Ascent and Descent
Ascent and Descent
Wilber's View
A recurring axis in Wilber's account of the contemplative traditions: Ascent is the movement of return from the manifest world of multiplicity back to the unified ground — "flee the Many, find the One" — associated with world-transcending mysticism (much of the Christian mystical tradition, Gnosticism) and with wisdom, which sees through apparent multiplicity to the underlying unity. Descent is the opposite movement: Spirit's embrace of and immanence in the manifest world of form — "this-worldliness" — associated with compassion, which recognizes that the One is fully expressed in each and every being, and so treats each with care rather than looking past it toward something higher.
Wilber's own position is explicitly non-dual: neither movement alone is adequate, and most of the tension in Western civilization's spiritual history, on his account, comes from treating Ascent and Descent as rivals rather than as a single completed movement — "having found the One, embrace the Many as the One." He reads Plato as an early and underappreciated exemplar of holding both together (see wilber-on-plato for that reading in detail).
In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
"All Truth, all Goodness, all Beauty was to be found, finally and fully, only in the contemplative absorption in the eternal and unspoken One."
All Truth, all Goodness, all Beauty was to be found, finally and fully, only in the contemplative absorption in the eternal and unspoken One.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, "The Way Up Is the Way Down"
"Flee the Many, find the One; having found the One, embrace the Many as the One."
We can therefore summarize Plato's overall position in words that would apply to any Nondual stance wherever it appears (as we have already seen it apply to Eckhart and Ramana): flee the Many, find the One; having found the One, embrace the Many as the One.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, "The Way Up Is the Way Down"
"The path of Ascent is the path of the Good; the path of Descent is the path of Goodness."
The Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions (and similar Nondual traditions in the East) therefore maintained that the "Good" or Perfect One is expressed in and as the "Goodness" of all creation. Those two terms—the "Good" and "Goodness"—are extremely important… The path of Ascent is the path of the Good; the path of Descent is the path of Goodness.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, "The Way Up Is the Way Down"
"The Many returning to and embracing the One is Good, and is known as wisdom; the One returning to and embracing the Many is Goodness, and is known as compassion."
The Many returning to and embracing the One is Good, and is known as wisdom; the One returning to and embracing the Many is Goodness, and is known as compassion.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, "The Way Up Is the Way Down"
"Wisdom sees that the Many is One… compassion sees that the One is the Many."
Wisdom knows that behind the Many is the One. Wisdom sees through the confusion of shifting shapes and passing forms to the groundless Ground of all being… But if wisdom sees that the Many is One, compassion knows that the One is the Many; that the One is expressed equally in each and every being, and so each is to be treated with compassion and care, not in any condescending fashion, but rather because each being, exactly as it is, is a perfect manifestation of Spirit.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, "The Way Up Is the Way Down"
See Also
- wilber-on-plato — Wilber's reading of Plato as holding Ascent and Descent together
- great-chain-of-being
