Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber gets sick of trying explain the same things to people over and over again. So instead of writing, he just prints out a page full of red delicious apples.

***

Ken Wilber is the main support person for his sick wife [Treya]—and he's so stressed out that he himself needs support people. He has two friends playing this role for him—and now these two guys are themselves feeling really stressed out. So they decide to write and perform an Off-Broadway play about it.

Now Ken has written a book about the use of theater to combat stress. On the cover is a photo of the two guys singing and dancing on stage. The name of the book is FAT CITY. Ken decides not to include it in his Collected Works.

***

I am standing just inside the doorway of a room, and Cher [yes, that one] is just on the other side of the threshold.  Cher is excitedly showing me her book of poetry, just published. It’s a hardcover and looks to be about 800 pages—as big as a Ken Wilber tome!  I flip through the book and see that she has used abbreviations like “&,” “u,” and “cuz.” I have a feeling of condescension but admire the book and remark that people in India spell things that way.

***

This is my favorite Wilber dream:

She was supposed to mount a Ken Wilber exhibition consisting of large blow-ups of his ideas printed on tall white rectangles. She stood on a stepladder adjusting them as he scanned the text critically, demanding corrections. She pointed out that there ought to be a paragraph somewhere explaining that each rectangle represented a separate idea; otherwise people would get confused trying to figure out the connection between the rectangles. Wilber brushed this notion aside impatiently and went to get more corrections, which he had stacked in boxes. She would have to work all day and night every day this week to complete the exhibition.

Her own life was a cartoon strip running backwards in The New Yorker—a series of dark misadventures involving drugs, wild animals, disembowelment, runaway buses, and zombies wandering hollow-eyed across deserted city squares. When she wasn't being deprived of her inheritance, she was being cheated out of small change by starving beggars. When not roaming the streets alone with black-rimmed eyes, she was forced to perform with enraged lions and tigers before a bloodthirsty public.

But then a solution came to her. Maybe there was hope! Instead of the exhibition, Wilber could read his ideas aloud over the radio. 

"Couldn't we have a weekly 'Ken Wilber Hour'?" she urged.

“No way!” he replied.

***

Ken Wilber and I are watching a game show featuring celebrities. It’s incredibly stupid. I tell him, “I’d rather be reading an eye chart!”

***

I am looking at a friend, Vicky, a Shambhala co-worker, with admiration. We are in a kind of elementary school classroom, with a feeling of busyness, people moving around, kids’ projects on the wall.

Vicky has just straightened her hair and is happily shaking out her head of shiny shoulder-length light brown hair, with the air of a radiant, smiling, slim Carnie Wilson. 

But the woman next to me is critical of Vicky’s hair straightening. She scoffs that Vicky is just being seductive.

I protest. “Of course she isn’t. Who is she trying to seduce?”

“Ken Wilber,” comes back the answer.

I argue that this is ridiculous, as Ken is seriously ill. Why, just the other day, Sam [my then-boss at Shambhala] described how weak Ken sounded over the phone [dream detail, not actual]. 

The woman denies that Ken is really sick, insists it’s all an act. I am shocked, but doubt creeps in. Can it be true?

The dream ends with this wicked statement—I am not sure where or whom exactly it is issuing from:

“Don’t try to heal Ken Wilber—he’s better this way.” 

***

Ken Wilber is sitting on a large bed, writing on sheets of paper that are on top of the rumpled bedclothes. But I point out that no words appear on the pages that he has been writing on. He dismisses my concern with a wave of the hand. The text will be there when the pages are printed out. But where is the carbon copy? We search under the covers and find a black manila folder.

I joke to Ken that he’s a squirrel. Passionately he exclaims, “I’ve lived to write this book!”

***

I query Ken Wilber, something about the accuracy of a statement he made about vitamin C. He replies in the form of a small note appearing in a shop window display that I pass along the street at night. I bend down to read it. In it he asserts that indeed, it is true that vitamin C is responsible for a certain vital function in the body. If Ken said it, it must be true!

***

Note to self: Ask Ken Wilber whether it’s possible to prevent alligator contamination of water coming out of the bathroom faucet.

***

Ken Wilber began a foreword to a book with this sentence: 

“Kendra Crossen and bullshit co-arise together.*”

[In the dream, there’s an asterisk, but the footnote is not known or remembered.]

Note: Reference is to the Buddhist concept dependent co-arising.

***

Ken Wilber is sitting all the way across the room from me. 

Lately he’s been including a lot of poems in his books, only he calls them “pomes.” Now he’s telling me that he wants his pomes to have more rhymes. 

I say, “Don’t you mean ‘more romes’?”

***

Ken Wilber has sent me several gifts. (I see him kind of hazily in the distance watching me as I open them.) They're all toys. The one I'm looking at is a little house, like a detailed little dollhouse. 

At first I'm a bit disappointed; it doesn't seem like such a big deal. But then I see it has a little plaque over the door that says "Tower." These are "Tower Toys.” The roof can be extended straight up, turning the house into a very tall tower. This is exciting!

***

Ken Wilber has a new book out, a mass-market paperback filled with text right up to the bottom of the very last page. On the last page, which contains the most up-to-date, late-breaking information about people who are coming out with competing integral theories, each paragraph is a different color. In the last one (reddish pink), Ken writes jokingly about a new smart-alec writer who calls himself “Ken Wilb.” 

***

Ken Wilber has written a new book, titled YOU ARE YOURSELF. 

[Note to Googlers; This is a dream!]

***

Ken Wilber takes back his manuscript of INTEGRAL SPIRITUALITY because he suddenly decided to add several dozen simple practices to help people be more healthy and happy. “We may as well tell them,” he says, referring to such advice as avoiding sugar and cigarettes. He says, in the familiar cadences of his teaching voice (tone of patient explanation), that even people who are poor can follow these guidelines. He also mentions a folk remedy for acne and a certain mushroom powder that Japanese mothers put in their daughters’ prom dresses to make the girls prettier. Now everyone can use it, since Genpo Roshi has packaged it at a special price for members of Integral Institute.

***

Ken (in real life) sent me a Thanksgiving greeting saying kindly that he is thankful that I am his editor.

Then that night I dreamed that I was sitting back, relaxed, while I overheard other Shambhala editors in a tizzy about what to do about Wilber’s manuscripts. I heard Sam reminding an assistant editor not to misspell the author’s name “Wilbur.” I was unconcerned.

***

Ken Wilber has submitted his new manuscript, but not to Shambhala—to another, bigger publisher. That’s a mistake on his part, as he is obliged to let us publish it. 

He is using a new name—Zyz Z. Wilber. This is ridiculous—some New Agey demonstration that his life has changed and he’s a new Wilber? I’ll refuse to edit the book!

But then I rethink. Why should I refuse just because he wanted to change his name? I can do it.

***

Ken Wilber was joking about a time he had been in the hospital and, to pass the time, he ordered a subscription to a newspaper. But it never arrived. “I never got the 100 copies at $100.43—nor even 50 copies at $50.43.” His failure to correctly divide the larger amount in half surprised me because one assumes a brilliant person like Ken should be able to do math. I concluded: “Ken Wilber doesn’t do numbers.”

***

I dreamed KW had decided to start wearing "robes" like a spiritual master. He had resisted it for many years, wanting to dress like a regular guy, but finally it became necessary for some reason. I met him in the dream—he was wearing saffron—but I didn't treat him like anybody special. 

***

Sitting in a café, I overhear some guys saying to each other, “I wonder what Ken Wilber is up to these days.” I interrupt them to answer the question: “He’s into marbles that aren’t round.” I explain that they’re a kind of impossible geometry like the Möbius strip. They look like slices of an olive stuffed with a pimiento.

***

After I ceased to be Ken’s editor, upon leaving Shambhala, I don’t think I ever dreamed of him again, except for this poignant dream about Shambhala’s former art director, Brian Boland, who later became ill and (after the dream) died:

Image of a huge city intersection, with a big traffic jam and construction blocking the way, amid gigantic tall buildings. I am on one side of the obstruction, which is to my right, and distantly in the crowd I see Brian Boland on the other side. I’m trying to signal to him, pointing up at a tall building to my left, where a hardcover book is dangling. Its jacket is colored turquoise with a trace of red like Wilber’s Transformations of Consciousness.