Transpersonal Philosophy Grows Up: A Clarification of Ken Wilber’s Most Recent Updates to His Theoretical Framework

The fact that there are multiple phases to Ken Wilber’s theoretical development has been widely recognized, with Wilber himself arguing that his works can be divided into four distinct phases (1983/2001). Students of Wilber’s work later added a fifth and final phase, which is said to begin in 2001. What has received hardly any scholarly attention, however, is the fact that Wilber still made major changes to his theoretical framework several years after the beginning of phase 5 in Integral Spirituality (2006), and that it is only after the publication of this book that his thinking really reaches a steady state after which very few major changes were made anymore. This paper clarifies these most recent changes and reflects on their implications, arguing that they represent a new phase in Wilber’s thinking: phase 6.