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Rating: 
Summary: Mind-blowing explorations of human evolution--and involution
Review: In the beginning, Spirit was only alone and blissful in infinite silent repose. In the formless purity of the Infinite there was nothing but empty clarity and radiance. There was nothing but a thoughtless, feelingless eternity of Love, and only one problem, one tiny problem: the Love wanted to share itself somehow. And then a current of creativity began to act, to set a pattern, to stretch a rubber band of creation; suddenly, with perhaps a very big bang, Spirit threw itself out of pure unity and nothingness into a world of seeming multiplicity and somethingness. On the underside of time, in a process called "involution," it manifested itself in patterns of increasing density--from spirit to soul to mind to life to matter--and on the upside of time, in a process called "evolution," it has been progressing for billions of years to rediscover itself, fleshing out the involutionary patterns in unpredictable and creative ways, becoming more and more conscious of itself at each step, and heading toward that final level of absolute consciousness (or spiritual enlightenment) that is the only true goal of the game. Volume 2 of Ken Wilber's _Collected Works_ traces this extraordinary journey of spiritual involving and evolving as it relates to humans in both ontogenetic and phylogenetic domains. Taking the ontogenetic perspective, the first book, _The Atman Project_, is an intellectually dizzying piece of work that explains the development of the human being from birth to adolescence to adulthood to death to between-life realms and beyond. Wilber defines the "Atman Project" as the "drive of God toward God," or the involutionary and evolutionary game that Spirit is playing. In tracing our own role in this cosmic sitcom, Wilber produces a map of human psychological development that is so comprehensive--covering all major schools of thought, both Eastern and Western--that no one interested in transpersonal psychology can afford to pass it by. From the fetus to the id to the ego to God, every step of personal evolution available as innate potentials to present-day human beings is outlined, explained, and backed with enough evidence (culled from orthodox clinical psychology for the lower and middle stages and orthodox contemplative spirituality for the higher ones) to convince anyone of the model's essential validity. The scope of the work--like most of Wilber's stuff--is simply astonishing. Mind you, however, it ain't light reading; a randomly selected paragraph says: ". . . Like the magical primary process, this paleological thinking frequently operates on the basis of a whole/part equivalency and predicate identity; but unlike the pure primary process, which is strictly composed of nonverbal images, precausal thinking is largely verbal and auditory. . . . Unlike the image of the primary process, it is a true type of thinking-proper, operating with protoconcepts, verbal abstraction, and elementary class formation." The style of _Atman_ takes some getting used to, but once you've got it you're in for a remarkable ride into understanding the growth and ultimate goals of your own self. The next book, _Up From Eden_, takes the phylogenetic (collective) view of human evolution, starting with the Big Bang and explaining how all subsequent development is simultaneously a transcendence and an inclusion of what went before it. As Wilber puts it, "early life forms (plants) went beyond but included lifeless matter and minerals in their makeup; and animals went beyond plant forms (simple life) but included life in their makeup. Just so, humans go beyond but include animal characteristics, and, by implication, humans include but transcend _all_ prior evolutionary stages." From the earliest hominids to modern _homo sapiens sapiens_, each evolutionary progression has been marked by one crucial factor: an increase in consciousness. Thus, extrapolating the obvious (and backing it with the claims of enlightened mystics), Wilber identifies the _goal_ of evolution as simply an _absolute_ transcendence of everything in the discovery of an absolute level of consciousness (which is Spirit itself). Those humans who have attained this degree of transcendence in their own ontogenetic development, such as Christ and Buddha, act as the "growing tip" of human phylogeny, stretching our potential into increasingly higher domains, and making the goal of this game just a little bit closer for the rest of us. But _Up From Eden_ isn't just a historical documentary, tracing evolution up to the present, suggesting what might lie in the future, and leaving it at that. No, _Eden_, like _Atman_, is also an invitation for us to pursue our own further ontogenetic growth, and thereby contribute in potentially powerful ways to the growth of the species as a whole. Wilber has issued the map, described the party, and invited us to attend, but it is up to us to get in the car and drive there. And if we refuse--if we prefer instead to kick back and take it easy at our present level of consciousness development--"we contribute nothing; we pass on our mediocrity." For those who have hesitated in buying this volume because you already have _Atman_ and _Eden_, perhaps the essay included with these two books will arouse your interest. "Odyssey," a 38-page account of Wilber's personal experience up to the early '80s, is a fascinating little gem that explains how Wilber became interested in mysticism, how he overcame the "pre/trans fallacy" that permeated his early work (see CW: Volume 1), how his meditation practice had progressed from subtle to causal levels, and how he developed a model for meditative development that explained culture-specific "surface structures" and their relation to universal "deep structures"--a model used in both _Eden_ and _Atman_. In short, these books are two of the most important in the development of Wilber's later work, and it's hard to find anything to complain about. They're well worth the time and money for anyone who wonders even dimly what the heck we actually are, and has, at some point, stared into the starlit sky and pleaded into the silence: "Why, oh _why_, is there something rather than nothing?"
Rating:
Summary: Mind-blowing explorations of human evolution--and involution
Review: In the beginning, Spirit was only alone and blissful in infinite silent repose. In the formless purity of the Infinite there was nothing but empty clarity and radiance. There was nothing but a thoughtless, feelingless eternity of Love, and only one problem, one tiny problem: the Love wanted to share itself somehow. And then a current of creativity began to act, to set a pattern, to stretch a rubber band of creation; suddenly, with perhaps a very big bang, Spirit threw itself out of pure unity and nothingness into a world of seeming multiplicity and somethingness. On the underside of time, in a process called "involution," it manifested itself in patterns of increasing density--from spirit to soul to mind to life to matter--and on the upside of time, in a process called "evolution," it has been progressing for billions of years to rediscover itself, fleshing out the involutionary patterns in unpredictable and creative ways, becoming more and more conscious of itself at each step, and heading toward that final level of absolute consciousness (or spiritual enlightenment) that is the only true goal of the game. Volume 2 of Ken Wilber's _Collected Works_ traces this extraordinary journey of spiritual involving and evolving as it relates to humans in both ontogenetic and phylogenetic domains. Taking the ontogenetic perspective, the first book, _The Atman Project_, is an intellectually dizzying piece of work that explains the development of the human being from birth to adolescence to adulthood to death to between-life realms and beyond. Wilber defines the "Atman Project" as the "drive of God toward God," or the involutionary and evolutionary game that Spirit is playing. In tracing our own role in this cosmic sitcom, Wilber produces a map of human psychological development that is so comprehensive--covering all major schools of thought, both Eastern and Western--that no one interested in transpersonal psychology can afford to pass it by. From the fetus to the id to the ego to God, every step of personal evolution available as innate potentials to present-day human beings is outlined, explained, and backed with enough evidence (culled from orthodox clinical psychology for the lower and middle stages and orthodox contemplative spirituality for the higher ones) to convince anyone of the model's essential validity. The scope of the work--like most of Wilber's stuff--is simply astonishing. Mind you, however, it ain't light reading; a randomly selected paragraph says: ". . . Like the magical primary process, this paleological thinking frequently operates on the basis of a whole/part equivalency and predicate identity; but unlike the pure primary process, which is strictly composed of nonverbal images, precausal thinking is largely verbal and auditory. . . . Unlike the image of the primary process, it is a true type of thinking-proper, operating with protoconcepts, verbal abstraction, and elementary class formation." The style of _Atman_ takes some getting used to, but once you've got it you're in for a remarkable ride into understanding the growth and ultimate goals of your own self. The next book, _Up From Eden_, takes the phylogenetic (collective) view of human evolution, starting with the Big Bang and explaining how all subsequent development is simultaneously a transcendence and an inclusion of what went before it. As Wilber puts it, "early life forms (plants) went beyond but included lifeless matter and minerals in their makeup; and animals went beyond plant forms (simple life) but included life in their makeup. Just so, humans go beyond but include animal characteristics, and, by implication, humans include but transcend _all_ prior evolutionary stages." From the earliest hominids to modern _homo sapiens sapiens_, each evolutionary progression has been marked by one crucial factor: an increase in consciousness. Thus, extrapolating the obvious (and backing it with the claims of enlightened mystics), Wilber identifies the _goal_ of evolution as simply an _absolute_ transcendence of everything in the discovery of an absolute level of consciousness (which is Spirit itself). Those humans who have attained this degree of transcendence in their own ontogenetic development, such as Christ and Buddha, act as the "growing tip" of human phylogeny, stretching our potential into increasingly higher domains, and making the goal of this game just a little bit closer for the rest of us. But _Up From Eden_ isn't just a historical documentary, tracing evolution up to the present, suggesting what might lie in the future, and leaving it at that. No, _Eden_, like _Atman_, is also an invitation for us to pursue our own further ontogenetic growth, and thereby contribute in potentially powerful ways to the growth of the species as a whole. Wilber has issued the map, described the party, and invited us to attend, but it is up to us to get in the car and drive there. And if we refuse--if we prefer instead to kick back and take it easy at our present level of consciousness development--"we contribute nothing; we pass on our mediocrity." For those who have hesitated in buying this volume because you already have _Atman_ and _Eden_, perhaps the essay included with these two books will arouse your interest. "Odyssey," a 38-page account of Wilber's personal experience up to the early '80s, is a fascinating little gem that explains how Wilber became interested in mysticism, how he overcame the "pre/trans fallacy" that permeated his early work (see CW: Volume 1), how his meditation practice had progressed from subtle to causal levels, and how he developed a model for meditative development that explained culture-specific "surface structures" and their relation to universal "deep structures"--a model used in both _Eden_ and _Atman_. In short, these books are two of the most important in the development of Wilber's later work, and it's hard to find anything to complain about. They're well worth the time and money for anyone who wonders even dimly what the heck we actually are, and has, at some point, stared into the starlit sky and pleaded into the silence: "Why, oh _why_, is there something rather than nothing?"
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