Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering … - Ken Wilber

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Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?

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About Ken Wilber

Kenneth Earl Wilber Jr. (born 31 January 1949) is an American author who writes on psychology, philosophy, mysticism, ecology, and spiritual evolution. His work formulates what he calls an "integral theory of consciousness". He is a leading proponent of the integral movement and founded the Integral Institute in 1998.

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Also Known As

Alternative Names: Kenneth Earl Wilber II Kenneth Earl "Ken" Wilber Junior
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Additional quotes by Ken Wilber

It marshals a vast amount of scientific evidence, from physics to biology, and offers extensive arguments, all geared to objectively proving the holistic nature of the universe. It fails to see that if we take a bunch of egos with atomistic concepts and teach them that the universe is holistic, all we will actually get is a bunch of egos with holistic concepts. Precisely because this monological approach, with its unskillful interpretation of an otherwise genuine intuition, ignores or neglects the “I” and the “we” dimensions, it doesn’t understand very well the exact nature of the inner transformations that are necessary in the first place in order to be able to find an identity that embraces the manifest All. Talk about the All as much as we want, nothing fundamentally changes.

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