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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).

Ken Wilber and the Persistence of Metaphysical Language

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

Ken Wilber has long presented himself as a philosopher of integration—one who seeks to reconcile the insights of science, psychology, and spirituality within a single coherent framework. Yet even as he champions a “post-metaphysical” approach, his writing remains saturated with metaphysical vocabulary. Terms like “Spirit,” “Eros,” and “the Ground of Being” appear not as metaphors for human experience, but as cosmic principles governing existence itself. The paradox is striking: Wilber's system claims to transcend metaphysics, yet it continually reintroduces it through the back door.

Why, in an age that prides itself on critical self-reflection and philosophical modesty, does Wilber still speak in the tones of the old metaphysicians and mystics? Why not simply say “the ground of your being,” as any truly post-metaphysical thinker would? This question points to a deeper problem—the persistence of metaphysical language in a post-metaphysical age, and the difficulty of maintaining spiritual meaning once metaphysical certainties are relinquished.

The Rhetorical Power of the Metaphysical

To understand why Wilber cannot quite abandon metaphysical speech, we must first recognize its rhetorical and psychological power. The metaphysical voice speaks from the ultimate perspective. It offers comfort, orientation, and cosmic assurance. When Wilber writes of “Spirit-in-action,” “Eros as the drive of evolution,” or “the Ground of all Being,” he is not merely describing human experience—he is endowing the universe with purpose and direction. His readers sense grandeur and depth. They feel lifted out of fragmentation and cynicism.

Metaphysical language functions as a kind of existential glue. It binds together the disparate registers of life—science, art, ethics, and religion—under the promise that they are all expressions of one deeper unity. Wilber's Integral framework, with its quadrants, levels, and lines, gains emotional credibility from this cosmic backdrop. Without it, the system risks looking like an elaborate taxonomy of perspectives, devoid of transcendence.

Thus, even as Wilber declares his allegiance to post-metaphysics, he cannot relinquish the spiritual magnetism of metaphysical speech. To do so would mean to surrender not only a vocabulary but a worldview—a worldview that has sustained mystics and metaphysicians for millennia.

From Experience to Ontology—and Back Again

The problem, however, lies in the subtle but decisive step from experience to ontology. When mystics speak of union with the divine or the Ground of Being, they report a transformation in consciousness—a state in which ordinary distinctions dissolve, and reality appears as one seamless field. Such experiences can be life-changing. But when philosophers or spiritual teachers like Wilber declare that this unity reveals what reality is, they move beyond phenomenology into metaphysical speculation.

Post-metaphysical thinking demands discipline at precisely this point. It insists that we describe how things appear in consciousness without claiming to know what they are in themselves. Saying, “I experienced reality as unbroken unity” is legitimate. Saying, “Reality is unbroken unity” is metaphysics. The former is modest, experiential, and falsifiable in an intersubjective sense; the latter is assertive, dogmatic, and unverifiable.

Wilber's ambition to create a “religion of tomorrow”—a spirituality without myth but with depth—requires walking this fine line. Yet again and again, he crosses it. His invocation of the “nondual” or the “Ground of Being” slides effortlessly from the experiential to the ontological, from the descriptive to the declarative. He cannot resist asserting that Spirit is not just experienced as the essence of all things but is the essence of all things.

The Mirage of “Post-Metaphysical Spirit”

In Integral Spirituality, Wilber attempts to square this circle by redefining “Spirit” as neither a separate entity nor an object within the world, but as “the Suchness of all things.” At first glance, this seems to rescue spirituality from metaphysics—Spirit is no longer “out there,” but right here, inseparable from every perception. Yet the very phrase “Suchness of all things” betrays the lingering metaphysical assumption that there is a single ontological Suchness pervading reality.

This rhetorical maneuver mirrors the ancient Advaitin claim that “Atman is Brahman.” It sounds profoundly nondual, but it presupposes a metaphysical unity behind appearances. A genuinely post-metaphysical approach would refrain from asserting such unity as fact. It would treat the intuition of oneness as a human event—a phenomenological revelation, not a cosmological truth.

In this respect, Wilber's “post-metaphysical Spirit” remains metaphysical in everything but name. It continues to posit a cosmic foundation for being, even while disavowing mythic cosmology. One might call it “metaphysics with footnotes.”

Why “Your Own Being” Matters

To say “the Ground of your being” rather than “the Ground of Being” may seem a small grammatical change, but philosophically it is revolutionary. It localizes what Wilber universalizes; it personalizes what he absolutizes. It places the mystery of existence within the human subject rather than projecting it onto the cosmos.

In the age of neuroscience, cognitive science, and phenomenology, consciousness is increasingly understood as an emergent and context-dependent process. The sense of unity or nonduality may thus reflect particular brain states, developmental stages, or interpretive frameworks. To describe it as the “Ground of Being” turns an empirical and psychological phenomenon into an ontological claim. Saying “Ground of your being,” by contrast, acknowledges the subjective and symbolic nature of this insight. It respects both the profundity of the experience and the humility of our epistemic limits.

This shift aligns with the central project of post-metaphysical thought: to recover the existential and transformative power of spiritual experience without smuggling in metaphysical baggage. It echoes the call of philosophers such as Habermas, Varela, and Ferrer, who have each sought forms of spirituality compatible with pluralism, embodiment, and intersubjective verification.

The Survival Instinct of Metaphysics

But why does metaphysics keep returning, even among thinkers who claim to have moved beyond it? The answer lies not just in philosophy but in psychology. Metaphysical ideas satisfy deep emotional needs. They provide orientation in a world that often appears meaningless or chaotic. They promise that consciousness is not a fleeting accident of matter but an expression of something eternal.

Wilber, like many modern spiritual teachers, intuits that a purely secular humanism lacks the existential warmth that religion once provided. He therefore rebuilds transcendence within an ostensibly postmodern framework. His Integral Vision functions as a cosmic reassurance: evolution has meaning, Spirit has direction, and your consciousness participates in the grand unfolding of the universe. This is theology in developmental disguise.

To abandon such cosmic assurances would require confronting a more austere spirituality—one that finds meaning in human depth rather than metaphysical destiny. That is a harder sell. It demands existential courage instead of cosmic comfort.

The Linguistic Frontier of the Post-Metaphysical

We are living in a time when metaphysical language still lingers like an afterglow from a departed sun. The words “Spirit,” “Being,” and “Eros” carry immense cultural resonance, but they no longer refer to anything we can confidently assert exists outside human meaning-making. To speak in these terms, as Wilber does, is to risk ambiguity: Are we speaking of experience or of ontology? Of metaphor or of fact?

The challenge of post-metaphysical thought is not to abolish these words but to recode them. A post-metaphysical “Spirit” could mean the felt sense of vitality and connectedness that arises when the ego dissolves. “Being” could denote the sheer givenness of existence as experienced, not a transcendent essence. “Eros” could signify the creative impulse within human imagination and evolution, without invoking a divine teleology.

This linguistic discipline does not impoverish spirituality; it refines it. It allows us to retain wonder without illusion, depth without dogma.

Toward a Human Spirituality

A truly post-metaphysical spirituality must be grounded in the realities of human existence—embodiment, finitude, language, and culture. It must resist the temptation to speak for the cosmos. Instead, it should explore how the cosmos appears to us, through our fragile and fallible consciousness.

Wilber's project, for all its ambition, remains caught between two eras: the metaphysical and the post-metaphysical. He wishes to preserve the grandeur of the first while claiming the intellectual legitimacy of the second. But one cannot inhabit both worlds indefinitely. The more he insists on the “Ground of Being,” the less convincing his post-metaphysical credentials become.

To speak of “the ground of your being” is not to trivialize mysticism but to humanize it. It invites us to look inward, not upward—to recognize that the depth we seek is the depth of our own experience. What the mystics called “the Ground” may be nothing other than the fundamental openness of consciousness itself, ever-present yet never final, infinite only in its capacity for meaning.

Conclusion: After the Death of Metaphysics

The death of metaphysics need not mean the death of spirit. It means learning to live without pretending to know what lies beyond the horizon of experience. It means replacing grand narratives of cosmic evolution with humble practices of awareness, compassion, and dialogue.

Ken Wilber's persistent metaphysical language reminds us how difficult this transition remains. The temptation to universalize one's private illumination into cosmic ontology is perennial. Yet the maturity of a post-metaphysical age lies in resisting that temptation. The challenge is to preserve the fire of spiritual insight without enclosing it in metaphysical glass.

Saying “the Ground of Being” may make us feel eternal; saying “the ground of your being” makes us honest. And in a world long enchanted by metaphysical promises, honesty may be the deepest spirituality we have left.