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Ken Wilber

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A Brief History of Everything Mass Market Paperback – March 27, 2007

by Ken Wilber (Author)

4.5 581 ratings

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In a breathtaking trip from the Big Bang to the Postmodern world we inhabit, Ken Wilber examines the universe and our place in it, and comes up with an accessible and entertaining account of how it all fits together. Along the way he sheds light not only on the great cosmic questions but on various contentious issues of our day, such as changing gender roles, environmentalism, diversity and multiculturalism, even the meaning of the Internet. A Brief History of Everything is the perfect introduction to the great Integral thinker at his wise and witty best.

Review

"In the ambitiously titled A Brief History of Everything, Wilber continues his search for the primary patterns that manifest in all realms of existence. Like Hegel in the West and Aurobindo in the East, Wilber is a thinker in the grand systematic tradition, an intellectual adventurer concerned with nothing less than the whole course of evolution, life's ultimate trajectory—in a word, everything. . . . Combining spiritual sensitivity with enormous intellectual understanding and a style of elegance and clarity, A Brief History of Everything is a clarion call for seeing the world as a whole, much at odds with the depressing reductionism of trendy Foucault-derivative academic philosophy."—San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Ken Wilber is the author of over twenty books. He is the founder of Integral Institute, a think-tank for studying integral theory and practice, with outreach through local and online communities such as Integral Education Network, Integral Training, and Integral Spiritual Center.

Print length

544 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Shambhala
Publication date

March 27, 2007
Dimensions

4.25 x 1.57 x 6.76 inches
ISBN-10

1590304500
ISBN-13

978-1590304501
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Shambhala; 2nd edition (March 27, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 544 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1590304500
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590304501
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.25 x 1.57 x 6.76 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,898,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,968 in Evolution (Books)
- #51,028 in Philosophy (Books)

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4.5 581 ratings

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Ken Wilber

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Ken Wilber is one of the most widely read and influential American philosophers of our time. His recent books include "A Brief History of Everything", "The Marriage of Sense and Soul" and "Grace and Grit".

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Roger Curley

Raise your consciousness to new and aspiring levels, help raise the collective world view to one of harmony & peace

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2014

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A must read for anyone that seeks enlightenment & is curiously frustrated with the 'average common denominator' ever so slow ability to 'Get it', He explains mans struggle to evolve over the entire history of man, also explains what factors needed to be in place before true transcendence to more 'adequate world views' could allow man to evolve to higher & wider levels of consciousness .

Explains our current resistance to previously Dominating social hierarchies like the mid Evil churches, which spowns sayings like 'question authority', & don't tell ME what to do or think.

As we slowly get beyound these mythical based dominating theologies & more toward mans new major Human Epoch - the Imformation age', this book helps identify the basic paths to the basic 'Truths' that will lead us all (in our own way) towards human Enlightenment....
But Don't worry, it's not going to happen with any instant hocus pocus...Sorry to those who feel that the only factor that holds us all back currently is Saturns position in the cosmos....:-O scary...
But it's all rather simple, you see...
"Man will get along Inteligently...ONce he's tried EVERY OTHER WAY :-o

Read this book & all of Ken Wilber works, you'll soon understand the common sense ways towards increasing Your consciousness, and at least have an understanding why so many struggle or are simply oblivious to the idea of evolving, transcending ...

6 people found this helpful

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Table_for_5

Astounding!

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2007

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This book brings transcendentalism into its proper perspective. Ken's creation of the 4 Quandrants brings enlightenment to the very concept of enlightenment, making way for a clear mind to identify the all-inclusive reality of transceding the ego and returning back into the oneness of Spirit WHILE living healthily, honestly, and with understanding in this world of form. ALL who have seen the light of their true being, even if only a glimpse, MUST read this book. It not only serves as the proverbial "finger pointing to the moon," but it also points to the science behind the moon and the steps that must occur before one can get to the moon, plus what the moon is NOT. Spirit is not merely consciousness, but it also manifests as birds, rocks, water, hair, teeth, and hands: spirit is the source of all, seen and unseen. Ken brings this to light in a most enlightening way, and gives you a few chuckles in the process. He also demonstrates the dichotemy of truth and fallacy that many Eco-based transcendentalists' and Ego-based transcendentalists' philosophies and beliefs hold.

Buddhists, Taoist, Unitarians, Gnostic Christians, Spiritualists, Hindus, Sufis, Kabbalahists (more so you guys with the K than the Q) and a whole host of others will greatly appreciate Ken's years of research and practice that have culminated in this work. In short, READ THIS BOOK!

17 people found this helpful

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Tim Ferguson

New vocabulary

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2023

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The author creates new words and categories for the reader. He is also very convoluted in his explanations.

One person found this helpful

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Jay D. Smith

Easy-to-read intro to Integral Theory

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2018

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If you need an introduction to Ken Wilber’s work on Integral Theory, this, for me, seems the place to start. Though it goes into some necessary detail explaining the four quadrants and different levels, this book is more than just a summary, showing how evolution works in the quadrants of the individual (I and it) and the collective (us and its) in dealing with both exterior and interior states (stages) of evolution within social structures, communities, cultures and individualistic ideas and thoughts. I’ve not read a more comprehensive understanding of the “why” of our growth and progress as individuals and collective humanity. It answered a lot of questions I had regarding how a person or group can seemingly be at one stage of development within their belief systems and yet maintain a different stage of development in perspective or ideological system when they are often juxtaposed. I’m on to “Sex, Ecology, Spirituality” next. Thanks, Ken, for writing and for your work. I know I’ve barely scratched the tip of the iceberg.

20 people found this helpful

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Laura Granville

I ate it up!

Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2013

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Ken Wilber speaks to my mind and soul! It isn't light reading, but it is amazingly intellectual. I was a Liberal Studies major in college. I had a pulse on the essence, the truth of what he proposes, and explains. I am delighted to discover his works and ideas. They really speak truths that resonate with me. This was the first Ken Wilber book I have read. At the advice of a friend who turned me on to Ken I had listened to two of his books before reading this. It was excellent advice. Wade in the the pool before attempting to learn to swim. I listened to The Marriage of Sense and Soul and The One, Two Three of God before reading this. Now I am onto reading A Simple feeling of Being and listening to Kosmic Contagiousness. I must say 3 months ago I never read his stuff, but now if you ask me "who is the one person dead or alive you would like to meet and spend a day with? I would say make it a week and it is Ken Wilber!" A day just wouldn't be enough.

6 people found this helpful

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Cliente Amazon

Leitura Interessante e Actual

Reviewed in Spain on May 31, 2023

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Livro com muito interesse, para uma prospecção futura.

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Lorena Orive

Ken Wilber es maravilloso, recomiendo ampliamente todos sus libros

Reviewed in Mexico on April 6, 2020

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Este es un excelente libro para comenzar a leer a Ken Wilber.

One person found this helpful

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Nick Waldenmaier

Attempting to encompass everything

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 17, 2019

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In Wilber’s ontology, the building blocks of reality are holons: wholes that themselves form part of greater wholes, all the way up and down. So for instance, atoms form molecules, which in turn make up cells, which constitute organisms, and so on – thus creating holarchies (hierarchies of holons). The emergence of consciousness, for Wilber, is not a particular problem, as he deems it already present in elementary particles, though much less so than in holons with greater “depth”: humans, for example. Moreover, holons have an inside and an outside, as well as an individual and collective aspect: thus one arrives at four quadrants, each with its own type of holarchy, or growth hierarchy – “I”, “We”, “It”, “Its”; with their respective lines of personal, cultural and scientific development. Spirit, which manifests as all four quadrants, is both the highest, all-encompassing stage as well as the very ground and being of everything. To grow beyond a given stage is to first differentiate from it, then to transcend and include it; if not, things are either stuck or take on a pathological form. It is central to Wilber’s “Integral Theory” that development needs to proceed in all quadrants and along all lines apace if real and healthy progress is to be made.

Wilber is a great categoriser and systematiser, and the explanatory power of his conceptual map does indeed prove itself in the illuminating way he analyses various pathologies that have arisen along the way, be it scientific materialism (the denial of the interior dimension), eco-romanticism (the reduction of the spiritual to mere exterior nature), or postmodern relativism and multiculturalism (the denial of growth hierarchies). Outlining the history of both cultural and individual growth, he throws in (among other things) superb summaries of the philosophies of Plotinus and Schelling, all along the way to the Nondual realisation.

To offer anything resembling an adequate critique of Wilber’s system would go entirely beyond this brief review, and I will not do so here. Just a few points: The distinction between interior and exterior, for example, does not in itself answer the deep philosophical question as to why reality is such as to motivate the distinction - it states it but does not explain it. As for the relationship between interior and exterior – between, for example, having a certain emotion and a certain brain state – Wilber says that they are “correlated”, but does not sufficiently explain how this is to be understood. His “integral vision” is meant to integrate at a higher level (“transcend and include”) what modernity differentiated but could not pull together: aesthetics, morals and science. But what that level would look like remains somewhat nebulous: “The general idea is simply that we need to exercise body, mind, soul, and spirit – and do so in self, culture and nature.” (p. 311) To be sure, he has written more on how this is to be done in later works; nevertheless, his vision seems to me to be more a promise so far than a reality.

Despite his relative fame, Ken Wilber has perhaps not been given the credit he deserves: Spiritual seekers tend to regard him as too obsessively focussed on theorising, while hard-headed theoreticians are suspicious of his spiritual outlook. And yet his achievement is precisely that he has pulled spiritual theory and practice together. He has dedicated a lifetime to sifting through, organising and synthesising vast amounts of material, from both East and West, and the result is a conceptual map which in its combination of clarity and comprehensiveness is probably unmatched by any other. Certainly I have benefited a great deal in clarifying my own thinking by reference especially to his various states and stages, to their characterisations and to the principles and pitfalls that govern the transitions between them – things that had been quite muddled in my mind.

Above all, whether he is quite right or not, he has surely made a significant contribution to pointing out the way towards the realisation of much higher potentials than we typically live up to, a challenge for us to get serious and grow up if we are not to destroy our planet and ourselves. I therefore think that anyone who strives for higher things would do well to be familiar, at least in outline, with Wilber’s thought, both as a fruitful theoretical framework and for its very practical implications. This book, a distillation of most of his system, is as good a starting place as any to becoming acquainted with it.

13 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on December 31, 2016

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Arrived in time in perfect condition and was exactly what I wanted at a good price.

One person found this helpful

Abdulqadir Al-Emad

Five Stars

Reviewed in India on December 2, 2016