Customer Reviews

Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy

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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.

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

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.

An Added Note, Jan 2002:

Reading the reviews on this page, some of them remind me of a philosophy class I once took with an excellent professor. The subject matter was Sextus Empiricus, and his "fathering" of Skepticism as a formal philosophical method. What the professor mentioned to us, just before handing back our first essays, in a friendly but admonishing manner, was that it is far too easy to simply cast aspersions or find thinkers wrong; whereas it is far more productive to find what is right about what they say; and that only after you've got what they say down pat & can recount it, can you start to do an intelligent criticism of their work.

Mr. Wilber himself parses his work into four periods, sometimes revising his earlier views (such as on Romanticism). And though there is a general concern that informs what he has written - the totality of human knowledge and how we come to that knowledge and what characterizes that knowledge & perhaps most importantly what we can do with that knowledge (which therefore makes is difficult to write something that is not somewhat related to something else that is already written in Wilber’s ongoing opus) – UP FROM EDEN is not the same book as, say, INTEGRAL PSYCHOLOGY. And the repetition in the books simply, yes, rehashes the basic outlines of his foundational Quadrant model, which any good writer will offer, as there will always be readers who are new to him. Thus each book can be self-contained and does not require what can be a frustrating practice of buying a book that refers back to another book the reader is therefore forced to get in order to be able to make sense of the tome in her hands at the moment – a tome which could have set her back 50 dollars.

Who else out there can summarize so much, so clearly, and be good enough at writing to actually sell books, thus making his work available (can anyone really argue otherwise, agree or no with his starting-point conclusions) to all of us easily, and not have us searching for his work in obscure, disparate, academic journals? And what other philosopher is so perspicaciously tooting the horn of so many other writers, introducing them to us and contextualizing them for us?

For my buck, it is difficult to find a better analytical guide to knowledge, and his hand-holding - as he guides us through the annals of consciousness - is simply too valuable and too rare, to my eye, to cast aside as simply repetitious.

Is it a wonder at the relatively young age of Mr. Wilber that his works are, though unfinished, already collected?

Ken Wilber, the master of integration, attempts to integrate many theories in the diverse field of psychology, philosophy, and spirituality in this book. It is full of very interesting ideas and insights. Even if you do not agree with some of his ideas, it is very interesting and worth contemplating. In this book, Wilber convincingly writes that the four quadrants (his theory of the "1,2,3 of consciousness") are highly related to each other, and that they need to be integrated in order to advance our understanding of things. However, he really does not go into much detail about how we can go about doing this. I found that the book called the "The Ever-Transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato goes one step further and actually attempts an integration of these four quadrants. This fantastic book by Sato is a little more readable and takes this idea to an even more advanced level. Both books should be on your must read list if you are interested in the intersection between psychology, philosophy, and spirituality.

This book is one of my favorite books. I say that because it represents a higher paradigm, actually the ultimate paradigm, which means it's continually subject to even higher paradigms. Behind all teachings, concepts, ideology, religion and science is psychology. Even though there are methods of psychology restricted to particular schools of thoughts, psychology itself exists behind that. And integral psychology is the higher of paradigms. Another wards, every book read, every concept, teaching, every system, no matter how accurate, significant, reliable, and proven empirically and so forth, when taken alone as the "one truth," amounts to reductionism. In most cases, empirical observation is known as flatland, as the observable facts are without the "forgotten truth" (Huston) and subjective reality which cannot be "proven" in objective terms.

Wilber is very detailed and the pages of footnotes confirms this, each point painstakingly laid out, many times repeatedly with emphasis on another particular angle. I've read the "Atman Project," "Theory of Everything," "Eye of The Spirit," and it's recommended to also read, "Sex Ecology and Spirituality" (you should see all the footnotes in that book!), "Spectrums of Consciousness," .....Eden," "History of Everything," "A Sociable God," "Sense and Soul," there's some more too, every book is connected to the Integral psychology. This book is really an eye opener and I highly recommend it. When to comes to the transformation and development of consciousness, Wilber's is an expert on the subject, devouring all other authors on this subject, either complimenting or criticizing it in one of his publications. I used to think I perceive all of my paradigms from a larger liberal paradigm and yet now I question such simplicity. And yet can I call this book that? After all, it will not take in one model as "all," but transcend it into another.

Pardon this over simplification, especially when it comes to Wilber - It's the four quadrants that I think can be weighed against every teaching. For instance I love Fijof Capra's "Tao of Physics," and it is an awesome analysis of the web of relational links found in physics and the Eastern counterparts. And yet, the book itself is monological, another wards it's an important work but only from the Upper Right Quadrant or objective lens. And so this needs to be taken in account with the other quadrants, the individual subjective, the collective subjective molds of thoughts we think through and the collective objective systems we perceive reality through as well. So every book, whether it's Freud's awesome repression psychoanalysis, which is limited to the Upper Left Quad or individual subjective, or Jung's archetypes which is limited to mostly the Lower Left Quad or collective subjective, or Marx's manifesto, which is limited to the Lower Right Quad or collective objective social system, or David Bohm's Implicate Order, which is limited to the Upper Right , which is the Individual Objective, all these are greatly significant, yet taken alone as dominant act in reductionism. His four quadrant approach is just fantastic in relations to evaluating fairly what ever it is you are reading. I was reading the Tao of Physics and it relates so well the outline of the web of relational links in quantum and eastern thoughts and yet it only falls within the upper right quadrants. I was reading Marx - lower right, Freud - upper left and so on. No matter how wonderful the theory in psychology, in political science, in neurology or biology, in cultural linguistics - they all fall within one or maybe two of the quadrants, all pieces, but never the whole and that is the point here. None can claim absolute, as this is reductionism, while each part is a whole makes up a larger whole/part which is part of a whole/part and so forth.

Now there are streams and levels within each quadrant and Wilber can get exhaustive here if he wants to - most of the footnotes are as significant as the chapter they are noted in and he loves going on footnote tangents, worthy of every morsel.

I'm impressed in the way Wilber defines much of the grown of consciousness in Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields or collective forces, waves and streams and various levels, which can be advanced more rapidly through altered states and yet cannot be omitted or overridden but most be personally developed and experienced in all.

The chapters on premoderism to modernism, but of more significance to myself, the chapter on modernism to postmodernism was the best I've had explained. using the deconstructuralism and both the validity and reductionist aspects - truly enlightening! Wilber is a special writer and personally, I think will go down in history as significant and prolific

There are many facets to this book. One is the pre-trans fallacy, where Wilber argues against his former teaching of romanticism of returning to the pre-ego self, as here he now teaches that the later development, as in the subtle and casual realms of consciousness are areas that include and transcend the ego, a whole/part within a larger whole, as opposed to the trashing of the ego and returning to the pre-ego. It is here that Jung's archetypes represent the subtle and if a collective consciousness relating to before the ego then a pre and not a trans development.

Also argued are Stan Grof's adaptation of Rankian analysis incorporated into his analysis of the LSD experience in the return to the pre-ego and what's more argued is the ideas of returning to the birth process psychologically or having to be re-born as in a return. Instead it is a return only to re-experience in the sense of re-living or returning only to loosen the particular repression and to then move back forward to both include and transcend the ego development. You must first fully develop the ego to the strongest or highest extent before transcending it to the higher development.

I just purchased books by Jenny Wade, Michael Murphy, Jurgen Habermas, Pappa Free John, Stan Grof, and a few more in conscious development and influences on Wilber.

Those who have read Wilber know that he writes with marvelous clarity. If every help manual in the world were written in such a style, we could all follow the directions, no doubt about it. Even granted the Wilberian preoccupation with spatial metaphors: up, down, around, transcend and include.

What I question are the credentials re: "therapy." One could definitely make a case that many of the best "therapists" never get licensed at all and don't have impressive credentials. At the same time, however, it's strange to read suggestions about therapy or counseling without seeing any of the author's background in these disciplines. Was Wilber trained by therapists? Has he actually sat with clients and received supervision from therapists? Listened as a group of colleagues told him about his own countertransference issues? I don't know. Perhaps he has. I hope so. Because work on yourself isn't enough to make you knowledgeable about psychotherapy--just as meditations on the nature of horseness don't make you an expert on dressage.

Wilber does some of the homework in terms of theory, but the real grist, the give-and-take of actual case histories, actual in-session learnings, knowledge of the analytic literature, accounts of the mistakes all trainees make in session, notes on dealing with fighting couples or self-destructive families: where is it? Because without it, degree or no degree, we are scarcely in a position to write adequately about psychotherapy, let alone recommend modifications to how it is performed by seasoned practitioners who every day get their hands and hearts dirty with genuine human conflict and tragedy, illness and death.

The charts alone are worth the low price. Anyone desiring to see how the Kosmos fits together needs this book. It organizes and explains his ideas as clearly as always, allowing academics and others to better orient themselves when reconciling and understanding their disciplines. While we await Volume 2 of his trilogy, I heartily appreciate Ken's willingness to provide us with a regular fix to our addiction to his insights. Ken is a national treasure. Buy this book.

"The roots of modern psychology lie in spiritual traditions, precisely because the psyche itself is plugged into spiritual sources." As a branch of his Integral Studies, Wilber reviews the history of psychology and establishes his Integral Psychology as, of course, necessarily a developmental one. Few are integrating East and West better than Ken Wilber, and no one explains the painful ramifications of the four hundred year split between matter and spirit better. No one offers better (integral) solutions. The correlating charts here alone are worth the price of the book.

One objection I must include: "Horizontal Typologies" on page 53. "Finally, a word about 'horizontal' typologies, such as Jungian types, the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, and so forth. For the most part, these are not vertical levels, stages, or waves of development, but rather different types of orientations possible at each of the various levels." For the most part. For one thing, "Jungian types" and "Myers-Briggs" are the same thing; for another, the unfolding developmental pattern of hardwired Jungian function preferences (extravert/introvert, thinking/feeling, intuition/sensation) may very well fit vertically into Wilber's charts. Nevermind -- he has something important to add to, revise or refine in his stunning four quadrant model with each new book (here he joins with Spiral Dynamics), and he, most important, never fails to make a deliberate point to welcome authoritative feedback for continual revision for accuracy and precision. "Whatever [integral] contributions any of us might make will only be the shoulders, we can hope, upon which others will soon stand."

This book will not necessarily make good bed timing reading from the standpoint of being "light." Between the covers, it presents a deep exploration of the shortcomings of modern reductionistic ways of looking at the psyche and in its place posits and optimistic, embracing and holistic view that revives the original meaning of the term psyche in most broad sense i.e. mind or soul.

In Chapter One Ken Wilber points out that the great problem of psychology has always been that different schools of thought have taken one or a few aspects of psychology and declared it the only worthwhile aspect(s) worth studying. In his model, the goal is to honor and embrace every legitimate aspect of human consciousness.

Ken also looks at reality as a hierarchy (holoarchy) made of wholes that are also parts. He calls these holons and each one has four dimensions; 1) subjective; 2) objective 3) collective objective (objective systems); and 4) intersubjective (worldviews and cultures). He further argues that each dimension is not reducible to any other, which means that the subjective and intersubjective are legitimate areas of inquiry with their own unique validation criteria.

Ken Wilber's model also embraces a synthesis of over 200 worldviews and he includes mystical experience and other ways of knowing as legitimate epistemologies. He goes on to explain that the subjective nature of reality is "real," but that the scientific method is not the correct mode of inquiry for this exploring this domain. However, he says that its existence is both undeniable and has been explored for thousands of years by highly developed people of all faiths. In other words, we can have real knowledge of this area.

His model honors the full spectrum of human experience including the body, emotions, mind, soul and spirit. These are presented as different developmental levels which exist within each quadrant that make up an entire holon.

Another important part of Wilber's model is the notion of evolution. According to him, we are evolving personally and collectively toward higher states of being that include subtle and non-dual states.

Ken opens the book with a definition of psychology which very nicely summarizes the scope of this work: "Psychology is the study of human consciousness and its manifestations in behavior. The functions of consciousness include perceiving, desiring, willing, and acting. The structures of consciousness, some facets which can be unconscious, include body, mind, soul, and spirit. The states of consciousness include normal (e.g. waking, dreaming, sleeping) and altered (e.g. nonordinary, meditative). The modes of consciousness include aesthetic, moral and scientific."

According to Wilber, "the development of consciousness spans an entire spectrum from prepersonal to personal to transpersonal, subconscious to self-conscious to superconscious, id to ego to Spirit. The relational aspects of consciousness refer to its mutual interaction with the objective, exterior world and the sociocultural world of shared values and perceptions." I think this describes his notion of development well, but this is even further developed in his book the Atman project.

This book really represents a well-research and holistic model of the psyche including its intersubjective aspects. This is often a piece that is left out as though we are isolated monads wondering through the world.

While this text is valuable, fascinating and thorough, it is not the easiest read for people with a weak background in philosophy or psychology. If this applies to you, you may want to read his book "A Brief History of Everything" first. This presents his major ideas in a more "user friendly" format.