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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).

Three Metaphysical Visions of Evolution

Clarifying Ken Wilber's Spiritual Naturalism

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

Ken Wilber's metaphysical framing of evolution offers a distinctive synthesis of spirituality and developmental science. In a moment of rare clarity, Wilber once summarized the metaphysical options as follows:[1]

"You either postulate a supernatural source of which there are two types. One is a Platonic given and one is basically theological—a God or intelligent design—or you postulate Spirit as immanent—of course it's transcendent but also immanent—and it shows up as a self-organizing, self-transcending drive within evolution itself. And then evolution is Spirit's own unfolding. Not in super-natural, but an intra-natural, an immanently natural aspect. And that's basically the position I maintain."

This statement presents three metaphysical accounts of evolutionary order:

• A Platonic account of eternal archetypes;
• A theistic view of divine design;
• An immanent spiritual view, where evolution is Spirit-in-action.

Wilber ultimately rejects the first two as “supernaturalist” in the classical sense—imposing order from above—and advances a third way: a vision of Spirit that is both transcendent and immanent, operating through the natural world rather than outside it.

Let's examine these three perspectives and their implications for our understanding of evolution.

1. The Platonic Given: Archetypes Beyond Time

The first option posits a realm of timeless archetypes or ideal forms—ontological structures that serve as the blueprint for all things. This is not merely Jungian psychology, but what Wilber calls the “real” archetypes: pre-existing forms of deep structure in the subtle realm of being. These are ontologically prior to manifestation, shaping the evolution of forms from a level “above” gross material existence.

Wilber draws from the Neoplatonic tradition, where reality emanates downward from the One, through archetypal structures, into the world of matter. These subtle archetypes are not physical or material, but patterning principles that govern developmental trajectories.

Implications for evolution:

• Evolution is not random but follows pre-structured templates embedded in the cosmos.
• The archetypes are not psychological projections (as in Jung), but ontological realities accessible through higher states of consciousness.
• This view attributes direction and coherence to evolution, but at the cost of naturalistic explanation.
• It edges toward metaphysical essentialism: every being is shaped by an ideal essence it tries to actualize.

Wilber respects this view, and integrates it within his subtle realm ontology, but ultimately sees it as incomplete unless combined with a dynamic, immanent force.

2. The Theological Option: Intelligent Design

The second “supernatural” view is the theological one: evolution is guided by a divine intelligence—God, or some kind of intentional creative agency. This is the territory of Intelligent Design and classical theism.

Implications for evolution:

• Nature is not self-organizing but dependent on divine intervention or supervision.
• Complexity in biology is not emergent but designed.
• Evolution has a purpose dictated from outside the system.
• This view tends to be dualistic: God and world are separate, with God acting as a craftsman shaping creation.

Wilber firmly rejects this view as philosophically outdated and scientifically unnecessary. It violates his commitment to nonduality and fails to explain the interior depths of becoming without appealing to an outside agent.

3. The Immanent View: Spirit as Evolution-in-Action

The third position—Wilber's own—is a panentheistic, nondual metaphysics in which Spirit is both the ground and the process of becoming. Spirit is not a designer or an archetype, but the very dynamism of evolutionary unfolding itself.

Wilber calls this an “intra-natural” spirituality, meaning it does not posit anything outside nature, but sees nature as always-already Spirit in action. Evolution isn't just blind chance filtered by selection; it's Spirit's immanent push toward greater depth, complexity, and integration.

He often refers to this as the “Eros of the Kosmos”—not a literal force, but a metaphorical pointer to the observable drive toward self-organization and self-transcendence.[2]

Implications for evolution:

• Evolution is not just mechanical or random, but directional (though not strictly teleological).
• Spirit manifests as the immanent force of creativity in evolution.
• Emergence, complexity, and consciousness are not accidents, but natural expressions of Spirit.
• This position honors science, but extends it into metaphysics, interpreting its patterns spiritually.

This view combines insights from systems theory, developmental psychology, and mystical traditions, but many scientists and philosophers see it as smuggling teleology back into biology without empirical warrant.

Archetypes Revisited: Subtle Realms and Formative Forces

Importantly, even though Wilber ultimately affirms Spirit-in-action as the deepest explanation, he does not entirely discard archetypes. In his spectrum ontology, archetypes exist in the subtle realm, above the gross material world but below causal Spirit. These archetypes are not static ideals as in Plato, but dynamic templates of form and process—part of the ontological infrastructure of the universe.

In Wilber's integral map, subtle archetypes influence both cultural forms and biological evolution, particularly through the interior dimensions of consciousness. Thus, his third position still incorporates the first, but subordinates it to a deeper metaphysical process: the unfolding of Spirit through all levels.

Conclusion: Wilber's “Third Way” and Its Dilemmas

Wilber's metaphysical interpretation of evolution seeks to integrate spiritual depth with empirical development, avoiding the twin pitfalls of:

• Materialist reductionism, which sees evolution as mindless and purposeless.
• Supernatural theism, which invokes a designer or blueprint imposed from outside.

His preferred view of Spirit as the immanent drive within evolution provides a spiritual interpretation without violating the self-organizing logic of nature.

Yet this metaphysical third way raises deep questions:

• Is the “Eros of evolution” more than poetic metaphor?
• Can spiritual interiority be grounded without violating scientific naturalism?
• Does invoking subtle archetypes compromise the claim of intra-naturalism?

Ultimately, Wilber's metaphysics is an ambitious synthesis, seeking to unite depth psychology, systems theory, and nondual spirituality into a comprehensive vision. Whether it stands as a philosophically coherent and empirically plausible account of evolution remains a matter of ongoing debate.

NOTES

[1] Audio recording linked to from the PDF: "Ken Responds to Recent Critics", www.kenwilber.com, 2006 (now offline). (Archived)

[2] Yet, his statements are ambiguous. In his latest book Finding Radical Wholeness (2024) he explicitly uses the term "force" in this context (emphasis added):

The inherent drive of the universe to self-organize has set evolution in motion and then pushed it from from within to ever-greater and ever more unified wholes (or holons), with the result of 14 billion years of this self-organization through self-transcendence being nothing less than this unbelievably beautiful world we find ourselves in. This is an inherent drive—an actual force—present in the universe itself. It's as real a force as gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.

This Eros or self-organization also pushes our own growth and development and opens us to higher and higher stages of evolutionary unfolding. The force that produced galaxies from the Big Bang, gorillas from dirt, and global worldcentric concern from egocentric narcissism is the same force that will drive us to higher and higher stages of our own growth, development and evolution. And if you see evolution as being driven by "Spirit-in-action"—which is one possible view that emerges at this orange stage—then the very drive of this Eros or self-organizing activity can be seen as the creative drive of Spirit itself, creating something from nothing in every moment of existence, as the creative Ground of Being of everything that is. (p. 167)