A Brief History of Everything (20th Anniversary Edition)

This is a thrilling, sometimes repetitious, but ultimately rewarding book. And while this is the first one I have read by Ken Wilber, it will certainly not be the last.

"A Brief History of Everything" is structured dialogically, a series of interviews in which Wilber plays both himself and his interlocutor. The structure is both accommodating and sophisticated: one the one hand, the dialogues create a conversational tone, and this makes Wilber's ideas more readily accessible to a general audience than a more formal, academic style might; on the other hand, since intersubjective communication is so essential to Wilber's theory of integration, form follows function as well.

I think it is only natural to make comparisons, and while I was reading this I kept thinking of Sartre's "Being and Nothingness." Like that text, this one takes a bit of getting used to, but once you are immersed in the language things come together. Wilber is much more accessible than Sartre, and certainly more inspiring. Indeed, reading Wilber is a bit like reading Sartre or Heidegger, but without the dread.

Don't get me wrong: his message is urgent; the philosophical foundation he is trying to build in justification of what he calls integration is as imperative as it is challenging. But there is also a certain reassuring optimism in this book--nowhere explicit, but everywhere implicit. In this sense, he reminds me of the British existentialist, Colin Wilson.

Colin Wilson is more inclined to draw from literature and mysticism, whereas Wilber tends to stick more to philosophy and comparative religion (and his breadth of knowledge is intimidating). Moreover, whereas Wilson at times risks sounding New Age, Wilber expressly rejects any facile, feel-good solutions to existential problems.

I enjoyed this introduction to Integral Theory, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in existential philosophy (which it is not), environmental studies, the evolution debate, gender studies, the history of ideas, et cetera. Not all of these topics are developed in depth, but they are all pertinent to Wilber's attempt at a systemic philosophy, and even when he perhaps fails to convince, he nonetheless succeeds in provoking thought and challenging conventional beliefs.

This is philosophy, not self-help. But it may be the most helpful philosophy book you read.

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.

Wilber's _Everything_ charts the evolution of consciousness by both the entire Kosmos and by individuals. He includes his map for achieving a supreme, all-encompassing Divine awakening. Those who have had peak experiences (Wilber says many of these experiences are "peek" experiences) may find corroboration in these pages. Wilber devotes several pages to "talking you into" the One Taste ... and it works!
Further, Wilber describes in detail the steps or "rungs of the ladder" a person can expect to transverse in the climb from the awareness of a newborn to ultimate vision. He describes problems one might meet in this aspiration to enlightment as well as his suggestions for eliminating deep, unconscious knots.
A careful reading of this book could provide any aspirant with key tools and new understanding of both self and Self. This book turns me on!

I bought this book for my boyfriend because I thought it was something he wanted. After he started reading it, we realized it was actually another book he was looking for. This is just not our cup of tea, a lot of spiritual talk and strange references.

Let me acknowledge that I personally struggle to outgrow the "formal-reflexive" stage of consciousness and to feel comfortable in the "vision-logic" stage, and perhaps for that reason I stopped reading A Brief History of Everything after chapter 11. For me, Wilber's effort is a fine account and synthesis of many contemporary philosophical, psychological, cultural ideas, written in a clear, informal style, which often succeeds brilliantly in simplifying without oversimplifying. I finally truly understand post-modernism, and deconstuctionism. By relating and organizing the contributions of many thinkers, Wilber attempts to create new truths as well as express old ones, and I suspect he has accomplished this with his account of the different psychiatric approaches. At the same time, well before chapter 12, there were sections I did not get much out of. Also, Wilber makes two important errors in the first chapter of the book: evolutionists have several competing ideas for the origin of life which do not rely on impossibly random events (cf. Stuart Kauffman: At Home In the Universe: the Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity ), as well as explanations of the functions of pre-flight wing-like appendages. They have begun to identify in the fossil record some of the intermediate stages, and it would be surprising if life is not created in the test tube by the end of the century by "fair" means, and in fact there is not the great divide between non-life and life that Wilber posits.

I listened to this while exercising at the gym.
The first CD on the formation of the universe was rather dull.
The second, on the development of physical science was very dull and I found myself fast forwarding at times.
The third CD on dinosaurs and mass extinctions and the earths structure was ok.

I did not find this to be worth continuing and deleted it.
This was one of the least interesting history/science audio books I have listened to. The subject matter selected was not interesting. There is no reason to recommend this over any other similar book. I'm not faulting the text or analysis in terms of accuracy, just saying it was not enjoyable to listen to.

I wouldn't have written a review--there are already so many--but no one was giving my take on the book.
The first thing you should know is that it's very difficult reading. Even if you're used to reading scientific and philosophical works, this one is difficult. The question/answer format helps, but nothing can make it a quick read.
That said, I found that Wilber was forcing reality to fit his system, ignoring or misinterpreting things to meet his needs. This is a man who really loves systems. Since it's a history of everything, everything has to be included in his system. Several people have already pointed out errors. I could point out others, because my background is in a different field, but it seems to me that all the errors spring from a disregard of detail, and an emphasis on the overall system.
If you love systems, you could love this book. It really does bring together stuff from a lot of different disciplines. But as the misstatements piled up, I found myself dissatisfied.

Cautiously, this book absorbs a great deal of knowledge and synthesizes it with considerable alacrity, acuity, conciseness, and coherence. The book will be attractive to a large number of readers who are looking for an "integrative" approach to knowledge. As one with a philosophical bent, I appreciated the inclusion of Whitehead's Process Reality and Bergson's Creative Evolution, which have largely been abandoned by collegiate, philosophical departments. Einstein and Darwin are also included. Science, philosophy, wisdom, psychology, and spiritualism are all integrated into a nice coherent system.
My only reservations are linguistic, which often is hokey, and tone, which is often authoratative rather than heuristic.

This book is frusterating. In many, many instances, statements are made, but never supported. These statements beg for certian questions to be asked, but they never are. Instead of challenging the weak points of Wilbur's arguement, the softball questions serve only to keep the book moving ("Nothing to see here folks, just keep moving. That's it, keep it moving") The language, while at times poetic, is overwhelmingly pretentous. The central portion of the book, dealing with the evolution of conciousness, is worth reading. Unfortuantely, for the most part is is merely a restating of other people perpsectives. Rarely do i have problems with these conclusions, but Wilbur's attempts to draw universal conclusion based on these more speciallized conclusions, are laughable. I don't doubt that some higher synthesis can be made, I just doubt that Wilbur has done it. His conclusions ARE possible, but so are a plethora of other silly conclusions. The bottom line is that the opinions expressed in the book are simply that: opinions. They are not adequetly supported. The arguments, when made, are weak. Maybe Wilbur's view of everything IS correct, but this book is a very poor way to go about convincing someone of that.

An interesting, well written, and occasionally poetic, philosophical monologue about the spiritual limitations of modern science and an explanation of Ken's holistic flavor of the "correct" way to interpret reality.
Critique: Wilber sounds more like a preacher or a sage than a fellow seeker of the truth. He sees the scientific method as reductionism, and has a quarrel with the concept that logic (or philosophy) can explain everything. At the same time, he makes extensive use of logic and science where it fits his argument.
His "Theory of Everything" boils down to a somewhat unique blend of mysticism, or spirituality, and reasoning. Through it he attempts to convey his holistic and all-encompassing view of God, Creation, and how Man fits in that picture. He rejects the Christian belief of a one-and-only God, consisting of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Instead, he is happy to include all of the above, as well as Buddha, Dharma & Shranga, and who else you want to add as part of the same holistic view, culminating in the eastern belief that Man is part of the Kosmos, which is part of God. (Emptiness = Creation & One = All.)
In particular he finds fault with the "flatland" view of the new science (Systems Theory) - which is based on the recent discoveries regarding chaos and complexity, and how interrelated systems behave in an unpredictable environment. In his mind, these "web-of-life theories" differs from his interpretation, in that it does not account for the concepts of absolute meaning, beauty, virtue and value. But, perhaps because they could be perceived as rather closely related to his holistic view, they draw considerable criticism from him (page 129).
In total, he expects (a-la Lobsang Rampa, "The Third Eye") the reader to throw out his preconceived ideas about the relevance of science and religion, without absolute proof, and without supernatural revelation, in exchange for another mother-of-all theory.
The well trained scientist will classify Wilber's ideas in kind with perpetual motion. The sincere Christian will consider him dangerous, in his ability to distort the truth. The average individual might have a harder time to separate fact from fiction.
On a positive note - Wilber does attempt to address some serious deficiencies in our view of reality. In some of his attempts he can even be described as brilliant, though his ability to synthesize meaning from cutting edge issues.
The problem is - its just another theory. By diverting his considerable talent into the realms of mysticism, and without the tools of science and logic, he forgoes the opportunity to use his talents in furthering real understanding. He might have done better if he had finished his studies at university.

I have just finished reading reader's comments and I find it interesting that Ken's biggest detractors on this page have spelled his last name wrong. Not only that, but their spelling in general leaves something to be desired. To be sure what is presented here is no great revelation for any serious student of philosophy- it has been written a thousand times before. But he must be commended on his unique and entertaining way of getting the point across. There is definitely something to be said about his fluency and the clarity of his thoughts. Here is a true scholar. I feel sorry for the readers not able to appreciate the truth and the beauty contained here.

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.

Recently, a former English professor of mine who is familiar with Wilber's work commented, "I can't decide if he's absolutely brilliant or a horse's ass. Probably some of both."
That about sums up the majority of popular opinion on Wilber.
I have fervently studied psychology, philosophy, and religion ever since my freshman year of highschool, when an existential crisis left me confused and hopeless. For the first several years my relentless search for meaning uncovered nothing more than the dreadful seriousness of existential philosophers like Sartre and Camus. They offered validation but no hope. Religious texts didn't seem to address my problem, and traditional psychology was inclined to treat it as pathology. On occassion someone would speculatively declare that I was on the brink of a great spiritual transformation, but then would halt abrubtly, perhaps unclear about exactly how this transformation could be brought about. Blind faith? It went against the grain of my very being. I was slowly becoming acclimated to the idea that there truly was No Exit. Just grit your teeth and bear it.
Personally, reading A Brief History of Everything was an epiphany. 173 pages into the book Wilber describes a stage of consciousness which he terms Fulcrum-6. Almost immediately I realized that he was talking about the existential crisis. Excitement welled up from the very depth of my being as I continued to read the most sensible treatment of this condition I had ever encountered. Wilber had placed it in a broad context - orienting this stage in the evolution of consciousness - in a way that made perfect sense to me. What I had always suspected and cautiously hoped for - that my condition was not permanent and that there is a way to transcend it - was now made eminently obvious. I had seen the path that brought me to this point, and now, for the first time in my life, I could see the path ahead. For that insight alone I owe Ken Wilber my utmost gratitude.
If you suspect you are suffering from a Fulcrum-6 existential crisis, or know someone who is, please read this book. Shoot, read the book anyway. Wilber has encompassed a tremendous amount of information from a diversity of fields and presented it all in a coherent model of the evolution of everything. It will change the way you think, forever.
If you are feeling particularly bold, read Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality which presents the same model but at roughly three times the length.

Wilber is the first person (and a Westerner too) to finally put the many aspects of life into one "format". Unfortunately those still stuck in the age of "Enlightenment" won't understand as they will be forever mired trying to rationalize concepts which barely fit within our abilty to imagine, much less our ability to verbalize.
Much like a book on Zen - not much fun, let alone any use, for someone who has never been enlightened but a much different experience for those who are open.

Recently, a former English professor of mine who is familiar with Wilber's work commented, "I can't decide if he's absolutely brilliant or a horse's ass. Probably some of both."
That about sums up the majority of popular opinion on Wilber.
I have fervently studied psychology, philosophy, and religion ever since my freshman year of highschool, when an existential crisis left me confused and hopeless. For the first several years my relentless search for meaning uncovered nothing more than the dreadful seriousness of existential philosophers like Sartre and Camus. They offered validation but no hope. Religious texts didn't seem to address my problem, and traditional psychology was inclined to treat it as pathology. On occassion someone would speculatively declare that I was on the brink of a great spiritual transformation, but then would halt abrubtly, perhaps unclear about exactly how this transformation could be brought about. Blind faith? It went against the grain of my very being. I was slowly becoming acclimated to the idea that there truly was No Exit. Just grit your teeth and bear it.
Personally, reading A Brief History of Everything was an epiphany. 173 pages into the book Wilber describes a stage of consciousness which he terms Fulcrum-6. Almost immediately I realized that he was talking about the existential crisis. Excitement welled up from the very depth of my being as I continued to read the most sensible treatment of this condition I had ever encountered. Wilber had placed it in a broad context - orienting this stage in the evolution of consciousness - in a way that made perfect sense to me. What I had always suspected and cautiously hoped for - that my condition was not permanent and that there is a way to transcend it - was now made eminently obvious. I had seen the path that brought me to this point, and now, for the first time in my life, I could see the path ahead. For that insight alone I owe Ken Wilber my utmost gratitude.
If you suspect you are suffering from a Fulcrum-6 existential crisis, or know someone who is, please read this book. Shoot, read the book anyway. Wilber has encompassed a tremendous amount of information from a diversity of fields and presented it all in a coherent model of the evolution of everything. It will change the way you think, forever.
If you are feeling particularly bold, read Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality which presents the same model but at roughly three times the length.

Wilber is the first person (and a Westerner too) to finally put the many aspects of life into one "format". Unfortunately those still stuck in the age of "Enlightenment" won't understand as they will be forever mired trying to rationalize concepts which barely fit within our abilty to imagine, much less our ability to verbalize.
Much like a book on Zen - not much fun, let alone any use, for someone who has never been enlightened but a much different experience for those who are open.

I think the hardest critics of Wilber are the ones who do not consider someone as an author unless he/she is a hands-on scientist, artist or an academic title holder. Well, the purpose of this book is to present a theory covering many things that are already part of mankind's common heritage. Very few scientists -unfortunately- have time and/or stimuli to go through such grand amount of information and come up with a theory. As a non-academic in classical sense, Wilber does much more than many of the academics. I am an M.D. dealing with spiritual and psychological issues of patients and due to the nature of my work I am always in need of a deeper understanding of many aspects of life. Wilber's book is one of the resources that I use to achive that. Good work Mr. Wilber!

ABHOE remains a great 1996 landmark popular summary of Ken Wilber's continually evolving thought and work to that date -- a summary that could keep you up in one all night sitting and, cliche that it is, change and reorient your life and knowledge within his four quadrant evolutionary and developmental scaffold of inner and outer existence. Enjoy a great sense of humor here in a question and answer format, in what amounts to something of a litmus test designed to find yourself and encourage your further development in his 10 fulcrum model of human cognitive development, then take on the weightier tome Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.

I remember the excitement I experienced when I started thumbing through the pages of this book.Wilbur's incredible genius shines through it from cover to cover and it leaves you fascinated. Perhaps the most brilliant philosopher of our time. However, in his attempt to integrate all thought systems into a cohesive whole, the soul sense seems to be left out due to his strong eastern metaconscious position. This seems to be more of an ego disassociation than an integration. Identification with the Godhead is grandios.

To me as a scientific minded person approaching spirituality but having a hard time integrating the two, this book was a landmark.
Not only does the book give an excellent structure where all sorts of wisdom and knowledge may live side by side in a friendly manner, but on the personal level it helped me at least intellectually to unify various aspects of myself and my life.
Lately I have read large amounts of buddhist texts, new as well as traditional. This book takes a wider perspective and helps me relate my spiritual understanding and experiences in framework where it can co-exist with everything else I know about biology, physics, psychology, etc.
I recommend this book to everyone with an open mind that has the capacity to understand and grasp the subject and has any interest in science, psychology, philosophy, religion, history, feminism, biology.
I have already one other book by Wilber in my book stack, and I'm sure I will at least buy and read a few more before I move on.

This book has been described as the 'popular' version of Wilber's "Sex, Ecology and Spirituality". Ken introduces his 'Four Quadrants' and the first third of the book describes the different types of society and their respective worldviews. The real value of this book for me lies in the second part where he describes development from the existential level through the higher transpersonal relams of subtle and causal and non-dual. His descriptions of these realms are as good as I've read.

I postponed reading Wilber for a long time, because I felt that time had yet to come for me to be exposed to such a mindblow, like I knew this would turn to be. Sometimes you don't want to set your mind in a certain direction yet.

When I decided on reading Wilber I decided on reading this particular book after reviewing most of his books and finding this to be probably the most complete introduction to his thinking.

I certainly didn't regret that decision. "A Brief History of Everything" turned out to be a very readable enlightening experience. Wilber proposes a very impressive integral view of reality: personal and collective; personal and transpersonal; inner and outer.

His worldview is naturally not totally foolproof. For example, I am not sure if a rational person is necessarily in all cases in a more "developed" position than a mythic person (I mean 'Mythic' and 'Rational, in the sense discussed inside the book). For example if you put a great mythic sage against a standard rational person from our society. That and some other ideas need to be explored some more. However, those question marks that still stand are natural in a book which is so adventurous and bold.

Overall, this book is so full with brilliant enlightening observations, and it can change or deepen your view about a lot of different issues from minority politics to ecology, from sex to psychoanalysis, from personal development to world politics.

There are not a lot of books where you get so much information and wisdom in such a short read.

Wilber seems to be one of the leading thinkers of our time, and I would certainly recommend this book as an introduction to his philosophy.

A book that is a combination of biology, psychology, social studies and more. A new and bold way to look at human and world evolution. The book describes inner and outer evolution, in one brief look that goes from atoms through laws of the cosmos, to developments of the planet and up to human beings and society. It is realy a new and amazing look at ourselves, our future and past.

Ken Wilber is an important thinker who is waiting for an audience to rise to the right level of consciousness to fully appreciate what he is saying. In this introductory and relatively easy-to-read book, Mr. Wilber outlines many of his mind-opening ideas. Although it may be easy to get lost in his "holon" concept, some DNA-like idea that holds the code to the full slice of spiritual and physical existence, other concepts are worth studying and understanding, because they have to be true. Chief among these is Wilber's presentation on states and stages of human development. In a nutshell, consciousness flowers in slow-motion; it first cares only about base existence, eating, sleeping, and sex, and then gradually moves on to appreciating the family, the community, the village, the nation, the world, the unverse, the unity of all things and beyond. (While this sounds like Hegel, that is a good thing, because Hegel was on the right track.) Importantly, Wilber emphasizes that once someone reaches a stage of consciousness, once you see that your soul is connected to the world at large, you cannot go back. You've climbed that rung of the ladder. States of consciousness, in contrast, are more like temporary "highs," rushes of expanding awareness driven by mediation, exertion, concentration, or drugs. But these states often give only a glimpse of a higher stage -- like a sneak look at the answer book -- but the glimpse may make the transition to the higher stage come faster.

So why is this book important? Because higher stages of consciousness are good. They make us see farther forward and backward. They make a person appreciate what they they already have and see a deeper connection to the power and beauty of the world. Books like this one are the product of an advanced stage, and are easier to understand as one climbs their own ladder.

Allow me to address the review from "A reader" from Tennessee. With all due respect, I believe he/she has misunderstood the entire message of Mr. Wilber's integral-transformative theory. Wilber's idea is to assemble all of the orienting conclusions from each field, which have incredibly important truths to tell us. For the moment we assume that these are, indeed, true. These truths are then assembled into chains and networks of interlocking conclusions into a coherent vision. He is open in his praise and admiration of these truths, but stresses that they are only partial, and often incredibly narrow perspectives.
It is true that he often seems closest to a Zen Buddhist ideology, however his praise of organized religion in general, Freud, behaviorism and any number of schools of thought are stricly qualified.
Wilber, as an example, is brutally critical of behaviorism's narrow interpretation of observable human behavior. He gives it credit for it's narrow scientific truth, while citing it's laughable culpability as a "world view." He believes this type of reductionism is ultimately destructive.
Does Wilber just "take what he wants" from these ideologies? No. He honors the truths that come from one "quadrant" or another in his model and attemts meld this deep fragmentation into a more wholistic vision. It becomes fairly obvious which fields, theories and schools of thought fall into which quadrants, if you grasp the concept.
If you demand that Wilber conform to any kind of "universal" dogma you will be dissapointed and miss the message of perhaps the greatest modern philosopher of our time. This is a book of startling clarity and depth of understanding. He won't placate or coddle you, he gives it to you straight, and then it's up to you to try your own experiment. You must do the WORK.

Wilber is one of the leading pantheistic (or nondual) thinkers of the day. His ability to synthesize vast amounts of material is impressive, as is his literary output. However, his fundamental world view is philosophically inconistent and denies things sane people take to be true. His philosophy of nondualism (or monism) logically entails the elimination of the duality of good and evil. In some places Wilber admits this; in others he assumes the ontologically reality of good and evil. This is contradictory, and therefore, false. There is a thick contradiction at the heart of his worldview. No amount of meditation can dissolve that.
Wilber speaks of enlightenment as beyond words and language, but then uses words and language to describe it. This, too, is contradictory, and, therefore, false. And on it goes. He takes the Ultimate or Absolute to be impersonal, thus leaving no philosophical explanation for ourselves as personal beings. For a full review of this book see my essay in The Christian Research Journal (September/Ocotber, 1997), p. 50-51.
Douglas Groothuis

How does a Seeker of knowledge download 2,000 plus years of human history in a few days of reading? Easy. Read or listen to Ken Wilber's brilliant synopsis neatly packaged into an elegant model of everything. The "Integral Model" will change the way you view your own life challenges and the world's enormous geopolitical problems forever. I highly recommend this book and think every politician and college student in America should have this book in their collection.
 Affirmations for the Everyday Goddess Spiritual Guidebook & 22 Wisdom Cards for Contemplation & Prayer (based on the 22 major arcana of the tarot)

In the 20th (now 21st) century, there lies before us a truly tremendous and difficult problem, that is, if we have had direct spiritual experience in a world that does not officially recognize such. But that is only half of the problem. Are we to also conversely and in turn deny the truths disclosed to us by science and rational human knowledge?

This is the problem; how to bridge these two aspects of reality if we KNOW that they are BOTH real? For these are no longer simple times that we live in. There is simply too much legitimate "smarts" out there in science, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, physics, etc., etc. to simply deny them and still be honest with yourself. Yet again, to the contrary of that, what to do if you KNOW there is more?

Tortured with this problem and trying to wrestle out even some sliver of a solution myself, I finally came to the conclusion that the world of the 21st century needed something very unique and special; not just another scientist and not just another mystic. It needed an absolute, super high IQ brainiac genius with a super-compute mind who ALSO had legitimate spiritual experiences. Only such a person could ever solve the problem.

And then I remembered Ken Wilber.

I happened upon this book some ten years ago and the result was nothing less than sheer joy. I highly recommend it to all who might be interested and perhaps tortured by all of the same ideas I mentioned above. This is indeed a wonderful introduction to Ken Wilber's work.

Stuck in an airport and needing something to read, I bought this book on impluse. The beginning explanation of Wilber's comparative and synthetic approach was fascinating. I was fully engaged. I believe this line of thinking is very unique and potentially very productive.

Very early on however -- page 31 to be exact -- Wilbur unfortunately demonstrates a clear and complete misunderstanding of biological evolution. There are not "discontinuities" in biological evolution as Wilbur claims and, therefore, we have no evidence for "self transcendence." As this is number two of the twenty tenets that make up the "patterns that connect," we have a foundational problem.

I strongly recommend Daniel Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" as a source of more insight. Dennett calls the theory of evolution a "universal acid." For me, that acid quickly and thoroughly dissolved my interest in this book.

Given both the promise of Wilbur's "meta-analysis" and his glaring mis-read of biology, I'm profoundly disappointed.

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.

This book inspired a 180-degree turnaround in my life. It awakened me to the true spirit of 'Common Sense', and sent me scrambling for other works by the same author. Ken Wilber is as enlightened as a Westerner can ever be, and his gift is the ability to share his wisdom - in a friendly and non-condescending way - with anyone who is prepared to receive it. If you're one of those seeking universal truths, don't miss this book!

Ken Wilbur is so brilliant that it is frustrating to read this book. By using complex multi-level models and charts, he is basically saying that we need to bring left brain and right brain, science and theology, creativity and logic, etc. together for a new paradigm. Having advanced through periods where religion dominated our culture followed by science dominating our culture, history suggests we are now ready to face the Millenium by bringing together these formerly unreconcilable areas. I believe this is Wilbur's central message and, indeed, good news for humanity.

For me the most important reason to read this book was Tony Robbins recommended it at a seminar. Wilber requires dedication to plow through and some of his ideas take work to grasp. But the book was very interesting and I admit I was challenged in my own thinking about spirituality and having respect for different traditions.

The `Èinstein of the New Age`holds forth in his unique and brilliant style on the history of world views and how to put spirit back in our life. If you have the patience to learn his jargon and read slowly there is alot of serious brainfood here.

I read this and his Sex, Ecology and Spirituality(1995)with Hofstadter's famous Godel, Escher, Bach(GEB) written in 1980(both of which I have reviewed here). Wilber's work has many parallels with GEB, both of them massive works attempting to tie together disparate fields and different views of life. Unlike Hofstadter, who was mainly interested in the nature of intelligence, Wilber does not treat math, music or DNA, and he concentrates on world views that have a spiritual relevance. He spent a vast amount of time working out the relationships between ideas and how they relate to individual and society, spirit and science. Though he cites GEB(and almost every book of relevance in last 100 years!) he does not specifically use the GEB concepts of recursiveness, incompleteness, and tangled hierarchies. However, Wilber's holons nested in holons, criticism of incomplete ideas that either lack sense(eg, science) or soul(eg, spirit) and his diagrams and descriptions of the hierarchical nature of all holons are much in the spirit of GEB. Hofstadter spent little time on spirit(though Zen pops up now and then) and had little to say about the meaning of it all and has written little on the subject since.

This is a much shorter and more accessible version of his famous SES(see my review). Unlike the former book which has hundreds of pages of notes and hundreds of references, there is not even an index here(though there is a 2001 edition which may remedy this). If you don't have the time or patience for the whole book, read Superconsciousness Parts 1 and 2 which are an xlnt summary. His shortest book, `The Marriage of Self and Soul`(see my review) is a much easier read that gives you a good idea of his style and purpose.

He details alot of intellectual history(philosophy, psychology, religion, ecology, feminism, sociology, etc) and shows where nearly everyone went too far in the direction of Ascent(to the spirit) or Descent(to science,materialism, reductionism or Flatland). He trys to show how to heal the rifts by combining sense and soul(spiritual and material life, science and religion, internal and external, individual and social). Everything is related to everything else(holons in holarchies).

The Age of Enlightenment denied the the spirit, the individual and the interior life but developed art, morals and science and led to democracy, feminism, equality and ecology, but this reductionism compressed the intellect and the spirit into the Flatland of science, rationality and materialism. He sees the loss of the spiritual point of view with the Age of Enlightenment as the major factor responsible for the malaise of modern times, but real spirituality or `intelligent religion`(ie., the quest for enlightenment) as opposed to `primitive religion`(everything else-see my review of Boyer's `Religion Explained) was always rare. It is intelligent religion he sees as the panacea, but it is primitive religion that the masses understand, and it too has only materialistic goals.

In this book, he never makes it clear that Jesus was a mystic in the same sense as Buddha etc, but what was to become the Catholic church largely destroyed his mystical aspects(personal search for enlightenment, no mind etc) in favor of primitive religion, priests, tithes and a structure seemingly modeled on the Roman army(but see his SES p 363). But for the early Christian church, the cognitive templates(see Boyer) were servants of the genes and enlightenment was not on the menu. Jesus was not a Christian, he had no bible and he did not believe in a god any more than did Buddha. We have Christianity without the real intelligence of Jesus and this, as he explains indetail in SES is a major cause of the West's extended stay in Flatland(reductionism).

Wilber is a bookworm and he has spent an incredible amount of time analyzing classic and modern texts. He is extremely bright has clearly had his own awakening, and also knows the minutiae of Eastern religion as well as anyone. I doubt there are more than a handful in the world who could write his type of book.

A major shortcoming is that most of the material he analyzes is of questionable relevance today. They use terminology and concepts that were already dated when he was researching and writing 15 years ago. One has to slog thru endless pages of jargon laden discussion of Habermas, Kant, Emerson, Jung etc to get to the pearls. He immerses himself in Freud and the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams(eg, p92) , though most intellectuals now regard these as merely quaint artifacts of intellectual history.

If one is up on philosophy and cognitive and evolutionary psychology, most of this seems archaic. Like nearly everyone(scholars and public alike) he seems not to understand that the basics of religion, ethics, society, in fact all human behavior, are programmed into our genes. A revolution in understanding ourselves was taking place while he was writing these books and it mostly passed him by(and most of society). The evidence(for those who need it) is accumulating rapidly that most of what we do and who we are is resident in universal programs evolved at least 100,000 years ago. Those who doubt this should start with Pinker's brilliant book `The Blank Slate:the modern denial of human nature`, Boyer's `Religion Explained`, and a couple recent texts with 'evolutionary psychology` in the titles.

Like everyone up til quite recently, the hundreds of authors he discusses lacked any real explanation for human behavior. Why do we even have such ideas and behavior? What are the methods we can use to find out? Everything happens below the surface. Possibly a few Zen and Hindu mystics got some insight into the mechanical churning of the cognitive templates but their explanations are invariably opaque to the rest of us. He seems unaware that his holarchy of the mind(except for top 3 levels) operates in everyone all the time due to its presence in our cognitive templates(and of course our genes).

Though he has read some of John Searle's superb philosophy,and has passing references to research in cognitive psychology, it is amazing that he could extensively research philosophy without studying Wittgenstein, religion without reading Osho and psychology without Tooby, Cosmides et al. Much of evolutionary psychology was only published in journals at the time he was writing and Wilber has almost no references to journals among the hundreds in SES. But Wittgenstein is the most famous philosopher of modern times and Osho the most famous spiritual teacher. It is remarkable that although he spends so much time in his books discussing the intellectual aspects of therapy(Freud. Beck, Maslow etc) and clearly understands that the spiritual path is the ultimate therapy, he totally ignores Osho, who had the most advanced therapeutic community in history functioning worldwide for the last 30 years.

A major problem is that Wilber is lost is the airy realms of intellectual debate. Basic biology gets the short straw. As in SES, probably the worst mistakes he makes(along with most of the planet) are ignoring and misunderstanding basic biology. On pg 22-3 he states that the eye and the wing have to evolve all at once and this has to happen in both sexes at the same time. On page 26 he says the chances of an enzyme originating by chance is essentially zero(true but irrelevant!). Elsewhere he says Darwin really does not explain evolution! Any intelligent high school biology student can refute this! Of course Darwin did not know genetics nor plate tectonics, but it is nevertheless inexcusable to make such statements without careful qualification.

The brute fact is there are 6 billion sets of selfish genes carrying out their programs to destroy the earth. They are an acid that will eat through any intellectual conclusions, egalitarian fanatasies and spiritual rebirths. Selfishness, dishonesty, tribalism and shortsightedness are not due to accidents of intellectual or spiritual history. He says that the lack of spirit is destroying the earth, and though there is of course this aspect to things, it is much more to the point to say that it is selfish genes that are responsible. Likewise he says `Biology is no longer Destiny`, but it is an easily defensible point of view that the reverse is far more likely. The attempt to understand history in terms of ideas ignores biology and in particular denies human nature. Selfish genes always live in Flatland(his term for reductionism) and, as he noted elsewhere, less than 1000 people in all of human history have escaped the tyranny of the monkey mind into enlightenement.

Another major problem(admittedly not unique to him) is that this is very elitist stuff. The aim is to rejuvenate humankind and maybe save the world, but I doubt most readers will persist to the end of these books and that they will come away a changed person. How is the realization that we can meld sense and soul going to change the world? It is Wilber's hope we can somehow be enlightened(figuratively or literally).

Though he severly criticizes the excesses of the two movements, one could regard this as a deconstructive or postmodern interpretation of religion, philosophy and the behavioral sciences from a very liberal, spiritual point of view--ie, without the worst of the horrific jargon, rabid egalitarianism and antiscientific antiintellectualism. This is not a criticism of Wilber, but only to suggest that it might be useful to regard some of his books as belonging to this general movement.

Wilber embraces a simple utilitarianism(greatest good for greatest number)--ie, the greatest depth for the greatest span(p334) but of course this has serious problems. Which people should we make happy and how happy and when(ie, now or in the future)? On what basis do we distribute resources now and how much do we save for the future population? He calls upon our Basic Moral Intuition(BMI) but it is not really to help others but to help ourselves, and the few thousand(or let's be very optomistic and say few million) who are spritually advanced do not run the world and probably never will.

Instead of the intellectual or spiritual approach Wilber takes to history, others take ecological, genetic or technogical approaches(eg, Jared Diamonds book Guns, Germs and Steel). In the long run it appears that only biology really matters and we see daily how overpopulation is overwhelming all attempts to organize and educate the world. The democracy and equality which Wilber values so highly are just means created by selfish genes to facilitate their destruction of the planet. In spite of the hope of Wilber and many others that a new age is dawning and we will see the biological and physical evolution of a new human, the fact is that we are the most degenerate species there ever was and the planet is nearing collapse. The billions of years of eugenics(natural selection) that thrust life up out of the slime and gave us the amazing ability to write and read books like this is now over. There is no selection for the healthier and more intelligent and in fact they produce a smaller percentage of the children every year. Nature does not tolerate physical and mental aberrations but society encourages them. Our peak was probably CroMagnon man or maybe even Neanderthals(whohad larger brains) about 100,000 years ago. It seems plausible that only genetic engineering and an enlightened oligarchy can save us.

In the USA, fundamentalist Christians and the Republican party are now the most powerful single force for planetary destruction. They are against population control and for environmental devastation in order to maximize the size and resource use of the human genome. This was a rational strategy when it was fixed in the genes about 100,000 years ago but it is suicidal now. The spiritual rebirth he talks about is not that of born again Christians nor of Islamic converts.

If Wilber want to get his messages to the masses he will have to dumb down his writing and forget about trying to incorporate the worlds intellectual history. One if his primary messages is that spirituality(higher consciousness--ie the pursuit of enlightenment) is a scientific pursuit and so there is no conflict between it and science(though he only explains why in other books such as SES and Marriage of Sense and Soul). I fully agree, but the problem is that most of religion involves the mechanical churning of the primitive cognitive templates(see Boyer) and has very little connection with spirituality in the sense Wilber has in mind. He describes how Schelling and Hegel united nature and spirit but this seems quite irrelevant to society and even to Wilber, who presumably woke up with meditation and not by reading. Finally,(p307)he mentions that the West mostly lacks the techniques for uniting the two, which Zen has found long ago.

He sayss(p329) that it is the poor and ignorant who are the major environmental problem and that this is somehow due to our Flatland approach, so if we just wake up, get spritual and help them out this will solve it. However, its clear that everyone is part of the problem and if one does the math(vanishing resources dividied by increasing population) it's clear that a drastic reduction in population is necessary. At the very end he tells us that one of the basic ethical principles is to do no harm, but to live( and above all, to reproduce), is to do harm and if reproduction remains a right then it's hard to see any hope for the future. Like so many, he emphasizes rights and says less about responsibilities. It is a reasonable and necessary view that if society is totreat us as human, we must accept responsibility for the world and that this concern must take precedence over our personal needs. Of course, it is unlikely that any government will ever implement this, and equally unlikely that the world will continue to be a place any civilized person will wish to live in.

[For full review, see forthcoming, Torosyan, R. (2001). A system for everything: Book review of K. Wilber's Brief History of Everything. New Ideas in Psychology, 19 (3).]
Wilber manages to create a sweeping system for everything in life. He describes our spiritual evolution, and our dominant conceptual concerns: East and West, ancient and modern, individual and collective, physical and metaphysical. Wilber writes in an accessible common-sense style. He deliberately avoids a typical scholarly tone. While not free of some pretense at a monolithic voice, his work promotes rich conceptions of self-reflexiveness, interconnection, spirituality and empathy.
Wilber shows how the major theories of biological, psychological, cognitive and spiritual development describe different versions of how to find "the truth." At the outset, Wilber refers to Douglas Adams's best-selling cult novel Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. We desire final conclusions, just as Adams facetiously proposed the "answer that would completely explain 'God, life, the universe, and everything'" (p. xv). In the novel, that answer was "42," highlighting the absurdity of seeking such a final answer.
Wilber's "answer," instead, is a framework for connecting evolutionary currents. At first, he uses a Socratic dialogue, beginning with "KW" for Wilber and "Q" for the questioner, be s/he reader, fan, or friend. Initially, this appears somewhat contrived. The text pretends to be an interview, when it is clearly the author's own highly controlled construction. Upon further reading, however, the stylistic device helps Wilber engage the reader in a dialogue.
To Wilber, traditions of thought have usually been either "ascending" toward transcendental spirituality, or "descending" to the body, the senses, and sexuality (p. 11). The author suggests that humans must integrate dualities to survive as a species. In fact, we must not merely synthesize but accept the "nonduality" of ascending and descending, mind and body (p. 12).
Wilber's first chapter presents a brief summary of the entire book in the voice of the questioner:
Q: So we'll start with the story of the Big Bang itself, and then trace out the course of evolution from matter to life to mind. And then, with the emergence of mind, or human consciousness, we'll look at the five or six major epochs of human evolution itself. And all of this is set in the context of spirituality-of what spirituality means, of the various forms that it has historically taken, and the forms that it might take tomorrow. Sound right?
KW: Yes, it's sort of a brief history of everything...based on what I call 'orienting generalizations' (p. 17)
"Q" is obviously more highly informed than a first-time reader. Wilber uses Q less to ask questions than to help simplify points [the book summarizes the more complex content of Wilber's massive Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995)]. The "generalizations" he notes are Kohlberg's and Gilligan's moral stages. "Human moral development goes through at least three broad stages" (p. 17). In brief: before the child is socialized, it is "preconventional," as it learns the values of society it becomes "conventional," and eventually it may reflect on its own values critically, becoming increasingly "postconventional."
Wilber goes on to show a number of "tenets" or "patterns that connect." The first of these is that "reality is composed of whole/parts, or 'holons'" (p. 20). A holon is something that is itself "a whole and simultaneously a part of some other whole" (ibid.). Borrowing from Arthur Koestler, Wilber argues that the world is full of "holarchies," as opposed to hierarchies. Where a hierarchy typically separates distinct parts, a holarchy consists of both wholes that are parts, and parts that are wholes. For example, an atom is a whole of its own, but also a part of a whole molecule. A whole molecule is a part of a whole cell, and a whole cell is part of a whole organism. As Wilber says, "Time goes on, and today's wholes are tomorrow's parts" (ibid.).
Wilber uses the ideas of "depth" and "span" to say that whenever we map a territory, something always gets left out. For instance, as we narrow focus with a microscope, "There are fewer organisms than cells; there are fewer cells than molecules; there are fewer molecules than atoms; there are fewer atoms than quarks. Each has a greater depth, but less span" (p. 34). Similarly, if we move from mysticism and psychology, into biology and physics, the progression gives greater depth of specific detail but less span, embrace, or inclusion of levels of reality (pp. 36-38). These dimensions are neither dependent nor independent, but interdependent.
Great shifts in "reality" paradigms were brought by what Wilber calls "the watershed separating the modern and postmodern approaches to knowledge" (p. 58). Postmodernists criticize old paradigms such as "the Enlightenment,... the Newtonian, the Cartesian, the mechanistic, the mirror of nature, the reflection paradigm" (ibid.). In opposition, many postmodernists propose that "all truth is relative and merely culture-bound, there are no universal truths" (pp. 62-63). But as Wilber notes, even Derrida now concedes the elemental point that worldviews are not "'merely constructed' in the sense of totally relative and arbitrary" (p. 62). In Wilber's diagnosis, assertions that "there is no truth in the Kosmos, only those notions that men force on others," are nihilistic, replacing truth with "the ego of the theorist" (p. 63).
As a tool to place different worldviews, Wilber uses "four quadrants of development" (pp. 71-75). The exterior form of development is measured objectively and empirically. The interior dimension is subjective and interpretive, and hence depends on consciousness and introspection. And both interior and exterior occur not just separately but in social or cultural context.
Wilber describes how Foucault summarized the "monological madness" that dominated the eighteenth century and Enlightenment notions of the subject: "the subjective and intersubjective domains were thus reduced to empirical studies-I and we were reduced to its- and thus humans became 'objects of information, never subjects in communication'" (p. 269). Treated as objects, people were expected to meet norms of mental health, for instance, while their subjective position in the world was ignored.
Wilber says the whole of his morality aims to "protect and promote the greatest depth for the greatest span" (p. 335). He argues we must use these criteria when we make judgments. Although the spirituality risks opacity, the overall effort suggests deeply researched and grounded ways to structure reality. If we as a society need human empathy for multiple perspectives, then the patterns of thought laid out by Wilber provide a system for integrating such perspectives. Distilling messages of vast ranges of thought, Wilber presents highly differentiated worldviews and multiple points of intervention through which we can, if contingently, take action.

Noted for his vast and brilliant synthesis of many disciplines, however, no one familiar with the topics he refers to can agree. It is the work of a Male-Western Science-Christian-Freudian who still believes the Truth of all that but also is aware that they aren't the whole Truth. He yearns for the subjective, but can not trust it beyond reports by those (like Freudians) who can clean the subjective of its unconscious 'deceits' and other limits. Einstein wrote of mystery as the heart of great science and art. This is the personal (subjective) experience of creative scientists, artists, religious types and everyone else who isn't limited solely to what they read in the library. This insightful group doesn't include Ken Wilber. Wilber cites many authors and theories, though those familiar with those works will not recognize them from Wilber's remarks. His fundamental overview of all systems is based in the simple double dichotomy of Cartesian axes, though he is totally unaware of the circumscribed circle of the horizon which is always implicit in such a format. Even within his four-fold model of the subjective/objective individual and social, he doesn't notice that really he is only speaking of the physical sciences, psychology and the social sciences. They study his four realms, but of course they are all academic objective sciences. The emotional angst he unleashes against "flatland" views of science only can only be his own subjective pain trying to break through his defenses. His is a totally flatland synthesis, confusing flat circles for spheres and higher dimensions. It is tough to revere Freud as truth and hope to find any sense of wholeness or subjective integrity.

A thoughtful, comprehensive and accessible theory of everything. It describes the path to the higher levels of consciousness that are necessary to understand and address the challenges we face. A must read!

I started out as a reluctant reader... then as it became clear that the evolutionary spirit was manifesting through his efforts I became won over. I am concerned that the Pythagorean Theorem was so poorly stated, and not corrected by even the humblest of assistant editors! However, forgiving that one minor glitch, I am impressed by the comprehensive overview. I'm satisfied that the picture he paints is an accurate rendition of spirit in our time, and that it is critical for all who are able to live in Nonduality, yet surf the Form waves as they manifest.

As a psychotherapist who has used system's thinking as a basis for my work, this book has proven to be a revolution. Wilber's incredible capacity to glean salient facts and then synthesize them, understandably, for the reader is amazing. If I had only read the first 30 pages of this book, my work would have changed. The cherry on the top is his suggestions of the directions we need to work toward. A rare book indeed, that marries spirit with science, philosophy, psychology, physics, etc. Bravo.

On page 219 we find this: "If you take somebody
from the magic or mythic worldview, and you try to
explain to them that the sum of the squares of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the hypotenuse, you won't get very far." Well, of course not, because you will not be making any sense at all! Did the author mean to state the Pythagorean Theorem: the square of the hypotenuse in a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides? This is a completely different idea, but we must assume this is what he was trying to say. But it gets worse! Mr. Wilber wants us to believe that the results and conclusions of the meditative traditions
( "you are face to face with the Divine . . .") are exactly the same kind of knowledge as the Pythagorean Theorem!!!!! Have your seventh-grade child demonstrate--in the real, physical, "empirical" world--the truth of the Theorem of Pythagoras and then ask yourself if you believe Wilber is correct here.

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?

He seeks out a lot of important ground and introduces you to it in his own evangelistic way, inextricably mixing in his many confusions. The innocent who reads this book first will probably struggle to unlearn it for decades.

Ken Wilber has done amazing work as a synthetic philosopher, pulling together various insights into a vast metaphysical construct that he calls "integral." This, like many of his books, is a sort of synoptic overview of the Wilber Construct. I read it when it was first published, a condensation of SEX, ECOLOGY, SPIRITUALITY. For an even briefer summary of Wilber's system, see THE MARRIAGE OF SENSE AND SOUL.

What I want to address, though, is Brother Ken's apparent need to develop his compassion, which seems stunted by comparison to his intellect. I just found a statement of Ken's on the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, which he posted to his website in 2003 (it can be found on the Shambhala Publications site), and which he apparently thinks highly enough of to have left there until now. In it, Ken lashes out at the peace movement in a way betraying a lack of elementary decency and respect.

His proposal, which is supposed to reflect his superior "second-tier" insight, is a world government, which is something I've seen the need for since I was about 13. I don't think it took "second-tier" consciousness to figure it out. Does Ken think most peace activists haven't also thought of that? But what do we do without one when imperialist powers like the U.S. invade and occupy countries? He places the peace movement and the neocon advocates of war on the same primitive moral plane, far beneath his lofty position, but based on his tirade I think it's clear who needs some intensive ethical development.

Certainly developing "compassion for all sentient beings" would be a prerequisite to Brother Ken becoming any sort of philosopher-king with policy-making authority. For a truly enlightened and compassionate perspective, I recommend LIVING BUDDHA, LIVING CHRIST by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen teacher and peace activist.

Ken Wilber has indeed presented a genuine masterpiece. The infinite spirit of who, what and why are touched but not overdosed. He clearly has enjoyed writting this and if God were to write a review..it might read "Your getting close Ken! Well Done"

I stumbled upon the book while browsing. While being a big fan of Joseph Campbell's work I find Wilber's work to provide a pathway "beyond".
I am now reading Sex, Ecology, and Sprituality. These should be required reading for world leaders
and political and religious leaders.

I started out as a reluctant reader... then as it became clear that the evolutionary spirit was manifesting through his efforts I became won over. I am concerned that the Pythagorean Theorem was so poorly stated, and not corrected by even the humblest of assistant editors! However, forgiving that one minor glitch, I am impressed by the comprehensive overview. I'm satisfied that the picture he paints is an accurate rendition of spirit in our time, and that it is critical for all who are able to live in Nonduality, yet surf the Form waves as they manifest.

I just couldn't get through this book. By trying to claim this was about everything, it covered nothing, save perhaps new age woo.

I knew it was going to be bad when he made up a new word for a meaningless concept. He claims that everything is both a whole, onto itself, and a part of something larger, called a "holon". I admit I have a pet peeve against authors that make up new words because they are not aware that other people have perfect good words that mean the same thing.

He completely lost me, and I am certain many intelligent people who know anything at all about Biology, when he said that very few theorist believe in Darwin's theory about chance mutation and natural selection. (Page 20, he really said that!) Yes, yes, we do. And if he wants to propose an alternative hypothesis (in science it doesn't get to be called a theory until after you prove it) then he better have some extraordinary new evidence, because natural selection IS the generally accepted theory.

Just like the Heliocentric theory (that the Earth goes around the Sun, not vice versa) is currently the generally accepted theory. Yes, I am sure it is a theory, not a fact or a law.

This book has a preview. I strongly suggest that you use it, before you spend any money.

I was looking forward to reading Ken Wilbur's book, expecting a logical, "scientific" explanation for many questions which I had. Instead, what I read was a series of "spiritual musings", an author who likes to hear himself write, sententeces full of words, signifying nothing. The form in which the book is written, a question and answer interview, is a good one but it still did not help in clarifying Mr. Wilbur's point of view. Indeed, it is difficult to say what Mr. Wilbur is trying to say although he uses a great many words to say it.

Wilber, in essence, explains they way "things just are" in our world today. The clarity of his explanations (and their supporting philosophies)are powerful in their completeness. It makes you feel as if you have been lied to all your life and ultimately glad you finally know the truth.

On page 219 we find this: "If you take somebody
from the magic or mythic worldview, and you try to
explain to them that the sum of the squares of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the hypotenuse, you won't get very far." Well, of course not, because you will not be making any sense at all! Did the author mean to state the Pythagorean Theorem: the square of the hypotenuse in a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides? This is a completely different idea, but we must assume this is what he was trying to say. But it gets worse! Mr. Wilber wants us to believe that the results and conclusions of the meditative traditions
( "you are face to face with the Divine . . .") are exactly the same kind of knowledge as the Pythagorean Theorem!!!!! Have your seventh-grade child demonstrate--in the real, physical, "empirical" world--the truth of the Theorem of Pythagoras and then ask yourself if you believe Wilber is correct here.

This is a disappointing book. I had read a couple of Wilber's earlier books and liked them, especially the superb "Grace and Grit." At his best, he can be very good at explaining a nondualistic Eastern style philosophy.

As the title suggests, this book is meant to introduce people to an all encompassing metaphysical system. No one could attempt such an enterprise without a little hubris. But why stop at a little? Wilber is fond of dropping the names of long lists of famous intellectuals whose work he finds consistent with, but subservient to, his system. Reality is sliced and diced in an endless taxonomy of levels, holons, stages, paradigm shifts, quadrants, centers, spheres and fulcrums before being reassembled into a nondualistic whole. Anyone satisfied with scientific explainations is dismissed as a "reductionist" holding what he calls "an insane world view." The science based world view is not so much argued against as it is insulted, dismissed and misrepresented.

The most remarkable thing in this book is it's bizzare description of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. He makes the astonishing claim that very few theorists believe in Darwinian evolution and that, "There is no evidence whatsoever for intermediate (fossil) forms." Wilber maintains it would take at least a hundred simultaneous beneficial mutations for something like a wing to evolve. He claims this would have to occur separately in both a male and a female who would then have to mate successfully. This is a grotesque caricature of Darwinan theory. Anyone who thinks it is adequate should buy this book. Others should read Richard Dawkins "Climbing Mount Improbable." Wilber never names any scientists who advocate this version of evolution for the very good reason that there aren't any.

What accounts for this straw man caricature of the most foundational scientific theory in modern biology? Well, Darwinian theory predicts that two species competing for the same niche will compete very fiercely. Wilber's Hegelian style spirit based pantheism competes with a science based pantheism in the tradition of Spinoza, Darwin and Einstein.

This book is written in a question and answer format. I bought it on audio cassette. The questions were read by a young woman. Her tone indicates she is struggling to understand. She is always co-operative and eager to receive the wisdom from on high. The answers are read by a man. His tone is authoritative and patiently condescending. This is perfect for the text.

Here is a one sentence sample, from the book, of Wilber's writing at it's worst: "So we have some very popular theorists who, tired of the burdens of postconventional and world-centric rational perspectivism, recommend a regressive slide into egocentric vital impulsive polymorphous phantasmic emotional revival." Like Hegel, Wilber has attracted legions of readers who assume that his most incomprehensible writing must be his most brilliant. If you are willing to make that assumption, this book will delight you.

it is a measure of just how much surplus capitalism generates that psycho-babblers of this variety are able to make a comfy living trying to impress impressionable coeds. Wilber is convincingly and repeatedly debunked by real scholars who have taken the path of scholarship within their discipline

Talk about big things coming in small packages! It's a great read. A little high brow in places but the author balances it out by being more relaxed, even playful, in other parts. This books truly is a brief history of everything...hold on and get ready for a cerebral, probably more spiritual, ride!