• home
• about
• new
• essays
• AI
• book

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).

When Spirit Becomes Everything, It Explains Nothing

The Final Retreat from Empirical Reality

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

When the metaphysical ambitions of Integral Theory finally collide with the hard limits of empirical reality, its defenders reach for a familiar but devastatingly effective maneuver: Spirit is simply everything that happens. At first glance, this sounds magnanimous, even sophisticated. No supernatural interventions, no violation of natural law, no crude creationist tinkering. Spirit, we are told, is not added to reality—it is reality. What could be more inclusive?

But this is not a philosophical advance. It is a strategic retreat—a retreat so complete that it abandons explanation altogether. When “Spirit” is equated with “whatever exists or occurs,” it ceases to function as a meaningful concept. It becomes immune to falsification, detached from causal relevance, and indistinguishable from the natural world it purportedly transcends and explains.

In short: this move does not save Integral Theory from the charge of metaphysical overreach—it confirms it.

From Grand Claims to Vacuous Identifications

Integral Theory did not begin with the modest claim that “everything happens.” It began with far more ambitious assertions:

• Evolution is driven by Eros.

• Consciousness pre-exists matter and unfolds through hierarchical stages.

• The cosmos exhibits a directional and purposeful movement toward Spirit realizing itself.

These are not poetic glosses. They are explanatory claims about how reality works.

When pressed—especially by evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and complexity theory—these claims fail. There is no empirical evidence for a cosmic drive toward self-realization. No detectable teleology in evolution. No necessity to invoke Spirit as a causal factor.

At this point, the defenders pivot.

Suddenly, Spirit is no longer a guiding force, a telos, or an explanatory principle. It becomes a label applied after the fact to whatever happens anyway.

• Evolution happened? That's Spirit.

• Extinction happened? Also Spirit.

• Random mutation, blind selection, catastrophic failure? Spirit all the way down.

This is not reconciliation with science. It is capitulation disguised as profundity.

The Creationist Parallel—Still Intact

Integral theorists often pride themselves on distancing themselves from “crass creationism.” After all, they do not deny evolution; they merely spiritualize it. But when Spirit is redefined as “everything that happens,” Integral Theory fares no better than its religious cousin.

Classic creationism says:

“God created everything.”

Integral Theory's final defense says:

“Spirit is everything that happens.”

The difference is rhetorical, not structural.

In both cases:

• The metaphysical term adds no predictive power.

• It explains nothing that cannot be explained without it.

• It survives any possible empirical outcome.

If evolution had unfolded differently—slower, faster, more chaotic, less complex—it would still be called Spirit. That is not an explanation. That is retroactive sanctification.

The Collapse of Explanatory Asymmetry

A meaningful explanatory concept must do something asymmetric: it must explain this rather than that. It must rule out alternatives. It must risk being wrong.

“Spirit is everything that happens” does none of these.

It does not constrain outcomes.

It does not distinguish order from disorder.

It does not privilege complexity over simplicity, consciousness over non-consciousness, or emergence over collapse—except rhetorically.

Once Spirit is equated with the totality of events, there is no conceivable state of affairs that would count against it. And what cannot, even in principle, be false is not profound—it is vacuous.

This is not nondual wisdom. It is conceptual inflation.

Why This Move Is So Tempting—and So Corrosive

This final escape route is tempting because it offers several comforts at once:

• It preserves spiritual identity without empirical burden.

• It avoids confrontation with scientific failure.

• It reframes defeat as transcendence: “You're still stuck in dualistic thinking.”

But the cost is severe.

By collapsing Spirit into “whatever is,” Integral Theory forfeits:

• Any claim to explanatory depth.

• Any meaningful dialogue with science.

• Any justification for its hierarchical metaphysics, stages of consciousness, or cosmic narratives.

What remains is not integration but rebranding.

The Irony: Flatland Wins After All

Ironically, this maneuver concedes the very point Integral Theory once rejected: a flat ontology suffices. If Spirit adds nothing beyond what physics, biology, and history already describe, then the so-called “flatland” worldview is not a reduction—it is simply adequate.

Calling the totality of events “Spirit” does not deepen understanding. It merely baptizes ignorance.

Conclusion: When Everything Is Sacred, Nothing Is Explained

The claim that Spirit is “everything that happens” is not a synthesis of science and spirituality. It is the abandonment of explanation under the guise of inclusivity.

It is the point at which Integral Theory stops arguing and starts gesturing.

And once reached, it leaves no reason to take its metaphysical claims seriously—because a concept that explains everything equally well explains nothing at all.

This is not the triumph of Spirit over science.

It is the quiet admission that Spirit, as an explanatory principle, has no clothes left to wear.