Spirit-in-Action

Wilber's View

Wilber builds this concept from Schelling and Hegel's response to the very split he diagnoses throughout the book: the Enlightenment differentiated mind (Ego) from nature (Eco) but then, lacking a unifying ground, let that differentiation dissociate into a rift between subject and object. Schelling and Hegel's answer, on Wilber's reading, is that mind and nature are not two separate substances staring blankly at each other but "two simply different movements of one absolute Spirit" — Spirit is "both the Alpha and the Omega of development," present as Deus implicitus (God enfolded, unevolved) at the start and Deus explicitus (God unfolded, fully evolved) at the end, and — crucially — fully present at every stage in between, not just at the beginning or end but as "the very process itself." Nature is "slumbering Spirit," not-yet-self-conscious; mind is Spirit becoming self-conscious; and full realization is Spirit finally knowing itself as Spirit, uniting the two "apparent absolutes" of nature and mind rather than letting either claim to be the whole.

This is Wilber's technical vocabulary for [[involution-and-evolution|Spirit's self-unfolding]] read through German Idealism specifically, and it's the philosophical backbone of his own panentheism: Spirit is not simply identical with the world (pantheism, which would collapse the Kosmos into cosmos) nor separate from it (supernatural theism, dissociated Ascent) but both immanent in every stage as its process and transcendent of any single stage as their common source and goal. The real payoff Wilber claims for this move is that it lets Eros — the self-organizing, self-transcending drive already built into his account of holons (tenet 2c) — do double duty as a metaphysical thesis about evolution's direction, at a stroke answering the Ego/Eco standoff by making Ego and Eco successive self-expressions of the same Spirit rather than permanent rivals. That's an elegant synthesis, but it inherits Idealism's own vulnerability: it works if you grant Spirit as the presupposed premise, and Wilber offers Schelling and Hegel's own dialectical reasoning as the case for that premise rather than independent argument of his own.

In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

The Absolute is thus both the Alpha and the Omega of development. Schelling: "I posit God as both the first and the last, as the Alpha and the Omega, as the unevolved, Deus implicitus, and the fully evolved, Deus explicitus"—in other words, both Source and Summit—and present throughout the entire ascending or developmental process as telos (Eros), as the self-organizing and self-transcending drive of the whole process.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 13, "The Dominance of the Descenders"

Whatever else we might say, the world does hang together, and evolution does have a direction: Eros as Spirit-in-action. Thus, both Schelling and Hegel would maintain that evolution is not simply the drive toward Spirit; it is the drive of Spirit toward Spirit, manifested in a series of increasing wholes and integrations (holons) that express increasing degrees of Spirit's own self-realization or self-actualization.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 13, "The Dominance of the Descenders"

Thus the whole of nature Schelling refers to as "slumbering Spirit." Moreover, nature is not a mere inert and instrumental backdrop for mind. Rather, nature is a "self-organizing dynamic system" that is "the objective manifestation of Spirit"… But it is, says Schelling, Spirit slumbering because Spirit has not yet become self-conscious.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 13, "The Dominance of the Descenders"

…it is here, he says, that mind and nature can seem to drift apart, to be totally unrelated, to stare blankly and uncomprehendingly across the subject/object dualism at the alien beings on each side of the divide. The Ego and the Eco.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 13, "The Dominance of the Descenders"

Thus, for both Schelling and Hegel, Spirit goes out of itself to produce objective nature, awakens to itself in subjective mind, and then recovers itself in pure Nondual perception, where subject and object are one pure act of nondual awareness that unifies both nature and mind in realized Spirit.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 13, "The Dominance of the Descenders"

This is a truly stunning vision, a profound integration of Ego-mind and Eco-nature, of Spirit descending into even the lowest state and ascending back to itself, with Spirit nonetheless fully present at each and every stage as the process of its own self-realization and self-actualization.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 13, "The Dominance of the Descenders"

See Also

• involution-and-evolution — the Kosmic-scale unfolding/enfolding this concept supplies the German Idealist vocabulary for
• eros-and-agape — Eros as tenet 2c's self-transcending drive is what "Spirit-in-action" names at cosmic scale
• The Ego Camp and the Eco Camp — the standoff Schelling and Hegel's synthesis is Wilber's proposed answer to
• great-chain-of-being — Spirit as both Source and Summit of the Chain, present at every rung
• holons — self-transcendence (tenet 2c) as the holon-scale version of Spirit-in-action
• Georg Hegel — co-architect, with Schelling, of this account
• Alfred North Whitehead — credited with the complementary image of God acting through "gentle persuasion"