The Psychic, Subtle, Causal, and Nondual

Wilber's View

Having argued that transpersonal development is a genuine, cross-culturally reconstructible sequence (see transpersonal-domains), Wilber lays out its four stages, each illustrated with a single representative figure and a matching type of mysticism. The psychic level (Emerson) is nature mysticism: the individual witness begins to open onto an "Over-Soul" experienced as one with the whole of manifestation — matter, life, and mind alike, not just nature narrowly but "nation and nature" together, which is Wilber's way of blocking the reading of this as mere biocentric immersion. The subtle level (Teresa of Ávila) is deity mysticism: the soul unites with a personal or archetypal God-form beyond gross manifestation altogether — Teresa's silkworm-to-butterfly metaphor for the death of the ego and birth of the soul belongs here. The causal level (Meister Eckhart, Ramana Maharshi) is formless mysticism: both the manifest world and the deity-form dissolve into featureless, objectless awareness — the "Godhead" behind God, pure Witness, Atman = Brahman. And the nondual (again Eckhart and Ramana) is not a further stage at all but the recognition that the formless Ground and the entire world of Form were never actually two — "Brahman is the world."

Wilber's case for treating this as a genuine developmental sequence rather than a set of alternative belief systems rests on convergence: independently arising contemplative maps (Mahamudra, Visuddhimagga, Yoga Sutras, the Christian, Sufi, and Kabbalist mystical traditions) show, he argues, "an underlying common invariant sequence of stages" despite enormous cultural difference in surface content. That cross-tradition convergence is his strongest card, and it's a real one — it does more work than pure philosophical argument could. What's more contestable is the confidence with which four named representatives are made to stand for four crisply bounded stages; Wilber himself acknowledges each stage has multiple substages, and reducing whole traditions to a single spokesperson (Eckhart and Ramana are made to illustrate two different stages each) is a simplification in service of narrative clarity that a specialist in any one tradition would likely push back on.

In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

The evidence, though still preliminary, strongly suggests that, at a minimum, there are four general stages of transpersonal development, each with at least two substages… These four stages I call the psychic, the subtle, the causal, and the nondual.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 7, "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature"

The word transpersonal is somewhat awkward and confuses many people. But the point is simply, as Emerson put it, "The soul knows no persons."… "Impersonal," however, is not quite right, because it tends to imply a complete negation of the personal, whereas in higher development the personal is negated and preserved, or transcended and included: hence, "transpersonal."

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 8, "The Depths of the Divine"

At the subtle level, this process of "interiorization" or "within-and-beyond" intensifies—a new transcendence with a new depth, a new embrace, a higher consciousness, a wider identity—and the soul and God enter an even deeper interior marriage, which discloses at its summit a divine union of Soul and Spirit, a union prior to any of its manifestations as matter or life or mind… Nature-nation mysticism gives way to Deity mysticism.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 8, "The Depths of the Divine"

In the subtle level, the Soul and God unite; in the causal level, the Soul and God are both transcended in the prior identity of Godhead, or pure formless awareness, pure consciousness as such, the pure Self as pure Spirit (Atman = Brahman). No longer the "Supreme Union" of God and Soul, but the "Supreme Identity" of Godhead.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 8, "The Depths of the Divine"

Going within and beyond even this pure Source and pure Spirit—which is totally formless, boundless, unmanifest—the Self/Spirit awakens to an identity with, and as, all Form… This is not a particular stage among other stages—not their Goal, not their Source, not their Summit—but rather the Ground or Suchness or Isness of all stages, at all times, in all dimensions… And that is the Nondual.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 8, "The Depths of the Divine"

The Godhead completely transcends all worlds and thus completely includes all worlds. It is the final within, leading to a final beyond—a beyond that, confined to absolutely nothing, embraces absolutely everything.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 8, "The Depths of the Divine"

See Also

• transpersonal-domains — the argument that these stages are real and reconstructible in the first place
• great-chain-of-being — the psychic/subtle/causal/nondual sequence is the Great Chain's territory above mind
• ascent-and-descent — this sequence is largely told through the Ascending path; the nondual stage is where Ascent and Descent finally reunite
• waves-and-streams — the highest waves in Wilber's overall developmental model
• Interiority (the "Within" of holons) — the same logic of within/beyond that produces the four quadrants, carried to its transpersonal limit
• Sri Aurobindo — Wilber's Eastern parallel figure for this same territory, discussed alongside Plotinus
• Plotinus — the Western source of the nondual breakthrough Wilber credits alongside Nagarjuna