The Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Volume 3

by Ken Wilber

Book Overview

Volume Three of The Collected Works of Ken Wilber includes: - A Sociable God: Toward a New Understanding of Religion (1982) is a scholarly introduction to a psychology and sociology of religion that... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590303210
• ISBN13: 9781590303214
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: Shambhala
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Two lesser-known Wilber classics

This volume contains two different, but related, works by Ken Wilber. The first, "A Sociable God," proposes a methodology by which the discipline of sociology can compare and categorize religions. Religion and spirituality are making something of a comeback in modern society from their previously purged status under the rationalist paradigm. This has taken many forms, ranging from fundamentalism to contemplative and mystical approaches, to Eastern traditions, to the rise of cults. Wilber says that the traditional studies of psychology and sociology have tended to view religion as an immature or even regressive approach to resolving inadequacies at the social level and immaturities at the psychological level. He poses the question whether this is really all there is to say about religion, or whether something very important and fundamental is being left out of this view. It is Wilber's view that there is very much more to be said about the contributions religion and spirituality can make to the development of humankind, while at the same time recognizing that there is, indeed, ample evidence of religions that seem to deserve the charges of "immature," "inadequate," and even "pathological," Jonestown and Charles Manson being two extreme examples of the latter.Wilber bases his methodology on the spectrum of consciousness model about which he has written so extensively in numerous other works. His methodology distinguishes between "legitimate" religions, which feed the worldview of the self on a given level of the spectrum, fleshing out the content of that level, and "authentic" religion, which validates transformation to a higher level on the spectrum and delivers practices for doing so. Wilber asserts that this method can be employed to hierarchically evaluate religions according to how successfully they deliver what they claim to deliver, from Maoism to Moonies, from Buddhism to fundamentalism. Wilber then shows how religions can be examined in light of their contributions to the current developmental phases of humans worldwide. All this is done with Wilber's laser beam clarity in just 134 pages. Even talking about religion is rare in intellectual circles today, but proposing a methodolgy for crtically evaluating them? You have to read this just for his straight away courage for treading in such politically incorrect waters.In Wilber's system, he describes the various "realms" in the spectrum of consciousness, any one of which can be experienced temporarily by individuals as a "state,' or attained enduringly through evolutionary development by individuals or cultures as "structures." Each of the realms in the spectrum (grossly simplified as body, mind, spirit) can be investigated in accordance with its own nature, or with the appropriate "eye;" that is, the "eye of flesh," the "eye of mind," and the "eye of contemplation." Investigation of one realm with the eye of another produces, at best, a limited, or representational, understanding, an