5.0 out of 5 stars open mind

D. · 13 December 2015

A good book does not need advertisement a good book only need you to read a good book bring peace to your inner

5.0 out of 5 stars Integral Spirituality

M. · 26 July 2014

An excellent work - well worth reading.

4.0 out of 5 stars Relativism and its corrective

E. · 10 August 2009

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.

5.0 out of 5 stars Are you ready?

E.T. · 29 December 2006

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?

2.0 out of 5 stars Hmmmm - a bit heavy

P.J. · 22 August 2013

Unless you are into Wilber this is a bit heavy going and must say that whilst I like the concepts and models at the start I have yet to complete the reading of this book. The use of one terminology and then renaming it meant I was losing the thread.

2.0 out of 5 stars Going more and more astray

B.H. · 23 August 2007

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 inadequateand gross.

Essential reading

T.S. · 31 May 2016

I've studied theology, practiced spiritual disciplines, studied sociology, psychology, and philosophy. I love the way this book brings so much of the disciplines I've studied together in a cohesive way and gives a place of legitimacy to spirituality. A breath of fresh air.

Five Stars

C.d. · 22 May 2016

tout était parfait

Fascinating Read

S.P.S. · 23 June 2007

Ken Wilber's "Integral Spirituality" provides yet another example of the author's dynamic thinking; one in a long list of books. Wilber presents his four-quadrant model again: It (upper right); Its (lower right); We (lower left); and I (upper left). Make no mistake, the four originates from the Big 3 (I, we, it), a point that can be very confusing. Wilber (page 19) writes: "The Beautiful, the Good, and the True are simply variations on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person pronouns found in all major languages, and they are found in all major languages because Beauty, Truth, and Goodness are very real dimensions of reality to which language has adapted." Wilber (page 20) writes: "If you leave out science, or leave out art, or leave out morals, something is going missing, something will get broken." The movement from I and It to We and Its, is the passage from singularity to plurality (see his Figure 1.2). Wilber does not say it, but as the present moment offered by I is witness, the same movement is also the passage from the present into the past. The four quadrant model has spatial the temporal extent.Wilber's integration is provided by all Levels, all Quadrants, leading to the heavily used acronym ALAQ. To this he includes the experiential state and the line of speciality (state and line for short). Wilber also takes great care to integrate structuralism (stages) into his model. For example, Clare Grave's spiral dynamics in referred to in several places. Structure provides outside support, and our introspection is not immediately aware of this structure. Wilber (page 55) writes: "Phenomenology looks for the direct experience and phenomena, structuralism looks for the patterns that connect the phenomena." As each quadrant (as holon) can come with an interior and exterior, this generates 8 perspectives (or methodologies). Wilber dedicates most of his book to exploring the 8 perspectives. As the interior and exterior are not easy to differentiate (to first "negate" then "preserve" so as to "transcend" to use Wilber's words), the discussion can be very confusing. And in fact the interiors are mostly denied in world-views that favor the right-side quadrants. Nevertheless, by now Wilber is an expert in seeing these different perspectives. And the point that may get lost is that Wilber's integration is necessarily spiritual.Wilber is somewhat critical of the Great Wisdom Traditions (e.g., religions), i.e., before transformation and integration. He writes (page 43), "Modernist epistemologies [rationalist science] subjected them to the demand for evidence, and because the premodern traditions were ill-prepared for this onslaught, they did not meet this challenge with a direct elucidation of the one area of their teachings that could have met the challenge: the phenomenological core of their contemplative traditions, which offered all the verifiable evidence one could want within a remarkably modern paradigm." Likewise, Wilber tells us that postmodernity presents its own challenge, knowledge of the exterior structures (the necessary social culture required for introspection) appears to negate much of the mythic beliefs that are dear to the wisdom traditions.Wilber (page 57) writes: "you can sit on your meditation mat for years and never see Spiral Dynamics stages, and why you therefore find none of these types of stages in any spiritual or contemplative text anywhere in the world." As an example, Wilber tells us that "Boomeritis" is a dysfunction in some of the less developed stages, hinting that contemplation cannot deal with these irritations that source a narcissistic attachment to an exterior shell. As a reader, I don't understand why introspection is seen isolating itself from information coming from an exterior source; clearly, an irritation is still a feeling and finds itself subjected to our introspection just the same. I guess Wilber is saying that some folks just don't get it! And clearly a humble fisherman, unaffected by the lofty status of science or the self exaltations of postmondernity, may only face personal issues that have to do with caring for his family. His responsibilities do not entail integral psychology, nevertheless this traditionalist may find comfort and guidance in contemplation. Wilber (page 194) concedes that the ideal is not change for change's sake, but something else: "Human beings, starting at square one, will develop however far they develop, and they have the right to stop wherever they stop. Some individuals will stop at red, some at amber; some will move to orange or higher."Wilber (chapter 9) writes of the great repression of spirit by the intellectual West. He writes (page 183): "They jettisoned the amber God, and instead of finding orange God, and then green God, and turquoise God, and indigo God, they ditched God altogether, they began the repression of the sublime, the repression of their own higher levels of spiritual intelligence. The intellectual West has fundamentally never recovered from this cultural disaster." I agree the tragedy is very apparent, sense-certain in fact. Nevertheless, Wilber's investigation of 8 perspectives carries the weakness presented by his caricature-mode thinking here, and any caricature is revealed to be a strawman if we care to dig deeper.An assumption has been made that introspection cannot deal with irritation that sources the exterior structures, and even after reading "Integral Spirituality" I am uncertain of Wilber's position with this issue. The extreme narcissism that takes no prisoners (beyond the first negation that breeds only irritation), coming from both scientism and postmodernity, leads to a spiritual repression and a dysfunctional shadow, yes we agree. But seeing the dysfunction is seeing the second negation, the sense-certain irritation is a feeling that neither science nor postmodernity has explained, and the feeling transforms into a euphoria as the spirit returns to source. The shadow is no longer dysfunctional, as it is doing the work of the second negation, and all through the eyes of introspection. The self-love of scientism and postmodernity is found betraying itself.Like magic, the strawman given only as caricature is found carrying an inexplicable feeling, a feeling that can no longer be denied and pushed into repression. And the first negation has always been the first necessary step to generate the precognitive feeling as an irritation. Wilber (page 186) writes: "what emerged in modernity, as differentiated, was only `the Big 3' -art and morals and science. Spirituality due to an [Line/Level Fallacy] was frozen at the mythic level, and then that mythic level of spirituality was confused with spirituality altogether." But the irritation also reveals the strawman (the second negation), and the precognitive feeling passes over into the mature cognition. Our feelings are beneath the caricature offered by the Big 3, but the Big 3 with its feeling is found doing the work of the second negation. We find Wilber's Trinitarian God, strong and healthy. The sublime shadow (repressed as it was) is our lover! Wilber (page 160) writes: "the Big 3 (I, We/Thou, It), are the 3 fundamental dimensions of your Primordial Unmanifest Self's being-in-the-world." But the formless primordial spirit that manifest has an inexplicable feeling, and with time passage what we see written is only in 3-dimensional space, the magic slips away leaving the feeling as it goes.Disclosure: My agenda is declared in my profile.

Five Stars

S. · 15 July 2015

Good!

Five Stars

D. · 16 January 2017

I am giving Integral Spirituaity 5 stars because of Ken's ability to synthesize the history of spirituality in an easy to understand system AQAL. Having an understanding of the basic Integral System before being applied to spirituality is helpful if you want to skim read the first part of the book. Otherwise, Ken has done all the hard work by summarizing and drawing conclusions in nice charts and graphs. You don't need to know all the research behind those charts and graphs however I found that knowing of James Fowlers research into the stages of spiritual maturity helped.After reading the book completely I now see the author writing from a pastoral/academic perspective similar to Rudolf Bultmann whose project of demytholization of the New Testament had the similar goal of bringing the mythic world of Christianity into relevance for modern men and women. Bultmann also complained about how 19th century theologians had thrown-out the baby with the bath water. Ken is working from a similar starting point with post-modern men and women.I read this book during time discerning a vocation with a spiritual director and used AQAL. For further study in a Christian tradition, I would recommend Anthony Thiselton's Hermeneutics (zone #3 in AQAL).