Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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86 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wilber Revealed, June 27, 2001
Most of Ken Wilber's books do not reveal much about the man behind the work. For most academic writers that is fine. But Wilber's writing, though seemingly theoretical or academic at times, is in fact about the most intimate of topics: coming to know ourselves. Perhaps because his writing is so broad in scope and yet ultimately so intimate in its implications, Wilber thought his readership might be entitled to a peek at how he is doing with his own personal atman project. This book lets the reader peek away,and you may or may not like what you see.This was the first Wilber book I read. I had known about him for years, but my reading list is long and I just didn't pick his work up, until a respected friend gave me a copy of One Taste, and I could no longer put it off. I have now read almost all of his published work. With that perspective, I offer these thoughts. First, the part that may trouble some. KW does come off as pretty darn egotistical in this book. He seems to realize it and mentions in the introduction that these diary entries were (supposedly) not written with intent to publish, and therefore what may seem like boasting and namedropping were in fact just factual entries meant for himself. These now candidly published entries might to the outside reader seem a bit...immodest. This would be a trivial matter but for the nature of KW's work, which after all is ultimately about transcending the ego. I found KW's disclaimers about that less than entirely convincing, but the fact that he may still personally be a spiritual work in progress in my mind does not diminish the brilliance of his work. I was electrified when I read this. I have been a serious student of philosophy and spiritual practice for 30 years, and I find KW's work among the most brilliant and, to me, practically helpful work I have seen. Some say he does no original thinking, but only synthesizes the work of others. Yes, he only synthesizes the work of an unprecedentedly enormous body of thought, writing and accounts of mystical experience in a staggering array of fields over millenia, in ways no one else has before. I think this would qualify as original thought. Some say he doesn't write well. I find that he explains the ideas of many great thinkers more understandably than they do themselves. He relates their work to that of other great thinkers in ways that I,and I suspect most, never saw before. His writing can be moving and inspirational as well. I'm not sure I would recommend One Taste as the first Wilber book to read, although it worked fine for me. It is one of his most accessible books. One criticism of this book is that Wilber's references are too obscure. But, this being a journal, KW has taken less care than usual to explain all his references, because this was ostensibly originally written for himself. Readers already familiar with his other work will be less baffled, and this may be one more reason to start with one of his other books. One Taste has the advantage of being one of his more recent books. Because KW is constantly refining his thought, this gives the reader a look at his most current thinking. I give it four stars instead of five, because I wasn't interested in many of the boring personal details ("I went shopping today"), but the meaty parts are first rate. I find his work so personally helpful in my own practice precisely because it is a synthesis of so much other work. He links it together in ways I could never have myself and has helped me to take a more integral approach to what had before been disparate and disconnected elements of my practice and study.
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30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wilber Revealed, July 27, 2000
Most of Wilber's books do not reveal much about the man behind the work. For most academic writers that is fine. But Wilber's writing, though seemingly theoretical or academic at times, is in fact about the most intimate of topics: coming to know ourselves. Perhaps because his writing is so broad in scope and yet ultimately so intimate in its implications, Wilber thought his readership might be entitled to a peek at how he is doing with his own personal atman project. This book lets the reader peek away,and you may or may not like what you see.This was the first Wilber book I read. I had known about him for years, but my reading list is long and I just didn't pick his work up, until a respected friend gave me a copy of One Taste, and I could no longer put it off. I am now reading my eighth of his books. With that perspective, I offer these thoughts. First, the part that may trouble some. KW does come off as pretty darn egotistical in this book. He seems to realize it and mentions in the introduction that these diary entries were (supposedly) not written with intent to publish, and therefore what may seem like boasting and namedropping were in fact just factual entries meant for himself. These now candidly published entries might to the outside reader seem a bit...immodest. This would be a trivial matter but for the nature of KW's work, which after all is ultimately about transcending the ego. I found KW's disclaimers about that less than entirely convincing, but the fact that he may still personally be a spiritual work in progress in my mind does not diminish the brilliance of his work. I was electrified when I read this. I have been a serious student of philosophy and spiritual practice for 30 years, and I find KW's work among the most brilliant and, to me, practically helpful work I have seen. Some say he does no original thinking, but only synthesizes the work of others. Yes, he only synthesizes the work of an unprecedentedly enormous body of thought, writing and accounts of mystical experience in a staggering array of fields over millenia, in ways no one else has before. I think this would qualify as original thought. Some say he doesn't write well. I find that he explains the ideas of many great thinkers more understandably than they do themselves. He relates their work to that of other great thinkers in ways that I,and I suspect most, never saw before. His writing can be moving and inspirational as well. I'm not sure I would recommend One Taste as the first Wilber book to read, although it worked fine for me. It is one of his most accessible books. One reviewer thought his references were too obscure, but, this being a journal, KW has taken less care than usual to explain all his references, because this was ostensibly originally written for himself. Readers already familiar with his other work will be less baffled. One Taste has the advantage of being one of his most recent books. Because KW is constantly refining his thought, this gives the reader a look at his most current thinking. I give it four stars instead of five, because I wasn't interested in many of the boring personal details ("I went shopping today"), but the meaty parts are first rate. I find his work so personally helpful in my own practice precisely because it is a synthesis of so much other work. He links it together in ways I could never have myself (which, to my knowledge, no one else has done either) and has helped me to take a more integral approach to what had before been disparate and disconnected elements of my practice and study.
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28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but exasperating, inspiring but paradoxical., July 7, 1999
By A Customer
I've read several books by Ken Wilber now and always come away from them impressed by the depth of his knowledge, moved by the passion of his prose, unsure about the validity of his models, and irritated by the size of his ego. However, if you can bring yourself to ignore for the moment the irritating self-importance (so paradoxical in a writer whose aim is to convince the reader that loss of self is the ultimate spritual goal) and the surprisingly non-compassionate attacks on people who disagree with him, Wilber does have an interesting way of organising many divergent systems in human thought into an apparently coherent whole (especially his "four quadrants" and his concept of nested holons). Many of the grand disputes of philosophy could be resolved if models could be constructed that gave equal importance to different ways of looking at the world: Wilber provides one such model. But the problem with models like this is that they are not in themselves "provable" (an upper right quadrant demand of course!) - rather like Jung's archetypes - and so may look solid but actually be built on sand. They are rather cleverly constructed to render almost all criticism of them invalid in advance (e.g., my desire to "prove" the validity of such models is because I'm limited in being a right quadrant thinker) - well, Karl Popper carried out a pretty rigorous demolition of philosophies constructed in such a way over half a century ago, in "Conjectures and Refutations". But as tools to use when trying to resolve dilemmas, or even to illuminate new possible approaches to intractable issues - I think they're great. As for Wilber the person, I'm not sure I'd want to get to know him too well (is he as intimidating in person as he is in his writing style?), but a few parts of the journal at least hint at the real human being who lives behind the dense curtain of prose.
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