Customer Reviews

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Emerson wrote of Shakespeare, "his mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not see," and the same may be said of Ken Wilber. Wilber wrote SEX, ECOLOGY, SPIRITUALITY (hereafter, "SES") during a "three-year silent retreat"--"I lived the hermit's life; I saw exactly four people in four years," he recalls (p. xii), and in SES he lays the foundation for his integral philosophy, which he develops more fully in his subsequent books. Wilber was seeking "a world philosophy," in writing SES, he explains. "I sought an integral philosophy, one that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details--that is finitely impossible, but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos: a world philosophy, an integral philosophy" (p. xii).

In SES, Wilber unfolds "a broad orienting map of men and women's place in the larger Kosmos (of matter, life, mind, and spirit)" that "naturally touches on a great number of topics that have recently become 'hot,' from the ecological crisis to feminism, from the meaning of modernity and postmodernity to the nature of "liberation" in relation to sex, gender, race, class, creed; to the nature of techno-economic developments and their relation to various worldviews; to the various spritual and wisdom traditions the world over that have offered telling suggestions as to our place in a larger scheme of things" (p. 6). SES is a "cry of anger and anguish" (p. xxiii) against homogenized "flatland" paradigms, and is likely to alarm ecophilosophers, feminists, and fundamentalists, alike. We are on the "verge of planetary transformation" (p. 204), and Wilber is investing his hope in the "integrative power of vision-logic." He writes, "it is vision-logic with its centauric/planetary worldview that, in my opinion, holds the only hope for the integration of the biosphere and noosphere, the supranational organization of planetary consciousness, the genuine recognition of ecological balance, the unrestrained and unforced forms of global discourse, the nondominating and noncoercive forms of federated states, the unrestrained flow of worldwide communicative exchange, the production of genuine world citizens, and the enculturation of female agency (i.e., the integration of male and female in both the noosphere and biosphere)--all of which, in my opinon, is nevertheless simply the platform for the truly interesting forms of higher and transpersonal states of consciousness lying yet in our collective future--if there is one" (p. 192). Wilber covers a lot of ground in SES, making it difficult to summarize. Immensely challenging at times, and drawn from "voluminous research material," at the center of Wilber's philosophy, "surfaces extend; interiors intend--it's still almost as simple as that" (p. 134) he explains. "Going within = going beyond = greater embrace" (p. 263). SES should be read and then reread as an essential, visionary handbook for the new millennium.

G. Merritt

Ken Wilber's "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution", is my favorite book. And that isn't a title I award lightly.

SES is quite possibly the first attempt at putting together a syncretic, evolutionary worldview since Hegel's "Phenomenology". In an age when truth has been declared dead and multiple perspectives rule the roost, where philosophy lives in the shadow of Nietzsche's madman, Wilber, in this striking volume, challenges post-modernity. Unlike other challengers, arguing for a retreat to conservatism and cynical (or mythic-literal) traditionalism, Ken proposes a different idea- we need to integrate the strengths of Post-modernity (a recognition of the other, a bird's eye view of ideology, and a profound social and ecological awareness), Modernity (scientific rationality, empiricism, democracy), and Pre-modernity (religious wisdom and cultural bounty) into one complete, "integral" package.

Sounds like a tough mission for any thinker to take on. Of course, Wilber- living outside the academia, blending his scholastic persuits with Zen practice, and doing his best to live his own philosophy- is no ordinary thinker. In the 551 pages of text (not including extensive endnotes and bibliography), Wilber essentially lays out his "theory of everything". Based in the psychological work of Freud, Piaget, Kohlberg, Maslow, Jung, Gebser, and other thinkers, Wilber first constructs a socio-psychological map of civilization's evolution to date, and shows how it integrates with hard scientific data. Dividing the world into subject and object, Wilber shows how modern empiricism has attempted to colonize the subjective sphere by trying to render it irrelevant- a condition he refers to as "flatland". After providing this analysis, Wilber takes a gander at the cognitive structures still lying in our future, through several examples of such advanced minds- Emerson, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, Ramana Maharshi, and Meister Eckhart. After that, Wilber takes on the disease of the Post-modern world and it's primary culprits- a dissociation between what he refers to as the "Eco" camps (romantic, back-to-nature, web-of-life, holistic) and the "Ego" camps (rationalistic, modernistic, atomistic, disassociating the mind and body), and how these two contradictory (and self-contradictory) worldviews are becoming extremely destructive- in political discourse, academia, and the world in general.

Of course, as has been said before about SES, it's very hard to sum up in a simple outline- the book itself is practically a 500+ page outline. The main thrust of the work is to construct a coherent philosophy for the 21st century, and thus Wilber spends little time on details (which will be covered further in the next two volumes, Kosmic Karma and Creativity and The Spirit of Post-Modernity). But, that weakness aside, Wilber has proven himself the finest philosophical mind of the early 21st century, and the first great step beyond Foucault, Derrida, and the rest of the post-modern mess.

Although SES is an excellent book, it's not light reading, and readers without a background in philsophy, psychology, or cultural studies should take a look at a simpler introduction to Wilber's work, such as A Brief History of Everything- the condensed, more conversational version of SES.

For me, the modern age is characterized by some interesting excesses, and Wilber satisfyingly identifies many of them in his spiritual journey here. Three favorite targets I found were: (1) the attempt to make things simpler than they really are in order to explain them, which analytic philosopher Dan Dennett calls "greedy reductionism," (2) the "rage against reason" found in much postmodernism that rejects the notion of objective reality and confident knowledge; and (3) extreme conservative thinking unable to come to grips with the vision of a complex evolving universe.

Wilber has a brilliant imagination and he is a very engaging writer, and this book (probably his best) deals with all three of those excesses in a fascinating way. His overall approach is not original of course (it is essentially a spiritual interpretation of systems and process metaphysics, but there are some very original elements sprinkled here and there. And probably the best thing about this book is that it does a competent job of presenting and integrating ideas from many diverse fields, in addressing the modern excesses, and trying to come up with a satisfying spiritual worldview for our complex age.

This is beautifully ironic, since what he attempts is the very essence of reductionism (!), something Wilber rails against mightily in this book when the "reductionists" disagree with his ideas because the "reduction" is not spiritually meaningful.

For comparison, the conservative religious/creationist critique of Darwinism holds that a universe composed of material elements that interact algorithmically ("machines") cannot also contain spiritual meaning. The Catholic Pope avoided that bind in support of evolution by imbuing material with living Spirit. Wilber uses the metaphysics of systems and processes rather than living Spirit, making his version, (like that of theologian Haught), noticeably more (if still imperfectly) compatible with the scientific worldview.

But this attack of reductionism while using to make his point is the big flaw, to me, in an otherwise very compelling, ambitious, and scholarly synthesis of many of the most profound ideas ever recorded in human thinking.

Indeed, this book seems like it would be sure to appeal to a wide variety of people who, like me, are looking for a way of making sense of our world where we don't bury our head in the sand against uncomfortable aspects of the scientific worldview, nor reject the implications of being spiritual beings who crave meaning.

Technically, the main problem I found is Wilber's annoyingly spotty attention to analysis (which seems worse because he does it reasonably well when he does it), in favor of linking ideas through metaphor. It makes his ideas flow like repetitive New Age spiritual poetry, from science to theology to philosophy and back again, but it doesn't quite hold together for me. It feeds the soul in many places, and feeds the intellect in many places, but not quite both at once.

If this was just a book of inspiring metaphor, the science would be distracting, and as a work of argumentation it is largely devoid of rigor. The result is arguably appropriate to the topic, since one of his targets is the dictatorship of materialist reasoning in science. However, he seems to lapse briefly into some of the excesses of postmodernism or even wishful superstition when after building a perfectly good concept from the ground up, he throws out conclusions that only fit by analogy. The usual leap of faith needed to appreciate any book of religion is then required. This contrasts with the well-reasoned argument leading up to that point. It is perhaps, as other reviewers pointed out, that he has taken on so very much.

He is left, sadly, with the same problems that some populists of complexity theory have, their passion for applying their ideas goes beyond what they've actually demonstrated... they _could_ (probably ?) well be right, but they've at that point only built an illusion of scientific soundness by telling a masterful story.

This encyclopedic book joins Murphy's masterpiece, "Future of the Body," as another magnificent attempt to construct a new spirituality out of scientific, humanistic, and religious traditions. I applaud his efforts, and I think this is a very worthy book that introduces in understandable form many important complex ideas that most people would otherwise not have the chance to engage. For the sake of space, I'd like to refer interested readers to many of the excellent points made in Frederick Polgardy's very fine review previously here.

My first Wilber and a most interesting experience. Much that was good but much also that I found problematic. This is really a 3½ star review but on careful reflection I rounded unmathematically down.

This book is mostly a very widely-addressed, energetic and scholarly push to bring a practice-based spirituality back to mainstream philosophy and psychology, which is something many of us want to see, myself included. I just wish that it were more actually rather than intellectually inclusive, because the traditions I work in are very different to Wilber's. Still, if that were the only difficulty I'd have rounded up. The whole shebang is sold as the Answer to Absolutely Everything; that's what made me round down. I know Wilber was writing in reply to many others who also claimed to have `solved' all our crises, but for me, he fell into the same trap.

Wilber welds the spiritual to the scientific principally by means of evolution, following Gebser and Aurobindo, in an 'integral' viewpoint. Developmental psychology, not to mention history, shows an evolution towards higher levels of rationality in successive stages, and then, he surmises, into post-rational and transpersonal realms. We are evolving towards the yogic non-physical planes, both individually and societally, and the old 'chain of being' idea, with the entire universe linked in a divine hierarchy, is back. This isn't just declared but illustrated with careful argument and research in a dozen disciplines, not necessarily 'spiritual', from German Idealism to molecular chemistry. Wilber makes me want to look at a few people I'd never otherwise consider reading, like Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg and Habermas; never a bad thing.

For me though, difficulties often come from awkward leaps that have to be made to get that model to sit right. There's a lot of lopping. I won't pretend I've read half the people Wilber has, but when a familiar name did crop up, I kept sucking my teeth at just how little of the source's actual meaning was making it in. Occasionally it was a feeling similar to the one you get driving past a car wreck. (I found a nice paper by Gus diZerega -- easily found online -- which came up with many of the same objections, discussed them intelligently, and showed how Wilber murdered Emerson into the bargain. ^_^)

His synthesis is based primarily on the ladder of stages of Plotinus. He certainly does 'get' Plato and Plotinus, with whom he's completely on home turf, and is excellent on their spiritual qualities, relating them to Christian theorists like Dionysius, Origen and Eckhart. These latter appear as if abstract and with no Christian symbolism, though, because Wilber thinks the age of myth is over. The idea is to get at the underlying ladders, from here to 'God'; Wilber gets the job done and shows an equivalence between all these western figures and Nagarjuna, so we have a 'universal ladder' of spirituality which the entirety of humanity, and indeed creation, is hurtling up/along -- 'through time towards the timeless', he likes to say. It's very much a progress paradigm. And to a certain extent, it does fit and work on paper.

For me, though, there are problems with the linearity of the model; everything has to be going forwards. Take the 'pre/trans fallacy' idea, which is Wilber's way of dealing with the fact that the spiritual can be mixed up with what appears primitive or irrational. It's really designed to make spirituality of his kind academically acceptable as 'progress' (trans), whilst excluding things like magic, sorcery and paganism as 'regress' (pre). Of course you certainly cannot regress and call it progress -- but I think a certain blindness to the cyclical is letting him down. Dismissing the over-romanticism about childhood and early tribal humanity is laudable, and I love the fact he makes that point so strongly (people who see the womb as actual 'nondual' enlightenment are really pushing it, after all, as are those who think all 7 billion of us should go back to hunter-gathering when the earth won't support that many). But he overdoes it, peremptorily blackballing any attempt to see anything in the past as developmentally useful when it happens not to be to his taste.

Wilhelm Reich, dismissed with a one-liner, knew and showed that our earlier selves are naturally less encrusted with what he called 'body armour'. That's a very real phenomenon, and when Jesus of Nazareth recommended that we 'become as little children', I don't think he was asking us to regress to an infantile narcissism, any more than Lao-tzu was when he mentioned that "To possess Power that runs deep is to be like a newborn child." False selves need to be unmasked if true new ones are to be built, and decisions, events, images and energies need to be cleared to flow. Wilber seems to understand all this. At the time when the false was less present, the timeless was more so. (Grof's work alone shows that very clearly.) And lost potential is recovered by such an unblocking process. It doesn't matter what metaphors you use -- you can call it 'defragging the hard drive of the soul' if you prefer that to childhood -- but there is a valuable past simplicity and energy to be recovered. We haven't exactly 'gone the wrong way', but on some levels we've certainly cut ourselves off to get where we are.

Sullen dismissal of magic, alchemy, and suchlike endeavours, as also 'pre' and regressive, compounds this issue. This just gets plain silly. For someone of Wilber's intellectual capabilities one would expect more research. How about the three books of Franz Bardon:

Initiation into Hermetics
The Practice of Magical Evocation
Key to the True Kabbalah

... a western hermetic magical training that's about as 'integral' as you can get, of mind, body and spirit equally, that results in a 'non-dual' realization (see Rawn Clark, online, for some information on the experience) -- at the end of only the first book? It teaches communion with and summoning of spirits and gods, and multiple energetic strategies, many based on Platonism, in a tradition going back to Ancient Egypt. Where does that fit, exactly, with the idea that the magic and mythic are necessarily regressive? Bardon's fifth book would actually have been about alchemy if the communists hadn't intervened, but that's a tradition at which Wilber can only sneer... this aspect of his thought badly needs work. (Search Bill Mistele, too, for the observations of someone who bravely posts his interactions with some of these spirits and energies.)

Puzzlingly, Wilber seems to know perfectly well that such trainings exist -- "Other traditions value these psychic and subtle phenomena," he says, in the voluminous back notes, "and cultivate them mightily, even to the point of mastery and explicit articulation (which is a wonderful contribution)", p. 637. So what's wrong with the word 'magic' as a description of them, and with a revival and integration of those traditions, which rationality has indeed attempted to revise out of existence? I've seen at least one person wanting to make an 'integral magick' by Wilberian standards -- search 'Kaidevis' -- but personally I worry about the conformism that implies.

Likewise with mythology. Wilber wants gods only as evolvable-towards in the future, and Jungian archetypes, along with all mythic deity, as shadow play from the past. He genuinely seems to think animism is equivalent to kindergarten-age oversimplifications of identity and environment. Actually, the gods don't stand within time, and archetypes have universality because of their age-old links to the astral ('psychic') and succeeding levels, which are temporally non-linear and thus not exactly in the developmental past. But Wilber twists himself into real knots over this. Ancient and modern magicians do see a divinized cosmos rather than a foolishly egocentric one, but he hasn't grasped the livingness of that yet. (Have a look at p.135 of A Century of Spells and ask yourself what Wilber would make of that procedure.) So he can't see ancient gods that way either; even the idea of them as living 'omega points' for natural and cultural processes hasn't occurred to him apparently. Animism, to him, is a mistake and nothing more.

Steiner, Fortune and John Michael Greer would be good reads for Wilber, along with Harpur's Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld for a little less clunkiness on animism. I don't blame Wilber for fighting shy of the topic in the end; this after all is where Fludd and his weapon-salve got into such difficulties, and academia wouldn't look kindly I expect. But it's stuff he ought to know -- before pronouncing upon it. His high-handedness sits badly with his supposed universality.

An energetic perspective, too, is lacking. Chi/prana/pneuma/ruach/etc. is as global a cultural idea as anything else Wilber talks about, but makes for rather different conclusions from the very mind-first Plotinian approach. Try Katchmer's The Tao of Bioenergetics: East and West, which links east to west philosophically and scientifically just as does Wilber, but in choosing China, Taoism, Chi and alchemy as its focus (rather than India, Buddhism, non-duality and yoga) makes usefully contrasting points.


So I find the model a little flawed; although, like I say, not uninteresting and certainly an important contribution, it seems stiff. I can't find my actual practices and ways amongst his quadrants. And Wilber doesn't stop simply with the model either, wanting, I think, to reply to every single false utopia and badly-researched spiritual concept promulgated at the time he wrote. (And who wouldn't want to see the back of many of them?) I think he promised a lot here -- too much. Not only must meditation and integral psychology 'unite body and mind for the first time since their separation', the resulting new development level will bring the planet together as one culture and solve the environmental crisis! (How about _after_ breakfast, Ken?) To do all this "will take a vision-logic of tremendous power", he says. Hmm, wonder whose? ^_^

This is a myth, and kind of an old one. In turning his rationality into myth Wilber does actually become exclusionist for me, and in a way he knows well. That's why all the lopping. He describes the principle himself: "Rationality can tend toward a rather rigid version of 'universal' truth, operating in a very abstract and mechanical and formulaic fashion, ignoring all individuality and all particulars and all differences." Well quite -- but he never applies this to himself. Take that alongside some of the more totalizing elements in mythology which he also knows well: "Part of the violence inherent in myth is due to the syncretic fusion of various holons that in fact possess their own dignity and deserve their own individuality," and you get a rational myth that exhibits both rigid indignities. What Wilber has actually done is to syncretize a big triumphal arch through which anyone practicing spirituality now 'has' to pass to be authentic. I think it would be smarter not to stand quite so much on tip-toe, as Lao-tzu might put it.

For me, in his linearity, he's forgotten cycles. You don't have to see everything only as 'rushing ahead' to the timeless, because it's also _circling around_ the timeless. We've been here before. Similar motions to today's occurred when rational worldviews gained a foothold in the late classical, for example. Spiritual practices came out of foreign traditions (Egypt and Chaldea) and were philosophized (Hermetics and Chaldean oracles), just as we now psychologize them. Plotinus grandly synthesized much of this, yes -- but then came Iamblichus, on whom Wilber is silent. Iamblichus (see Shaw's truly excellent Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus) added a Plotinian philosophy to magical ritual and work with number-qualities based on Egyptian deific practices; he was hailed as the saviour of the world for doing so, but to Wilber that would be regression again.

A note or two on why that could use a rethink. We're back here to the ignoring of the closer subtle levels; I think we find, in some of the people Wilber hangs out with, a lesson or two. Have Adi Da, whom even Wilber now seems to admit is not always the most wholesome character, and Andrew Cohen, whose own mother has joined many of his students in accusing him of being straightforwardly abusive rather than 'wise', really got nothing left to achieve now that they have attained the precious non-jewel? Or is there not a lot more still to learn closer to what Wilber annoyingly calls 'the gross'?

Writing of Adi Da, Wilber says: "In ways that we are just beginning to understand, some types of spiritual development can run way ahead of moral, social, interpersonal, and wisdom development in general." Well yes. And I'm betting when 'we' do get around to understanding that, the 'model' will be changing somewhat, if indeed 'we' do really want 'one model to rule them all'. :)

This cultural move of uniting psychology with spirituality is in its early stages at the moment. There are a lot of moves yet to come. Iamblichus' formula was incredibly long-enduring (it held out like a sort of Asterix in Harran until 900 or 1000 AD, amidst Islam on all sides no less) and, according to him, had answers that Plotinus's didn't. Just as with Da and Cohen, 'nondual cosmic consciousness' didn't make a perfect human being of Plotinus' student Porphyry, who was subject to fits of depression even after achieving it -- Iamblichus said, due to lack of respect for, and resolution of, the lower orders of the ladder. Just as in Taoism and Hermetics, with their careful initial rooting and elemental balancing techniques, the path of Iamblichus resolved the etheric and astral levels before 'rushing ahead', and it did it by just those means Wilber ignores -- magic, deity, energy, animism, and all; perhaps we would be wise to have a think about that, and about the huge variety of 'psychic and subtle experience' he admits exists in all sorts of local practices worldwide, because I think these are threads of past potential, well worth sustaining and honouring for themselves, rather than regressions or things to be assimilated. And they require more understanding of diversity, rather than just of 'nondual' unity.

But anyhow, in these incredibly various and interesting times (take that either way), a redemption-by-monomyth just doesn't fly for me. It's all too top-down. When does the actual moment of redemption show up? Never. The very trope of redemption is unsubtle, always appearing at times of spiritualized decline with fresh promises. How about a more live, subtle, and multi-folded mything than that, for a world that is re-localizing, no longer globalizing? One that takes account of the real situation? Yes, rationality, and perhaps what Wilber reckons lies just beyond it, have appeared in the human race. But we're still dumber than a bag of hammers. And we're caught in cultural forces of which we're not in control, hardly yet seeing how they work. Plus, an era of fossil-fuelled extravagance has encouraged a narcissistic superiority streak, especially in those who won the resulting global empires. That mindset is about to get clobbered as the west goes third world; anyone thinking you can take oil away and get more rationality and utopia hasn't quite thought things through on the ground. The connection to a rushing-ahead model of spiritual development may not be spurious. I really like Lao-tzu in this situation, because being quiet is so much more reliable than the big myths and promises.

Historically, the rational-->spiritual move comes when cultures are in decline, not when they're about to vault into a new glory. In the west such declines generate powerful redemption myths -- so powerful that they last millennia, and Wilber is repeating them today (just as Marx was not long back). That is the rational, global, soteriological redemption he's writing about: "The God that was to come. The Descent of the all-pervading World Soul.... blessing each and all with the intuitions of the Over-Soul... touching each and all with its Goodness and its Glory, baptizing each with its Brilliance and its Blessing." Does that really sound like someone who's left the mythic behind? "... and this Earth becomes a blessed being, and every I becomes a God..."... whilst the Resource Wars begin and the empires crumble? How do you figure? I'm sorry, but spot the myth and spot the reality. We need more stories available than just this one yet again; we need ones that actually address the situation.

(In the non-appearance of yet another utopia, there will no doubt be a lot of scapegoating, an old and much-favoured mythic-ritual practice. I hear it's currently limited to 'boomeritis' and 'mean green memers' amongst those who really take this side of Wilber seriously; it rarely ends there, is all I'll say.)

This was a useful read for me, and I have notes on far more than I can mention here, including Wilber's views on art and emotion, questions about his 'quadrant' model, and reactions from a more Taoist and Hermetic standpoint, but for an Amazon review this is quite enough! (How am I going to explain the Taoist 'Immortal Embryo' techniques, and their concepts of pre- and post-natal, which differ so much from Yoga, without triggering the whole regression argument anyway?) Looking around on the net I find many of these points being made by others already. This is an oldish book now, and I hear there's new Wilber stuff since this. I can imagine reading more at some stage, but I'll give it a rest for now. Not only will it be some time before I want to read the word 'holon' again -- to be frank, the static, model-based and categorizing way he thinks doesn't help the particular work I'm here to do as much as I'd like. I, myself, don't find my own spirituality here. It's worthwhile but it's not quite for me.


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EDIT: I've later find far more holes in Wilber's model than I had time to discover, very well pointed up by Jeff Meyerhoff, also available online. In his references what I find particularly helpful is the large amount of more recent research showing not only what Wilber built as suspect, but what he built *on*. I felt the straitjacket of his developmentalism was far too rigid, and I was far more right than I suspected. (Read Meyerhoff for more.) Since writing this review I've taken systems theory and ecology, etc., further in a completely different sense from Wilber's and now my position just could never have anything in common with his; consequently I won't be reading him any more I don't think. I've come to think Wilber and 'developmentalism' are possibly actually wrong, as opposed to merely unhelpful for me personally. I stand by all the web recommendations in this review, and particularly by "The Tao of Bioenergetics", which although almost unknown has hugely more interest than Wilber as well as being far more open and just as learned. I'm not an 'integralist', which is funny, because I'm a psychologically-orientated meditator with an increasingly strong interest in systems and ecology, and mystical experiences etc. And seeing as how both Washburn and Wade are developmental too, I think, I'm not a 'transpersonalist' either perhaps -- although someday I'll read both to be sure. Meanwhile Psychosynthesis and IFS appear to me far more effective and 'spiritual' than any of the above, dovetailing perfectly with everything I do. This sure is interesting stuff.

Bottom line then: this book is definitely 'not for me', and I now begin to suspect it is not 'worthwhile' either.

I believe SES is so valuable not only because Ken Wilber has taken the time to master the essential findings of a dozen different academic disciplines, but because he then combines this brilliant scholarship with the insight of a meditation master. In India these rare individuals are called "Pandits" - scholars who have fully opened the "eye of contemplation." Mystics usually do not even attempt to bring the ineffable truths they discover in transverbal states of consciousness into the world of conceptual discourse and sensory evidence. Scientists almost always assume that rationality is the highest faculty we have available to understand our world, and ignore the vast areas of human experience that cannot be easily weighed or measured.

Because Wilber is attempting the extraordinarily difficult feat of integrating these two paths, I think we should keep this "degree of difficulty" in mind as we evaluate his work. He may not always keep his toes perfectly pointed as he enters the water, but how many other theoreticians currently working could include anywhere NEAR this many moves (truths) in a single dive (system of thought?) SES (and Integral Theory as a whole) is far from perfect, and Wilber himself certainly is far from perfect (whatever "perfect" might mean)- but if you care about developing a more compassionate, courageous and effective approach to the daunting challenges facing humanity in the coming decades, you will not want to ignore the tremendous intellectual goldmine he offers in SES.

I think the previous reviewer has belittled Wilber's scope by making out that this book is primarily about Buddhism. This book is nothing of the sort, and Wilber consciously widens the scope of any specific 'world religion' and he portrays a spiritual perspective of God which seems to me to be smack-bang in the middle of Eastern and Western philosophies. Many people would say that Buddhism and Western theism are oceans apart, but Wilber reveals here that there may only be One ocean. Some people might think Wilber is a little too pretentious or too bold with his thinking, but I feel he carries it off as well as anyone could. This book is not for everyone, but it's well worth delving into.

This is quite possibly the most profound and important book I've read in my life. Wilber has written 17 books (I've read 14 of them), and this is without a doubt, his magnum opus.

SES starts with a unique systems theory with swift, elegant explanation, superior examples and demonstrations of knowledge. The kicker comes about 100 pages into the book where Wilber applies the systems theory to consciousness development and anthropological evolution. He then shows how this same pattern of existence develops and envelopes universally through all three modes of awareness, demonstrated through Plato's "Big Three" (the Good, the True, the Beautiful). From there, the 2nd half the book takes you on a philosophical tour de force from Plato all the way to Hegel and Feuerbach, leaving no ideology or pundit unscathed, or perhaps unexhalted; Wilber highlights important contributions of almost every philosophical mind, prejudice and partisan towards no one. Ken fills every page with magnificent commentary, critique and insight from cover to cover.

Wilber literally leaves out nothing (theoretically, not factually). There is nothing--save some quantum mechanical theories--that escape his scope and integration. Wilber is the most profound and important thinker in the world today. And it's not only because his ideas are so revolutionary--to the contrary, most of his ideas have been developed before--but it's how plainly he weaves EVERYTHING together into a comprehensable and bite-sized (if you can call 830 pages bite-sized) book. He does this primarily through fantastic writing. He repeats important points in new ways, uses appropriate metaphors, and fleshes everything out rationally for accessibility; not to mention he's quite humorous at times.

I can't overstate the importance of this book. I read the critical reviews below and I see nothing but misunderstandings and flawed logic. For instance, Ken never implies religion is the answer to the "flatland" of modernity. He simply states that he BELIEVES transpersonal awareness is the next evolutionary step in consciousness, he never by any means claims it is necessary (in either mythic or mystic forms).

An important side note: this is not a good starting point for Wilber readers. If you've never read a Wilber book, start at "A Brief History of Everything" as a sufficient primer.

Ken Wilber is probably one of the most brilliant modern thinkers of our time. Among all of the books he has written, this one is "The One" that really explains it all. What an inspiring piece of work! He brings together work in philosophy, spirituality, psychology, sociology, biology, physics and all other fields of study and convincingly explains that it all fits together if we look at it through this framework that he has developed. If there is a philosophical book you should read, this is the one to pick up. If you are not ready for such a comprehensive detailed discussion, read the other absolutely incredible book called "The Ever-transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato. The content is very similar but everything is explained in a much simpler (and shorter) way. Both of these books really deserve some mega-awards!

Thank you Ken, for reading all those boring books! Thank you translating all that private mumble into a light and easy language! Thank you for making it possible for me to participate in the conversation with so many of the great thinkers. The integral perspective is the obvious approach and I am little embarrassed finding out about my own self-centredness. I can also think of a lot of modern thinkers that ought to be a little embarrassed too. Ken Wilber is a crystal clear voice - now cutting through the post-modern narcissism of our time, inviting us to find out what we can agree upon. This in the most important book I ever read!

As another reviewer suggests, this is indeed an extremely ambitious work. Wilber's life's work is exceedingly ambitious, and this volume is the most comprehensive and the most demanding single volume he has yet published

First, I will say to the KW book shopper, this is not the best of his works to start with, in my opinion. Even for the serious reader, I would recommend "ramping up" to this book by reading some of his other work first. You'll get more out of this one if you do. At least read "A Brief History of Everything" first, which KW wrote as a more accessible summary of the thought presented in SES. Because KW's work draws on thinkers from so many disparate fields, the terminology alone can be daunting in SES, unless you are already conversant in the languages of developmental psychology, linguistic analysis, sociology, metaphysics, epistemology, eastern religions and so on. Reading ABHE first will at least give you a good overview of the territory before plunging into SES. I had read eight other KW works before I took on this one, and I think my understanding of SES benefitted from that.

That said, this is a stunning work, and if any one volume of KW's work can be said to lay out the core of his thinking, this would be it. The book begins by outlining what KW calls the "Twenty Tenets," which are, as he calls them, "orienting generalizations" that place in context all that comes after. Here he explains his holarchical model, the "spectrum of consciousness," the basic characteristics of the evolution of consciousness, and his Four Quadrants model of wisdom traditions, or approaches to understanding the universe, which may be his most unique contribution to philosophical thought. From there he proceeds to flesh out his integral theory of knowledge, which seeks to establish a way for us to reconcile (and integrate) the valuable contributions of approaches as disparate as neuroscience and mysticism, Freudian analysis and systems theory. And he shows how this affects our approaches to, yes, sex (gender identity, roles of the sexes, feminism, the mens' movements, et al), ecology (what do various worldviews, belief systems, and perpectives along the spectrum of consciousness mean for our approach to ecological issues, and what are their prospects?) and spirituality (what place does spirituality still have in the story of humankind, and how do we make sense of the seemingly limitless and contradictory number of approaches to this oldest and most important of questions?)

The most unique contribution KW has made to world thought is to begin the integration of the many wisdom traditions and modes of inquiry--to set out a methodology for doing so and to begin to do it. Am I having a mystical experience, is God speaking to me, or is it just something my brain chemistry is doing? Or is it just a culturally-conditioned response to environmental context? Or regression to a prerational state? Any one approach has its answer, but who is right? And what place does each kind of answer have have in an integrated approach to understanding? Wilber says each of the many modes of serious inquiry has part of the truth, but not all of it. He asks how we honor the valuable contributions from each such partial view to begin to develop a comprehensive view of the whole. SES is Wilber's most all-inclusive single attempt to address these questions. His work is essential to any serious thinker or seeker of the truth today. And for any remotely serious student of Ken Wilber's work, you must read this book.