stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

170 STRIPPING THE GURUS
ica and beyond. (Those four quadrants embrace the subjective, objective,
intersubjective [i.e., cultural] and interobjective [i.e., social]
lives of all relative wholes or “holons”—a term coined by Arthur
Koestler—in the cosmos.)
While Wilber’s isn’t the [only] integral model, his work must
certainly be taken into account in any discussion of anything
“integral.” To not do so is negligent and tantamount to discussing
relativity theory without Einstein, existentialism
without Nietzsche or the Captain without Tennille (Berge,
2004).
* * *
As with Wilber’s academic accolades, one need not search far at all
to find indications of his high spiritual attainment. Indeed, already
by the mid-’80s, Wilber (1991) could lay claim to “fifteen years of
meditation, during which I had had several unmistakable ‘kensho’
[i.e., ‘glimpse of enlightenment’] experiences, fully confirmed by my
teachers.”
Of course, nearly every “enlightened” individual we have seen
thus far has made fully comparable claims. That is, it is rare to
find a respected spiritual figure who has not received confirmation,
from his own teachers or gurus, of his minor and major enlightenment
experiences. Thus, “Kensho Wilber” is part of a large class,
not a small one, in that regard. Indeed, Muktananda confirmed Adi
Da’s first adult experience of nirvikalpa samadhi in 1969 ... not so
long after Da’s early-’60s “astral moon cannibal slave” visions. (Da
himself reaffirmed the validity of those insights in the mid-’90s.)
Such endorsements, then, mean absolutely nothing, in terms of
evaluating whether any given individual is enlightened or simply
wildly deluded.
Nevertheless, Wilber’s kensho experiences later blossomed
into the nondual “One Taste” state:
I was conscious for eleven days and nights, even as the body
and mind went through waking, dreaming, and sleeping: I
was unmoved in the midst of changes; there was no I to be
moved; there was only unwavering empty consciousness, the
luminous mirror-mind, the witness that was one with everything
witnessed. I simply reverted to what I am, and it has
been so, more or less, ever since (Wilber, 2000a).