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124 of 134 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Consciousness Restored!, May 17, 2000
This review is from: Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy (Paperback)
With this book Ken Wilber accomplishes something extraordinary. In lucid, lively, and often humorous writing, he presents a model of psychology and spirituality that, unlike anything before it, fully integrates--in a _completely_ reasonable manner--every facet of serious mental and spiritual investigation ever devised. Standing in the middle of a room called reality, Wilber sees four corners--the subjective ("I"), objective ("It"), intersubjective ("We"), and interobjective ("Its")--and realizes the obvious: the world is not constructed as strictly "objective" and material, nor purely "subjective" and mental, nor the plurals of those, but somehow _all of them at once_. Reality has four corners to it (or, for simplicity's sake, three dimensions: subjective, cultural, and objective; or I, We, and It; or first-person, second-person, and third-person aspects), and none of these corners can be simply "reduced" to, or derived from, any other. All four corners of reality arise together, along with a single universal room, and while they are indeed irreducible to each other, they are all mutually determining, inseparable, and incessantly interacting. Thus, standing in the middle of this Kosmic room, Wilber gives consciousness its due, permitting it to roam freely about the room and saving it, so to speak, from the immemorial punishment of standing in a particular corner while its parents decided what to do with their problematic child. The mysteries that Wilber's model solves are numerous. When the four-quadrant model is coupled with the traditional spiritual insight called the "Great Chain of Being"--which sees reality as a multidimensional spectrum of being and knowing, ranging from matter to life to mind to soul to spirit--the human "self" finally regains the complexity that everyone naturally intuits, but few psychological and spiritual systems acknowledge. Wilber gives the "self-system" continuum, stretching from most fundamental ("proximate") to least fundamental ("distal"), as: (1) "I-I" (Spirit, God, pure Consciousness, true Self); (2) "I" (ego, individual self); (3) "me" (aspects of oneself seen objectively, such as, for the average adult, her physical body); and (4) "mine" (external possessions and associations that define oneself). In the evolution of the "overall self," the "I" at one stage becomes the "me" at the next, transcending and including lower levels of reality, and this process opens consciousness to increasingly integral vistas. As Wilber explains: "[W]hat you are identified with (or embedded in) at one stage of development (and what you therefore experience very intimately as an `I') tends to become transcended, or disidentified with, or de-embedded at the next, so you can see it more objectively, with some distance and detachment. In other words, the _subject_ of one stage becomes an _object_ of the next" (p. 34). And when one reaches a level of _absolute_ transcendence, wherein _all_ things, including the sense of "I," become objects in awareness, then one opens to the mystical realization of enlightenment, which Wilber devotes considerable attention to (making this book worthwhile reading for even those spiritually-inclined people who wouldn't normally read psychology or transpersonal psychology texts). The fluid progression of the overall self through these increasing levels of consciousness, and also through the different _lines_ of these levels (such as the spiritual-development line, as well as the cognitive, moral, affective, interpersonal, worldview, empathic lines, et al.) forms the backbone of the treatise, with everything else ultimately related to this evolutionary process. Just as significant is a remarkable chapter (and its footnotes) in which Wilber explains how the mind and brain can finally unite--first meeting each other with the conceptual understanding that inside and outside, subject and object, are two mutually-arising corners of the Kosmic room, as irreducible to each other as two sides of a coin, and then embracing each other in the "All is Spirit" vision revealed when consciousness develops to the level of perfect nondual enlightenment. A full summary of this book and its merits would likely be wordier than the very concise text itself, but just to give a hint of what's explored within, here is a list of some more of the topics covered: the history of psychology, the perennial philosophy, the nature of holons and holarchies, the types of mysticism (psychic, subtle, causal, nondual), the types of spirituality (translative and transformative), the types of spiritual experience (peak, plateau, and permanent adaptation), the meme scheme of _Spiral Dynamics_ and ample discussions of other research, the pathologies that can be encountered on each level of development, a brief history of sociocultural evolution, the relation of transitory states of consciousness and stable structures of consciousness, the distinction between cultural-specific surface structures and universal deep structures, the fallacies of scientific materialism, the relations of the ego, the soul, and the Witness (or Spirit), and plenty of charts and figures to help make sense of it all. Surprisingly, this book holds together extremely well, and it isn't nearly as complicated as the above summary might lead one to suspect. _Integral Psychology_ is just a model, a framework, around which Wilber hopes future investigations might follow. It isn't meant to be fully fleshed out and comprehensive, but for what it does explain--for what it tentatively integrates--it's more than well worth the consideration of anyone interested in the nature of mind and spiritual development. Truly, the utterly liberating sanity and clarity of this work cannot be overstated. From Aurobindo in the East to Piaget in the West, nearly every tenable analysis of the nature of consciousness adds a brick to this, the foundation of an edifice that, in coming years, can only help to restore meaning and sanity to the life of any self fortunate enough to walk its halls.
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68 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A psychological thriller for thinkers., January 18, 2001
This review is from: Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy (Paperback)
This is the second book I've read toward my goal of reading all of Ken Wilber's books this year. In 1835, philosopher Gustav Fechner wrote "Man lives on earth not once, but three times: the first stage of life is continual sleep; the second, sleeping and waking by turns; the third, waking forever" (pp. vii-ix). This observation inspired Wilber to write this book. His aim, he writes, is to start a discussion, not to finish it, to act as a beginning, not an end (pp. xii; 193). Wilber's book is not so much a "history of psychology," as he calls it (p. ix), but an attempt to reconcile the spiritual dimensions of the human consciousness with the discipline of psychology. "Consciousness is real, the inward observing self is real, the soul is real, however much we debate the details" (p. xi).
From Wilber's perspective, we are living in a modern "flatland." "The nightmare of scientific materialism is upon us (Whitehead), the nightmare of the one-dimensional man (Marcuse), the disqualified universe (Mumford), the colonization of art and morals by science (Habermas), the disenchantment of the world (Weber)" (p. 70). "Flatland," Wilber explains, is "the belief that only the Right-Hand world is real--the world of matter/energy, empirically investigated by the human senses and their extensions (telescopes, microscopes, photographic plates, etc.). All of the interior worlds are reduced to, or experienced by objective/external terms" (p. 70). Modernity "marked the death of God, the death of the Goddess, the commodification of life, the leveling of qualitative distinctions, the brutalities of capitalism, the replacement of quality by quantity, the loss of value and meaning, the fragmentation of the lifeworld, existential dread, polluting industrialization, a rampant and vulgar materialism" (p. 59). With the "thundering authority of science" (p. 55), modernity denies the premodern belief that higher potentials are available to any individual "who wishes to pursue a path of
awakening, liberation, or enlightenment" (p. 55), and reduces the entire spectrum of consciousness and certainly its higher levels (soul and spirit) . . . to permutations and combinations of matter and bodies" (p. 64). However, Wilber is not without optimism. "This is the dawning of the age of vision-logic," he writes, "the rise of the network society, the postmodern, aperspectival, internetted global village. Evolution in all forms has started to become conscious of itself. Evolution, as Spirit-in-action, is starting to awaken on a more collective scale" (pp. 193-4).
A truly integral psychology, Wilber says, would involve the best of religious premodernity, scientific modernity, and postmodernity, "all level, all quadrant" (p. 87). "The soul is not running around out there in the physical world; it cannot be seen with a microscope or telescope or photographic plates. If you want to see the soul, you must turn within. You must develop your consciousness. You must grow and evolve in your capacity to perceive the deeper layers of your Self, which disclose higher levels of reality: the great within that is beyond: the greater the depth, the higher the reality" (p. 189).
Integration is possible through authentic spiritual practice. Authentic spirituality is "fostered by diligent, sincere, prolonged spiritual practice . . . such as active ritual, contemplative prayer, shamanic voyage, intensive meditation, and so forth. All of those open one to a direct experience of Spirit" (p. 136). In one of the book's many poetic passages, Wilber writes, "looking deep within the mind, in the very most interior part of the self, when the mind becomes very, very quiet, and one listens very carefully, in that infinite Silence, the soul begins to whisper, and its feather-soft voice takes one far beyond what the mind could ever imagine, beyond anything rationality could possibly tolerate, beyond anything logic can endure. In its gentle whisperings, there are the faintest hints of infinite love, glimmers of a life that time forgot, flashes of a bliss that must not be mentioned, an infinite intersection where the mysteries of eternity breathe life into mortal time, where suffering and pain have forgotten how to pronounce their own names, the secret quiet intersection of time and the very timeless, an intersection called the soul" (p. 106). Wilber encourages us to beware of those spiritual paths that involve simply changing your beliefs or ideas. "Authentic spirituality is not about translating the world differently, but about transforming your consciousness" (p. 136).
Whether you are interested in psychology or not, this book is filled with fascinating insights into human consciousness. Although portions of Wilber's book overlap in subject matter with his other books, this is not a criticism. Rather, it is an indication, perhaps, of how all-encompassing Wilber's philosophy is when applied to a variety of subjects. This book left me in awe.
G. Merritt
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26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What is Psychology?, January 2, 2001
This review is from: Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy (Paperback)
Mr. Ken Wilber is simply a national treasure. Wilber's approach is to cast a compassionate yet perspicaciously critical eye on the entire history and practice of human's efforts to know, examine everything we know, and further, to understand and explain how we share this knowing. The kinds of knowing the mind & brain (all of them here explained) are carefully explicated in this clearly written powerhouse of a concentrated book. Though the title accurately cues us to its subject matter, those not familiar with Wilber's scholarship will be pleasantly surprised - thoroughly and gently challenged - by the breadth of the concern this book so carefully and compactly elucidates. Elucidates is what this books so clearly does. Many books attempt to bring light to the subject of psychology, however few so clearly and so broadly cast, as one reviewer says, "...conceptual order to psychology of the east and west." And all this in a friendly and clear prose which though simple, imparts heady ideas in an inviting, open style that makes the book a pleasure to read. Wilber teaches, but a didactic diction is as foreign as is superficial analysis in this and all of his work. If you are new to him you wonder why so many others are so positively bumbling in their grasp of ideas and in the delivery of their insights. I find it difficult to put down his books; they're surprisingly fun to read, given the subject matter of his prolific output - nothing less than, to borrow from the title of another work, A Theory of Everything. To give a taste of his work, I'll quote a passage from Integral Psychology that speaks to the positivistic predilection for eschewing all things non-quantifiable: "The bleakness of modern scientific proclamation is chilling. In that extraordinary journey from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, scientific materialism halted the journey at the very first stage, and proclaimed all subsequent developments to be nothing but arrangements of frisky dirt. Why this dirt would get up and eventually start writing poetry was not explained. Or rather, it was explained by dumb chance and dumb selection, as if two dumbs would make a Shakespeare. The sensorimotor realm was proclaimed the only real realm, and it soon came to pass that mental health would be defined as adaptation to that 'reality.' Any consciousness that saw anything other than matter was obviously hallucinating." Being a condensed 300 page version of a yet to be published two volume textbook on psychology, this immanently respectful contribution to the storehouse of knowledge on what we call "psychology" (there is polemic, but it only answers unfair or misconstrued erroneous criticisms of his work) not only elucidates its history & strengths, weaknesses & schools, but, anchored to the etymology of the word 'psychology,' plumbs the depths of what all quarters (east and west, ancient and modern) have brought to the question: what is consciousness? Collecting "sturdy conclusions" - as Wilber calls them - of the valid insights that various thinkers have had throughout history and within the conceptual constellations of their various schools of thought, Wilber tackles the idea of what therefore are Integral approaches to healing, to therapy; & true to his form, informs us of not only what the various schools positively contribute to this effort (& what we can do without) but what an Integral approach to psychology might entail and how to implement this approach. Reading this volume - heavily end-noted for those who want to pursue the spectrum of scholarship that Wilber has examined for this book - will definitely bolster anyone's novice, veteran or professional interest in the ideas of what knowing is, how knowing works and how we can cull the resources of the history of the effort to know knowing so as to further what we know (& expand our active repertoire of how we know), and how we can use this study of the psyche, of consciousness, to heal ourselves (& others); so that we can become better, if not more conceptually ordered, people - at least as regards the idea of what psychology is. Agree or disagree with Wilber - his method or his conclusions - he is not someone that you can ignore without peril to your own knowing. I can think of no one else who is as perceptively and unrelentingly, book by book, disclosing the nature of, again borrowing from what was his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness. No matter what your particular area of concern, or if your concern is the entire realm of the various areas & forms of knowing, Wilber has insights to impart that you will find merit your careful and considered attention. I suspect Integral Psychology is a volume you will read several times, and with much enthusiasm.
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