The real cause of Andrew Cohen's Dilemma

* See PS at the end.

See this Integral World article. Erdmann is right about the real cause, but it's not Wilber's fault. Both Wilber and Cohen were indeed subject to the same illusion, that enlightenment is without ego. I.e., ego defined as a separate self-sense. When one arrives at this illusion from experienced practice with formless meditation they assume this means they've arrived at-one-ment with Realty beyond ego, since a separate self-sense is suspended in this state.


This is especially so if one manipulates their consciousness to reside in this state on a semi-consistent basis, which is dysfunctional. One symptom of this dysfunction is indeed this paradoxical ego inflation rampant in evolutionaries like Wilber and Cohen and their followers. Whereas a healthy ego maintains both its autonomy and its community and uses such states as a temporary recharging much like sleep instead of the mainstay of some illusionary enlightenment.

* PS: See the comment to this post (and related link) for more on the postmetaphysical framing of this state.