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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

The Simple Feeling of Being Revisited

A Critical Review

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

A Curated Voice of Enlightenment

The Simple Feeling of Being (2004) occupies a peculiar place in Wilber's corpus. It is not a systematic work like Sex, Ecology, Spirituality or Integral Spirituality, but a curated anthology—assembled by editors—from earlier writings, journals, and talks. Its aim is clear: to foreground Wilber the mystic rather than Wilber the theorist. The book gathers reflections on nonduality, “the Witness,” and what he calls “One Taste,” presenting them in a poetic and devotional register.

This shift in genre is not trivial. It effectively bypasses the architectonic ambition of his integral framework and offers instead a distilled phenomenology of spiritual awareness—what he elsewhere calls the “formless awareness” underlying all experience.

The Core Claim: Always Already Enlightened

At the heart of the book lies a familiar nondual assertion: enlightenment is not something to be attained but something already present. Wilber repeatedly insists that the “simple feeling of being” is immediately accessible—prior to thought, identity, or differentiation. The problem is not absence but misrecognition; we are “already looking directly at Spirit,” but fail to notice it.

This formulation has undeniable rhetorical power. It collapses the distance between seeker and goal, offering a democratized mysticism: no esoteric training required, only recognition. It also resonates with Advaita Vedanta and Zen traditions, which Wilber explicitly draws upon.

Yet precisely here the philosophical difficulties begin.

The Problem of Inflationary Metaphysics

Wilber's language oscillates between phenomenological modesty and metaphysical extravagance. On the one hand, he describes a simple, pre-reflective sense of existence—something close to what philosophers might call minimal self-awareness. On the other hand, he inflates this into an ontological absolute: the ground of the Kosmos, identical with Spirit, God, or ultimate reality.

This move is never rigorously argued. It is asserted through rhetorical intensification. A basic experiential datum—“I am”—is reinterpreted as evidence for a cosmic metaphysics. The leap from phenomenology to ontology is simply taken for granted.

The result is a familiar Wilberian pattern: what begins as a subtle introspective observation ends as a grand metaphysical claim. Critics will recognize this as a category error disguised as insight.

Compilation as Concealment

Because the book is an anthology, it lacks argumentative continuity. This creates a double effect.

On the positive side, it enhances readability. The text flows as a series of aphoristic insights, anecdotes, and contemplative instructions. It is arguably one of Wilber's most accessible works.

But on the negative side, the format conceals conceptual tensions. There is no sustained argument to interrogate, no explicit engagement with counterpositions, and no methodological clarity. The reader is invited into a mood rather than a debate.

This suits the book's spiritual intent, but it also shields its claims from scrutiny.

The Aesthetic of Certainty

One striking feature of the book is its tone of absolute certainty. Wilber does not present nondual awareness as a hypothesis or interpretation, but as an obvious fact—“right now, right here.”

This rhetorical strategy has a dual function. For sympathetic readers, it reinforces the immediacy of the insight. For critical readers, it raises red flags. The absence of epistemic humility—especially given the extraordinary nature of the claims—undermines philosophical credibility.

In effect, the book substitutes experiential conviction for argument.

The Missing World

Another limitation is the book's relative indifference to the empirical world. While Wilber elsewhere insists on integrating science, culture, and psychology, this text retreats into a largely acosmic perspective. The world appears as a kind of dream or projection of Spirit—a familiar trope in nondual traditions.

But this comes at a cost. Social, biological, and evolutionary realities are bracketed or subordinated. The richness of Wilber's earlier engagement with developmental psychology and systems theory is largely absent. What remains is a purified mysticism, detached from the complexities it once sought to include.

Style Over Substance?

Stylistically, the book is often elegant, occasionally moving, and sometimes overwrought. Its language oscillates between clarity and grandiosity. Phrases like “the empty ground of your own primordial experience” exemplify both its appeal and its excess.

For readers attuned to this idiom, the prose can function as a kind of contemplative pointer. For others, it risks sounding like self-referential spiritual poetry—impressive in tone, elusive in content.

Final Assessment

The Simple Feeling of Being succeeds as a presentation of Wilber's mystical sensibility. It offers a distilled, accessible entry into his nondual vision, stripped of theoretical scaffolding.

But as a philosophical work, it is weak. Its central move—from immediate experience to metaphysical absolutism—remains unargued. Its anthology format obscures rather than clarifies. And its tone of certainty substitutes persuasion for demonstration.

In the end, the book exemplifies both the allure and the limitation of Wilber's project. It invites the reader into a profound simplicity—but one that may be philosophically less secure than it appears.