Ken Wilber

• I have one major rule: everybody is right. More specifically, everybody— including me— has some important pieces of the truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace.
  • Introduction, Collected Works of Ken Wilber, vol. VIII

• In fact, at this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the 'edge of history.' There would be a real New Age.
  • Up From Eden (1981)

• 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.
  • Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm (1984)

• In other words, all of my books are lies. They are simply maps of a territory, shadows of a reality, gray symbols dragging their bellies across the dead page, suffocated signs full of muffled sound and faded glory, signifying absolutely nothing. And it is the nothing, the Mystery, the Emptiness alone that needs to be realized: not known but felt, not thought but breathed, not an object but an atmosphere, not a lesson but a life.
  • "Foreword", in Frank Visser's Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (2000)

A Brief History of Everything (1996)

• Spirit slumbers in nature, awakens in mind, and finally recognizes itself as Spirit in the transpersonal domains.

• There is intersubjectivity woven into the very fabric of the Kosmos at all levels.

The Eye of Spirit : An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad (1997)

• We move from part to whole and back again, and in that dance of comprehension, in that amazing circle of understanding, we come alive to meaning, to value, and to vision: the very circle of understanding guides our way, weaving together the pieces, healing the fractures, mending the torn and tortured fragments, lighting the way ahead - this extraordinary movement from part to whole and back again, with healing the hallmark of each and every step, and grace the tender reward.

• The integral approach is committed to the full spectrum of consciousness as it manifests in all its extraordinary diversity.  This allows the integral approach to recognize and honor the Great Holarchy of Being first elucidated by the perennial philosophy and the great wisdom traditions in general. . . The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern.  But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well.

• An acknowledgment of the full spectrum of consciousness would profoundly alter the course of every one of the modern disciplines it touches— and that, of course, is an essential aspect of integral studies... A full-spectrum approach to human consciousness and behavior means that men and women have available to them a spectrum of knowing— a spectrum that includes, at the very least, the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of spirit.

• The integral vision, I believe, is more than happy to welcome empirical science as a part— a very important part— of the endeavor to befriend the Kosmos, to be attuned to its many moods and flavors and facets and forms.  But a more integral psychology goes beyond that . . . With science we touch the True, the "It" of Spirit.  With morals we touch the Good, the "We" of Spirit.  What, then, would an integral approach have to say about the Beautiful, the "I" of Spirit itself?  What is the Beauty that is in the eye of the Beholder?  When we are in the eye of Spirit, the I of Spirit, what do we finally see?

• Anybody can they say they are being "spiritual"— and they are, because everybody has some type and level of concern.  Let us therefore see their actual conception, in thought and action, and see how many perspectives it is in fact concerned with, and how many perspectives it actually takes into account, and how many perspectives it attempts to integrate, and thus let us see how deep and how wide runs that bodhisattva vow to refuse rest until all perspectives whatsoever are liberated into their own primordial nature.

• The Realization of the Nondual traditions is uncompromising: There is only Spirit, there is only God, there is only Emptiness in all its radiant wonder. All the good and all the evil, the very best and the very worst, the upright and the degenerate— each and all are radically perfect manifestations of Spirit precisely as they are.  There is nothing but God, nothing but the Goddess, nothing but Spirit in all directions, and not a grain of sand, not a speck of dust, is more or less Spirit than any other.

The Marriage of Sense and Soul (1998)

• There is arguably no more important and pressing topic tha the relation of science and religion in the modern world. Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Truth and meaning, science and religion; but we still cannot figure out how to get the two of them together in a fashion that both find acceptable.

• These two enormous forces—truth and meaning—are at war in today's world. ...And something sooner or later has to give.

• Within the scientific skeleton of truth, religious meaning attempts to fluorish, often by denying the scientific framework itself—rather like sawing off the branch where you cheerily perch. The disgust is mutual because modern science gleefully denies virtually all the basic tenets of religion in general. According to the typical view of modern science, religion is not much more than a holdover from the childhood of humanity, with about as much reality as, say, Santa Claus. Whether the religious claims are more literal (Moses parting the Red Sea) or more mystical (religion invovlves direct spiritual experience) modern science denies them all, simply because there is no credible empirical evidence for any of them.

• This is a massive and violent schism and rupture in the internal organs of today's global culture and this is exactly why many social analysts believe that 'if some sort of reconciliation between science and religion is not forthcoming, the future of humanity is, at best, precariousI

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