Blog — June, 2006

From Jim Chamberlain's Wilber On Evolution:

Wilber adds the word "clearly" to the last sentence [of a quote from Ernst Mayr's book What Evolution Is] and he says it with great emphasis, but it does not appear in the book.

From Wilber's Take the Visser Site as Alternatives to KW, But Never as the Views of KW, after Chamberlain's above claim had been shown to be incorrect:

[S]cholars in particular should accept no statements on the Visser site about what my position is; you can categorically ignore assertions about what I believe or don't believe that are posted on that site. There is simply no responsible editorial control, integrity, or accountability....

So again, you can take the papers and essays that are posted on that site as statements about what their authors mean, and what they think, and alternative viewpoints they would like to propose—and then that's just fine. But as for my views, I am saying that categorically the posts at that site are not to be trusted or accepted in any academic discourse as representing my actual views. They lie over there, so be careful. I'm sorry, but the site is so sleazy, one critic [actually, one of kw's daft integral friends] called it the equivalent of the Penthouse Letters to the editor....

I'm warning scholars to stay away from this when it comes to academic discussions of my work.

From Chamberlain's subsequent apology for his error:

I'm adding this parenthetical note several days after writing and posting this to the Ken Wilber Forum, from where Frank Visser copied it to his Integral World website. Thanks to Ken Wilber's blog post ... where he comments on this post, I relooked at my copy of Mayr's book and I see that I was mistaken when I said that Mayr's did not say "clearly." Mayr said "clearly" and Wilber quoted him accurately and I made a stupid mistake by stating otherwise. For that I apologize to Ken. In his blog post, Wilber notes that taped discussions at II "are NOT to be taken as any discussant's actual or academic views, because as everybody knows, in conversations you don't always state your nuanced views. There can be hyperbole, over-generalization, simplification, and sometimes plain forgetting." That's obviously the case, just as it is the case when I post to the Ken Wilber Forum, and as I said, that's where Frank copied this post from. It's just a post, but that doesn't excuse my stupid mistake, and again I apologize.

Not to at all excuse Chamberlain's rather mind-boggling error, but: the "editorial integrity" with which Wilber's own work has been evaluated by his publisher/friend Samuel Bercholz at Shambhala, for one, didn't stop his presentation of evolutionary biology in A Brief History of Everything from being, in Robert Carroll's words, "a few paragraphs of half-truths and lies." Nor did it stop Wilber from ridiculously misrepresenting David Bohm's ideas in his embarrassingly amateurish The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes, or from his wildly hyperbolic, unprovoked ranting against Bohm in The Eye of Spirit. If what Chamberlain has done is to "lie" rather than just make a "stupid mistake," then Wilber is subject to exactly the same charge, many times over, for his numerous provable fabrications of purported "facts."

Wouldn't it be nice to see kw exhibiting the same academic integrity/competence which he (validly) demands from others, and intelligently responding to relevant details on which he has demonstrably screwed up (whether as "lies" or as "simple" professional incompetence), rather than blanket-dismissing them as being mere "gotchas" in the "tabloid journalism" of his critics? Really, he himself could hardly be more guilty than he already is of the very same misrepresentations that he finds in Chamberlain's piece.

Pot. Kettle. Wilber.

Chamberlain, though, at least had the decency to apologize for his inexcusable "stupid mistake." Where is the same integrity in kw when he gets caught provably fabricating information in an attempt to either support his own half-baked notions or discredit the work of his "competitors"? (As he did with Bohm, for example.)

At any rate, good to see that Wilber is at least no longer foolishly quoting Michael Behe in favor of his own unscientific view of evolution, and that his followers are using Amazon's "search inside this book" feature to support their arguments. 'Cause you know who they learned that from. :)

Of course, that anyone (such as kw) who claims to follow developments in evolutionary biology "religiously" could ever have viewed Behe's work complimentarily is itself mind-boggling. Professional competence it ain't.

And as to Wilber's pretenses at being a "scholar," Matthew Dallman has already noted that no such term can rightly be applied to the "hopelessly new age" quasi-guru: "He may have footnotes galore, but he is no scholar. He is a speculator who coopts the insights of others.... He is the parasite, not his critics, and not the thinkers/scholars whose shoulders he wants to stand on. As demonstrated by this 'essay,' this man's ideas are sick, his intentions laughably irrelevant. Seeing some of his endorsed defenders in their ghastly display of non-thinking, it is clear that he infects the thoughts and words of others like a virus ... baldly embodying all that he criticizes in others." Sad, but true.

P.S. It's actually Wilber's "novel" Boomeritis that's the philosophical and literary equivalent of Penthouse Letters to the Editor. All others are just pale imitations.

Open Integral.

Or, if the summer weather (in the northern hemisphere, at least) has got you thinking of golf: the Integral Open.

The Bald Quasi-Guru, giving his best, embarrassingly limping arguments as to why his Integral Institute is supposedly "not a cult":

Based on a year-long study of his and many other experiences, a study supported by the Center for the Study of New Religious Movements in Berkeley, we arrived at this 3-variable, 8-box grid, which has continued to be highly accurate in spotting and predicting cultic behavior, because it is based, not on making judgments like "it doesn't allow criticism" (which is meaningless), but rather on several nonjudgmental variables that have been found empirically to be associated with behavior that injures groups and individuals. (This stops people who don't like a movement from labeling it cultic by coming up with checklists of things they don't like, which are just tautological.) It was, and is indeed, a landmark publication.

[Well, a lot has happened in twenty years in the cult-studies field and elsewhere; what was (wrongly) regarded as being insightful then, hasn't necessarily stood the test of time—you may have seen that pattern before with Wilber's writings. Who in the cult-studies field actually uses the ideas in kw's co-written Spiritual Choices today? No one that I'm aware of; I've never even seen the book cited, and have read it only because it's part of kw's "canon." (I've edited this significantly from its initial posting, as I did the first draft of this area just from the quoted excerpt from kw's blog, which had been emailed to me, without going to the "primary source" myself. My bad. But if you were several hours late for work, you'd be prone to taking shortcuts too.)]

I am glad to report that both the structure and beliefs of Integral Institute fall in the box (out of 8 boxes) that, in the past, has had the lowest number of cultic behaviors.

I-I is not charismatic [heh, but you can be just as tightly bound by infallible teachings as by a charismatic leader; just ask any Catholic]; its teachings are not based on your relation to a person but on your relation to an idea [heh, but see the above], namely AQAL. If you also happen to like or love me, I very much appreciate it, but that's not what we do. We do not teach relationships to me, but rather how to learn, use, criticize [ha!], and apply AQAL. And it's important to realize that AQAL is simply one version of integral. There are all sorts of other integral philosophies, integral forums, and arenas where somebody can play if they reject our approach, and I support the existence of those other forums and always have.

Yes, you're welcome to go and "play" with some other guru or organization if you can't take the heat here, or if you're simply too unevolved to understand the Great Work we're doing. "So long, Failure. You never even existed here." Ask Matthew Dallman: "I was the first composer featured on that site, but any reference to me was removed after I resigned from IU."

And for Khrist's sake, don't I already have a whole chapter in STG titled "Spiritual Choices"?! What does Old Baldy think that refers to?!! The "8 boxes" of "Wilber and friend" have "continued to be highly accurate in spotting and predicting cultic behavior"? Not a chance. From STG, as published well over a year ago:

Incredibly, most of the "enlightened" individuals and ashrams included herein would have been considered to fall close to the "safest" of the categories in the typologies of Dick Anthony (1987), et al., via the Spiritual Choices book. That is, nearly all of the spiritual teachers we have met thus far (not including the leaders of the Hare Krishnas, Moonies, or Jim Jones) were:

• Monistic rather than dualistic—i.e., working toward realizing a state of inherent conscious oneness with all things, as opposed to placing God as inexorably separate from creation and approachable only through a unique savior such as Jesus, with the failure to follow the appropriate savior leading to eternal damnation (exceptions: none)
  
  
• Multilevel—i.e., having a "distinct hierarchy of spiritual authority," in gnosis versus teachings versus interpretations (unilevel exceptions, which "confuse real and pseudo-transcendence of mundane consciousness," include Findhorn, Scientology, Rajneesh and TM [notwithstanding that the Maharishi's teachings themselves are rooted in the Vedas]), and
  
  
• Non-charismatic—i.e., emphasizing techniques of spiritual transformation (e.g., meditation), rather than relying on a personal relationship between disciple and teacher as the means of evolution/enlightenment of the former (exceptions: Ramakrishna, Meher Baba, Neem Karoli Baba, Adi Da, Muktananda, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, Jetsunma, Cohen, and Sai Baba and Chinmoy to lesser degrees)

Trungpa, Satchidananda and Zen Buddhism were all explicitly placed in Anthony's "safest" category—of "multilevel, technical monism." In his second-safest grouping ("multilevel, charismatic monism") we find Meher Baba, Neem Karoli Baba, Muktananda, Chinmoy and Adi Da.

If those are "safe" spiritual leaders and communities, though, one shudders to think what "dangerous" ones might look like. One's jaw drops further to find that, as late as 2003, Wilber has still been recommending Spiritual Choices to others as a means of distinguishing "safe" groups from potentially "problematic" ones. That such recommendations are coming years after the central thesis (as documented above) of the text has been wholly discredited in practice, is astounding.

Fooled by the arguments of Anthony, et al., I myself had endorsed Spiritual Choices at one point in a previous work. Obviously, however, my opinion of that book and of its authors' ideas has matured significantly since then. Indeed, by this point I very much regret that previous naïvete on my part, particularly when it is coupled with ideas such as the following, from the same group of "experts":

[Tom] Robbins and [Dick] Anthony's own contribution [to In Gods We Trust (1982)] includes a superb introduction—perhaps the best single chapter in the anthology; a complete and devastating critique of the brainwashing model; and an insightful report on the Meher Baba community (Wilber, 1983b).

The relevant meager, twelve-page, utterly simplistic chapter on brainwashing, however, is anything but a "complete" critique, much less a "devastating" one. Whatever one may think of the brainwashing and mind-control debate, how could a five-thousand word treatment of that complex subject possibly be "complete"? Entire books have been written from both sides of the controversy without exhausting it; entire Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication designations exist for the subject! Even if the short paper in question were the greatest ever written, it could not possibly be "complete"!

For myself, I have found the chapter in question to be utterly unimpressive. Indeed, it shows near-zero understanding of the psychological factors influencing one's "voluntary joining," and later difficulty in leaving, such environments. There is nothing whatsoever "devastating" about the text, whether one agrees or disagrees with Anthony's overall perspective.

By stark contrast, for a genuinely intelligent and insightful discussion of the brainwashing and mind-control question, consult Chapters 2 and 3 of Michael Langone's (1995) anthology, Recovery from Cults. Chapter 13 of the same book offers many chilling examples of previously healthy persons suffering mental breakdowns as an alleged result of various, unspecified, large group awareness training sessions. Child abuse in so-called cults is covered disturbingly well in its Chapter 17.

For a revealing example of Anthony's own wilber-esque attempts at critiquing other scholars' ideas, see Zablocki (2001).

If Wilber can't even intelligently evaluate Andrew Cohen's community, well after the publication of both Mother Of God and Enlightenment Blues, not to mention the WHAT Enlightenment??! blog, is it any surprise that he can't/won't see his own cult-leader behaviors in their real light?

And talk about tautologies—Wilber using his own past theorizings to "prove" that his current community is okay! As if those previous theorizings (by himself and the hopeless "cult-apologist" Dick Anthony) weren't created from within exactly the same psychological blinders which have produced his current community!

If "it doesn't allow criticism" is a meaningless criterion, then how about "it doesn't allow persons to make competent, thorough and valid criticisms of its leaders' teachings or character, which the leaders cannot refute, while still permitting the questioners to remain members in good standing of the community"?

Someone really needs to get Rick Ross (info@rickross.com) to add a "Wilber, Ken" listing to his database. Since none of this stuff with kw is in the newspapers, he probably won't be aware of it—there's no mention of Wilber in his June Cult News blog, for example. (I don't think I'm the right person to make that suggestion to Ross, simply for it looking too self-promotional.) I just let Steven Hassan know, though, as he and I have had some contact in that past.

Ironically, Hassan has also had contact with kw: Hassan visited The Bald One a number of years ago, to try to get him to see the reported dangers in Adi Da's community, for example. Not a dent in that fifty-something chrome dome, though—the man just doesn't get it.

Brad Reynolds sent this excerpt from his book Where's Wilber At? Ken Wilber's Integral Vision in the New Millennium (Paragon House, 2006) by Brad Reynolds (475 words [pages??]), where he attempts something of a neutral impartiality....

I laughed out loud when I read that. Brad Reynolds attempting impartiality with regard to the work of his "Manjushri"? Pull the other one!

KW:

After part 1 was up (and before part 2 was put up), one individual posted statements urging everybody to contact some of the universities that I-I is in partnership with, telling them that they should re-consider whether that is the kind of partnership they wanted.

I wasn't the person explicitly advocating that course of action; but I do fully support the idea.

KW again:

But notice this. Ordinarily you would tell somebody that their capacity to love is wonderful, something to be nurtured and increased. The more they love, the better. EXCEPT if they love me. If they feel any sort of love for me and say so, then they are a cultic idiot. So apparently if anybody loves me, they are sick.

If, after becoming aware of Meyerhoff's and my own work (etc.) in exposing kw for the manipulative fool that he is, you still don't get what kw is up to, well, then yes, I can't see any other conclusion than that there must be powerful factors in your own psychology blinding you to that reality—and those are indeed some of the same factors which get people into, and life-long stuck in, even the worst recognized cults. And if, after having had it demonstrated to you that a person's "philosophy" is filled with "half-truths and lies," and that even with those gross and inexcusable violations of truth it cannot manage to be self-consistent, you still continue to accept that worldview as being valid ... well, in any other field of knowledge you wouldn't be regarded as thinking clearly or competently, that's for sure.

Nevertheless, those of us who have been through cults ourselves don't generally refer to other people, who in the absence of proper debunking of the leaders may simply be as gullible as we once were, as being "cultic idiots." (In the cult-studies field, with its emphasis on coercive persuasive, a.k.a. "brainwashing," they would never refer to followers in that way.) I have indeed used the phrase "integral idiots" to describe followers of Wilber who go out intent on teaching (or censoring) me, for example, without having first done their research; hell, I've even referred to the same people as "dumb FOKs" (Fans of Ken). But that is very different from viewing anyone as being a "cultic idiot" simply for "loving" Wilber.

If you can "love" a raging, dishonest and/or incompetent narcissist, who by all believable reports will "love" you only so long as you are useful to him, more power to you. But even then, don't get suckered into his "theory," because as soon as you go back to primary sources to verify its claims, it all falls apart, and the dishonesties and/or professional incompetence of its author become obvious for anyone with eyes to see. And if, even after that, you continue to believe that the theories are doing more good than harm in the world, you are indeed behaving as any cultic follower would.

By all means "love the sinner" if you can. But far too many of the individuals who have recently been fawningly expressing their "love" for kw are, I think, also "loving the sin," i.e., lapping up the bullshit and cultic manipulation in which Wilber has recently been overtly indulging, and correspondingly being utterly unwilling or unable to evaluate that critically, and see it for what it really is. And yes, overall that is extremely cultic behavior, both on the part of the leader and his followers.

As anyone familiar with Wilber's work knows, the context in which such fawning "love" is expressed matters immensely; kw "skillfully" omits that fact from his above "analysis." The problem is not that you "love" him and openly express that sentiment in spite of his glaring character flaws and the near-worthlessness of his "theories." Rather, the worrisome thing is how you feel the need to gushingly express how you were moved to tears by his great and "compassionate" teaching methods in the very midst of being blatantly manipulated, with that unsettling reaction being presented as proof of your own "second-tier," "saved" status in the unquestioning community. And yes, when "love" is expressed in that context it is indeed disturbingly cultic.

All of that is a far cry from Wilber's simplistic and sadly manipulative framing of the issue as being "if anybody loves me, they are sick." But then, kw didn't get to where he is today by paying attention to nuances, did he?

One of the thorniest issues is finding, and allowing, an integral space, an integral sanctuary. I spoke out to all who are looking for such, and invited them to join us.

... and all of that in the midst of "proving" that his "sanctuary" isn't a cult.

Not.

Hey, it's official: I exist.

Wiki ergo sum.

Thanks to M. Alan Kazlev for initially setting that page up. :)

I have taken the "Wilber meltdown" stuff from here, some of which I had previously tacked onto the end of the Integral Censorship appendix in STG, and created a new appendix from it:

Bald Narcissism: The Dis-Integration of Ken Wilber.

Hmm, I've just been informed that Wilber has recently applied to join the Zaadz online community. How appropriate:

Many of you know that we went into a private beta mode after we had an influx of people joining who were not aligned with our intention. In fact, we deleted about 1,500 of the 2,500 accounts on our site in February and then went into a private beta mode to ensure that the integrity of our oasis was preserved.

Although this wasn't an easy decision at the time and we've taken a fair amount of heat for the decision, I'm proud of the fact we had the courage to slow down our growth and stand for our ideal.

Can't say why, but I've been really in the mood recently for reading some George Orwell.

From the Wikipedia entry for Narcissism:

While in regression, the person displays childish, immature behaviors. He feels that he is omnipotent, and misjudges his power and that of his opposition. He underestimates challenges facing him and pretends to be "Mr. Know-All." His sensitivity to the needs and emotions of others and his ability to empathize with them deteriorate sharply. He becomes intolerably haughty and arrogant, with sadistic and paranoid tendencies. Above all, he then seeks unconditional admiration, even when others with more objective views perceive that he does not deserve it. He is preoccupied with fantastic, magical thinking and daydreams. In this mode he tends to exploit others, to envy them, and to be explosive.

Egad, it matches Wilber point-by-point! From his recent childish blogging, to his misjudging of his cogent critics as "morons" compared to his own "brilliance," to his know-it-all nature, to his insensitive "forgiving" of others (and simultaneous failure to ask for forgiveness himself) when he's clearly the one in the wrong, to his haughtiness and arrogance, to his paranoid (i.e., disproportionate to reality) feelings of being loathed and condemned, to his obvious need for undeserved unconditional admiration, to his magical winds, and through to his manipulation and exploitation of others to ensure his own "greatness."

And to what may kw look forward, in his own "psychological development"?

A personality disorder arises only when repeated attacks on the obstacle continue to fail—especially if this recurrent failure happens during the formative stages (0-6 years of age). The contrast between the fantastic world (temporarily) occupied by the individual and the real world in which he keeps being frustrated (the grandiosity gap) is too acute to countenance for long. The dissonance gives rise to the unconscious "decision" to go on living in the world of fantasy, grandiosity and entitlement.

Of course, Wilber is blessed to not have to retreat into complete fantasy in order to live all that out: He's already created the "reality" of the Integral Institute in which to act out his delusions of greatness and entitlement (to unconditional admiration, etc.).

Len Oakes wrote an entire book (Prophetic Charisma) on the typically narcissistic personality structure of cult leaders. What we're seeing with Wilber these days is just par for the course and would, as others have noted, have happened eventually regardless of the recent "critical" provocation.

Fantastic addition to the analysis of kw's "card-playing":

Folks, outlining how and why this is classic cultic behavior is too elementary to even go into. Just pick up any book on the subject, or go read about the true root of all this: Adi Da....

In the end, Ken is trying to silence critics/outsiders by asking that they simply STOP, which is all he really wants at this point. He asks that they take a moratorium on judging others, on loathing and condemning him. Notice that none of this addresses anything of any real substance; it's just an attempt to bring it to an end, with him still on top as the teacher. He is the game-master, after all. In real academic and/or spiritual circles (or within an adult community) such cards are considered completely and totally out of bounds. They only work in guru and cultic environments. Ken, PLEASE, you are the one who needs to STOP.

Is there anyone at II with the courage to tell him this?....

The herd mentality that Wilber should concern himself with is the herd mentality he encourages in his young followers, the groupthink, the in-group versus out-group dynamic, the loading of the language with jargon and psychobabble, the arrogance, narcissism, and grandiosity.

Truly wonderful that all of that cultic behavior is becoming so clear, through kw's own actions, that only people in complete denial could fail to see it.

Personally, I have so many other interests (in I.T., music composition and performance, digital animation, etc.) that I really would prefer to not have to sink any more of my life into "condemning" such an utter fool as Wilber. It's just that he won't stop yapping on his cult-leadership trip and in spreading his near-worthless "philosophy" like the integral horse-manure it is. And as long as he keeps talking and writing, history has shown that he'll keep bullshitting through his integral teeth.

Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy

—Crash Test Dummies, Superman's Song

More of the integral wisdom of "Solomon":

I want to be hated for the real me! I am perfectly capable of generating massive irritation all by myself—I don't need your shadow to do it. So please do me the honor of hating the real me!

Yes, that's precisely what I've been doing. Though the "hating" thing is still an open question.

Okay, jokes aside: Let's forgive and forget the past, and start afresh. And let's see who honestly wishes to deal with this, and who wants to continue gun-fighting their own shadows....

Both sides could use a little confession, repentance, and forgiveness. I can say that, right here and now, I fully forgive any and all hurt that has been inflicted on me by unfair and unwarranted accusations, criticisms, and condemnations. With full heart, I sincerely mean that.

Okay, my turn to be slack-jawed. What the fuck is that?? The provably dishonest and/or professionally incompetent Wilber "forgives" his critics?!? Particularly the ones whose criticism is clearly warranted and inarguably valid but which he can only deal with by absurdly pretending, in his own edition of Jean Houston's co-authored Mind Games, that he is being misunderstood by first-tier "morons" who have treated him unfairly? Good Lord. And this man is the president of a freakin' university? He shouldn't even be allowed on campus.

And, how generous of the Bald Fool to offer his "forgiveness" to others ... without asking, nay begging, for the same from them! Integral narcissism, in spades. (I keep thinking of Salieri, at the end of Amadeus, blessing others in his newfound role as a patron saint of mediocrity.)

I really wish kw were joking about all that: The degree to which the Integral Emperor has become detached from reality, here, is truly astonishing. The eleventh of the integral Bullshit-Herding Pictures: Door ajar. Light extinguished on porch. Nobody home.

Helen Titchen Beeth on kw:

Try as I might, having seen you and sat in your aura, (I was at the very first ITP - as it was then - seminar in December 2004 - asked you a question about Europe) and heard your voice, I just have not been able to accept all the outraged finer feelings expressed on the London Integral list....

Remember back when kw was in the habit of ejaculating all over himself in endorsing Adi Da? He, too, had experienced only a few darshans or the like in the presence of Da Avatar. He's learned nothing since then, has he? Except to pull the same tricks himself, in presenting an appropriate "public face" when potential converts are watching.

Andrew Cohen will surely end up as one of Wilber's few loyal friends when all is said and done—their reported dysfunctionalities are far too similar for them to not stand side-by-side against the evil, projecting, "green" world, until the end. "Honor among thieves," etc. Why, even the current issue of What Is Enlightenment? magazine, presciently, is largely devoted to the life's work and Great Insights of their "favorite integral prophet."

You knew it was just a matter of time until kw got anointed as a "prophet," right?

And look: AC himself was recently honored as the recipient of the 2006 "Kashi Humanitarian Award," for his "twenty years of tireless dedication to the evolution of consciousness and culture." Just from the name of that accolade, though, you could guess that it was bestowed by Ram Dass' former guru, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, the professed incarnation of the Divine Mother. Past winners of the same award include "Dr." Jean Houston.

Small world, huh? "You scratch my sushumna, I'll scratch yours," etc.

Anyway, if you're gonna bluff your way through an entire career, making unsupportable claims which cannot stand up to even the most minimal research and questioning, as kw has done, it's not gonna be pretty when people holding real aces call your bluff, and force you to lay your cards on the table for the whole world to see.

Frank Visser has posted a truly excellent "companion article" to his response to kw. From Sorry, It's Just Over Your Head.

I read many responses to Wilber's part I, and the only person who speaks as if he might actually feel anything remotely like actual "hate" toward Wilber is Geoffrey Falk, and I think that calling Falk "hateful" would require us to read more into Falk's way of expressing himself than may be there. But let's say for sake of argument that Falk hates Wilber and II.

I can't quarrel with any of that. But, of course, we should always leave open the possibility that I, too, have been deliberately trying to "push the buttons" of Ken and his followers, shouldn't we? :) You know, in addition to obviously enjoying saucily "calling a spade a spade" when it comes to leaders and followers with whom one sadly cannot reason, so one might as well (generally justifiably) insult them (after having first proved them to be in the wrong) and hope that something gets through in all that.

So, love or hate the hatred (or "skillful love"?) with which I express myself, it makes no difference to the validity of the criticisms I've made of kw's ideas (and character). And really, without those solid critiques, which the Wilberian world cannot counter even were they disposed to responding cogently rather than reflexively (i.e., the knee-jerk "you're green" thing), would "Integral Church Lady" (a.k.a. kw) have been pushed to his (very damaging to I-I's grandiose "mission" in the world) "divine meltdown"? Perhaps ... but perhaps not. (I don't want to take too much "credit," since Meyerhoff's outstanding work seems to be bothering kw much more than mine, at least by name.)

It is an open question as to whether or not I "hate the sinner" in any of my irreverent ("Eighth Deadly Sin") criticisms of our world's gurus and pandits. But I certainly "hate the sin," no question about that! Anyone who tells me half-truths or worse to try to get me to cave to his ideas, in religion or otherwise, has picked the wrong person to try to deceive. SRF was the first organization to find that out the hard way.

So, as the former/late Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once said, "the universe is unfolding more or less as it should." :)

On the logic of cultism at the Integral institutes:

Being integral is increasingly being defined as: 'agreeing with Ken Wilber.' This is the only critique being accepted within the movement. And basically it takes the form of: yes you are a genius, but wouldn't you consider that xxx. Such a form of self-denigrating critique is the only one acceptable, and it can only serve to strengthen the edifice and the influence of the master....

[Even without Firmage's money, and Don Beck's reinforcement of kw's narcissism] the totalising edifice and the particular personality of Wilber would in all likel[i]hood have evolved in this way eventually....

Can there be any hope for such a movement? In my opinion: none whatsoever. The point of no-return has long passed.

Ken Wilber is losing it:

[Wilber's rant and Boomeritis, plus, I would add, kw's telephone interviews as featured on Integral Naked] sounds like the expression of a man desperately in need of confirmation by the young, attempting to be 'cool,' but not quite knowing how to do it, and revealing his own immaturity in the process....

At one point in our lives, we may seek a system of systems that may put to rest of fears of paradoxes and contradictions, showing how different truth claims can nevertheless be all true at some higher level of integration. But at another point in your life, if you are not intellectually and spiritually lazy, you have to learn again to live with the uncertainty of knowledge, and then, frankly, any reliance of a total edifice a la Wilber becomes counterproductive.

Personally, I agree strongly with nearly all of the points made in both of those fine postings, and am very glad to see them back up and available, after the recent hacking of the site by "Dark Lord."

I hadn't looked at the WHAT enlightenment??! blog for quite some time. Imagine my "surprise":

Andrew Cohen's close friend and collaborator, Rabbi Marc Gafni, was recently removed from his post as director of Bayit Chadash, the Jewish Renewal center in Israel that he led, after three female members of the center filed sworn statements and complaints of sexual misconduct against him with the police on May 9, 2006....

Now, one can't help but wonder when Ken Wilber will begin to question his allegiance to Cohen, whose abuses are about as well-documented as Gafni's were before the police got involved. Will it take a lawsuit or involvement of the authorities before Wilber withdraws his powerfully effective endorsement of Cohen, as he has had to do with Adi Da and, now, Gafni?

Frank Visser has responded to kw's rant:

[T]elling the audience Meyerhoff's book got rejected by publishers is a bit low: wasn't The Spectrum of Consciousness rejected 33 times?....

Wilber writes: "Have you noticed that the people who complain the most about the concept of boomeritis almost always have the worst cases of it?" So what about the number #1 crusader against boomeritis himself? Looks like he has a particularly bad case of it. Even jokingly mentioning "I am at the center of the vanguard of the greatest social transformation in the history of humankind" is telling. Sure, it's a joke. Or is it? Why mention?....

Wilber mentions the mind-body problem, for which he has presented an interesting solution of his own. Why is there a complete radio silence in the philosophy of mind about this theory? (David Chalmers was kindly willing to add two of Wilber's papers on this topic to his online repository when I asked him to do so, but he filed it somewhere under "Miscellaneous"). What does that tell us?....

I will not get caught in this game of praise and condemnation, so reminiscent of cultic milieus I have been in before. Instead, I will tirelessly go on publishing writings which I consider helpful in understanding integral philosophy. I may be wrong, I may be right—but that's not the issue. [T]he issue is that there should be an open, public forum where all voices can be heard. That's why Integral World is valuable.

There was, of course, a time when Wilber himself gave at least lip service to something approaching the latter idea:

What does matter, as Kierkegaard so rudely reminded us, is that only by investing and speaking your vision with passion, can the truth, one way or another, finally penetrate the reluctance of the world. If you are right, or if you are wrong, it is only your passion that will force either to be discovered.

Apparently in Wilber's world, though, that principle only applies to "theorists," not to critics.

And personally, I take kw's placing of himself at the "vanguard of the greatest social transformation in the history of humankind" as an accurate statement of his narcissistic delusions regarding his own value to the world. It's fully in line with his self-promoting use, within his own books and websites, of quotations from "experts" as to how brilliant and important he and his work allegedly are (as I've collected at the start of the Norman Einstein chapter in STG).

And by the way: My first book, the one glowingly endorsed by Huston Smith and James Fadiman? Rejected by 125 publishers in the U.S., U.K., and India. The quality of a book, after all, is barely relevant to whether or not it is published by a traditional press. What matters is, pure and simple, whether it's going to sell. Anyone who has had any contact at all with the publishing industry knows that.

Oh, look: It was all a dream ... I mean an integral joke.

Well, I'll admit it: I really thought that Wilber might actually be as immature, petulant, and unable to defend his ideas against competent criticism, as he appeared to be in that posting. "More fool me."

I still feel that way about his work. More than ever, actually.

Astonishingly, even after review by two hundred members of the Wilberian community, the piece still contains spelling ("resentiment"), grammatical ("Grave's"), and content (meaning of "ressentiment," and kw's simplistic presentation of the reasons for the arousal of "heterosexual crusaders against gay porn") errors. And overall, his "retraction" only goes to confirm what I've long known about the integral community. First, from one of his fans:

NEVER in over two years have I witnessed anything like this. THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU [KW] ARE REALLY LIKE. I repeat, I have NEVER seen you act like this.

Really? Bauwens and Dallman have seen that side of kw. He's shown enough of it in his mistreatment of the late David Bohm, too, all of which is in black and white by his own hand. Maybe you've just never been independent and intelligent enough to tweak your Bald Hero?

I can't help but wonder how Wilber reacted when he first learned that Visser would be publishing Meyerhoff's debunking of his (kw's) work, online. More or less exactly as childishly and petulantly as he behaved in his earlier rant, I'd guess.

Sometimes the most compassionate thing one can do is to cut down dangerous and terrorist egos.

Oh, is that what we are now to Wilber's loyal followers? "Terrorist" egos? Being cut down "compassionately"? For trying to warn people that Wilber's teachings and community are not what they appear to be? Ask me why I've compared the behavior of cult followers to that of "patriotic" Americans following 9/11 and preceding the war on Iraq.

I read Meyerhoff's MS a couple of years ago. There were some interesting points here and there, but even these I assumed you would be capable of rebutting with little problem. [Why would you assume that? On what possible grounds? And why would kw publish this letter, when it really only shows how little actual questioning his friends and followers are capable of?] I said as much to him, but then asked: What is the point of writing this document? If Wilber is as misguided as you think, why would any press bother publishing the MS? In other words, if the target is so pathetic, what's the point? And if you have turned the target into a straw man [he hasn't, that's Wilber's job, e.g., with regard to Bohm], then again—what's the point of publishing the document? (As you note, Meyerhoff can't get this turkey published.) I then asked him: What is YOUR, Meyerhoff's, alternative contribution? What do YOU have to bring to the party?

Whoever wrote that has no business having a professional opinion in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, or philosophy. Or publishing, for that matter. Whatever happened to the inherent worth in separating true ideas from false ones, even just in the pure pursuit of knowledge?

The point of putting these debunkings of Wilber's work into print is to do what one can to prevent others, not merely from wasting their time on Wilber's fabrications, and not merely from meditating to the point of developing clinical psychoses when they think they're working toward psychological stage-growth, but also from throwing their lives away on the likes of Adi Da and Andrew Cohen, based on Wilber's clueless endorsement of them. If one were working "for" the integral movement, that same attitude would be called "compassion." Here, however, it gets you branded as a "petty fucker" (see below).

Details are not "petty," nor does taking a "50,000-foot view" release you from the obligation of squaring your overarching principles with an honest representation of each and every detail. It was exactly because of the confirmation (to within experimental accuracy) of the predictions of Einstein's theories that he and his ideas became famous; without that precise validation, no one would even know his name today, much less care about the elegance of the core ideas underlying those theories. In the integral world, by contrast, you can screw up on details, and even actively misrepresent them, as much as you like, and the daft followers in that field will only defend your reasons for doing so, rather than taking you to task for that academic dishonesty and/or incompetence.

Plus, in fields of real scholarship, there has always been room for persons who merely gave harsh criticisms of the prevailing ideas, even without being able to offer better alternatives themselves—never mind that, in the integral world, having an alternative will only be held against you, via the claim that in tearing kw's ideas down you are just trying to get your own work noticed. (Note that, while my own first book was endorsed more enthusiastically by both Huston Smith [Wilber's close friend] and James Fadiman than any of kw's books have ever been feted by them, I have since completely disowned the same book. So, I could very easily bring an alternative contribution to the "integral tea party," I've just learned far too much about the skeptical objections to transpersonal claims in the past few years to want to be at that gathering.)

If people are going to sincerely buy into our approach, even if the ideas beautifully stand on their own (as they do) [no they don't, not even close], they'll do their due diligence. Especially those in the United Nations community or those seriously involved in corporate strategy and considering changing their approach.

Meyerhoff has done an appropriate level of "due diligence," in going back to the original sources which kw claims support his view, to prove that they regularly do not. How has he been treated by the integral community for doing so? And, how many people who get interested in kw's ideas would even be able to find the time, much less the interest, to do the same? All they can do is trust that the community wouldn't let incompetent or dishonest work rise to the top. Big mistake. And you think the politicians in the UN, or our world's corporate executives, are going to do even one-tenth of that work, as opposed to just looking at the roster of "big names" endorsing the fallacious integral ideas, and then proceeding in the confidence that "a hundred thousand Wilber fans can't be wrong"? Not a chance. Those are people who can't look past an "executive summary" to the details in the first place. Give kw and Co. credit for one thing, at least: They've picked a logical, and easy, target.

the rule of criticism, imo, is first understand the point of the person whom you are criticizing. frank visser's site, for example, explicitly disagrees with that.

When you can prove that the principles on which a theory is founded are false (or grossly misrepresented), you actually don't need to separately debunk its conclusions. If the premises are wrong, the conclusions will be wrong, too. (Of course, by pure coincidence and probabilities, a quack such as Wilber may still manage to get a few conclusions right—as even Velikovsky did.)

KW:

I got several calls from spiritual teachers around the country, and they all said almost exactly the same thing: "I wish I had the nerve to do this." That was a very common response, and many teachers went on to lament the "green swamp" their own sanghas seemed to be, "and what can I do about it?"

What do you figure the odds are that at least one of those sympathetic calls was from Andrew Cohen? The "green swamp," after all, wants democracy and dialog in what is inherently a dictatorship. "What can I do about it?" Indeed: Any guru would like nothing better than to suppress that "talking back."

KW:

you don't like us, you hate us, you hate I-I, you hate wilber, you hate this and you hate that—we heard you loud and clear. And we saw you. And now we know each other, don't we? But was that you or your shadow responding?

Personally, I have zero tolerance for being deceived simply because I don't go around bullshitting others; I ask nothing from them, in that regard, that I haven't previously demanded from myself. As recently as three years ago, I was still considering donating money to the Integral Institute; it was only in documenting Wilber's provable and gross misrepresentations of David Bohm's work that I began to sour on him, and since then to find his "work" shot through with the same bald cluelessness, which can only qualify as either academic dishonesty or professional incompetence. If you can look at that simple following-of-the-evidence and see only projection or hatred ... well, yikes. "What We Are, That We See," eh?

From the Fans of Ken:

I trust the meta-vision you see of human and social evolution, and if this posting as is serves the Kosmos, then so be it....

I couldn't list all your third-tier reasons for this, but I deeply know that Integral resonates with, and works for, those who are ready for it. It is a truth that doesn't need a prop to stand.

Of course, Wilber must be "third tier," uniquely able to judge the effect of his actions on the Kosmos. That should have been obvious by now. Just like Adi Da is the only seventh-level sage. The first thing any spiritual leader must learn is that you must always keep at least one step (in purported spiritual evolution) ahead of the followers.

If you find professional incompetence, academic dishonesty, and/or unconscionable manipulation in Wilber's work, that has nothing necessarily to do with tiers/altitude, shadow-projection, or the like. You're much more likely simply seeing it for what it really is.

When a bullshit artist tries to tell you that you're "first-tier" and shadow-projecting simply because you won't stand for being manipulated or misled, or that his blog "includes an excellent, useful explanation of why these critiques are invalid" (no, it doesn't, not even close), or that "second tier would get it, and that is who it was meant for"—well, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

Yes I was pissed off about IU hosts being referred to as minions ... fuck the crazy critic.

First "terrorist egos," and now "crazy," too. And you wonder why I regard the Wilberian community as a cult?

Personally, I've never publicly referred to Wilber's close followers as "minions." But, truth be told, that's exactly what I consider them to be. Their thoughts as included on the "I was only kidding" blog by kw have only confirmed that for me.

[D]oes telling a group of mental masturbators that they're off the mark actually legitimize them in a way? If their intent is simply (!) to fantasize, they are unlikely to have the decency to be embarrassed at being caught once again with their pants down around their knees.

First, does the integral community not realize that they are seen by skeptics as being every bit as "crazy" and unworthy of legitimization, as they now view kw's critics? No, of course they don't realize that. But it is nevertheless true.

And beautiful, how they reduce cogent criticism to the status of fantasy, while elevating their own transpersonal fantasies and outright delusions to the status of "reality." Myself, Meyerhoff, Andrews, and other solid critics have nothing to be "embarrassed" about, if the previous "lacking in substance" blog entry by kw is the best that he can offer in terms of trying to prove us to be "mental masturbators."

And again, it's Wilber who's sophomorically miming masturbation in public, and considering that to be funny. Where is his "decency"? Or his sense of embarrassment at being caught, repeatedly, with his own "pants down," blatantly and unconscionably fabricating information? Or his understanding of humor, or of group dynamics/laughter, for that matter?

KW again:

Part of the lesson—for you, for me, for any of us—when it comes to integral (second tier, vision-logic, centaur, turquoise) in today's world especially relates to the difference between what Trungpa Rinpoche called compassion and idiot compassion.

Quoting the alcoholic fraud Chögyam Trungpa. Nice. "Decency," indeed. How many lives did that drunken, abusive, "compassionate," idiotic Buddhist bastard ruin?

The best response actually came from Stuart Davis:

it's fantastic, it's overdue, and i feel it is appropriate and proportionate in tone and content. i laughed out loud half a dozen times, and it's right on the money. how fucking LONG are you supposed to sit back without comment while these toxic, petty fuckers make preposterous attacks on work that's ten years old? and only one in a hundred even knows what the fuck they're talking about, because like it or not YOU'RE RIGHT TO SAY it is a cross-altitude issue. these green shits take pot shots at 2nd tier morning, noon, and night, and they are literally not capable of registering the content, the locations, the addresses, the altitude of 2nd tier. it's insane, and i'm relieved to see you calling a spade a spade in this way.

Yeah, no shadow at all comin' through there from Kenny's bestest buddy. Yikes. Stuart should really focus on learning to write lyrical/melodic/rhythmic hooks, which is the only way his music is ever going to get a wider audience. (At one point, I owned around nine of his first ten CDs; there were maybe two singles on the lot of them.)

And, even work a decade old is certainly worth debunking, particularly for how the provable dishonesties and/or incompetencies in it reflect on the character of its author, and for how the same shortcomings suggest the (un)likelihood that his current work will stand up to future criticism. D'uh.

Plus, Davis of course genuinely believes that the "Dagon" (sic) tribal people received their purported knowledge of astronomy from extra-terrestrials.

And us critics are the "crazy" ones? Gott im Himmel. "Calling a spade a spade," indeed. And Wilber proudly puts that all into print, without so much as a twinge of realization of how it looks to the real world. Because, you know, any other cult leader or quack with a small, loyal following would have done exactly the same thing, just as proudly and just as opaquely.

KW:

I should mention that when IU opens we will be having specific classes, for those who want, where we analyze various forum responses for their altitude, their levels and lines, and their shadow elements.

Well yes. Nothing bonds an in-group like laughing together at the flaws in their out-group critics, who just cannot see things as clearly as they, the "special ones," do.

all we have to do now is send people to that blog and watch their response. if it freaks them out, it's unlikely they would do very well in any type of second-tier work. so at least we know. the thing is, K loves these people, I've seen him work with them because he'll work with anybody [well, except Bauwens and Dallman, etc.].

All for the Divine, Non-Dual Love of Ken. Pardon me while I vomit.

And through all of that, has Wilber offered any cogent, intelligent response to any of his recent critics ... never mind to David Lane's critique from 1996? No, of course not. What he's posted over the past few days could just as well have all been a deliberate smoke screen, to distract from the real issue. That is, to obscure the fact that his ideas consistently do not stand up to any kind of thorough questioning—a point which is hardly mitigated by him trotting out a few anonymous "experts" who daftly imagine the contrary.

KW, ranting:

It reminds me of the laboratory tests showing that the most active heterosexual crusaders against gay porn actually show more [he means "higher"] arousal levels when shown gay porn than straights do. In other words, the thing they hate the most, they secretly possess.

A concerned reader observes:

This AM, just a few minutes of web surfing uncovered a brief discussion of this study in an article on the penile plethysmograph (pluh-THIZ-muh-graf) at Skepdic.com. Note that the authors of the study offered "at least two competing explanations" for the fact that men "who score in the homophobic range and admit negative affect toward homosexuality" [not KW's exaggerated claim that these were "the most active heterosexual crusaders against gay porn"] demonstrate significant sexual arousal to male homosexual erotic stimuli.

Here are the highlights from the cited Skepdic.com entry:

Despite the lack of a theoretical basis for interpreting the data gathered using the PPG [penile plethysmograph] Professor Henry E. Adams et al. of the University of Georgia used to PPG to measure arousal of heterosexual men who were divided into homophobes and non-homophobes. They published their results in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 1996:

The results of this study indicate that individuals who score in the homophobic range and admit negative affect toward homosexuality demonstrate significant sexual arousal to male homosexual erotic stimuli.

In their study of 64 exclusively heterosexual men (self-identified), 66 percent of the non-homophobic group showed no significant arousal while watching a male homosexual video, while only 20 percent of the homophobic men showed little or no evidence of arousal.

Adams notes that there are at least two competing explanations for the fact that homophobic men would be aroused by "male homosexual erotic stimuli." One is the Freudian explanation in terms of latent homosexuality. Despite their protests, these heterosexual homophobes are secret homosexuals. Another explanation, however, is that

viewing homosexual stimuli causes negative emotions such as anxiety in homophobic men but not in non-homophobic men. Because anxiety has been shown to enhance arousal and erection, this theory would predict increases in erection in homophobic men. Furthermore, it would indicate that a response to homosexual stimuli is a function of the threat condition rather than sexual arousal per se.

There may be other explanations, as well, but we have no way at present to determine which, if any, are valid.

Once again, KW runs fast and loose, offering his spin as the one and only authoritative and absolute truth. No subtlety, nuance, or competing explanations. I've pretty much decided that he's a walking advertisement for the pre/post-fallacy!

That, from a fellow who got his kicks by flying kites in thunderstorms (perhaps after a few too many beers on an empty stomach)!

From the Naked Reflections blog:

[M]ost, I suspect, will find [Wilber's reply to his critics to be] mean-spirited, juvenile, petulant, "dismissive, conceited," lacking in substance, and damaging to the Integral movement.

As for me, I offer no criticisms, only questions. If I were somehow able to scale the heights of integral practice and awareness that Wilber has, would I conduct myself the way Wilber did in his reply? Was THAT an "integrally informed," psychologically mature, and spiritually advanced response? Did it successfully refute his critics, vindicate his ideas, advance the Integral cause, or truly benefit him or anyone else psychologically, spiritually, or in any other way?

Can anyone explain how it was or accomplished any of these things? If they can't, does that mean they're just not evolved enough? How would Jesus respond to criticism? Buddha? The Dalai Lama? Thich Nhat Hanh? Eknath Easwaran? Mother Teresa? [unfortunately, a provably bad example of "sainthood," but a very good one of how to do PR] Huston Smith? Are we wrong to hold up these people as role models, as spiritual exemplars? If not, how does Wilber's conduct compare to theirs? What are we to think of his reply? More importantly, what kind of person do we aspire to be, and how should we try to fulfill that aspiration? By becoming more "integrally informed"? By practicing the spiritual disciplines that Wilber practices or recommends? By becoming more like Ken Wilber?

If we feel disillusioned after reading Wilber's reply, should we not?

Yes, you should feel disillusioned. And, "lacking in substance" (not to mention failing to refute his critics or vindicate his ideas) is exactly right—I think I've done well to address the number of points I have, given that the man was firing (usually at "unnamed" targets) with an accuracy and frequency less reminiscent of Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral than of Dick Cheney out hunting quail. Or perhaps Elmer Fudd hunting non-integwal wabbits.

Really, kw is so all-over-the-place with his "anonymous" shots that I can't even tell whether any of his tirade refers specifically to me ... though I'm guessing that the "numb-nut young Turks" line might. Well, better a young Turk than an old Turkey. And as to the sensitivity of my genitals, Ken "Touchy Testicals" Wilber knows as much about that as he does about Bohmian physics.

Would you want to be "more like Ken Wilber"? <shiver> But y'know, that was obvious well before this one blog posting by the Integral Master. The evidence has been available for quite some time already by now; this is just Wilber inadvertently confirming what others like Bauwens and Dallman have previously documented about his dismal character.

But that's always the thing about spiritual leaders: The quickest way to prove them to be grandiose, narcissistic, petulant fools is to let them speak their minds about how the rest of the world needs urgently to evolve (by following their teachings) in order to become "more like them" ... and then compare that with how they treat anyone who doesn't unquestioningly follow their regularly clueless advice.

How will we ever solve the ecological crisis, or avoid future pre-emptive wars, without their wise guidance?

And as to the genuine fools who actually buy into the brutally nonsensical idea that Wilber's rant derives from anything resembling "compassion," as an integral "call to awakening" for others: Jesus, could kw do anything, ever, that you wouldn't excuse in that same way? Guru-figures make their livings from exactly the same gullibility.

Ken Wilber, again musing out loud, in his classic blog posting of 6/8/2006:

The whole kit and caboodle of recent criticism just reeks of Nietzschean resentiment [sic]—in plain English, resentment, deep and long and ugly resentment.

However, a concerned reader observes:

KW's blog was really creepy in a genuinely pathetic way.... BTW, he not only misspelled ressentiment, but it appears that he's consumed by it:

Ressentiment (as a term imported by many languages for its philosophical and psychological meaning only) is not to be considered interchangeable with the normal English word 'resentment,' or the normal French word 'ressentiment.' While the normal words both speak to a feeling of frustration directed at a perceived source, neither speaks to the special relationship between a sense of inferiority and the creation of morality. Thus, the term 'Ressentiment' as used here always maintains a distinction. (from Wikipedia)

Also, note that the fact that "ressentiment ... is not to be considered interchangeable with the normal English word 'resentment'" means that Wilber's "translation" of that into "plain English" is flatly wrong. But that type of bumbling is, of course, precisely what happens when you are either too lazy, or too stupid, or too cock-sure of yourself and your exalted position in the world, to bother verifying your sources and definitions. ("Resentiment" is actually an [obsolete] word, too; but it has nothing to do with Nietzsche. Note also kw's mis-punctuation of "Grave's," where he means "Graves'." Details are so important. At least he got "kit and caboodle" right. You know, as opposed to "kitten caboodle.")

From the same embarrassing blog, this is a partial listing of Wilber's fertile imaginings regarding the purported shortcomings of persons such as myself, who dare not only to have no use for his addled bullshit-philosophy but to further point out, in reasoned detail, why his half-baked conjectures make so very little sense:

lunatic and cacophonous ... so deranged as to be laughable ... suck my dick ... level of scholarship is so mediocre ... worthless ... you morons ... lame criticism ... painfully sluggish critics, dragging their bloated bellies across the ground at a snail's pace of gray dreariness, can frankly just eat my dust and bite my ass ... nonsensical ... neither true nor false but empty ... criticism so deranged you just stare at it wide-eyed and dumbfounded ... criticism so absolutely loopy you just stare in disbelief for minutes, pie-eyed, slack-jawed, say whaaaaaat? ... numb-nut young Turks and no-nut old Turks, many of whom have studied [my] work for up to 3 full hours....

As a wise man recently noted, all that one would have to do is just read that blog by kw (and nothing else) to see why Wilber is losing respect even from those academics who used to think he deserved his high standing in the transpersonal/integral community. Indeed, kw's childish response makes him look much worse, in his character, than any criticism of him by others could ever have done. (Not that I haven't personally tried my best to "make him look worse" than when he manages to sabotage himself on his own. Still, one can always aim higher, I suppose.)

Further, consider that Wilber himself can't have spent much more than "3 full hours" studying David Bohm's work before idiotically imagining himself to be in a position to trash it for purportedly not meshing with his transpersonal fantasies. Certainly, he hasn't spent even three full nanoseconds actually understanding Bohm's ideas.

Ken Wilber: As stable (and integral, and rational, and compassionate) as Ann Coulter ... but she still looks better in a short black skirt. Indeed, were that crazy blond Republican to ever start miming masturbation in public, she could really go far in the world of integral politics.

Also, with regard to kw's feelings of being "libel[ed] and slander[ed]": A defamatory statement about a person is only libelous (in print) or slanderous (in speech) if it's untrue. (You have to know these sorts of things when you're standing up to the various cults in the world and their watchful/tetchy lawyers.) A true statement cannot be libelous. So, Kensho hasn't been libeled. Not by me, anyway. 'Cause I can defend everything I've ever written about that dishonest and/or professionally incompetent fool. It's all backed up with solid references and reasoning to a degree which nothing he has put into print has ever been.

So, Wilber evidently knows as much about libel law as he does about every other field through which he so astonishingly bumbles.

Where you from, son? What the fuck you been thinking? You hitting that weed again man, doing them drugs overtime?

Ken Wilber. The "Foghorn Leghorn of consciousness research."

A final thought:

If you have to "rape and pillage" the details in any field in order to get them to "fit" with your grand theorizings—as Kensho has done throughout his entire career, and without which intellectual abuse there would not be any AQAL or the like—you are not integrating anything. Conversely, when people see details to which you (kw) are "legally blind," and correspondingly reject your supposed "integrations," it is not because they are seeing less than you are, but rather because they are seeing more.

Ironic, huh? Yet, to anyone who, unlike kw, doesn't imagine the integral sun to be shining up his late-middle-aged ass, or who isn't so in awe of the (delusions of) grandeur of his Bald Integral Hero that he can't think straight, that should be clear as day: If you pay proper attention to details and to simple, competent research, you cannot be "integral." Because it's exactly that attention to detail and broad knowledge-base which proves that things do not fit together—and most probably never will—in anything resembling the fashion which kw foolishly pretends they do. And then, because you will not accept Wilber's fallacious, detail-ignoring claims, you can only be "first-tier."

So, if kw finds himself more slack-jawed than usual in reading the most damning criticisms of his "work," my bet is that that's simply his involuntary reaction to writings and authors who can understand and incorporate details into their own work. After all, he wouldn't recognize a detail if it bit him on the ass—to borrow his continuing anal fixation—so what's not to gawk at, dumbfounded?

Wilber is royally fooling himself if he imagines that any of the recent criticisms by myself, Meyerhoff, or Andrews, for example, are based in envy, lack of "second-tier" perspective, or resentment deriving from his ill-gotten "success." Anyone who wants to bullshit through his teeth in presenting fairy-tale realities which have no real hope of being true is indeed on a well-traveled road to "success" in this world. But there are still those of us who would rather get our recognition the honest way. If you are even a competent undergraduate student with a conscience, there is next to nothing for you to "envy" in Ken Wilber's work or character: you already have more of what makes a decent human being in you than kw will ever even want to recover from his own wasted life. All you can really learn from the likes of him (or Da, or Cohen, etc.) is what not to do with your life, and how not to behave in attempting to make a name for yourself.

P.S. I have incorporated much of these past two blogs into the Integral Censorship appendix for STG.

The Bald Fool strikes again, this time with a "Wyatt Earp" complex. (Underappreciated gunslinger/sheriff/savior, out to save the Wild West according to his own version of the Kosmic Law.) Ken Wilber, ranting wildly on his critics:

In short, it's just ridiculous to say that I try to hide from this criticism, I live on it!.... This is what second tier does automatically anyway, it takes new truths wherever it finds them and weaves them into larger tapestries. It can't help doing so! If I find one, I am ecstatic! So mark this well: Only a first-tier mentality would even think that one would run away from good criticism.

Ken Wilber runs away from competent, thorough criticism like vampires flee from the sunlight. Mark that well. You don't need to be first-, second-, or nth-tier to see that; all you need to be able to do is recognize competent research when you see it, and note kw's shitty response to (or freezing-out of) that. You will not, however, find that same academic competence in kw's own writings, which is exactly why he needs to so hysterically marginalize people who can think and research roughly 100x more clearly and thoroughly than he has ever been able to do.

More, from the "compassionate bodhisattva":

And even a bald bastard with ambition, I might add, instead of even being able to lay blame where it in fact belongs, which is on its own sorry-ass, first-tier, lame-brain case of arrested development, a two-bit, no-fit, nobody-quoting, self-promoting, gas-floating, over-bloating, no deposit, lame composite, really lost it, never had it, wanna bees, felled at the knees, first-tier fleas, flick ‘em off his back and never look back: "Holy mackerel! let's go get a slurpee," says lonesome rider, Wyatt Earpy.

This is what happens when white fifty-somethings try to rap. Sad, isn't it? (Maybe he should get Rick Rubin to produce his next rant.) And if the self-promoting kw really thinks that critics such as Meyerhoff don't quote sources ("nobody-quoting"), Jesus, I think he's confused truly excellent, properly referenced scholarship with his own method of "research" (i.e., make shit up and then hope as hard as you integrally can that nobody goes back to check the original sources to catch you bullshitting). Or, maybe he means that the scholars who are quoted against him are "nobodies" relative to His Integral Self. Well, either way he's pathetically wrong.

You'll notice that nowhere in that rant does the Great Wilber address the reality that a large percentage of the criticisms which he brushes off as being "first-tier" are taking him to task for having provably misrepresented the purported "established facts" in the fields which he claims (falsely) to be integrating. Whether or not developmental studies are in "complete disarray," Wilber has brutally misrepresented the purported agreement regarding, for example, Piaget's stages of psychological development. There is no way around that fact; so, not surprisingly, all Kensho can do in response is to claim that he understands the relevant fields much better than his harshest critics do ... thus apparently licensing him to utterly/unprofessionally misrepresent the ideas in those same fields ... and thus actually showing, for anyone who wishes to see, that he either hasn't understood them or is deliberately and dishonestly misleading his readers.

Truly pathetic. But that's where too much (brain-dead) meditation will get you, isn't it?

I am not going to keep responding to the lunatics, nuts, fakes, and frauds.

(Note that it took kw nearly half a decade to respond to Cowan's shredding of his sub-student-level misunderstandings of Spiral Dynamics®. Better late than never, eh? But Ken: You fuck up on a set of ideas which people have spent their lives working on, and you mislead others in the process, so what do you expect? "Cowan and friend" have a damned good reason to tear you a new one when you pull dumb-ass stuff like that, as you so consistently do.)

But, into which group do I fit, Kensho? Lunatic, nut, fake, or (well-footnoted) fraud? Or maybe a "perv" instead? (Keep in mind that both Huston Smith and James Fadiman endorsed my own first book with far greater enthusiasm than they have ever given publicly to any of your own dismally failed attempts at scholarship.) But then, I'm not the one sophomorically miming masturbation in front of college-age (female?) students and thinking it's funny, am I? So, I've got a way to go until I'm a "non-integral pervert," eh?

What an idiot. What a total, fucking, bald, integral idiot.

P.S. If you've ever been bothered at all by my "tone," you owe it to yourself to be at least as bothered by kw attacking his critics at least as colorfully and with far less rational basis for doing so.

[P]erhaps I should mention that I am at the center of the vanguard of the greatest social transformation in the history of humankind ... using [my] Zen sword of prajna to cut off the heads of critics so staggeringly little that [I have] to slow down about 10-fold just to see them.

Uh-huh. Whatever. "You rock, Ken!" Grandiose, ignorant bastard. Good luck with the cult-leadership trip you're blatantly on. You're gonna need it.

Um, and I'm pretty sure it's not Frank Visser's background in Theosophy that's got him souring on kw just as wilber-4 mutates into wilber-5 and crawls forth on its dishonest, professionally incompetent belly from the integral slime. The fact that he's seeing through Wilber's charade at around the same time as the most recent installment of "Wilber: The Next Generation" is seeping out into the integral community is, I'd guess, purely coincidental. Nice attempt at bumbling through pop psychology though, Kensho. If the University of Wilber doesn't work out, maybe you can start a "Dear Kenny" advice column.

What an idiot.

The Yasuhiko Genku Kimura who thinks that Gurdjieff was an authentic master?

He was interviewed in Andrew Cohen's What Is Enlightenment? magazine back in 2002. Appeared there quoting Cohen himself, no less:

Unless you intend to consciously evolve and transform, your spiritual evolution is not going to be able to take place. That's one of the five salient points, or tenets, of enlightenment that the founder of your magazine, Andrew Cohen, writes about. He calls it Clarity of Intention. You know, it is essential—the volitional participation in the process of evolution is essential....

There are a few spiritual legends (perhaps like Babaji, whom you wrote about in your last issue) who point to an even further evolutionary possibility, Homo Sapiens Cosmicus, which is, I believe, another stage of evolution—the evolution of cosmic consciousness itself.

When I read that, I just about dropped my apple juice: Omigod, they think Babaji was real! Well, as David Lane would say, If he's real, let's see him buy me a Coke.

See, since Babaji is part of the whole SRF "mythology" (to put it politely), I know very well what it means to take seriously Yogananda's (ghost-written, fictional) portrait of him as a deathless Himalayan avatar with the power to make himself invisible at will, etc. Still, at least I never wrote an entire article in favor of the "Babaji Claus" for publication in a major magazine! From which:

[T]oday, in a spiritual world where it sometimes seems as if you can't throw a stone fifty feet without hitting yet another self-declared avatar, one has to appreciate Yogananda's foresight in distinguishing Babaji as nothing less than a Mahavatar.

Er, yes. Well, as they say, "If you're going to tell a lie, tell a big one." A Maha-lie, as it were.

[Leonard Orr:] "I talked with Babaji personally about Lahiri Mahasaya and Yogananda. The first time I went to see him, he told me that Yogananda had reincarnated, that he was about twelve years old at that time, and that I would meet him in Africa. I didn't go to Africa until twenty years later, and in fact I did meet Yogananda there, but he wasn't a he, he was a she. And she lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is a member of the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra."

From Two Penniless Boys in Brindaban to Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes. "You've come a long way, Guruji."

(Note: Other information, though, suggests that Yogananda may rather have been reincarnated as one Swami Vishwananda. And then there's Ammachi. A plethora of PY's. "I'm Brian, so's my wife," etc.)

And Kimura, who clearly cannot tell shit from Shinola, is one of the "good, wise" spiritual teachers leading the way for us today? Gord help us. "Too Late for Prayin'," indeed.

Kimura:

I think Ken Wilber and Don Beck and several others are making a great contribution to humanity through their writings, which are very accessible. They are helping to make evolutionary thinking and transformational ideas part of the human culture, which is essential for our next evolution.

It ain't Shinola, that's for sure. He's right about one thing, though:

"The path of truth is the path least traveled."

Just collected the kw- and cult-related blogging I've done since the start of the year into another appendix for STG: Integral Censorship and Cargo Cult Philosophy.

Sure to get Goethean and his integral ilk seriously tetched, eh?

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