• home
• about
• new
• essays
• AI
• book

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 Myth of Transcendence

How the Threefold Scheme of Evolution Failed to Deliver

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

When I was still immersed in Ken Wilber's integral philosophy, I found a simple but elegant framework that seemed to make sense of the grand story of existence: mythic–rational–mystic. This triadic model promised to chart humanity's understanding of evolution across history—from the age of creation myths, through the rise of scientific reason, to the dawning of a new, spiritually informed cosmology.

At the time, this map felt complete. It honored religion's hunger for meaning, science's hunger for truth, and mysticism's hunger for unity. It seemed to combine the best of all worlds—the devotion of the believer, the rigor of the empiricist, and the insight of the sage. For a long while, I believed that this was what “integration” meant. Yet over time, and especially after immersing myself in evolutionary biology itself, I came to see that this elegant threefold structure, for all its symmetry, was not a synthesis but a substitution—a sophisticated attempt to have the comfort of myth without the responsibility of method.

I. The Threefold Scheme: From Myth to Reason to Spirit

Wilber's developmental framework mirrored the evolution of human consciousness itself. Humanity, he said, has passed through major worldviews that shape how we interpret the cosmos. In this spirit, evolution could be read in three broad ways:

The Mythic View: The universe and life were created by divine beings. Sacred texts provide the narrative, and belief ensures belonging. Evolution, in this view, is not a natural process but a blasphemy against divine authorship. The world has purpose because it was designed.

The Rational View: The universe and life are the result of natural laws and contingent processes. Darwin replaced divine creation with descent with modification; natural selection, random mutation, and adaptation took the place of divine will. Life's complexity, in this view, arises from blind but cumulative processes—not from foresight or purpose.

The Mystic View: The universe and life are the self-unfolding of Spirit. Evolution is not random but teleological; consciousness and complexity are not accidental but expressive of a deeper drive—what Wilber called Eros, or Spirit-in-action. Evolution, here, becomes revelation: the cosmos awakening to itself through form.

It was a story with deep intuitive appeal. Each stage seemed to build upon and transcend the previous one, culminating in a vision that united science and spirituality. And for someone raised between religion and rationalism, that unity was intoxicating.

II. The Lure of Integration

The third position—the mystical synthesis—was attractive precisely because it seemed to include everything. It affirmed science, but gave it meaning. It affirmed myth, but purified it of literalism. It spoke of transcendence without superstition, and of purpose without fundamentalism.

In Wilber's and Theosophy's hands, evolution became spiritualized. The emergence of complexity, mind, and self-awareness were seen not as flukes, but as expressions of an immanent cosmic intelligence. Theosophy spoke of hidden hierarchies, etheric forces, and spiritual planes; Wilber, in a more modern idiom, spoke of holons, self-transcending drives, and the dynamic unfolding of consciousness through matter, life, and mind.

To the spiritually inclined intellect, this offered both reconciliation and relief. It allowed one to accept Darwin while secretly believing in Design. The universe regained meaning; evolution regained direction. The harshness of natural selection was softened by the conviction that “something more” guided it all from within.

For a long time, I too took comfort in that vision. It offered what religion could not—credibility—and what science could not—significance.

III. Cracks in the Synthesis

Yet the moment one looks closer, this synthesis starts to dissolve. The “Spirit-in-action” hypothesis, while rhetorically powerful, explains nothing. It assumes the very thing it claims to reveal. Instead of demonstrating that evolution is guided by an inner telos, it merely asserts that it must be—because randomness and chance feel unsatisfying.

This is not an argument but a reaction—a psychological need transformed into cosmology. When Wilber speaks of Eros as the self-organizing drive of the cosmos toward greater depth and consciousness, what he offers is not a scientific insight but a re-enchanted narrative, a myth of transcendence for the modern age.

What troubled me, as I learned more about evolutionary theory, was how little this mystical view engaged with actual biological mechanisms. The “spiritual” explanation remained metaphoric, untethered from empirical data. It offered no predictions, no testable hypotheses, no capacity to be falsified. It was science-flavored poetry.

Even worse, it displaced curiosity with contentment. Once you declare that “Spirit did it,” investigation ends. The explanatory pressure is relieved—prematurely. Instead of exploring the immense subtleties of mutation, selection, epigenetics, and developmental systems, one rests in the warm glow of metaphysical assurance.

This, ironically, is not the transcendence of reason but its abdication.

IV. From Integration to Inflation

The deeper problem lies not in the aspiration to integrate, but in the inflation of integration into metaphysics. Wilber's system, like Theosophy before it, claimed to map every level of reality—physical, biological, psychological, and spiritual. But to map everything is to risk mistaking one's map for the world.

Both systems tried to redeem meaning in a cosmos stripped bare by scientific materialism. But they did so by re-importing teleology through conceptual backdoors. Theosophy dressed this as occult cosmology; Wilber dressed it as developmental holism. Both promised to “include and transcend Darwin,” but in practice, both failed to engage Darwin at all.

Darwin's genius lay in showing that adaptation and complexity do not require foresight—that apparent design can arise from mindless iteration. This insight dethroned not only the biblical Creator but also the metaphysical “World-Spirit.” To resurrect purpose as “Eros” is to restore, in subtler form, the very metaphysics Darwin rendered unnecessary.

It was a romantic rebellion against randomness, and in that rebellion lay its charm—and its error.

V. The Return to Reason

What ultimately disillusioned me was not cynicism but respect for evidence. The more one studies actual evolutionary science, the more awe it evokes—not less. The natural world does not need our spiritual overlays to be wondrous.

Science's “flatland,” as Wilber calls it, turns out to be a multidimensional landscape of staggering complexity. Evolutionary theory, far from being reductionistic, integrates genetics, ecology, paleontology, and developmental biology into an ever-deepening understanding of life's history. It is dynamic, self-correcting, and humble in the face of uncertainty.

In contrast, the mystical version of evolution, for all its grandeur, remains static—immune to falsification, content with metaphor. It elevates intuition above investigation, turning the scientific mystery of emergence into a metaphysical truism: Spirit evolves through form.

But saying that tells us nothing about how eyes evolved, or how flight emerged, or how multicellularity arose. It is explanation by incantation.

VI. The Myth of Transcendence

The mythic–rational–mystic sequence, then, is not a historical inevitability but a psychological pattern. It flatters us with the belief that our spiritual intuitions mark a higher stage of knowing. Yet what if, instead, they mark a return—a sophisticated recycling of myth in metaphysical language?

To call evolution “Spirit-in-action” is to do precisely what myth has always done: personalize the impersonal, narrate the unknowable, and moralize the indifferent. The mystic view is not a breakthrough beyond science; it is a reversion with better vocabulary.

This realization was both liberating and sobering. The spiritual narrative had been meaningful, yes, but meaning is not the same as truth. The cosmos does not need our sense of purpose to unfold; its grandeur lies precisely in its indifference. That indifference, properly faced, can be the most profound form of transcendence—one grounded not in faith, but in understanding.

VII. What Remains

Rejecting the mystical teleology of evolution does not mean embracing nihilism. It means embracing reality as it is—wild, contingent, self-organizing, and endlessly creative in its own impersonal way. It means learning to see beauty in process rather than purpose.

If there is spirituality here, it is the spirituality of realism: of standing before the fact of existence without resorting to metaphysical decoration. It is not the universe awakening to itself, but us awakening to the universe—without projection, without myth.

The threefold scheme of mythic–rational–mystic once felt like a ladder toward ultimate understanding. Now it feels like a spiral—one that begins and ends in myth, unless we have the courage to stop climbing and simply look.