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Jan Krikke is a former Japan correspondent for various media and former managing editor of Asia 2000 in Hong Kong. He pioneered the study of axonometry, the Chinese equivalent of European linear perspective overlooked by Jean Gebser. He is the author of several books, including Leibniz, Einstein, and China, and the editor of The Spiritual Imperative, a macrohistory based on the Indian Varna system by feminist futurist Larry Taub.

The Category Errors at the Heart of the Wilber Debate

Jan Krikke / AI

A person can verify that they have had an experience of unity.
They cannot verify that the universe is unified because of it.

A person can verify that they have experienced timelessness.
They cannot verify that time itself does not exist.

The interior domain is self-verifying.
The exterior domain is not.

To claim otherwise collapses the distinction between phenomenology and ontology.

Experience vs. Explanation

Defenders of Ken Wilber often accuse his critics of relying too heavily on the “rational mind,” of lacking familiarity with meditative states, or of failing to appreciate the so-called “trans-rational” dimensions of consciousness. They argue that spiritual insight reveals truths inaccessible to science, and that critics who do not share these experiences cannot evaluate the metaphysical claims derived from them.

But this line of defense rests on a deeper issue—not simply a disagreement about spirituality or consciousness, but a fundamental category error: the misapplication of criteria, methods, and forms of justification from one domain of knowledge to another.

Let's examines these errors, not to dismiss the spiritual or the contemplative, but to clarify the difference between what can be experienced and what can be inferred from experience. The problem is not meditation, nor mystical insight, nor the value of direct, non-conceptual awareness.

The problem is what happens when one treats these experiences as evidence for a cosmological architecture of the universe. The moment meditative phenomenology is presented as a theory of reality itself, metaphysics has replaced observation, and spiritual interpretation has been mistaken for empirical explanation.

Human beings have experiences. They include ordinary perceptions, thoughts, emotions, memories, and—occasionally—states of non-dual or transpersonal awareness reported by contemplatives across cultures. These experiences can be profound. They can transform a person's sense of self, reduce suffering, or open new ethical or aesthetic sensitivities.

What they cannot do is settle questions of cosmology.

A meditative experience may feel like an encounter with the Ground of Being. It may feel like union with "universal consciousness." It may feel timeless, spaceless, or infinite. But the feeling of unity is not evidence of ontological unity.

This distinction is neither reductive nor dismissive. It is simply epistemic:
experience does not automatically justify metaphysical extrapolation.

Wilber's defenders collapse this distinction. For them, nondual states are not merely experiences; they are windows into the structure of reality itself. They claim that critics who have not had these experiences—or who do not interpret them metaphysically—are unqualified to judge the claims built upon them.

This is the first category error: confusing a first-person phenomenological event with a third-person ontological claim.

Verification and Category Error

The second error is methodological.

Science, broadly speaking, operates through verification, falsification, reproducibility, and intersubjective consensus. These criteria are not ideological; they are pragmatic tools for distinguishing what we wish to be true from what can be shown to be true. They allow us to build bridges, cure diseases, and track planets.

Spirituality does not and need not operate under these criteria. It works through introspection, interpretation, symbolism, transformation, and meaning. These are legitimate paths of inquiry—but they answer different questions.

A spiritual experience can be meaningful without being verifiable.
A meditative insight can be transformative without being explanatory.

To insist that meditative states yield cosmological knowledge is to violate the distinction between two domains. It is to confuse:

• how one feels with how the universe is
• subjective illumination with objective explanation
• symbolic meaning with physical mechanism

This is the second category error: applying the standards of spiritual insight to the domain of empirical description, or applying the language of science to justify metaphysics.

Wilber often describes cosmic evolution using scientific terminology—Big Bang cosmology, biological evolution, neurological development—yet interprets them as expressions of a metaphysical Eros, a teleological drive built into the universe. His defenders insist he is merely integrating scientific knowledge with contemplative insight. But integration requires compatibility, not conflation, and Wilber's framework often makes the latter move.

The Leap from Experience to Ontology

A central feature of many transpersonal philosophies is the claim that nondual awareness reveals the true nature of reality. Wilber's defenders argue that critics lack the necessary “altitude” to judge this claim: if you have not experienced nondual awareness, you cannot understand the universe it reveals.

But even if one grants the transformative power of nondual states, the metaphysical leap remains unwarranted. Experiences can be psychologically transformative without being cosmologically authoritative.

This is not an unfamiliar problem. Every religious tradition faces it. Every mystical system struggles with it. The perennial danger is confusing:

“This feels ultimate”

with

“This is ultimate.”

Many traditions warn precisely against this error. Buddhism distinguishes between emptiness and metaphysical claims about emptiness. Advaita Vedanta distinguishes between the experience of Brahman and philosophical assertions about Brahman. Christian mysticism distinguishes between union with God and theology about God.

Yet Wilber repeatedly moves from the character of an experience to a theory about the universe. His defenders follow him, arguing that the nondual state is not merely a psychological phenomenon but a direct apprehension of the Ground of Being. When critics challenge this, the defenders accuse them of lacking spiritual maturity.

This is the third category error: treating the interpretation of an experience as though it followed directly from the experience itself.

Ontological Modesty as Intellectual Honesty

A great deal of metaphysics proceeds by overextension: ideas inflated until they float above the ground of experience. Wilber's project is not unique in this respect; it belongs to a long lineage of metaphysical systems that attempt to show how the universe must be based on how consciousness feels in certain states.

The alternative is not reductive materialism but ontological modesty—the discipline of refusing to project experience beyond its evidential domain. This modesty does not deny spiritual experience or insight. It merely refuses to treat them as cosmological revelation.

Where Wilber's defenders accuse critics of lacking spiritual depth, the real issue is epistemic clarity. A system that cannot distinguish between experience and explanation, between psychology and cosmology, between introspection and physics, commits a category error at its foundation.

Spiritual experience may be profound. Meditative insight may be transformative. Nondual awareness may dissolve the boundaries of self and world. But none of this authorizes metaphysical claims about the structure of the universe. To argue otherwise is to confuse categories—inner experience with outer reality, symbolic meaning with empirical description, phenomenology with ontology.

Wilber's defenders often accuse critics of not “getting it.” But the issue is not failure of insight; it is failure of epistemic discipline. Critics are not rejecting the spiritual; they are respecting the difference between what can be known and what can only be believed.

And recognizing that difference is not a failure of spirituality.

It is a triumph of intellectual honesty.