natures be brought into phase with each other. In this sense, Jesus Christ was one of the most extraordinary spiritual teachers the world has ever seen, having found a direct path to the majesty of God’s love, and inviting us all to follow.
So what does following Christ really mean?
For many, following is as simple as naming Jesus as the world’s one and only true savior, adopting Him as some sort of mythic messiah to watch over our lives and rescue us from sin. For others, following is as simple as separating the man from the myth, and recognizing Jesus as one of the world’s greatest forerunners of humanistic morality. And for others still, following is as simple as asking oneself “what would Jesus do?” on a regular basis, treating other people with a kindness and respect that stems from an implicit understanding of the inherent goodness of mankind.
These are all perfectly valid ways of interpreting Jesus Christ’s role in our lives, perfectly appropriate for various stages of spiritual and psychological growth. All these interpretations light us up in different ways. But to some they are also incomplete, insofar as they each treat Jesus Christ as an object of awareness, existing somewhere in the stream of time outside of our own consciousness — Jesus the disembodied messiah, Jesus the historical personage, Jesus the proto-hippie. To truly follow Christ is not to merely walk behind Him as a sheep to a shepherd, but to follow Him as we follow our hearts and our dreams — following Christ by stepping into Christ; following Christ by becoming Christ.
We should consider taking the much more difficult road of actually subjectifying ourselves with Jesus Christ, inhabiting Christ consciousness in a direct and immediate way and experiencing for ourselves the mysterious union of earth and heaven, of time and eternity, and of humanity and divinity that Jesus Himself embodied. Not to be free of suffering, not to escape suffering — but to turn toward suffering, to face suffering with unshakable courage, to contain the world’s suffering within yourself by expanding your love until entire galaxies drift effortlessly within your perfectly broken heart.
Here is where we return to the heart of the Christian Tradition, the secret Holiest of Holies at the core of the religion, the Tootsie Roll center of the celestial Tootsie Pop. It is no longer enough to accept salvation as hearsay. We must taste it for ourselves, be it for ourselves, and ultimately find the Kingdom of Heaven within ourselves — the infinite stillness within our hearts that Jesus Christ told us we would find, if we simply cared to look.
While we should always remain cautious as to which parts of Scripture we interpret as literal truth, there are some parts can only be taken literally, and none more so than the words of the apostle Paul: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
Written by Corey deVos
Other pieces in this series
About Ken Wilber
Ken Wilber is a preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development. He is an internationally acknowledged leader, founder of Integral Institute, and co-founder of Integral Life. Ken is the originator of arguably the first truly comprehensive or integrative world philosophy, aptly named “Integral Theory”.
