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304 SPIRIT AND THE MIND
with the divine. His work sheds light on the relationship of lower to higher developmental stages: in particular, the dynamics of transcending the crucial transition point or “knot,” of chakra 4 in order to awaken and establish chakra 5.
In an article2 published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology in 1982 he summarizes his work and defines these 10 levels of consciousness: the subconscious sphere—matter-pleuroma, reptile- uroboros and mammal-body; the self-conscious sphere—persona, ego and centaur; and the super conscious, transpersonal or universal sphere—psychic (realm of siddhi and psi powers), subtle (home of archetypes and personal deity), causal (the unmanifest void), and ultimate (spirit). These stages describe in detail the general movement from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit.
Wilber’s fifth and sixth stages, ego and centaur, correspond to chakras 3 and 4 respectively. He grew to an understanding of these two levels by studying the differences between ego and humanistic- existential psychologies. In so doing he combines insights from both psychology and spirituality. Here we see the interrelationship and merging of these two fields—the increased understanding each can bring to the other. Wilber writes:
The ego psychologies seemed to aim at “making conscious the unconscious,” or reuniting the ego with aspects of the psyche that had been split off or dissociated due to past developmental snarls or double-binds (“Where id was, there shall ego be”). Using Jungian terms, I conceptualized this as: The persona (or fraudulent self- image) can be reunited with the shadow (or repressed personal unconscious) so as to allow the emergence of the total ego (or accurate self image, adequate ego strength, and so on). Theoretically, it was almost as simple as: persona + shadow = ego.
The humanistic-existential therapies did not deny this equation; many in fact, made explicit use of it (Perls, for example). But somehow they seemed also to go beyond that equation and talk about the potentials of the total organism, potentials that surpassed any of its parts, whether persona, ego, id, or superego. Rollo May (1969), for instance: “Neither the ego, nor the unconscious, nor the body can be autonomous. Autonomy by its very nature can be located only in the centered self. Logically as well as psychologically we must go behind the ego-id-superego system and endeavor to understand the ‘being’ of whom these are


































































































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