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greden's review
5.0
My favorite quote from the book:
“The UFO anal probe: where Freud meets Jung.”
Ken Wilber can be described as Bertrand Russel with a spiritual twist. He’s extremely intelligent, unbelievably well-read, unbelievably… he is a likable character, makes the reader feel smart, and most of all, makes a lot of sense 99% of the time with lucid and down-to-earth language and humor, even though it gets technical by necessity.
Wilber’s central ideas are very Schelling-Hegel-inspired. The universe, life, biology, societies, and individuals are part of a “Great chain” or an evolution that has recursive patterns and an overall direction toward more complexity and higher self-actualization.
I’m very fond of Wilber’s style of thinking. He outlines general universal principles of the world, and all his concepts are sort of soft… they are applied as “percentages,” “fractals,” or “recursive,” meaning they apply on varying degrees and scales, microcosms, and macrocosms. Nothing Wilber outlines is really set in stone per se: this is the model; rather, this is how models work; it’s like a meta-theory. In other words, Wilber finds a nice balance between a more orderly view of the world without creating false “yes no” categories that simplify the word to the user’s detriment. A rare accomplishment if you ask me.
He takes a very balanced approach, neither conventionally liberal nor conservative. He has a refreshingly unique perceptive.
There are some fundamental pieces to his theory.
He identifies twenty rules that all “holons,” the fundamental building bricks of reality, operate on.
He identifies four quadrants of understanding the world.
He emphasizes the importance of evolution, both micro and macro.
He’s adamant about reconciling other-worldly and this-worldly philosophy.
There’s a Spirit that is both the Exterior and Interior, both material and consciousness, which are two sides of the same coin, that of Spirit.
I’m a big fan of the four-quadrant model. I think it’s a very helpful way of thinking about problems. And it can be applied to virtually anything. It’s a nice tool, crystallizing something that was vague before. The four quadrant model is Interior individual (consciousness), Interior shared (culture), external individual (physiology) and external shared (world). The Interior is what does not have a location or is quantifiable but nonetheless exists. The exterior is what can be seen but has no value in itself.
The point is that we shouldn’t deny one quadrant over the other. Each is a different side to the same coin; each is interrelated, and attacking problems merely from one quadrant is suboptimal.
With this four-quadrant model, he points out that all ways of thinking until now have existed in either of these quadrants. And making these explicit helps a great deal in making a conscious effort to approach problems in a more “holistic,” effective, and true manner.
According to his system, there is no quadrant that exclusively affects each other. For example, individual consciousness does not control individual physiology (Radical free will) and not the other way around (Determinism); rather, all four quadrants affect each other in any direction. The societal system will have a strong influence on the cultural worldview, which sets limits to individual thoughts which will register in the brain physiology. Wilber rejects causality in the form that one quadrant “causes” effects in another, but instead, that they are all manifestations of Spirit, something that is really one but appears to be multiple. He says they are all equally determining; they all cause and are caused by the other quadrants. Something that defies how we tend to understand conventional causality and logic.
As I alluded to earlier, Wilber believes in the grand evolution of the world. And he does not subscribe to evolution in terms of merely survival and chance. He instead takes the idea of Spirit, which is, as far as I understand it, both material and consciousness, bound by certain tenets. In other words, the world is not random or meaningless, but there is a grand narrative to the world, to societies, and to individuals. And in doing so, Wilber makes a case for the inevitability of the status quo and history.
Wilber points out that the psychological developmental stages of children can be extended into even higher psychological stages of spiritual stages. In the same way, we experience paradigm shifts from being an infant to being an adult today; there is no reason why we can’t stop having paradigm shifts, a “higher level of consciousness.” Wilber is convincing here, especially by how he uses research such as Piaget’s to clearly make the point that there are reliable paradigm shifts in children at certain age ranges.
As individuals ascend in consciousness, we become less and less narcissistic. Wilber outlines four stages of spiritual consciousness that have been described in somewhat or another in all mystic traditions. As young children, we did not have an identity separate from the world, then we separated from the world, but not our bodies. Then we separated from our bodies, but not the mind. And so it goes. Eventually, we stop identifying with the ego, and our identity becomes one with nature, one with consciousness, and finally, one with the non-duality of Spirit. There was one more stage but ain’t that important.
I think this is a great introduction to higher states of consciousness for those not spiritually inclined. It just makes lucid sense.
I suppose the Free will / Determinism paradox cannot be solved but dissolved by transcending consciousness and identifying with the non-dual Spirit. That would be nice.
I have a thought, along the lines of Wilber’s style of thinking, that you are never too developed to work on any stage or paradigm or “fulcrum,” if you may. The psyche is like a house, and as you strengthen the foundational, you strengthen the most developed parts as well. For that reason, I reject that, for example, existentialism is passé philosophically. And one philosophy simply replaces another. Now we’re supposed to be postmodernists. As Wilber points out, transcend and include. But I’d add emphasis that because you’ve already gone through the 1-2-3 process of identifying, differentiating, and integrating, it doesn’t mean there’s still work to be done on each level; as Wilber points out, no one individual is simply “at a certain stage.” And so again, it’s faulty to think you don’t get any value from studying “outdated” material.
One thing that does genuinely concern me is that when you put the amount of emphasis on evolution (the great chain) as Wilber does, it invariably leads to an inclination to associate difference with higher or lower. You start to judge people and cultures in accordance with how Spirit has evolved, and of course, the West is at the head of this Spiritual evolution. I’m not in disagreement with the idea of “holarchies’ and depth of value, though it seems awfully convenient to say the way the West has progressed is part of the Divine plan, so to say, and all others are merely lagging behind. It’s a comforting and flattering thought, and that’s precisely why I’m skeptical of it.
Right after finishing this book, I saw a guy wearing a shirt in a really bizarre fashion, and I said to myself, in jest, “Woah, what kind of level of consciousness is he on?” Even though that was a playful thought, it is a genuine concern to me that this abstract and sophisticated model can be an elitist weapon against people you don’t like, particularly of the conservatives, who aren’t as fond of “include” and world-centric growth as Wilber.
Nevertheless, I’m against cultural relativism or any moral relativism in any case, and it’s necessary and right, in my opinion, to say that the level of “conscience” of individuals is restricted to the level of the center of conscious development in their culture, which may lead them to enslave people, sacrifice human beings and eat animals raised in terrible conditions without any bothering from their poorly-dressed cricket on their shoulder.
In Wilber’s discussions of the “consciousness gap” contrasted to the “economic gap,” I can’t help but think Wilber was alluding to the fact that the majority of Americans voted for Trump. It does seem like smart people like Wilber and Paul Check use the framework of Spiritual growth to criticize political conservatives as having a “low level of consciousness” due to their ethnocentricity.
I flat-out deny that liberals have a higher state of consciousness than conservatives. And Wilber, I believe, would agree, saying that elitists are shoving down their high-consciousness beliefs onto the throats of the less developed masses, which adopt, for example, altruistic and world-saving ideals in us vs. them type of fashion.
Wilbers level of thought was, for the vast majority, very high and nuanced. His level of thought severely dropped discussing ethics regarding vegetarianism. Equal was the drop of intellectual nuance when Bertrand Russel discusses Christ in “Why I’m not a Christian.” For some reason, highly intelligent people simply shut down on certain topics.
Wilber makes the mistake of deriving very specific ethical courses of action from a very abstract principle, namely, to embrace both depth and span. He says, “It’s much better to kick a rock than an ape, much better to eat a carrot than a cow, much better to subsist on grains than on mammals.”
Regarding the carrot better than cow thing - and Alan Watts! Oh God! - Allan Watts, when asked why he was a vegetarian, answered by saying Carrots don’t scream when you eat them. What an idiotic thing to say by such an intelligent man!
.
Are predators inherently more immoral because they kill things that make more noise than, say, berry-eating deer? Do you know what happens if you remove predators from an environment? Everyone suffers - a lot more than if they were there.
Also… for the sake of argument, if I was a floating monad in the ephemeral space, and I was given a choice to not be manifested in reality at all or be a cow that was bred for the sake of being slaughtered after a certain amount of time in order to provide health and vitality to humankind, and during that lifespan, I would get to chill, hang out with other cows, eat nice grass, fornicate once in a while, and be treated by loving farmers, I’d say sign me up! Only a prudish monad, in my opinion, would say that’s beneath my dignity.
I will officially accuse Wilber of Vegan-smuggling, that is, providing an abstract and interesting model of philosophy and then here and there mentioning that carrots are preferable to meat!
If I was given a choice to be a diabolically genetically engineered chicken in a loud clacking smelly farmhouse for the sake of providing antibiotic-filled mediocre meat probably fried in trans fat eaten by some unconscious guy watching Netflix, I’d say fuck off, I’m staying in the unmanifested thank you very much.
His ethics seem very vague to me. The intrinsic value (depth) and extrinsic value (span) are clever but don’t seem to solve any problems. He says he’d rather kill a Mafia gangster than a couple of apes, even though the human being has more depth than the apes. But I wish he’d clarify why. Chimpanzees, for example, brutally murder each other like a Mafia gangster would. So where do you make the value judgment?
I mean, according to his “holarchy” based ethics, an ape should have more value than a worm. Unless it’s a really mean ape. If the ape is a dickhead, it’s actually worth less than a dickhead worm because, well, he can inflict more damage, I guess. But by adding value judgments to the picture, I don’t really see how the idea of “intrinsic value” matters at all!
Wilber says, “Even though an ape and an atom are both perfect expressions of Spirit, the ape has more depth, more wholeness, and therefore more intrinsic value.) Again - I’m troubled by the fact that “depth” seems awfully subjective. Species of evolution does not evolve “forward” while others “stay the same,” it’s more like, species just adapt to their current environment. And who’s to judge what is up and what is down? Mere complexity? As Wilber points out, the materialistic worldview made size the only value, a terrible basis of value judgment. States of consciousness? Well, if an ape is more worthy than a worm because of a higher level of consciousness, does that mean an adult is more worthy than a child? What and where exactly is this “intrinsic” value? I know this is a brief introduction to his models, so perhaps I’m expecting too much to be fleshed out. But it does seem to me that something very important is missing.
Wilber discusses the different stages of human philosophy. First, morals, science, and art were fused together, undifferentiated. Then the Enlightenment’s accomplishment was to differentiate these realms. “I,” “Us,” and “It.” But the problem was from then on, the representation paradigm went rampant, focusing on only “It,” which the Industrialization and empirical science (which feeds off each other) only exacerbated. True knowledge, for the Enlightementists, was found in the empirical world. The single “Truth” can be found simply by mapping the “One true world.”
Then the post-modernists found out that’s impossible because “The self” is not just a “Monad” inseparable from the world but is influenced by the world, from society. Our very perspective of how we view the world and how we value things is determined by genetics, our upbringing, and our society. The problem with the Enlightenment approach was that the problem with maps was that it left out the mapmaker.
Hegel put it beautifully when he said, “We must realize that thoughts are not merely a reflection on reality, but are also a movement of that very reality itself.”
For example, our thoughts do not pop into our heads out of nowhere. They pop into my head out of a cultural background. Children who do not learn a language do not produce linguistic thoughts on their own. The self is not the autonomous and self-generating monad as the Enlightenment imagined.
Now comes a questionable statement of Wilber, namely that interpretation is not a subjective whim; there are good and bad interpretations of Hamlet. So far, so good. But my difficulty is that the way he says what a good and bad interpretation is determined by “the community,” which implies that the correct mode of interpreting a text is basically conformist. The validity of an interpretation, Wilber states, is determined “by a community of those who have looked into the same depth.” He continues, “The interpretation can be easily rejected by a community f those who have read and studied the text - that is, by a community who have entered the interior of Hamlet, by those who share the same depth.”
The point of interpretation matters - a lot - because it’s not merely a question of how to interpret classic books but how we can value one perspective, one truth, one morality, over another, in an objective way. In other words, we must show that one interpretation is better than another if we can state there is a Truth. And Wilber has not been very convincing on this point.
One of the strongest sides of the book was how Wilber puts Enlightenment, Ego-transcendence philosophy, and Eco-Romantic philosophy into a brilliant perspective and uses his four quadrant model to criticize how these philosophies get it wrong.
I am totally on board with Wilber’s idea that we have to focus on all four quadrants, and I am convinced that this model is truly innovative and useful. As the brief encounter with the colors of consciousness made a permanent mark in my mind, Wilbers detailed ideas will also linger and influence me in, I believe, significant ways. Knowing these models doesn’t solve much, at least right away, but at least it gives something to hold on to.
The point is, what Wilber sees as ideal, is that we take all four quadrants and apply them across each stage of development, body to mind to soul to Spirit, and combine the ascending and descending paradigms, like Plato, the papa of philosophy, wanted us to. Listen to your daddy! This means, basically, that the world is the manifestation of the Spirit, so worldly beauty ought to be embraced, but there ought to be transcendence to higher realms of consciousness too.
Despite the quirks and questions, which probably is due to my lack of understanding, and the Carrot-smuggling, Ken Wilber’s work is amazing. God bless him and his genuine search for truth and spiritual development
“The UFO anal probe: where Freud meets Jung.”
Ken Wilber can be described as Bertrand Russel with a spiritual twist. He’s extremely intelligent, unbelievably well-read, unbelievably… he is a likable character, makes the reader feel smart, and most of all, makes a lot of sense 99% of the time with lucid and down-to-earth language and humor, even though it gets technical by necessity.
Wilber’s central ideas are very Schelling-Hegel-inspired. The universe, life, biology, societies, and individuals are part of a “Great chain” or an evolution that has recursive patterns and an overall direction toward more complexity and higher self-actualization.
I’m very fond of Wilber’s style of thinking. He outlines general universal principles of the world, and all his concepts are sort of soft… they are applied as “percentages,” “fractals,” or “recursive,” meaning they apply on varying degrees and scales, microcosms, and macrocosms. Nothing Wilber outlines is really set in stone per se: this is the model; rather, this is how models work; it’s like a meta-theory. In other words, Wilber finds a nice balance between a more orderly view of the world without creating false “yes no” categories that simplify the word to the user’s detriment. A rare accomplishment if you ask me.
He takes a very balanced approach, neither conventionally liberal nor conservative. He has a refreshingly unique perceptive.
There are some fundamental pieces to his theory.
He identifies twenty rules that all “holons,” the fundamental building bricks of reality, operate on.
He identifies four quadrants of understanding the world.
He emphasizes the importance of evolution, both micro and macro.
He’s adamant about reconciling other-worldly and this-worldly philosophy.
There’s a Spirit that is both the Exterior and Interior, both material and consciousness, which are two sides of the same coin, that of Spirit.
I’m a big fan of the four-quadrant model. I think it’s a very helpful way of thinking about problems. And it can be applied to virtually anything. It’s a nice tool, crystallizing something that was vague before. The four quadrant model is Interior individual (consciousness), Interior shared (culture), external individual (physiology) and external shared (world). The Interior is what does not have a location or is quantifiable but nonetheless exists. The exterior is what can be seen but has no value in itself.
The point is that we shouldn’t deny one quadrant over the other. Each is a different side to the same coin; each is interrelated, and attacking problems merely from one quadrant is suboptimal.
With this four-quadrant model, he points out that all ways of thinking until now have existed in either of these quadrants. And making these explicit helps a great deal in making a conscious effort to approach problems in a more “holistic,” effective, and true manner.
According to his system, there is no quadrant that exclusively affects each other. For example, individual consciousness does not control individual physiology (Radical free will) and not the other way around (Determinism); rather, all four quadrants affect each other in any direction. The societal system will have a strong influence on the cultural worldview, which sets limits to individual thoughts which will register in the brain physiology. Wilber rejects causality in the form that one quadrant “causes” effects in another, but instead, that they are all manifestations of Spirit, something that is really one but appears to be multiple. He says they are all equally determining; they all cause and are caused by the other quadrants. Something that defies how we tend to understand conventional causality and logic.
As I alluded to earlier, Wilber believes in the grand evolution of the world. And he does not subscribe to evolution in terms of merely survival and chance. He instead takes the idea of Spirit, which is, as far as I understand it, both material and consciousness, bound by certain tenets. In other words, the world is not random or meaningless, but there is a grand narrative to the world, to societies, and to individuals. And in doing so, Wilber makes a case for the inevitability of the status quo and history.
Wilber points out that the psychological developmental stages of children can be extended into even higher psychological stages of spiritual stages. In the same way, we experience paradigm shifts from being an infant to being an adult today; there is no reason why we can’t stop having paradigm shifts, a “higher level of consciousness.” Wilber is convincing here, especially by how he uses research such as Piaget’s to clearly make the point that there are reliable paradigm shifts in children at certain age ranges.
As individuals ascend in consciousness, we become less and less narcissistic. Wilber outlines four stages of spiritual consciousness that have been described in somewhat or another in all mystic traditions. As young children, we did not have an identity separate from the world, then we separated from the world, but not our bodies. Then we separated from our bodies, but not the mind. And so it goes. Eventually, we stop identifying with the ego, and our identity becomes one with nature, one with consciousness, and finally, one with the non-duality of Spirit. There was one more stage but ain’t that important.
I think this is a great introduction to higher states of consciousness for those not spiritually inclined. It just makes lucid sense.
I suppose the Free will / Determinism paradox cannot be solved but dissolved by transcending consciousness and identifying with the non-dual Spirit. That would be nice.
I have a thought, along the lines of Wilber’s style of thinking, that you are never too developed to work on any stage or paradigm or “fulcrum,” if you may. The psyche is like a house, and as you strengthen the foundational, you strengthen the most developed parts as well. For that reason, I reject that, for example, existentialism is passé philosophically. And one philosophy simply replaces another. Now we’re supposed to be postmodernists. As Wilber points out, transcend and include. But I’d add emphasis that because you’ve already gone through the 1-2-3 process of identifying, differentiating, and integrating, it doesn’t mean there’s still work to be done on each level; as Wilber points out, no one individual is simply “at a certain stage.” And so again, it’s faulty to think you don’t get any value from studying “outdated” material.
One thing that does genuinely concern me is that when you put the amount of emphasis on evolution (the great chain) as Wilber does, it invariably leads to an inclination to associate difference with higher or lower. You start to judge people and cultures in accordance with how Spirit has evolved, and of course, the West is at the head of this Spiritual evolution. I’m not in disagreement with the idea of “holarchies’ and depth of value, though it seems awfully convenient to say the way the West has progressed is part of the Divine plan, so to say, and all others are merely lagging behind. It’s a comforting and flattering thought, and that’s precisely why I’m skeptical of it.
Right after finishing this book, I saw a guy wearing a shirt in a really bizarre fashion, and I said to myself, in jest, “Woah, what kind of level of consciousness is he on?” Even though that was a playful thought, it is a genuine concern to me that this abstract and sophisticated model can be an elitist weapon against people you don’t like, particularly of the conservatives, who aren’t as fond of “include” and world-centric growth as Wilber.
Nevertheless, I’m against cultural relativism or any moral relativism in any case, and it’s necessary and right, in my opinion, to say that the level of “conscience” of individuals is restricted to the level of the center of conscious development in their culture, which may lead them to enslave people, sacrifice human beings and eat animals raised in terrible conditions without any bothering from their poorly-dressed cricket on their shoulder.
In Wilber’s discussions of the “consciousness gap” contrasted to the “economic gap,” I can’t help but think Wilber was alluding to the fact that the majority of Americans voted for Trump. It does seem like smart people like Wilber and Paul Check use the framework of Spiritual growth to criticize political conservatives as having a “low level of consciousness” due to their ethnocentricity.
I flat-out deny that liberals have a higher state of consciousness than conservatives. And Wilber, I believe, would agree, saying that elitists are shoving down their high-consciousness beliefs onto the throats of the less developed masses, which adopt, for example, altruistic and world-saving ideals in us vs. them type of fashion.
Wilbers level of thought was, for the vast majority, very high and nuanced. His level of thought severely dropped discussing ethics regarding vegetarianism. Equal was the drop of intellectual nuance when Bertrand Russel discusses Christ in “Why I’m not a Christian.” For some reason, highly intelligent people simply shut down on certain topics.
Wilber makes the mistake of deriving very specific ethical courses of action from a very abstract principle, namely, to embrace both depth and span. He says, “It’s much better to kick a rock than an ape, much better to eat a carrot than a cow, much better to subsist on grains than on mammals.”
Regarding the carrot better than cow thing - and Alan Watts! Oh God! - Allan Watts, when asked why he was a vegetarian, answered by saying Carrots don’t scream when you eat them. What an idiotic thing to say by such an intelligent man!
.
Are predators inherently more immoral because they kill things that make more noise than, say, berry-eating deer? Do you know what happens if you remove predators from an environment? Everyone suffers - a lot more than if they were there.
Also… for the sake of argument, if I was a floating monad in the ephemeral space, and I was given a choice to not be manifested in reality at all or be a cow that was bred for the sake of being slaughtered after a certain amount of time in order to provide health and vitality to humankind, and during that lifespan, I would get to chill, hang out with other cows, eat nice grass, fornicate once in a while, and be treated by loving farmers, I’d say sign me up! Only a prudish monad, in my opinion, would say that’s beneath my dignity.
I will officially accuse Wilber of Vegan-smuggling, that is, providing an abstract and interesting model of philosophy and then here and there mentioning that carrots are preferable to meat!
If I was given a choice to be a diabolically genetically engineered chicken in a loud clacking smelly farmhouse for the sake of providing antibiotic-filled mediocre meat probably fried in trans fat eaten by some unconscious guy watching Netflix, I’d say fuck off, I’m staying in the unmanifested thank you very much.
His ethics seem very vague to me. The intrinsic value (depth) and extrinsic value (span) are clever but don’t seem to solve any problems. He says he’d rather kill a Mafia gangster than a couple of apes, even though the human being has more depth than the apes. But I wish he’d clarify why. Chimpanzees, for example, brutally murder each other like a Mafia gangster would. So where do you make the value judgment?
I mean, according to his “holarchy” based ethics, an ape should have more value than a worm. Unless it’s a really mean ape. If the ape is a dickhead, it’s actually worth less than a dickhead worm because, well, he can inflict more damage, I guess. But by adding value judgments to the picture, I don’t really see how the idea of “intrinsic value” matters at all!
Wilber says, “Even though an ape and an atom are both perfect expressions of Spirit, the ape has more depth, more wholeness, and therefore more intrinsic value.) Again - I’m troubled by the fact that “depth” seems awfully subjective. Species of evolution does not evolve “forward” while others “stay the same,” it’s more like, species just adapt to their current environment. And who’s to judge what is up and what is down? Mere complexity? As Wilber points out, the materialistic worldview made size the only value, a terrible basis of value judgment. States of consciousness? Well, if an ape is more worthy than a worm because of a higher level of consciousness, does that mean an adult is more worthy than a child? What and where exactly is this “intrinsic” value? I know this is a brief introduction to his models, so perhaps I’m expecting too much to be fleshed out. But it does seem to me that something very important is missing.
Wilber discusses the different stages of human philosophy. First, morals, science, and art were fused together, undifferentiated. Then the Enlightenment’s accomplishment was to differentiate these realms. “I,” “Us,” and “It.” But the problem was from then on, the representation paradigm went rampant, focusing on only “It,” which the Industrialization and empirical science (which feeds off each other) only exacerbated. True knowledge, for the Enlightementists, was found in the empirical world. The single “Truth” can be found simply by mapping the “One true world.”
Then the post-modernists found out that’s impossible because “The self” is not just a “Monad” inseparable from the world but is influenced by the world, from society. Our very perspective of how we view the world and how we value things is determined by genetics, our upbringing, and our society. The problem with the Enlightenment approach was that the problem with maps was that it left out the mapmaker.
Hegel put it beautifully when he said, “We must realize that thoughts are not merely a reflection on reality, but are also a movement of that very reality itself.”
For example, our thoughts do not pop into our heads out of nowhere. They pop into my head out of a cultural background. Children who do not learn a language do not produce linguistic thoughts on their own. The self is not the autonomous and self-generating monad as the Enlightenment imagined.
Now comes a questionable statement of Wilber, namely that interpretation is not a subjective whim; there are good and bad interpretations of Hamlet. So far, so good. But my difficulty is that the way he says what a good and bad interpretation is determined by “the community,” which implies that the correct mode of interpreting a text is basically conformist. The validity of an interpretation, Wilber states, is determined “by a community of those who have looked into the same depth.” He continues, “The interpretation can be easily rejected by a community f those who have read and studied the text - that is, by a community who have entered the interior of Hamlet, by those who share the same depth.”
The point of interpretation matters - a lot - because it’s not merely a question of how to interpret classic books but how we can value one perspective, one truth, one morality, over another, in an objective way. In other words, we must show that one interpretation is better than another if we can state there is a Truth. And Wilber has not been very convincing on this point.
One of the strongest sides of the book was how Wilber puts Enlightenment, Ego-transcendence philosophy, and Eco-Romantic philosophy into a brilliant perspective and uses his four quadrant model to criticize how these philosophies get it wrong.
I am totally on board with Wilber’s idea that we have to focus on all four quadrants, and I am convinced that this model is truly innovative and useful. As the brief encounter with the colors of consciousness made a permanent mark in my mind, Wilbers detailed ideas will also linger and influence me in, I believe, significant ways. Knowing these models doesn’t solve much, at least right away, but at least it gives something to hold on to.
The point is, what Wilber sees as ideal, is that we take all four quadrants and apply them across each stage of development, body to mind to soul to Spirit, and combine the ascending and descending paradigms, like Plato, the papa of philosophy, wanted us to. Listen to your daddy! This means, basically, that the world is the manifestation of the Spirit, so worldly beauty ought to be embraced, but there ought to be transcendence to higher realms of consciousness too.
Despite the quirks and questions, which probably is due to my lack of understanding, and the Carrot-smuggling, Ken Wilber’s work is amazing. God bless him and his genuine search for truth and spiritual development
helloashluna's review
overly complicated and heady seemingly for the sole purpose of being overly complicated and heady. I rarely stop reading a book, even if I hate it but this one is the exception I just can not continue.
muerte's review against another edition
Outdated. Irrelevant. Just my current thoughts BUT I will attempt a second time when Im ready.
davehershey's review against another edition
3.0
Well, the title is correct. In this book, Wilber seems to give a history of everything! From the beginning on through to today, he builds a story of the universe. But it’s not a “history” as much as a philosophy/spirituality book. Overall, I found it a mix of good and bad.
The best was Wilber’s quadrant that truly does explain so much. On the upper left you have the interior individual, the usual “spiritual” stuff. Upper right is the exterior things like biology. Lower left are all the cultural forces that shape you. Finally, lower right is the exterior systems. Wilber excels in showing how you need all four. When you only have the exterior, as in much modern mindsets, you reduce everything to mere physical. Wilber’s critique of the idea that science is everything is worth the price of the book. But if you only have the interior, then you discount the physical world and live only in your head.
There’s other good in here. But I found Wilber’s creation of words and concepts tedious. Maybe it’s my Christian faith, but his invented words just seemed empty. Give me a deeper religion, whether Christianity or anything. It seems in trying to create a theory of everything, he waters down what people actually do. There’s not really practice here. Would a practicing Muslim or Buddhist or Christian see much here? I guess that’s not a fault, Wilber’s offering a theory of ”everything”. To do that means generalizing. Such generalizing ends up being a bit esoteric and academic, which isn’t a fault in itself. It’s just...if we’re talking about spirituality, when do we discuss what real people actually do and believe? Wilber does offer a sort of stages of faith, with nine steps, echoing Fowler and Erickson. I found much of what he said here helpful too. I guess I can’t put my finger on it...this book never really hit me deeply. It was interesting but not inspiring. To be fair, maybe he wasn’t going for inspiring.
I also hate the dialogue format! Why am I reading so many books in dialogue format!!!
If you’re into religion and philosophy and psychology and spirituality, this book is worth your time. There’s stuff her to chew on. But after a while it’s tedious.
The best was Wilber’s quadrant that truly does explain so much. On the upper left you have the interior individual, the usual “spiritual” stuff. Upper right is the exterior things like biology. Lower left are all the cultural forces that shape you. Finally, lower right is the exterior systems. Wilber excels in showing how you need all four. When you only have the exterior, as in much modern mindsets, you reduce everything to mere physical. Wilber’s critique of the idea that science is everything is worth the price of the book. But if you only have the interior, then you discount the physical world and live only in your head.
There’s other good in here. But I found Wilber’s creation of words and concepts tedious. Maybe it’s my Christian faith, but his invented words just seemed empty. Give me a deeper religion, whether Christianity or anything. It seems in trying to create a theory of everything, he waters down what people actually do. There’s not really practice here. Would a practicing Muslim or Buddhist or Christian see much here? I guess that’s not a fault, Wilber’s offering a theory of ”everything”. To do that means generalizing. Such generalizing ends up being a bit esoteric and academic, which isn’t a fault in itself. It’s just...if we’re talking about spirituality, when do we discuss what real people actually do and believe? Wilber does offer a sort of stages of faith, with nine steps, echoing Fowler and Erickson. I found much of what he said here helpful too. I guess I can’t put my finger on it...this book never really hit me deeply. It was interesting but not inspiring. To be fair, maybe he wasn’t going for inspiring.
I also hate the dialogue format! Why am I reading so many books in dialogue format!!!
If you’re into religion and philosophy and psychology and spirituality, this book is worth your time. There’s stuff her to chew on. But after a while it’s tedious.
kerkelov's review against another edition
4.0
Тази книга наистина предлага един по-различен начин да се погледне на света.
Първата част на книгата е вдъхновяваща.
Жалко че само един от четирите квадранта, на които авторът разделя реалността (духа) е разгледан подробно във втората част на книгата.
Третата част на книгата е едно непрестанно повторение на една идея, която съвсем структурирано може да бъде изложена на няколко страници.
Първата част на книгата е вдъхновяваща.
Жалко че само един от четирите квадранта, на които авторът разделя реалността (духа) е разгледан подробно във втората част на книгата.
Третата част на книгата е едно непрестанно повторение на една идея, която съвсем структурирано може да бъде изложена на няколко страници.
bookishmaryrose's review
3.0
Ideology is reductionist that seeks to examine values and ideas without examining the role of colonization and white hetero-patriarchy. Was recommended to me. There were some good things... but a lot of gaps.
leebill's review against another edition
2.0
Cannot get beyond the 1st chapter. Need some sort of cheat sheet
icywaterfall's review against another edition
5.0
Quite possibly the best book I’ve read so far in my life because of its ability to put everything of importance into context.