A dialogue on Ken Wilber’s contribution to transpersonal psychology

A verbatim transcript of a structured dialogue between John Rowan and Michael Daniels on the work of Ken Wilber, mediated by David Fontana at a transpersonal psychology conference. The dialogue followed a pre-agreed format of presentations, reconciliation attempts, responses, open discussion, and a summary that ends abruptly due to a recording failure. A postscript discusses the origins of Wilber's levels of consciousness.

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Abstract

This is an edited, verbatim transcription of a three-hour dialogue on the work of Ken Wilber between John Rowan and Michael Daniels, mediated by David Fontana and chaired by Malcolm Walley. The dialogue was held at the 11th British Psychological Society Transpersonal Psychology Section Conference at Cober Hill, Scarborough, on 15 September 2007. Nothing has been added, apart from reference details, some syntactic and explanatory inclusions (indicated with square brackets) and footnotes. To aid clarity, coherence, and ease of reading, some colloquial wording has been excised and some unintelligible or incidental discussion has been omitted (indicated by ‘…’ in the transcript). The formal structure for the dialogue was agreed by the participants in advance and comprised: (1) introductory presentations by John Rowan and Michael Daniels, followed by; (2) an attempt at reconciliation by David Fontana; (3) responses by all three speakers; (4) further responses; (5) an open discussion; and (6) a summary of key issues by David Fontana. Unfortunately the final 15 minutes of the dialogue did not record successfully, so that David Fontana’s summary ends somewhat abruptly. The paper ends with a postscript on the origins of Wilber’s system of levels of consciousness.