A truly 21st Century philospher with a concept of life that embraces everything

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #347522 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-06
• Released on: 2006-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Synopsis
"Integral Spirituality" answers the question: how can we validate the existence of spiritual realities - specifically, the higher levels of mystical experience claimed by the world's wisdom traditions - in the face of modern and postmodern attacks that deny those realities as unscientific or reduce them to social constructions? Applying his highly acclaimed integral approach, Wilber formulates a theory of spirituality that honours the truths of modernity and postmodernity - including the revolutions in science and culture - while incorporating the legacy of the great religions. He shows why full enlightenment is not possible without combining the enlightenment of the East, which excels at cultivating higher states of consciousness, with the enlightenment of the West, which offers developmental and psychodynamic psychology. Each contributes key components to a more integral spirituality. On the basis of this theoretical framework, Wilber is able to make some timely suggestions. Because the world's religions have such a tremendous influence on the worldview of the majority of the earth's population, they are in a privileged position to address some of the biggest conflicts we face.

By adopting a more integral view, and thus effectively responding to contemporary critiques, the great religions can act as facilitators of human development, from mythic belief to rational science to postmodern pluralism - all the way up to enlightenment, and to a global society that honours and includes all the stations of life along the way. This is a vital book for our times.

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Customer Reviews

Going more and more astray
In recent years Wilber's theories have become, apparently, more and more complex, more and more aimed for a 'sophisticated' intellectual audience. Having left the transpersonal theories of Grof and others far behind him, instead embracing some rather dubious sociological theories which divides people into several different tiers (memes), and rather amusing placing Wilber himself at the top, amongst the 0,7 % of the most advanced humans.

And certainly managing to make spiritual progress look very difficult, getting more and more lost in the intricate webs of what John McLaughlin once called "the murky corridors of your mind".

Furthermore his recent writings have a decisively ethno-centristic undertone in his dismissal of the classical Eastern views on the topic of Enlightenment. Views based on thousands of years exploration of altered states of consciousness. And based on the experiences of thousands of mystics and their existential insights into the Beyond. Something which fits all too well with his support of president Bush and the Iraq war, trying to americanize the world of spirituality too.

Perhaps things are a lot more simple than Wilber and his followers will admit, perhaps the question to be asked is really the old Hendrix-phrase: Are you experienced? Have you gone beyond the everyday mind and opened up to the truth of what/who you are?

But Wilber's real mistake is to think that Truth can ever be figured out by the human mind with all it's limitations.

I find it significant that great Enlightened ones like the Buddha and in recent times Ramana Maharshi and Osho have discouraged all kinds of metaphysical speculations. And when push come to shove that's actually all the clever Wilber has to offer with his quadrants and postmodern hype: some highly hypothetical speculations about the Unknowable.

No doubt Wilber has a very keen intellect, a brilliant mind. What his 'teachings' lack is Heart, openness, humility concerning the role of the intellectual mind and the ability to just open up to the wonders of the world.

Many a simpleton may actually 'know' a lot more than a smart guy like Wilber. And she/he may express that insight in a dance or a song or just in tears of gratitude because Truth makes words seem so utterly inadequate
and gross.

Are you ready?
As with all Wilber's work, he certainly dosn't sit on the fence on any of the issues covered! This book is sure to create as much division as anything else he has written, but if your open to the issues he's exploring, he might just blow your mind.

His AQAL framework (a kind of 'map of everything') is laid out in a really clear and consistent way, and with a 'definitiveness' perhaps not present in his other work. Although, if you are a newcomer to Wilber's work, I think there are better introductions, Kosmic Consciousness gets my personal vote.

There's no 'fluff' or rambling in Integral Spirituality, he lays out the issue and proceeds to nail almost every major point. Some may disagree with some of the finer points of his conclusions, but I think, again, if your open to it, are ready to be challenged, and believe in truth and consistency, this book could really split open your concepts of spirituality.

One of the most important points that Wilber presents is that spirituality and the world's wisdom traditions must take into account the modern scientific, and postmodern pluralistic findings of the Western world. Only then can they truley be taken seriously, and begin to rid themselves of the dogmatic, conformist elements so often associated with spirituality and religion.

Personally, I don't hane any doubt that Wilber is a writer way, way ahead of his time. The question is, are you ready for it?

Relativism and its corrective
In October 2006 Wilber published a new book, Integral Spirituality. Here he complements the quadrants with perspectives, from inside and from outside. A person, who is meditating, experiences himself from inside and can not see himself from outside, can not see that he is active on a certain level in the upper left quadrant, and that he knows nothing about the other three. The old wisdom traditions from hinduism, buddhism, Christianity, islam etc. cannot therefore withstand the criticism from modernity, which requires objective evidences, and from postmodernity, which shows that their "eternal truths" partly are formed by the culture, where they are created. The survey the quadrants offer, however, makes it possible to recognize and to incorporate what is best of premodern, modern and postmodern contributions. Without metaphysics, however, for Wilber now replaces perceptions with what goes before, namely perspectives, and asserts that phenomena only exist within the framework of the perspective an observer is able to open up. In this way, there are also "different levels of God".

But precisely for that reason, religion can become "a conveyor belt" from primitive levels to the most developed ones. Provided, though, that both science and religion cease with their confinement to the mythical level, to war-gods or the nice uncle on the cloud etc. Because spirituality, religion, God are found on all levels. Forgetful of his earlier fights against modernity, Wilber now sides with this movement, but so he is threatened with total relativism. He does not seem to realize that, just as the text is corrective in literary interpretations, so the physical world is a corrective against total relativism in the interpretation of the world.