[Royce]

Anyone familiar with this guy?

Some say "genious", some say "new age intelligent design theory". Which is it?

Any recommendations as to where to begin reading?

[Madness]

I used to say I was 70% Bakker, 30% Wilbur in my thought processes.

EDIT:

You should definitely look up the Kosmos Trilogy (and read what is available) and Grace and Grit, which makes me ball every fucking time.

[sciborg2]

I've heard good things, read a little but wasn't particularly interested in the message at the time.

I'm starting to lean back into indeterminism, that reality is a garbled mess, so I'm willing to see if Wilbur can make sense of it.

[sciborg2]

For Ken Wilber – An Artist’s Spiritual Friend

I first encountered Ken Wilber’s phenomenal philosophical genius while reading ReVision Journal some seventeen years ago. I marveled at how he modeled and brilliantly articulated the evolution of consciousness from slime to Godhead in writings on the Spectrum of Consciousness, the Atman Project and Up from Eden. The range and depth of his thinking, the clarity and originality of his insights, definately put Ken in another league. Maybe a league of one, the world’s greatest philosopher. Perhaps selfishly, I wondered what special insights he could bring to contemporary artists. Could he help us circumnavigate through bullshit art criticism and give us the swords of critical thinking that could slay the Jabberwocky of “flatland Modernism” and the Hydra of Post-Modernity, and could his philosophy help put Art on the track to real Spirit?

Around this time, back in 1981, my wife Allyson answered the telephone one day and said, “It’s Ken Wilber! He wants to talk to you.” A rush of excitement and a big gulp, “Uh hello?” I said, and Ken replied, “Hi, I really like your work and would love to see some more of it.” So we invited him to our loft studio in downtown Boston...

A: Ken, I’ve been talking with some artist friends who consider their art as their spiritual practice. I’ve been wondering to what degree we could consider art as a legitimate spiritual practice?

K: There are developmental stages to what I call the spectrum of consciousness — art can come from any of these stages. Piaget did psychological experiments with children and determined that there is a sequence to the unfolding of higher values. He showed that compassion and “fairness” is a quality not so present in a four year old child because they cannot project themselves into the role of the other–at around age seven the brain/mind has the capacity to exchange self for other. The human mind can potentially develop through emotional, rational, psychic and spiritual modes of awareness. The higher spiritual stages are also progressive and unfold with spiritual practice.

So art can express any of these stages or levels of awareness, from sensorimotor reflections of the world of matter, to the feelings and ideas of the ego-self, to the sociocentric or worldcentric self. But this is still not transformative spiritual art. A spiritual art must transform the artist and the viewer. In order for art to be transformative, it has to undo you.

[sciborg2]

Apparently this guy Visser was a big fan, but now doubts a lot of Wilber's ideas:

www.integralworld.net/visser15.html