PERENNIAL LEARY

LEARY

LEARY, HUXLEY, RAM DASS... que tiempos.

The original Great Chain of Being that defined his early thinking even from the start has become lost in a maze of quadrants, levels, holons, lines, states, and types that constitutes the mature Wilber IV. And although his supporters claim that Wilber does indeed propound a single unified system of knowledge, seamlessly integrating all aspects of science and spirituality, art and culture, ancient and modern knowledge, this was not my impression of his philosophy (see critiques of Wilber's "AQAL" cosmology and of philosophical method and Arvan Harvat's review/critique Even more so than Wilber III, this latest stage does not constitute a new philosophy or cosmology in itself. Rather, it seems to represent a rejection of metaphysics, especially his earlier (Wilbers I to III) position of an updating of the Perennial Philosophy's Great Chain of Being, in favour of a more Mahayana Buddhistic "emptiness" (shunyata) teaching, inspired by the Madyamika (Nagarjuna) and Yogachara schools [Brad Reynolds, Where's Wilber At? p. 14]. This marks the increasingly postmodernist flavour of Wilber's work, as the promised metaphysical synthesis of Wilber IV did not deliver the union of One and Many that one might argue should be at the heart of every grand esoteric synthesis