IONS Review #55 • March 2001

A Theory of Everything?

A Critical Appreciation of Ken Wilber's Collected Works

Christian de Quincey | IONS Noetic Sciences Review | IONS Review #55 |

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I therefore sought to outline a philosophy of universal integralism. Put differently, I sought a world philosophy—or an integral philosophy—that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details—that is finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations . . . a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos, a genuine Theory of Everything.

—Ken Wilber (A Theory of Everything, p. 38).

Why do so many people think best-selling author and philosopher Ken Wilber is one of the most important thinkers of our time? Why are so many disturbed by what he writes? In this overview of his work, I hope to throw some light on both questions, and show why he is a master at making explicit our culture's major "orienting generalizations"—those big ideas that give shape to and direct society's dominant worldview.

First, Wilber's contribution: In a remarkable outpouring of books and articles—his Collected Works (Wilber, 2000a) already fill eight thick volumes (and he's only 51 years old)¹—he makes one of the strongest cases for opening up the modern worldview to include not only consciousness, but Spirit, too. While honoring the great achievements of science, Wilber famously highlights its shortcomings: Knowledge that confines itself to the single level of physical reality, he forcefully argues, can at best rise to the status of "flatland" science.

At the very least, science needs to acknowledge the reality of the interior depth of the world—of subjectivity, the domain of experience. As Wilber says, it is beyond ludicrous to believe that only exteriors exist. Such a view is utterly nonsensical. Exteriors can exist only in the presence of interiors. Exteriors (objective realities) without interiors (subjective realities) are meaningless.

With a characteristic combination of verve, wit, intelligence, humor, and provocation Wilber takes his readers beyond the narrow confines of materialism and objectivity without sacrificing the undoubted gains of modernity, and without falling prey to the world-denying tendencies of various forms of idealism.

In short, he provides a postmodern worldview that includes the best of empirical science and rational philosophy, and the best of visionary religion and mysticism. More than that: Perhaps other than Kant and Hegel, no-one has presented a comparable comprehensive framework for integrating the "three cultures" of science, morality, and art. He achieves this by the apparently simple device of focusing on what is possibly the greatest central "orienting generalization" of modernity—the notion of evolution—and extending it to a conclusion consistent with its own empirical findings and logic: Beyond the current highest stage of evolution, represented by the human brain and consciousness, lie further stages of biological, psychological, cultural, and social development.

And if human consciousness is the current apex of terrestrial evolution (situated within an incomparably vaster cosmic—or "Kosmic"—evolution), then we have every reason to believe further stages of evolution await either our own species or whatever will succeed us. Those "higher" stages, Wilber argues drawing on the perennial philosophy of the world's great wisdom traditions, move through higher psychic, and even more subtle, levels (correlated with developments in brain tissue and sociocultural dynamics), culminating in the realization of Spirit.

Wilber is not centrally concerned with the next stage (or species) in human evolution at some future date. He is most interested in the fact that the world's great wisdom traditions—across all cultures, for millennia—have reported that higher stages of consciousness development were attained by numerous men and women in the past. Those higher states and stages of consciousness, therefore, are not awaiting us in some far-off time to come—they are potentially available to us right now, today.

Nevertheless, according to Wilber and many scholars he cites, there is a trajectory of consciousness evolution for our species as a whole. For example, even though at the time of the Buddha some individuals attained very advanced states of consciousness, their society on average was at a lower developmental stage. Thus, today our species has evolved to a higher average level of consciousness (for example, Piaget's concrete operational, or formal operational rational stages). Furthermore, it seems a significant number of people have already developed to the next stage, vision-logic; and a smaller number to even higher stages. So, although a particular individual could, at any epoch, develop to a higher stage of consciousness, the average level of consciousness for societies and the species as a whole does evolve through identifiable stages (see, for example, Gebser [1985]; Aurobindo [1939]).

Here is a postmodern worldview that includes the best of empirical science and rational philosophy, and the best of visionary religion and mysticism.

Wilber's great contribution to modern intellectual debate is to have made a provocative case for not only extending modern science—a model of evolution reaching beyond rational creatures all the way to Spirit—but for integrating it with premodern spiritual wisdom to produce a truly postmodern, all-encompassing spectrum of consciousness.

In a word, his central achievement is to have brought together humanity's two great orienting generalizations of "Evolution" and "Spirit"—one a relatively recent discovery of science, the other an ancient, and perennial, discovery of religion and mysticism. This is a remarkable accomplishment not only because of the scope of the disciplines Wilber attempts to integrate, but also because of the level of detail from each discipline he brings to the discussion.

For readers unfamiliar with his work, the following will give some idea of the wide reach of his intellectual net:

Wilber's approach is the opposite of eclecticism. He has provided a coherent and consistent vision that seamlessly weaves together truth-claims from such fields as physics and biology; the ecosciences; chaos theory and the systems sciences; medicine, neurophysiology, biochemistry; art, poetry, and aesthetics in general; developmental psychology and a spectrum of psychotherapeutic endeavors, from Freud to Jung to Piaget; the Great Chain theorists from Plato to Plotinus in the West to Shankara and Nagarjuna in the East; the modernists from Descartes and Locke to Kant; the Idealists from Schelling to Hegel; the postmodernists from Focualt and Derrida to Taylor and Habermas; the major hermeneutic tradition, Dilthey to Heidegger to Gadamer; the social systems theorists from Comte to Marx to Parsons and Luhmann; the contemplative and mystical schools of the great meditative traditions, East and West, in the world's major religious traditions. All of this is just a sampling. (Jack Crittenden's foreword to Wilber's Eye of Spirit [1997, pp. viii-ix] and Collected Works, vol. 7, p. 406).

Such a panoramic and synoptic intellectual viewfinder is so inclusive that Wilber himself has referred to his overall model as A Theory of Everything (2000b). In this article, I will examine some of the key elements of Wilber's "integration"—his vast and majestic intellectual edifice—to see if they hold together as he proposes. Has Wilber produced a true Taj Mahal of the intellect, or is his structure more like a clever and creative house of cards, standing impressively as each part rests on its neighbors, but vulnerable to collapse when some particular component is picked up for close scrutiny?

He aims to show how all the subtleties of consciousness map onto events and structures in the physical world.

Is Wilber, as some commentators suggest, the latest in a long line of great speculative philosophers, following in the footsteps of thinkers such as Plato, Plotinus, Hegel, and Whitehead in the West, and Shankara, Nagarjuna, and Aurobindo in the East?² Or is he rather the latest "new, new thing" in contemporary avant-garde intellectual circles, who may shine brilliantly for his followers today, but quickly fade into the pages of history once the next "new, new thing" comes along? The truth, I suspect, lies somewhere in between. At the very least, Wilber has earned a place of prominence in transpersonal psychology—undoubtedly its most influential theoretician today.

Mapping Consciousness

Like so many others in the field of consciousness studies and transpersonal theory, I was impressed by Ken Wilber's earlier works, beginning with The Spectrum of Consciousness (SoC) (1977) and including a wonderful anthology, Quantum Questions (QQ) (1984), where he drew from the founding greats of quantum theory to show that subatomic physics could no more enlighten us about consciousness and mysticism than the physics of Newton. But it was the publication of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (SES) (1995) that, in my opinion, distinguished Wilber as an intellectual force, and, by his own reckoning, launched him into a new phase in his career as a philosopher/psychology theorist. In SES, for the first time, Wilber went beyond the levels or "spectrum" of consciousness that characterized his speculative model up to that point, and introduced his new mandala of the Four Quadrants.

With the appearance of SES, after a hiatus of about five years following the death of his wife, no one could doubt that Wilber has regained his prodigious productivity. SES was a blockbuster of 800-plus pages (200-plus of which were endnotes). In short succession he pumped out a series of other books, including A Brief History of Everything (BH) (1996) a "not-too-brief" popularized version of SES aimed at a wider audience, and Wilber's first book to crack the New York Times bestseller lists. Now he has published two more: Integral Psychology (IP) and A Theory of Everything (TOE) (with references to a companion volume he's calling by the unfortunate title Boomeritis).

Readers of his newer books will find a few new twists—spirals and waves—that soften the charge of linearity often leveled at him. With each new refinement (Wilber has a way of assimilating and accommodating the barbs of his critics), his model grows increasingly complex, mind-numbingly so, as we will see. In fact, the complexity of his latest model—which moves beyond any mere linear psychospiritual development by incorporating "waves" and "streams" and "spirals" in the self's unfolding—reminds me a little of the heroic efforts made with Ptolemaic epicycles to save the problematic cosmology of Aristotle. However, it just may be that Wilber's "integral epicycles" accurately reflect the actual complexity of human psychospiritual development. If that is so, then Wilber's increasingly complex models may be, as he himself believes, a significant contribution toward the launch of the Human Consciousness Project (psychology's equivalent of the Human Genome Project in biology—see below).

Not only does Wilber explore the detailed complexity of the psyche—a major task in itself—but he also aims to show us how all these subtleties of consciousness map onto the events and structures in the physical world. And so we have Wilber's other major orienting generalization: The world, including human beings, consists of interiors and exteriors, the two great domains of his Four Quadrants (see above).

Why, then, four quadrants, not just two domains? You will see from the figure that exteriors and interiors alike come in two forms: individual and communal. So, in the Upper Left (UL) quadrant, we see individual-interiors (the domain of individual subjects). In the Lower Left (LL), we find communal-interiors (the domain of mutual intersubjectivities). In the Upper Right (UR), we see individual-exteriors (the domain of atomistic objects). In the Lower Right (LR) we find systems-exteriors (the domain of networks of objects). This, in a nutshell, is Wilber's map of reality, his ontological mandala.

But that is only part of the map. Remember his other great orienting generalizations: Evolution and Spirit. Each quadrant is co-evolving, from the lowest, simplest forms to the highest, or deepest, most complex realities. That means, simply, that individual-interiors (subjects) evolve, communal-interiors (cultures) evolve, individual-exteriors (individual physical objects) evolve, and network-exteriors (objective physical systems) evolve. Further, nothing evolves in any single quadrant without a concomitant evolution in all the other quadrants.

Which brings us to perhaps the central orienting generalization of Wilber's entire cosmology: Everything that exists consists of holons. (Wilber got the term "holon" from Arthur Koestler [1969].) Very simply, everything is simultaneously a part of something larger than itself (a higher whole), and a whole in its own right made up of its own smaller parts. As well as consisting of a part-whole relation within its own quadrant, every holon, says Wilber, necessarily partakes of all four quadrants. Nothing exists merely as an exterior (or interior) reality, and nothing is ever simply an individual (or a system). All systems consist of individual parts, and all individuals are embedded in systems. And, of course, all exteriors have interiors, and vice versa.

To understand how the world is put together and how it works, Wilber says, we need to pursue an "all-quadrant, all-levels" approach—meaning we need to take into account not only interiors and exteriors, individuals and systems, but also the fact that each holon evolves within all four quadrants through the various levels identified in the Great Chain of Being, on the one hand, and in evolutionary sciences on the other. This is what Wilber unfolds in his Collected Works.

Style and Substance

His impressive contribution to transpersonal theory and the integration of Eastern and Western psychologies and philosophies is, however, shadowed by questions and concerns about his style, and by problems with the substance of some of his ideas.

The French have a saying, "le style c'est l'homme même" ("the style is the man")—and this seems particularly appropriate when discussing Wilber's work. He has been criticized, sometimes severely, for his argumentative, polemical, abrasive manner, often triggering a like-minded reaction from his critics (and those he critiques), resulting in what I once referred to as the "Great Chain of Being Nasty." Wilber seems to evoke extremes: For the most part, people seem to either love him or hate him (I count myself among the exceptions).

Philosopher Michael Zimmerman, who called Sex, Ecology, Spirituality "an admirable book," was nevertheless moved to comment on its "most disturbing aspect," namely Wilber's "rhetorical style":

Wilber sometimes resorts to divisive, even contemptuous rhetoric when discussing views with which, and people with whom, he disagrees. . . . His position will be weakened unless he adopts a more charitable rhetorical style when examining the views of his opponents. Failure to do so would be a shame, since he has gone further than anyone else in recent history in developing an affirmative vision of humanity's evolutionary history and future (Rothberg & Kelly [eds.] 1998, p. 204).

Challenges Facing the Model

Besides the issue of style, a number of areas of Wilber's overall model raise problematic questions:

The Mind-Body Problem

For instance, his model does not (and probably cannot) unsnarl the "world-knot" known as the mind-body problem: how consciousness is related to the physical world. How can something as insubstantial as mind, consciousness, or spirit (something that has no extension in space) ever interact with something as weighty as matter or body (which does have extension in space)? How, in other words, can the world of interiors interact with the world of exteriors? What would be the nature of their point of contact? Just how does the ghost enter the machine and operate it?

Wilber says he won't even attempt to explain how this perennial problem could be solved. He is content to say that the solution reveals itself in higher states of consciousness, and that his integral model accommodates such states. Now it may well indeed be true that from the perspective of some higher, mystical experience the mind-body problem will be seen to dissolve. However, since Wilber's model is a rational construct, and since it fails to provide a rational understanding of how mind and body—interiors and exteriors—are related, his "solution" amounts to little more than "promissory integralism."

Wilber's model, then, does not answer the mind-body problem, or, to use his terminology, it does not (and, according to Wilber, cannot) explain how the two interior domains are causally related to the two exterior domains. But the mind-body relation, or the relation between the left and right quadrants, is arguably the major issue of any post-materialistic, truly integrative philosophy or worldview. And it is precisely this that Wilber himself admits his model cannot provide.

The mind-body problem remains the great "world knot." It is an increasingly critical issue for the world as our civilization plunges forward, surfing on a wave of pragmatic materialism that excludes, denies, even attempts to annihilate or eliminate anything that smacks of subjectivity, experience, consciousness, meaning, purpose, or value. We, therefore, urgently need a way to account for both the exterior physical world and the interior world of consciousness—and their relationship. We need, as Wilber has so eloquently emphasized over and over in his Collected Works, to integrate the exterior and interior domains of our lives, of our world.

Unfortunately, Wilber's grand edifice does not provide that critical missing piece.

Intersubjectivity

Another difficulty with Wilber's model is his treatment of intersubjectivity. Elsewhere (de Quincey, 2000), I have expressed doubts about the completeness of the lower-left quadrant in his four-quadrant model. In essence, my concern is that he does not make room for true intersubjectivity, where two or more people (or other beings) can engage each other's presence without having to resort to exchanging physical symbols such as spoken or written words.

His model does not answer the mind-body problem—how the interior domains are related to the exterior

Subtle Energies

And yet another challenge for the model is where to locate subtle energies and subtle bodies in the four quadrants. It is not at all clear to me that Wilber's model can easily, if at all, account for objective subtle realities. (I explore these questions in greater detail in a forthcoming book, Edifice Complex: Taj Majal or House of Cards?)

These are potentially serious challenges for Wilber's model as a whole, and perhaps further clarification will resolve some, or even all, of them. However, there are also a number of smaller "details" in his Collected Works that I (and others) find troublesome. A recent example is discussed in his latest book A Theory of Everything and its companion volume Boomeritis.

'Boomeritis' and 'TOE'

Wilber's definition: "Boomeritis is that strange mixture of very high cognitive capacity...infected with rather low emotional narcissism—exactly the mixture that has been noted by so many social critics" (A Theory of Everything, p. 27).

I think Wilber is mistaken when he sides with those who characterize the Boomers as the narcissistic "me" generation. I've always thought that label was a cute, but inaccurate, phrase and generalization that completely missed the essence of the "something in the air" of the sixties. Great ad copy, maybe, but bad sociocultural analysis. Yes, many Boomers got serious about self-reflection and self-development in the Seventies and Eighties (accounting for the "therapy boom"), but I do not agree that this was a narcissistic project. In my experience and observation, Boomers recognized that in order to make a difference in their communities—yes, even in the world—they first had to "get their own act together." No point in trying to transcend the ego if you have only a squishy ego to begin with. Get the ego clear and strong, and then move on—ego development in the service of service, not self-indulgent narcissism. Sure, there was some, even a lot, of that. But that's nothing new. That's not what was/is most significant about the boomer generation.

Despite his harsh criticism of the Boomers and their failure to develop to "mature second-tier consciousness," Wilber thinks they "still might do so...the boomers are still poised for a possible leap into the hyperspace of second-tier consciousness. That would indeed be a great historic transformation, one that would have a profound effect on society as we know it" (A Theory of Everything, p. 30). The Boomers couldn't have put it better themselves: "a leap into higher consciousness," "a great historic transformation," a shift that would have "a profound effect on society as we know it." That's what they have been striving for ever since the great consciousness revolutions of the sixties.

Ironically, despite his criticism of Boomers reaching for grand world-saving visions, Wilber himself has recently suggested his own model qualifies as "a theory of everything" (TOE).

But is a TOE even possible?

Wilber does acknowledge the difficulty: "Knowledge expands faster than ways to categorize it...So why even attempt the impossible?" (TOE, p. xii). His answer: "Because, I believe, a little bit of wholeness is better than none at all."

Why can't he do it?

Because you cannot create a model or a map that contains itself. Where, for example, would the four-quadrants model fit into the four-quadrant model? Mathematical and logical proofs developed by Bertrand Russell and Kurt Gödel—along the lines that no set of all sets can itself be a set of the same logical category, type, or level—invalidates the claim. Both Alfred Korzybski and Gregory Bateson immortalized this dilemma with the phrase "the map is not the territory." In this case (Wilber's TOE), not only the map, but more crucially, the consciousness that created the map, cannot be found in its own creation. To attempt to make room for it would involve us (and Wilber) in a logical infinite regress. This meta-critique applies to any TOE, of course, not just Wilber's.

The Human Consciousness Project

Notwithstanding some of the theoretical and logical difficulties buried in the details of Wilber's vast and comprehensive model, his overall contribution has been immense. More than any other individual, he has pieced together a truly remarkable map of the mind.

If we learn one unavoidable fact from Wilber, it's that the world of the mind, the interior life, is at least as complex and differentiated and interrelated as the immense complexities of the outer world revealed by physical sciences. Wilber's integral psychology alerts us to the baffling complexity of consciousness.

Whereas modern science tends to divide the world simplistically into outer-physical and inner-mental, and modern philosophy of mind focuses on the mind-body relationship, Wilber, drawing on a wide spectrum of psycho-spiritual disciplines and traditions, has documented and charted the immense complexity of the inner domain—not just the id, ego, and superego of psychotherapy, but a whole host of characters and developmental sets through which we play out our life's dramas. (For example, developmental levels of the self; levels/waves, structures, the navigating self; and each wave with its multiple self-streams [identity, needs, emotion, etc.].)

Wilber highlights the significance of integral psychology by proposing the intriguing idea of the "Human Consciousness Project" (TOE, p. 7). Based on the mapping of consciousness found in cross-cultural variations of the Great Chain of Being on the one hand, and the "waves and streams" of consciousness mapped by Clare Graves, Don Beck and Christopher Cowan (along with Wilber's own formulation of the four quadrants), on the other, we now have a blueprint for an "all-level, all-quadrant" model of consciousness—equivalent to, if not surpassing in scope and importance, the Human Genome Project.

As an example of the complexity involved in weaving together the Human Consciousness Project, here are just some of the streams of development Wilber identifies (following Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics)—what he calls "self streams" that evolve through the multiple levels of the Great Chain or Nest:

We have credible evidence that these different streams, lines, or modules include cognition, morals, self-identity, psychosexuality, ideas of the good, role taking, socioemotional capacity, creativity, altruism, several lines that can be called "spiritual" (care, openness, concern, religious faith, meditative stages), communicative competence, modes of space and time, affect/emotion, death-seizure, needs, worldviews, mathematical competence, musical skills, kinesthetics, gender identity, defense mechanisms, interpersonal capacity, and empathy (TOE, p. 44).

In an endnote, he goes on to say, "Individuals can be at a relatively high level of development in some modules, medium in others, and low in still others—there is nothing linear about overall development" (TOE, p. 142).

If we factor in cross-cultural differences and attempt to map these self-developmental streams as they move independently through the many levels, stages, and structures of the Great Nest, and recognize that the movement of these streams flows in nonlinear loops and spirals, and then multiply this mind-boggling complexity by four (to accommodate the quadrants), we begin to get some idea of the immense task facing the Human Consciousness Project. Do the math: Without factoring in cross-cultural differences or loops or spirals, we have at least thirty-one streams, seventeen levels, and four quadrants, giving us a minimum of 2,108 consciousness variables to track as each individual person develops his or her matrix of "intelligences" or "competencies" in life.

Do the math: We have at least 2000 consciousness variables to track for each individual.

The disconcerting question, of course, is how to keep track of all this? No wonder so many of us have difficulty navigating through the maze of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, cultural, and social complexities that face us daily as we try to deal with the vagaries of life. No surprise, then, if many of us suspect that the diagnosis "multiple personality" refers not merely to a pathology, or even to an anomaly, but to the intrinsic condition of human consciousness. How can we possibly keep up with so many developmental challenges? How can we ever learn to corral this overpopulated society of selves that lives in each of us? Is such a complex, multidimensional typology of consciousness more likely to overwhelm us than enlighten us?

Once the Human Consciousness Project gets underway, we will presumably have a growing awareness and insight into what makes each of us "tick" psychologically. We may be able to help individuals assess or diagnose their states and stages of consciousness as it grows and spirals throughout life. Perhaps we may even devise psychometric tools to monitor periodic (monthly, weekly, daily, hourly?) swings in consciousness—and, even more important, develop an essential curriculum, practices that will enable people to consciously develop their own consciousness in whatever areas of the spectrum appropriate for them at any particular time.

Wilber's Integral Psychology (and his Collected Works in general) provides an impressive "first-pass" outline for integrating the multiple disciplines engaged, one way or another, in the study of consciousness. As the Human Genome Project gave a specific focus and purpose to genetics, the Human Consciousness Project could give a pragmatic purpose and focus to the broad, and currently fragmented, field of consciousness studies. If such a project ever gets off the ground, Wilber will be, rightly, lauded for his single-minded passion and determination to create an integral foundation for the study of consciousness.³

Again, however, there is need for caution. The motivation behind developing such a comprehensive map of human consciousness may indeed be to understand ourselves in greater depth, help us reduce psychospiritual suffering, and grow toward our full potential. However, the project of developing a detailed cartography of consciousness using the tools of analysis and modeling may leave some people feeling that consciousness or spirit is being reduced to, or squeezed into, neat rational categories—missing what is most precious and vital about lived experience, in much the way that the details of the Human Genome Project, despite potential for improving human health, cannot enlighten us about the experience of being a living, social, organism.

Nonetheless, Ken Wilber's contribution is already valuable. The mere construction of such a magnificent intellectual edifice is itself a worthy enterprise—even if, as is inevitable at some point, cracks appear in the foundation and it begins to fall apart. For what is far more valuable than the edifice is the vision that inspired it—a vision for an integral world, a world nurtured by an integral psychology, an integral philosophy and metaphysics, an integral science and spirituality, an integral economics and ecology, an integral aesthetics, an integral medicine, an integral sociology, an integral politics . . . vision of inclusion, a vision of the "whole" embraced by Spirit.⁴

Notes

1. In a review of this length it is not easy to do justice to Wilber's Collected Works. Thankfully, his thematic constancy throughout gives his overall output a kind of holographic character: Pick up almost any single volume and you can get information about the whole. In this review, I have focused mostly on Integral Psychology. A more thorough "critical appreciation" of Wilber will be available as an online ebook, Edifice Complex: Taj Mahal or House of Cards? (from www.ikosmos.com). This article is adapted from a longer review essay, "The Promise of Integralism," published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, volume 7, number 11/12 (2000).
2. See, for example, Michael Murphy's appreciation of Wilber in Rothberg & Kelly (eds.), (1998).
3. With a group of colleagues, Wilber has established a nonprofit Integral Institute based in Boulder, Colorado.
4. Many thanks to colleagues who read earlier drafts of this manuscript, or parts of it, or who took the time to talk or correspond with me about many of the ideas discussed here. These include: Chris Bache, John Buchanan, John David Ebert, Jorge Ferrer, David La Chapelle, Kaisa Puhakka, Kenneth Ring, Richard Tarnas, Jenny Wade, and Eric Weiss.

References

• Aurobindo, Sri (1939), The Life Divine. Pondicherry, India: Centenary Library.
• de Quincey, C. (2000), "The Promise of Integralism." Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 7, no. 11/12. Essex, UK: Imprint Academic.
• Gebser, J. (1985), The Ever-Present Origin. Athens: Ohio University Press.
• Griffin, D. R. (1998), Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, freedom, and the mind-body problem. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Koestler, A. & Smythies, J. R. (eds.) (1969), Beyond Reductionism. The Alpbach Symposium 1968: New perspectives in the life sciences. London, UK: Hutchinson.
• Rothberg, D. & Kelly, S. (eds.) (1998), Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with leading transpersonal theorists. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books.
• Wilber, K. (1999-2000) Collected Works, vols. 1-8. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
• Wilber, K. (2000a) Integral Psychology. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
• Wilber, K. (2000b) A Theory of Everything. Boston, MA: Shambhala.

Dr. Christian de Quincey is a professor of philosophy at John F. Kennedy University, where he teaches Consciousness Studies. He is also Managing Editor of IONS Review, a 40,000 membership magazine from the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and an international speaker on consciousness, cosmology, spirituality, and cognitive science at conferences and workshops in the United States and Europe.

His work on consciousness has appeared in both popular and academic journals, including Journal of Consciousness Studies, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, ReVision, Network, Noetic Sciences Review, Connections, Cerebrum, and Somatics. He is author of Radical Nature: Consciousness All The Way Down, a novel, Deep Spirit, and co-author, with Willis Harman, of The Scientific Exploration of Consciousness. Before moving into academia, he worked as a high-tech marketing communications consultant in Silicon Valley, and before that was a professional journalist for national newspapers including The Irish Times, the London Sunday Times, and the science journal Nature.

He served as guest faculty on the University of Arizona's pioneering on-line degree course "Dialogues In Consciousness," and served as a member of the advisory committee for the University Arizona's new Center for Consciousness Studies; on the program committee for the University of Arizona's "Spirituality, Health, & Healing" conference; on the program committee for Dublin University's conference on "Cognitive Science"; and was a keynote speaker at the 1999 "Consciousness and the Original Spirit of Science" conference, Olympia, Greece. He has a doctorate in Philosophy and Religion, and a masters degree in Consciousness Studies.

"As a professor of philosophy and consciousness studies, I have spent decades teaching and guiding people through the mystery of consciousness. My success as a teacher and writer in this field grows out of my dedication to making difficult issues simple and clear-even for those with no background. My main interest is to find common ground between various worldviews."

Christian de Quincey can be contacted at: The Institute of Noetic Sciences, 101 San Antonio Road, Petaluma, CA 94952-9524. Email: cdeq@noetic.org.

Samples of his writings on consciousness and cosmology are available on his website: www.deepspirit.com.