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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

The Wilber-Combs Matrix

Can Anyone Wake Up at Any Stage?

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

One of the central claims of the Afterword is that "Waking Up" and "Growing Up" are largely independent dimensions of human development. A person, Wilber argues, can experience profound enlightenment from virtually any developmental stage. This idea was first formalized in what became known as the Wilber-Combs Matrix, developed with the late consciousness researcher Allan Combs.

The matrix cross-classifies two dimensions. One axis represents stages of psychological development (egocentric, ethnocentric, worldcentric, integral), while the other represents temporary states of consciousness (gross, subtle, causal, nondual). According to Wilber, every combination is possible. Thus, a person at an ethnocentric stage may have a genuine nondual realization, while a highly developed integral thinker may never have experienced awakening at all.

At first glance, this appears to solve a longstanding puzzle. History certainly provides examples of mystics who combined profound contemplative experience with narrow moral horizons. The distinction between temporary experiences and enduring psychological development is both reasonable and psychologically plausible.

The difficulty arises when Wilber moves from conceptual possibility to empirical certainty.

The Wilber-Combs Matrix is not based on systematic experimental research demonstrating that every developmental stage can access every contemplative state. No large-scale studies have independently verified such a matrix. Nor have contemplative neuroscience or developmental psychology established the independence Wilber assumes.

Instead, the matrix functions primarily as a theoretical synthesis. It integrates observations from developmental psychology, meditation traditions, and Wilber's own philosophical framework. As such, it is an interesting hypothesis. It is not an established scientific model.

Moreover, the matrix depends heavily on accepting the traditional classification of subtle, causal, and nondual states as objectively existing categories. Yet these categories originate within specific contemplative traditions rather than empirical psychology. Modern neuroscience generally studies altered states without presupposing such metaphysical taxonomies.

There is another conceptual difficulty. If every developmental stage can realize the same ultimate Reality, then what exactly distinguishes realization itself from its interpretation? Wilber answers that interpretation varies according to developmental stage. But once interpretation is acknowledged to be inseparable from experience, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify an invariant core that remains untouched by culture, language, expectation, and conceptual framework.

The Wilber-Combs Matrix therefore remains an elegant theoretical possibility rather than an empirically established map of consciousness.