The One Two Three of God [Audiobook, CD] [Audio CD]

Ken Wilber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2006

Is it possible to develop an all-inclusive embrace of God, one that can satisfy scientists, philosophers, and priests at the same time? It is, teaches best-selling author Ken Wilber, if you are able to understand The 1-2-3 of God. According to this premier modern philosopher, the seemingly innumerable ways humans conceptualize God can actually be broken down into three basic perspectives.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ken Wilber is one of the most widely read and eminent American philosophers of our time. The author of more than twenty-two books, including A Brief History of Everything, (Shambhala, 2001) and A Simple Feeling of Being, (Shambhala, 2004), his writing has been translated into more than twenty languages.

From AudioFile

In a dialogue with Sounds True host Tami Simon, Wilber, a leader in the field of human spiritual development, discusses his ideas regarding the nature of God, which he explored in his book INTEGRAL SPIRITUALITY. He approaches the Divinity from three perspectives--the first person (I/we), the second person (you), and the third person (it/they)--and relates some of the ways these perspectives have informed and could inform modern spirituality and organized religion. The question-and-answer format is informal and accessible. Staying focused on the questions presented, Wilber is articulate and provides much food for thought. The final CD contains a meditation exercise led by Diane Hamilton, an esteemed teacher in the Buddhist tradition. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Sounds True, Incorporated; Unabridged edition (November 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591795311
• ISBN-13: 978-1591795315
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #217,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #69 in Books > Books on CD > Reference

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wilber fan, but I had a mixed reaction...., April 27, 2007

By 

Patrick D. Goonan "see profile for URL" (Livermore, CA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The One Two Three of God (Audio CD)

In actuality, I rated this CD a 3.5. I am big fan of Ken Wilber, but I think he could have done better here. Although this is newer material, it doesn't measure up to the standard Ken set in Kosmic Consciousness for quality. There is a lot of repitition on this CD and for people already familiar with Ken's work it could be annoying. I also don't feel that Integral Spirituality that was released was also up to par for such an established author. I would really like to see more copy editing going forward, because overall I feel Wilber is a genious and one of the most important, if not the most important philosopher of our time.

With respect to content, this CD deals largely with the multiple perspectives one can take on reality i.e. first person, second person and third person. These perspectives correspond to subjectivity, intersubjectivity and an objectivity, respectively. Each of these areas also correspond to a certain orientation toward the divine, for example jnana yoga or path of direct knowledge (first person), bakhti yoga or path of devotion (intersubjectivity) and karma yoga or path of activity in the world (objective). The audio also covers various levels of these three primary dimensions and maps the same essential ideas to various traditons.

There is also a lot of material on this CD about the different spiritual levels and their correlates in culture (this corresponds to the interior of a collective). In other words, Wilber talks about what an orientation to God looks like from an archaic, magical, mythical, rational, post-modern, subtle, causal and non-dual perspective. He uses examples to illustrate how religion shows up in various cultures at some of these stages. The stages beyond rational are more rare and not experienced in the culture, but rather expressed in individual practices.

Again, for many Wilber fans this will be a repitition of familiar material. If you are new to Ken Wilber, Kosmic Consciousness or A Brief History of Everything would certainly be much better introductions to Ken's work.

If you have only read Ken Wilber, you will find another side of him revealed in the interviews. I think it is important to have a sense of his personality and although this comes across better in Kosmic Consciousness, I think you can get that here too.

Overall, Ken has looked across cultures, worldviews, spiritual experience, science, sociology and many other fields to come up with an inclusive model that embraces more of reality. He conceptualizes this by applying a four quadrant model which corresponds to the various perspectives I mentioned above. The fourth quadrant comes from the original model and the three perspectives above result from a simplification of the model to describing both individual (empirical) objective and collective (systems) objective views to a single it/its zone lumped under what he calls the third person view.

There are also various levels within each quadrant where every successive level both transcends and includes the earlier levels. At each level, there are new phenomenon that crop up with emergent properties that can't be explained as the mere sum of parts. An example of this on the physical level would be the heirarchy (holarchy the term Wilber uses) e.g. atoms, molecules, macromolecules (such as proteins, DNA, etc.), cells, tissues, organs, organ systems and multi-cell organisms. In this example, life would be an emergent property that appears with cells.

One of Ken's arguments is that each of the quadrants is irreducible to the others and that each dimension has certain truth criteria associated with it that is appropriate to its domain. In Wilber's opinion, this avoids a situation where we ignore the validity of subjective experience or other important dimensions of reality that can't be measured through the scientific method. For example, he might argue that love exists and consciousness exists, but we can't look at either one through a microscope. There needs to be other ways to validate truth for each quadrant.

From a larger perspective, this worldview offers a post-metaphysical view of reality that validates the legitimacy of the arts (first person), morals (second person) and sciences (third person). This notion is also related to the notions of the Beautiful (first person), Good (second person) and True (third person).

The most valuable thing about this recording from my perspective is the exercises on the last CD. They help you to integrate the concepts on the CD with your own experience. They also give you a feel for how you can make practical use of the model to stretch your boundaries and as a tool for trying on various perspectives, points of view and orientations toward Spirit and the world.

My review does not do justice to Ken's model or the power of his ideas. In a limited space, this is very difficult to convey. However, I have read almost everything Ken has written and I believe he will go down in history as an extremely important thinker. My understanding is that he has 20+ books in print continously since they have been published and he is the only (or one of the only) living authors to have a major publisher put together his collected works during his lifetime.

Admittedly, it is difficult to wrap your arms around Ken's entire thought. It requires a lot of background information on a variety of topics and an understanding of his history including the evolution of his thought which has changed numerous times over 20 years. If you are serious about Wilber, then I would certainly purchase Ken Wilber: Thought As Passion (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Pyschology) and use it for context and a general roadmap. If you get this along with Kosmic Consciousness or A Brief History of Everything, you will have a very good foundation and get his most important ideas in a relatively painless way. If you try to tackle something like Integral Psychology : Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy right off the bat, you may get discouraged. Some of Ken's works are more accessible than others.

In general, it is good to see Ken giving interviews and it is likely I will buy anything he puts out. However, I would like to hold him to a higher standard in terms of presentation, avoiding unnecessary repitition, etc. The man is a genius, but he is sometimes all over the map.

Finally, I would like to leave you with an intriguing Ken Wilber idea about holism. Ken argues that combining the understanding of quantum physics, ecology and systems theory into a worldview is a gross reduction of reality to the deepest levels of the physical universe. I happen to agree with Ken on this, but it is a very controversial idea. The implication is that we can't even understand the deepest level of physical reality without it breaking down and its complexity leads us to mistake this for all of reality. If this is true, how much more complex might reality be, if there are other ontological levels that are even more complex as described by the Perrenial Philosophy that seems to form the core of every major religion i.e. the levels of the body, emotions, mind, soul and spirit. A lot of Ken's model is based on taking this view very seriously. You can get some good background information on this notion from Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World's Religions. While Wilber differs from Huston Smith in many ways, it is very interesting to see where they are similar and where they differ. This is particularly interesting with respect to Ken Wilber's Integral Methodological Pluralism which comes out of his latest thought and which underlies the contents of this CD at a deeper level. Also, Huston Smith is very eloquent with his methaphors and descriptions, which will also help you to digest Wilber.

This CD is definitely worth buying. However, I don't feel it's the best place to start or the best example of Ken's work. It's a BIG BOOK, but Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition is a great more or less comprehensive look at the scope of Wilber's thought in one volume. It's a monster, however, at 800+ pages!

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It Was Entertaining., January 4, 2007

By 

R.B.F - See all my reviews

This review is from: The One Two Three of God (Audio CD)

I am a big fan of Wilber and found this to be entertaning and a must for his fans but I must say I did not learn too much of anything new. It is still a very fun listen and I love how he can treat these issues very lightheartedly and always have a joke. Tami Simon is a great person to interview Ken because I feel she asks the laymans questions.
One last thing is that I am not a fan of the 4th disc which is a meditation on all three views of God it felt very rushed and was hard to relax into.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Companion to Integral Spirituality, May 14, 2007

By 

Reflection - See all my reviews

This review is from: The One Two Three of God (Audio CD)

The One Two Three of God uses the interview format introduced in Kosmic Consciousness to provide an overview of some of the concepts more fully developed in Ken Wilber's Integral Spirituality. The interview is much like those in Kosmic Consciousness, enjoyable to listen to and effectively touching on the integral perspective in relation to God, Spirituality and Religion. As a fan of many of Ken Wilber's writings and of his integral perspective, I found the content to be somewhat basic but generally clearly defined within the conversation dialogue. However, for someone unfamiliar with the basic AQAL framework and the states, stages, levels and lines developmental map, the discussion will most likely be a bit harder to follow. As a companion to Integral Spirituality, this interview session offers an overview of several key points presented in that work. It additionally provides a guided meditation as an experiential introduction toward integrating the 1st, 2cnd and 3rd person understandings of God into a more inclusive spiritual perspective.