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Summary: chema
Review: I think we are lucky to have ken wilber alived, because he writes a kind of books that bridge the gap between east and wester philosofy. This book has helped me to clarified my ideas about what is going on in the development of spirit nowadays. I think that the chapter about Irony is great and very accurate. It is the first book that i have read of this author, but i am sure that it will not be the last. I would like to get Ken Wilber's e-mail adress if it is possible. I would be grateful for the rest oif my life.
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Summary: great sane work
Review: Reading Wilber, along with a practice of meditation has brought me into a greater in-tune-ment with the world as it is right now... Reading Wilber focused my mind on the world and God toghether just as it is right now... Instead of seeking God only in the transcendent "beyond" God, Wilber makes it intelligible to see God in all aspects of nature and our human (even "secular") world... Although I would like to have heard more about a God who would and can project a creation in the first place (A God with a more personal as well as impersonal(which Wilber seems to dwell on) flavor, I am still extremely grateful for his cogent and grand synthesis and can give it no less than a 5 star review... This synthesis could do wonders for helping this world "fly" right...
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Summary: A Compelling Vision of Wholeness
Review: It bothers me not in the least that Mr. Wilber has failed to tie together every thread of every promise made or that he has misstated a Theorem. Why would this matter?Look at the enormity of what he has delivered in this work and ask - who else in this community of 6 odd billion is currently illuminating so many important fragments of human existence and blending them into a compelling and united vision of meaning? This one solitary man is single-handedly and valiantly doing more than anyone alive to show us how it all fits! If it doesn't all fit and it isn't supposed to all fit - then Heaven help us. The act of reading Ken Wilber is not the direct experience of that at which he points. However, his finger is true and fair and he challenges us to participate personally in living a life that encompasses awareness of unity. Mr. Wilber's work is not necessarily "true" - it is, however, more helpful in weaving a vision of the relationship among pieces ("everything") than anything else being done at this stage in our collective dialogue. For this he must be applauded and this book should be read and re-read.
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Summary: Ambitious botched attempt of synthesis
Review: The title of this book aptly summarizes messages the author had the intent of conveying. Since online reviews shouldn't ( IMO ) be places of unbridled confessions & ecstatical yes or no self-congratulatory sermons, I'll try to enumerate ( as impersonally as I'm capable of doing this ) the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Strengths 1.The author's audacity in pursuing of what he calls "integral studies". In our fragmented world of clashing Weltanschauungen Wilber tirelessly searches for a unitary vision, the "marriage of East and West". More-he tries to accomplish the task fathering an entirely new linguistic coordinate system, dispensing with ( and, simultaneously, assimilating ) older, culturally/religiously conditioned vocabulary in an attempt of the comparativist synthesis. A laudable endeavor. 2.His critique of Jungian/Depth psychology and its central tenets, with archetypes being frequently misinterpreted as Platonic ideas/forms and the Collective Unconscious mixed up with Supramental states of, say, Sri Aurobindo's description of Reality. Washburn's criticism of Wilber's supposed misreading of the role of archetypes, in my opinion, doesn't hold water. 3.Wilber's penetrating and frequently funny dissection of contemporary pop-spirituality & other New Age fads ( pathetic Gaia cults which are nothing more than Rousseau in feminist clothing rehashed for the late 20.th century spiritual cosmetics, irrational & dogmatic idolizing of the imagined paradisiacal life in foraging cultures,..) Weaknesses 1.With all due respect, Wilber is quite innocent re science, especially physics. His references ( for instance, on Pythagoras' theorem, but also his musings on Quantum Mechanics in other books ) could only put off a professional physicist or a mathematician as an amateurish dabblings of a presumptuous ignoramus ( the contempt Gauss had harbored for Hegel's philosophizing of mathematics springs to mind immediately ). 2.Wilber's central worldview is the non-dualist vision of Reality ( essentially, it is Ch'an/Zen, Tibetan Mahamudra or Trika Shaivism refurbished ), combined with Hegel's evolving Spirit. Yet, the two are hardly reconcilable. You either got: a) the manifest Reality as Illusion ( Advaita Vedanta, Zen,..) which doesn't warrant "perfection" or "evolution". The world just *is*, without any mythological, let alone rational, explanation or answer to the Leibniz's ultimate question " Why is there anything, instead of nothing ?" b) the manifest Reality as actualization of potential, "hidden" state of the Absolute, radiating/emanating into evolving & ever perfecting forms ( a tad optimistic view on evolution ). In sum, the manifest ( in various levels of manifestation ) Kosmos serves the purpose of enriching & "glorifying" the omnipresent Spirit ( Erigena, Hegel, also Meher Baba in his wilder speculations ). An important subvariant ( Rumi, Neotheosophy ) claims that not only Spirit evolves, but essential human souls ( ruh, pneuma, jivatman ) who are the chief protagonists of "evolutionary enterprise".) Therefore, I would say that marriage of Shankara's Advaita and Hegel's objective idealism is doomed from the outset. 3.All this inflated verbal jazz is not the substitute for genuine originality. I haven't found true creative spirit & seminal ideas, just the old wine in new ( bells and whistles ) bottles. 4.The last verdict: Wilber's predisposition for non-dual visions of Reality in the vein of Advaita Vedanta or Zen blinds him to the richness and profundity of, also "spiritual", but more nuanced and "diversified" doctrines a la Hermetic, Rosicrucian, Lurianic Kabbalistic or more "digestable" contemporary revelations like Seth or truly radical & practical, but lucid and all-encompassing transpersonal psychologies like Assagioli's psychosynthesis. Marriage of East & West turned out to be no more than a dissemination of distilled & modernized corpus of intelectually elitist, but esentially marginal non-dual spiritual doctrines of East and Southeast Asia.
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Summary: 5 stars, yet I've only digested 3 stars worth so far...
Review: The dis-integration of totality (Wilbur's Kosmos with a "K") is unbearably awkward. The glaring obviousness of enlightenment gently taunts the mind that slogs through complexity in order to achieve the same ends. This is like a rich man driving his BMW through the ghetto. When I fall asleep on my arm and wake up with that cold, immobile limb, I suffer the pins and needles of rejuvenation, for they help me increase my potential as a being, rather than diminish it. How do we distinguish which pains are growing (integration) pains and which are disintegration pains? And Heidiggers question: what is a thing? Wilbur's "thing" is central to this philosophy. He takes Koestler's seminal idea of the "holon" (loosely defined as "whole/part": a conceptually challenging concept like "space/time") and builds his theory, as fairly as possible, around it. Important concept: the mere ability to form a cohesive conception that transcends (which means it also includes) yourself is evidence to evolution. Religion would be impossible without it. Thus, religion is not discounted at all, but certainly it is filtered through these eyes. I must be cocky in my conclusion: just as books on sex may be inappropriate for children, this book is not appropriate for those not seeking a higher conceptual balance; personally not seeking a higher conceptual balance. If you are not emotionally AND intellectually AND spiritually ready, you will surely find this book discouraging. Captain Obvious fires a silver bullet at Dr. Awkward, and we are both the victims and the benefactors.
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Summary: An excellent introduction to his opus
Review: Don't expect all of Wilber's subtlety to be captured in this witty effort to popularize the main body of his work. DO read Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, the book that this one summarizes. In particular, track down some of the references and buttressing arguments in his footnotes. You have to take him seriously, even if you want to argue with him. This book has been enormously useful to me in my clinical work (as a psychologist, a profession that Wilber, rightly, rakes over a few coals), in my role as an administrator of health care, and in my own spiritual search. I have found no better integrator among 20th century thinkers.
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Summary: I'd like the book more if he was a succussful mom
Review: Geez, this is a nice start, but being able to conceive, carry, birth, raise and release healthy happy kids requires much more than the basics, trust me! But i agree, he seems to have the beat, time to dance.
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Summary: Breathtaking for the fittest
Review: This book is the most mind-expanding book I've ever read. The man is both a scholar and an accomplished Buddhist, and storms the universe making deep sense of all he sees. Not a book for beginners, but compehendable for those with a back ground in serious spiritual work or developmental psychology. Enormously recommended. Not only my favorite author, but the best starting place for his work.
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Summary: The Philosophers' Rosetta Stone? The Mystics' TOE?
Review: Lyrical and pedantic and sweeping and groovy, these are the adventures of a brilliant analytical mind still clinging to the sloppy throes of New Age spiritualism before acknowledging Ultimate Truth of the Santiago Theory of Consciousness. Wilber is one of those quirky thinkers of the Millenium that navigates the murky waters of the science of the mind like a light bulb in search of a cord. Senseless sense, and all that. Amen?
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Summary: Wilber's thought is clear, if complex, his ideas, useful.
Review: Those who denounce Wilber's ideas in this forum themselves prove some of his most essential points. Many practice self-contradiction ("I hate people who hate!"), magic and mythic worldviews ("My religion right or wrong!"), and sling ideas about without proof while accusing him of illogic (I challenge anyone to find an illogical conclusion or construction anywhere in Wilber's many works. Near twenty published works all still in print!)and dogmatism (I challenge anyone to point out dogma in Wilber's work. He is essentially anti-dogmatic and always, always intellectually responsible.) Wilber's book is a synthesis and begs to be read as an introduction to post-modern world philosophy as well as to his own works, although it does stand on its own. His is a voice of reason in a world (theology, philosophy, psychology, teleology, ontology, etc.) caught in all sorts of retro-romantic and dogmatic "unthought." This book has much to offer those with an open heart and a probing mind. He nowhere expects ready acceptance of any of his ideas but everywhere goes back again and again to reason. The main thing he avoids in the present book is following, as he has in past books, often in the copious endnotes which have been characteristic of his other works, the gnarled roots of argument off into all their tangents, leaving no counterargument or supporting stone unturned. He keeps it right on the target and explains that that is intentional and not an error or omission. "You want all my research," he seems to suggest, "go to my other works. You want a synthesis of my present thinking, here it is!" The book simplifies, then, without being in any way simplistic. In other words, the work tries to be more accessable and direct and less complex and comprehensive than his other books. The bottom line is that Wilber, nowhere more than in this book, holds himself to no lesser a standard of argument (truth, beauty, and goodness!)than he does his many detractors (who mostly have particular worldviews or agendas to support and, I think, are often not themselves ready to live up to that standard.) Wilber's only agenda in this book is to aim our thinking and his own in the direction of ongoing integration. The bottom line is that Wilber offers an access to new thinking that goes way beyond the New Age. He here offers this to people who are not, perhaps, used to the more esoteric and ethereal planes of post-modern thought or who have wrestled with his thought elsewhere and who might then benefit from a fresh and clarified version of that thought. His is a generous, humorous, clear, and careful style backed with yards and yards of bibliography and years and years of hard work. His thought will be welcome to those who seek to clarify their own thinking but will be hardly welcome among those with hard-etched agendas and romantic or mythic worldviews to defend. Agree or disagree with Wilber's thought but beware, this is a sharp mind well primed with research that is often better armed with the literature of a field than those who would denounce him from that field! Literalists, fundamentalists, retro-romantics, and true believers need not apply. (Well, they do need to apply but the message, and it is too bad, will probably be lost to them.) Wilber's thought could, given half a chance, get us past our differences and into integration. Read him. Read him carefully and with an open heart and a probing mind. The book is a gem.
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