the timboucher experience

A couple people have recently turned me on to somebody named Ken Wilber. From what I can gather, looking at various articles, book descriptions, excerpts and other quotes, he is an author/philosopher who is interested in creating some kind of holistic/integrated approach to science and religion and like, some other things. He has a bunch of books and a ton of websites and a seemingly huge and devoted following. But yeah, I’m willing to admit that I don’t get it. Not that like I don’t understand what he’s saying, because it doesn’t seem all that complex. He basically seems to be interested in approaching different areas according to an “everything is right” and you have to look at everything in order to put all the pieces together and find some kind of whole. When I say I don’t get it, I more mean that there are some authors and schools of thought that when I try to get into them, they immediately turn me off. That happened to me when I read the first article of his recommended to me. I thought it was just a fluke, then read another and caught the same result. And then more, and then tried reading what other people said to him. And nothing. Sorry guys. You all seem to be really excited about him and whatever it is he’s doing, and I say run with it. Go on with your bad selves.

For anybody else who’s never heard of him, here are some quotes which sort of illustrate why I don’t jive with him.

“Prana is implicate to matter but explicate to mind; mind is implicate to prana but explicate to soul; soul is implicate to mind but explicate to spirit; and the spirit is the source and suchness of the entire sequence.”

I mean, I’m well aware of what implicate and explicate means, and prana, and all these other words and concepts in this sentence. But this shit just doesn’t make any sense to me! What the hell is he saying here? All of the passages I have read seem to be like this. On one hand, maybe he’s trying to use elaborate language to sort of snap you outside your ordinary world of thought, and all that jazz. But on the other, he just seems to loop and loop around with lots of fancy vocabulary and its supposed to be all mystical and stuff, but to me it just feels like poor communication. I’m a real big fan of being all wordy and everything, but I also love concise delivery of ideas. If somebody who’s into him can point me in the direction of an article which kind of cuts through all this in a concise way, I’d very much like to take a look at it. Or maybe you could post about it all in your own words, and why you like it so much and find it useful. I’d also be curious to hear a more personal response to his stuff, because it all seems kind of distant to me. Send me a link if you do.

Oh, one final jab before departing: I saw this one interview with him, where he was saying all this stuff about how he wants the focus to be on the ideas, and not on him as a personality. And so, he keeps a low profile. If that’s the case, why is his photo and name plastered all over every single thing about him I came across? That just doesn’t add up to me.

• Wayne Dyer’s Power of Intention
• Ken Wilber Critique, Part 5
• Ken Wilber Critique, Part 7
• Moral Relativism
• The Last Word on Wilber