Involution and Evolution

Wilber's View

Wilber pairs two technical terms to describe the two "movements" of Spirit across the Great Chain/Great Nest of Being. Evolution (which he also calls Reflux, or Ascent, driven by Eros) is the familiar unfolding upward: matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each level transcending and including its predecessors. Involution (Efflux, Descent, driven by Agape) is the less familiar half — the higher dimensions "enfolding" or "involving" themselves into the lower first, depositing themselves there as potentials, so that evolution can later unfold what involution first laid down. Nothing evolves into existence out of nowhere, on this view; it unfolds what was already enfolded.

He borrows Plotinus's precise formula for the relationship: in evolution/Reflux, if the lowest level is A, the next level up is A+B, the next A+B+C, and so on — each step adds something new. In involution/Efflux, moving down from the highest, the sequence subtracts: A, then A−B, then A−B−C — each step down is a stepping-down or "understood in minuses" from the ground above it. What's left after every possible subtraction — bare matter — is therefore the most fundamental level (present in everything) and simultaneously the least significant one (see kosmos-vs-cosmos on that same inversion). Wilber is careful to head off a common misreading: involution isn't fate. Because it deposits only potentials, not fixed outcomes, the actual, concrete surface features of anything that evolves are still genuinely co-created during evolution itself — by chance, individual initiative, and the vast space of variables evolution has to play with. He also treats this pairing as the best explanation on offer for why mystical experience, across very different traditions, so consistently carries the character of recognition rather than invention — a "recollection" (Plato's term) of a depth that was there as potential all along, not a private fabrication of the individual mind.

In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

This integration may be thought of (very crudely and, as always, somewhat misleadingly) as a Great Circle. The descending or manifesting or creative path moves from the top of the circle to the bottom, and the ascending or returning path from the bottom to the top—both arcs traversing the same dimensions—which is why, as we will see, "The way up is the way down."

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 9, "The Way Up Is the Way Down"

Some readers felt that this made the universe completely deterministic and fated. But involution, in my opinion, simply creates a vast field of potentials, which are not determined as to their surface features at all. Those are co-created during evolution, depending on an almost infinite number of variables, from individual initiative to random chance… evolution is playfully creative at every point!

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Preface to the Second Edition

Moving upward from the center (matter, the most fundamental) is the process of evolution (Reflux or Ascent, driven by Eros), and moving downward from spirit (the most significant) is involution (Efflux or Descent, driven by Agape). Each senior level is an emergent, marked by properties not found in its juniors.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 12, "The Collapse of the Kosmos"

…in Plotinus's view, in evolution or Reflux, if we represent the lowest level as A, the next level up is A + B, the next is A + B + C, and so on. But in involution or efflux, if we start with the highest and represent it as A, the next level down is A – B, the next is A – B – C, and so forth, since each involutionary efflux is a subtraction or a stepping-down from the ground of its predecessor. This is why Plotinus says that efflux (involution) is to be "understood in minuses."

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 9, "The Way Up Is the Way Down" (footnote)

Mystical experiences… share at least a broad similarity wherever they occur… and when they do occur, virtually all of them carry the overwhelming conviction that one is not stumbling onto something sui generis, made up, constructed at the moment… rather, one has the overwhelming apprehension that one is recognizing something once known but long forgotten, that one is being ushered into a worldspace that in some extremely fundamental sense existed prior to its recognition: it was there all along, just not seen.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 9, "The Way Up Is the Way Down" (footnote)

See Also

• eros-and-agape — the motive forces Wilber assigns to evolution (Eros) and involution (Agape)
• ascent-and-descent — the same movement described in terms of wisdom and compassion
• great-chain-of-being — the nested structure evolution unfolds and involution enfolds
• kosmos-vs-cosmos — the fundamental/significant inversion involution's "minuses" produce