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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).

From Spirit to Sediment

Ken Wilber's Confused Metaphysics of
Involution, Emanation, and Incarnation

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

[A]ccording to the traditions, this entire process of evolution or “un-folding” could never occur without a prior process of involution or “in-folding.” Not only can the higher not be explained in terms of the lower, and not only does the higher not actually emerge “out of” the lower, but the reverse of both of those is true, according to the traditions. That is, the lower dimensions or levels are actually sediments or deposits of the higher dimensions, and they find their meaning because of the higher dimensions of which they are a stepped down or diluted version. This sedimentation process is called “involution” or “emanation.” According to the traditions, before evolution or the unfolding of Spirit can occur, involution or the infolding of Spirit must occur: the higher successively steps down into the lower. Thus, the higher levels appear to emerge “out of” the lower levels during evolution—for example, life appears to emerge out of matter—because, and only because, they were first deposited there by involution. You cannot get the higher out of the lower unless the higher were already there, in potential—sleeping, as it were—waiting to emerge. The “miracle of emergence” is simply Spirit's creative play in the fields of its own manifestation...

Thus, for the traditions, the great cosmic game begins when Spirit throws itself outward, in sport and play (lila, kenosis), to create a manifest universe. Spirit "loses" itself, "forgets" itself, takes on a magical facade of manyness (maya) in order to have a grand game of hide-and-seek with itself. Spirit first throws itself outward to create soul, which is a stepped down or diluted reflection of Spirit; soul then steps down into mind, a paler reflection yet of Spirit's radiant glory; mind then steps down into life, and life steps down into matter, which is the densest, lowest, least conscious form of Spirit. We might represent this as: Spirit-as-spirit steps down into Spirit-as-soul, which steps down into Spirit-as-mind, which steps down into Spirit-as-body, which steps down into Spirit-as-matter. These levels of the Great Nest are all forms of Spirit, but the forms become less and less conscious, less and less aware of their Source and Suchness, less and less alive to their ever-present Ground, even though they are nevertheless nothing but Spirit-at-play. — Ken Wilber.[1]

Ken Wilber's integral philosophy aspires to synthesize the major currents of human knowledge—science, psychology, philosophy, mysticism—into one overarching developmental framework. Central to this synthesis is a metaphysical scaffolding built on a dual movement: involution and evolution. Evolution, in Wilber's view, is not the blind groping of matter toward complexity, but Spirit awakening through successive layers of its own self-manifestation. But for evolution to occur, he insists, something must come before it: involution, or what he also calls infolding and emanation.

While this narrative of descent-then-ascent has roots in ancient cosmologies, Wilber's modern retelling of it raises serious philosophical and conceptual problems. Especially troubling is his fusion of metaphysical and psychological registers—cosmic structures and personal experience—into a single metaphoric-historical arc. By conflating involution, emanation, and incarnation, Wilber produces what may be an inspiring spiritual mythos, but also a conceptual muddle that resists careful analysis.

This essay explores these subtleties, using Wilber's own words to demonstrate the ambiguities and confusions that lie at the heart of his esoteric metaphysics.

1. Wilber's Thesis: Involution as Precondition for Evolution

Wilber's metaphysical claim can be stated succinctly: evolution is impossible without involution. That is, Spirit cannot unfold through evolution unless it has first folded itself down into matter. In Integral Spirituality, Wilber puts it this way:

“According to the traditions, before evolution or the unfolding of Spirit can occur, involution or the infolding of Spirit must occur: the higher successively steps down into the lower... You cannot get the higher out of the lower unless the higher were already there, in potential—sleeping, as it were—waiting to emerge.”

This is a bold ontological reversal of modern evolutionary theory. Where science sees complexity emerging from simplicity through natural processes, Wilber insists that complexity (or Spirit) was always already present, in potential, sedimented into the lower realms by a prior descent. Hence, life doesn't emerge from matter so much as it reawakens from within it.

He continues:

“The lower dimensions or levels are actually sediments or deposits of the higher dimensions, and they find their meaning because of the higher dimensions of which they are a stepped-down or diluted version.”

This “stepped-down” model sounds like a blend of Neoplatonic emanation and Vedantic metaphysics, but Wilber places it within a developmental schema that also borrows from modern systems theory and psychology. The result is a model in which Spirit "throws itself outward" into soul, which becomes mind, then life, and finally body:

“Spirit-as-spirit steps down into Spirit-as-soul, which steps down into Spirit-as-mind, which steps down into Spirit-as-body, which steps down into Spirit-as-matter.”

This creates a seamless metaphysical arc from Spirit to sediment—what Wilber calls the Great Nest of Being—through which Spirit forgets itself in order to remember itself again.

2. Involution or Emanation? A Category Mistake

Despite his appeals to “the traditions,” Wilber's use of involution diverges significantly from classical sources. In Neoplatonism, emanation describes the timeless and necessary overflow of the One into Nous, Soul, and the material cosmos. In Vedanta, Maya veils Brahman through layers of increasing density. In both cases, the process is atemporal, not historical. There is no "before" or "after."

Wilber, however, frames involution as a kind of pre-historical event—a metaphysical Big Bang that deposits higher realities into lower substrates. But by doing so, he unintentionally conflates emanation (an ontological hierarchy) with involution (a spiritual myth of descent), without distinguishing whether these are metaphorical, phenomenological, or ontological claims.

This is not just a terminological quibble. If involution is a metaphor for subjective spiritual forgetting, it belongs to psychology. If it is a claim about the structure of the cosmos, it belongs to metaphysics. If it is a literal account of how the universe was formed, it collides with science.

Wilber blurs these distinctions, asserting metaphysical continuity across disciplines that have incompatible premises. This allows him to fold modern developmental science into a spiritual mythos, but at the cost of analytic coherence.

3. Wilber's Post-Metaphysical Turn: A Shift in Tone, Not Substance

One might reasonably ask how Wilber's later, so-called post-metaphysical phase would assess the very metaphysical framework just described. Beginning in the early 2000s, Wilber increasingly emphasized the need to move beyond traditional metaphysical assertions—such as belief in subtle realms, reincarnation, or cosmic hierarchies—and instead focus on what he called the "pragmatics of enactment." This shift was aimed at framing spiritual insights not as ontological claims about reality, but as phenomenological enactments within particular worldspaces or meaning contexts.

In this post-metaphysical view, statements like "Spirit descends into matter" are no longer taken as literal cosmological facts, but as symbolic descriptions of deep structures within human consciousness. The emphasis shifts from asking "Is this real?" to "What practices bring this into view, and for whom?" In theory, this could have marked a healthy evolution of the integral model—one that avoids overreaching metaphysical claims in favor of grounded phenomenology.

However, in practice, Wilber continues to use metaphysical language liberally—even lavishly. The very passage quoted earlier, where Spirit steps down into soul, mind, body, and matter, appears in Integral Spirituality (2006), a work that is supposed to reflect his post-metaphysical maturity. This raises the question: has Wilber truly left behind metaphysics, or merely reframed it under new terms?

Critics have pointed out that Wilber's post-metaphysical rhetoric often coexists uneasily with traditional metaphysical commitments. He may claim that Spirit is not a metaphysical substance, but he continues to speak of Spirit's play, descent, awakening, and realization in ways that suggest ontological continuity. The language of involution and evolution remains central to his cosmology, even if now couched in developmental or enactment-based terms.

This inconsistency suggests that Wilber's post-metaphysical turn may be more strategic than structural: it helps insulate his system from scientific criticism by appealing to pluralism and phenomenology, while still relying on metaphysical scaffolding inherited from esotericism. The result is a hybrid discourse that tries to have it both ways—metaphysics without metaphysical commitment.

4. Subtle Energy: Esotericism Rebranded?

Another central component of Wilber's metaphysical system—one with deep esoteric roots—is the notion of subtle energy. This concept is most fully articulated in his unpublished Excerpt G, where he presents the idea that “every mind has a body,” including dream bodies, astral bodies, and causal bodies.[2] These are not metaphorical phrasings but are tied directly to the layered architecture of the Great Nest of Being, where each level of consciousness corresponds to an actual energetic vehicle or sheath.

Drawing from Theosophy, Vajrayana Buddhism, and energy medicine traditions, Wilber describes a spectrum of energy bodies that underlie gross physical form. He frames these subtle energies as quasi-empirical—something that could, in principle, be investigated through altered states of consciousness and cross-cultural spiritual phenomenology. Subtle energy, for Wilber, bridges the experiential (subjective states) and the structural (developmental levels), and serves as a mechanism linking Spirit's involutionary descent with the individual's evolutionary ascent.

Yet once again, ambiguity clouds the picture. Wilber refers approvingly to the work of Harold Saxton Burr, who studied so-called L-fields and T-fields as bioelectrical organizing patterns in biological systems. However, these are explicitly physical fields within the domain of measurable electromagnetism—not subtle energies in any esoteric sense. By citing such research, Wilber blurs the line between scientific biofield theory and metaphysical subtle energy systems, without clarifying whether he sees them as analogous, identical, or complementary. This conceptual slippage leaves his readers unsure whether he is grounding his claims in science, spirituality, or a hybrid that satisfies neither. Wilber remains vague.

In Excerpt G, he appears to treat these energies as both phenomenologically accessible and metaphysically real, suggesting that subtle energies are just as fundamental to the universe as quarks or photons—perhaps even more so. However, elsewhere he appeals to the post-metaphysical framing of these energies as “enacted” within specific worldspaces, potentially undermining their ontological autonomy. This is emblematic of Wilber's broader strategy: he draws liberally from esoteric sources while cloaking them in philosophical and developmental language to lend them legitimacy.

As with his treatment of involution, Wilber's notion of subtle energy raises more questions than it answers. If these energies exist, how do they interact with physical systems? If they are purely experiential, why present them as ontological layers? And if they are intersubjective enactments, can they still claim explanatory power in a theory of consciousness or evolution?

Rather than clarifying these tensions, Wilber allows the ambiguity to remain, perhaps because it sustains the spiritual resonance of his system. But for those seeking philosophical or scientific rigor, the concept of subtle energy—like much of Wilber's metaphysical apparatus—remains an article of faith dressed in developmental jargon.

5. The Descent of the Soul: Incarnation Smuggled In

Another source of confusion in Wilber's schema is the incorporation of incarnation—the idea of a soul entering or becoming embodied—as part of the cosmological structure. Traditionally, incarnation is personal, not cosmic: an individual soul takes on a body, usually through birth or karmic necessity. It is a cyclical event, not a metaphysical precondition for evolution.

But in Wilber's vision, the “soul” appears to be both:

• A cosmic ontological layer (Spirit-as-soul), and
• A personal spiritual identity (your subtle body or higher self).

This conflation allows him to describe both cosmogenesis and the individual spiritual path in the same language, creating a seamless but conceptually slippery framework.

He speaks of the soul stepping down into mind, then life, then body. But is this a story of the universe or the individual? Is he describing the birth of a cosmos or the reincarnation of a soul?

By wrapping incarnation into involution, Wilber makes it impossible to tell where cosmic ontology ends and personal psychology begins. What results is a metaphysical metaphor that reads like a creation myth but is defended as a developmental model.

6. The Problem of Causality: Deposits Without Explanation

Let's return to this key phrase:

“The lower dimensions or levels are actually sediments or deposits of the higher dimensions…”

Here, Wilber suggests a causal or ontological dependence of the lower on the higher. But what exactly is the mechanism of this “sedimentation”? Is it:

• A literal cosmological process?
• A metaphor for spiritual potential?
• A Jungian-like archetypal imprint?

Wilber doesn't say. The idea of “depositing” higher potentials into matter is attractive for spiritual narrative but lacks explanatory power. It also inverts the naturalist picture without providing a testable alternative.

From the standpoint of evolutionary biology, life emerges from matter through self-organizing complexity—not because some pre-existent soul is waiting inside atoms. Wilber would say that this emergence is only apparent, because Spirit was already “sleeping” in matter. But this is a theological assertion, not a scientific one.

In other words, Wilber replaces the hard problem of emergence with a metaphysical claim that higher forms were already present, just latent. But this simply pushes the mystery back to involution, which is even less explainable. It solves the problem of emergence with a deeper mystery—unfalsifiable, unprovable, and hermetically sealed.

7. The Play of Spirit, or the Play of Language?

Finally, Wilber's concluding phrase reveals the poetic heart of his metaphysics:

“The 'miracle of emergence' is simply Spirit's creative play in the fields of its own manifestation.”

This is beautiful as myth—but unhelpful as explanation. It leaves us asking:

• Is Spirit a being, a process, or a metaphor?
• Does “play” mean randomness, creativity, or divine intent?
• Are the “fields of manifestation” ontological realms or subjective states?

These ambiguities are not trivial. They allow Wilber to slide between registers—spiritual, scientific, psychological—without committing to the logic of any one domain. This may work for readers seeking synthesis and poetic coherence, but it frustrates those looking for conceptual clarity or philosophical rigor.

Conclusion: A Mythic System in Philosophical Garb

Wilber's esoteric cosmology, with its stepped-down sequence from Spirit to matter, offers a compelling spiritual narrative of descent and return. It draws from rich traditions of Neoplatonism, Vedanta, and Theosophy. But by conflating involution with emanation, and mixing in incarnation, he produces a metaphysical system that is both inspiring and incoherent.

He wants evolution to be more than materialism—he wants it to be Spirit's self-remembering. But to do so, he postulates an unobservable, unmeasurable descent of higher realms into the lower, a descent that neither science nor critical philosophy can affirm. His metaphors shine; his categories blur.

For those drawn to spiritual integration, Wilber's model may still serve as a symbolic roadmap. But for anyone concerned with rigorous metaphysical inquiry, the model requires a critical disentangling of its poetic beauty from its philosophical confusions.

Postscript: A View from Beyond Belief

From: C.W. Leadbeater, Man Visible and
Invisible, 1920 (view)

Having once traversed the symbolic world of Theosophy [I was publisher of the Dutch Theosophical Society for a decade in the '90s], I no longer subscribe to the ontological reality of mind, soul, or Spirit apart from the body. These terms, once taken as literal structures of the cosmos, now strike me as mythopoetic projections—useful, perhaps, for exploring consciousness, but not as maps of reality.

And yet, I remain attuned to how these terms function—psychologically, culturally, philosophically. It is precisely because I've left these frameworks behind that I am more sensitive to how easily they can be misused. Ken Wilber's conflation of involution, emanation, and incarnation may appeal to spiritual intuition, but it does a disservice to both esoteric integrity and philosophical clarity. One can respect the symbolic richness of these traditions while holding them to a standard of conceptual coherence. That standard matters—even, and especially, in matters of Spirit.[3]

Anticipating objections from those who view Theosophy as a fringe or fabricated spirituality, it must be said that however speculative Theosophy's framework may be, it provided one of the most elaborate and systematic treatments of the involution-evolution schema in modern esotericism. Ironically, while critics may turn to more "authentic" traditions like Vedanta or Kabbalah to correct Wilber, those traditions often offer only allusive or symbolic references to these concepts. Theosophy—whatever its faults—took the task of mapping the metaphysical descent and ascent of consciousness with a level of detail that few other traditions attempted. That makes it all the more important to recognize when its terminology is borrowed, adapted, or misrepresented.

Wilber too is heavy on metaphor and poetry, but thin on explanation and understanding.

NOTES

[1] Ken Wilber, Integral Spirituality, Shambhala, 2006, p. 215-217.

[2] Ken Wilber, "Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energies", www.integrallife.com. In Integral Spirituality Wilber boasts that "one reviewer called it the 'first believable and workable synthesis of the major schools of subtle energy'." (p. 229). This remains to be seen. Subtle energy is either physical, and then it can be measured by science, or it is metaphysical, and then it is tied to subtle bodies, subtle planes, reincarnation, and all that jazz.

Here's Wilber's overview of subtle energies—note the odd biological terminology of family, genus and species, and the weird mix of particles, bodily organs, developmental stages and mystical states.

For a full-blown occult-metaphysical treatment of this topic, see these theosophical compilations by A.E. Powell: The Etheric Double, The Astral Body, The Mental Body, The Causal Body and the Ego and The Solar System at Theosophy World.

[3] See also: Frank Visser, Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion, SUNY Press, 2003, p. 281-282, where I compare Wilber with the esoteric traditions.

Briefly, within an esoteric-metaphysical framework, these were the intended meanings:

• emanation - the creation of the seven worlds or planes.
• involution - the downward movement of divine life through these planes.
• evolution - the upward movement of divine life through these planes
• incarnation - the downward movement of individual souls through the lower planes.
• excarnation - the upward movement of individual souls through the lower planes.
• individualisation - the downward movement of spirit into an individual animal.
• inspiration - the downward movement of spirit into an individual human.

Condensing this complicated story into post-metaphysics results in an incoherent psycho-cosmic narrative. In a truly post-metaphysical narrative, only evolution remains, but it is no longer driven by Spirit and can be explained by fully naturalistic principles. That way, much of the cosmic and psychological dynamic Wilber needs would be obsolete. Hence, he holds on to an outdated cosmological scheme. Evolution-without-involution is a view Wilber deems "an incoherent position" (The Collected Works of Ken Wilber, vol. II, Shambhala, 1999, p. 12), but coherence is not enough for science.