Ken Wilber and Corey deVos
Part 1: The Problem of Evidence [FREE]
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In this episode of The Ken Show we take a look at an essay by Ken Wilber titled “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energy” (available to download for free!) which offers an elegant summary of how these energies might be accounted for by integral metatheory and integrated with our scientific understanding of the universe.
Throughout Ken’s career, he has been very careful to include only those dimensions of experience and reality that have a rigorous body of evidence behind them (and of course that evidence can come through any coherent methodology in any of the four quadrants/eight zones, and can be enacted by either the “eye of flesh”, the “eye of mind”, or the “eye of spirit”.)
But when it comes to things like subtle energy, it’s much more difficult to find this sort of repeatable and rigorous evidence. We have tons of interior-based anecdotes from people throughout history about their experiences with subtle energies — however, because the field is also littered with all sorts of magical thinking, charlatans, and snake oil, we need to be that much more careful about how we go about collecting evidence.
What’s more, because we are discussing exterior-quadrant realities here (we’re really talking about various forms of matter-energy) this means that we ultimately require exterior-quadrant methodologies in order to verify and/or falsify the existence of subtle energies. Which means that, until we are able to produce instruments capable of registering and measuring these phenomena in a clinical setting, the question of whether or not subtle energies exist seems to remain largely unverified and unfalsifiable.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t use the evidence we do have in order to come up with some strong hypotheses about how these energies might work, as Ken does in this essay. Who knows, perhaps these hypotheses will help guide the future of subtle energy science — simply by telling us where to look, and what to look for.
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More Episodes of The Ken Show
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In this very special episode of The Ken Show we are joined by Aissatou Diallo, Zoe Tray, and Noah Delorme, students at Choate Rosemary Hall who have been studying Ken Wilber’s seminal book, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality for their senior year project. Watch as Ken, Aissatou, Zoe, and Noah unpack many of the core insights of SES and discuss the unique value Integral work holds for a new generation of thinkers, leaders, artists, and scholars.
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Watch as Ken and Corey explore the ongoing unfoldment of love along the paths of Waking Up, Growing Up, Opening Up, Cleaning Up, and Showing Up. What follows is one of the most powerful, transformative, and touching conversations that Ken Wilber has ever recorded.
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In this episode we continue our fascinating discussion about Integral epistemology, taking a look at the important but partial truths of Marxism, how we go about verifying and confirming spiritual experiences, and the involutionary/evolutionary nature of mathematics.
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How do we know stuff? Like all of the great philosophical quandaries, it’s a fundamentally straightforward question that can lead us into an endlessly branching series of chicken-and-egg meditations on the nature of existence (ontology) versus the nature of knowledge (epistemology). In this fascinating episode of The Ken Show, we take a look at a dozen of the most popular schools of epistemological thought — idealism, pragmatism, empiricism, constructivism, etc. — noting their respective contributions and limitations, and how they can all be pulled together into a more Integral epistemology.
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All of us possess three primary modes of perception that we use to disclose reality – the "Eye of Flesh", the "Eye of Mind", and the "Eye of Spirit". Watch as Ken and Corey explore these ideas and the many ways we perceive and interpret spiritual realities.
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Ken and Corey offer a stunning overview of the psychological shadow. Ken describes several different kinds of shadow, how shadow can show up differently in all four quadrants, and the relationship between shadow, violence, and social transformation.
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Ken and Corey respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by suggesting a far more comprehensive approach to health and healing. Watch as we take a tour through all four quadrants of healthy living — a much-needed guide to integral anti-fragility in the 21st century.
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Ken and Corey take a in-depth tour through one of Ken’s most well-known contributions to integral philosophy: the Four Quadrants. Watch as Ken shares his personal story about the origins of the Four Quadrant model — the day everything came together — as he weaves 3rd-person theoretical descriptions of the model with his own 1st-person experience and creative process.
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As Ken has said, “all history is the study of an Other in space-time”. An integral enactment of history brings us to the thinnest edge of that infinitely tapered boundary between “self” and “other”. Watch as Ken unpacks his own approach to integral historiography, helping us to better understand our own place in history — and history’s place in us.
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In this stunning 3 hour discussion, Ken Wilber offers his own views around healthy and unhealthy forms of social justice, praising the healthy and legitimate efforts to enact social justice over the generations while noting how much of today’s broken discourse around social justice is helping to perpetuate multiple forms of injustice.
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In this exclusive 8-hour series, Ken and Corey take an in-depth look at America’s ongoing struggle with gun violence, using the four quadrants to track many of the most critical and commonly-blamed factors, conditions, and causes that seem to be contributing to this terribly wicked problem.
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Ken Wilber and Corey deVos ponder the evolutionary mysteries of the universe, speculating on how abundant life might be in the kosmos, why we haven’t met any of our galactic neighbors yet, and what might happen if a UFO landed on the White House lawn.
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Ken and Corey explore the path of Waking Up — a guided tour through temporary states of consciousness that include everything from emotional states to chemically-induced states to the direct, immediate experience of timeless reality.
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Ken and Corey explore our many developmental capacities in detail, offering a powerful summary of human potentials, talents, and intelligences — a comprehensive map of the territory of “you” that will help guide your own ongoing growth and development.
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Ken and Corey offer their views on some of the most controversial policy debates of our time — abortion, the death penalty, universal healthcare, vaccines, etc. — each of which has become a battle line in our constantly escalating culture wars.
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Ken and Corey offer their views on some of the most controversial policy debates of our time — abortion, the death penalty, universal healthcare, vaccines, etc. — each of which has become a battle line in our constantly escalating culture wars.
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In this episode of The Ken Show we explore five themes near and dear to the liberal heart — tolerance, nonviolence, power, privilege, and gender — celebrating the healthy aspects of each while weeding out the unhealthy regressive narratives that most of these have devolved into.
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Ken and Corey explore how today’s transnational challenges and realities may be hastening humanity’s eventual growth toward increasingly inclusive and global forms of governance, what government might look like at the level of the global holon, and how we might actually be able to get there from here.
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Ken and Corey take an in-depth look at the “major and minor scales” of integral politics — an inventory of the most critical elements, polarities, and patterns of self-organization that are at play within all of the major political systems across the world, from the rise of civilization to today. Includes a free eBook by Ken Wilber.
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Episode 4 — Is Free Will an Illusion?
In this episode of The Ken Show we explore one of the oldest and, in many ways, most profound and consequential philosophical questions in history: what is the nature of “free will”, and is it ultimately just an illusion?
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Episode 3 — How to Think Integrally
This conversation isn’t just about the “integral model”, it’s also about the kind of thinking that produces things like Integral models in the first place. Watch as Ken and Corey explore some of the most important qualities and principles of integral thinking.
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Ken and Corey explore some of the causal factors behind many of the regressive tendencies in our culture and politics these days, from new social pressures coming from social media technologies like Facebook, to the historic evolutionary trends that have formed and informed our major schools of political thought in the first place.
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Ken Wilber responds to questions about immigration, the dangerous excesses of the political right, and the regressive tendencies we are seeing in the postmodern left. Ken and Corey then offer an exploration of feminism and the need for both men and women to better harmonize the public sphere of politics, career, and religion with the private sphere of family, hearth, and home.
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Supporting Members of Integral Life can view all of the episodes above — over 30 hours of material, featuring Ken Wilber's latest ideas around politics, current events, and the great questions of our time. Includes full audio versions for every episode, so you can enjoy while driving, exercising, working, etc.
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Stay tuned for more exciting announcements and content releases from Integral Life!
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