Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World

by Ken Wilber

Book Overview

This cutting-edge theory of spirituality for today's global society honors the truths of modern science and postmodern culture while incorporating the wisdom of the great world religions Applying his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590303466
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Shambhala
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.1" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Wilber continues to inspire...

Wilber broadens my thinking and living experience with his writing. Having 21 of his previous books, each one he authors inspires my vision of the world and puts many areas of study into perspective /integration. I'm encouraged that both Clinton and Gore are using his theory in their vision for the future. This book brings clarity/integration to both the spiritual/religious and political arena in a way that can give purpose and direction in our search for the greater good.

Problems with Ken Wilber

I have read just about all of Wilber's material and find him extremely insightful, needless to say. But I continue to have certain major reservations. First, is "enlightenment" the goal of all religous/spiritual paths? Wilber talks only or almost exclusively of the "contemplative/medative traditions".The implication being that "spirituality" only occurs primarily between the alone and the Alone or is primarily an "intellective"(cognitive)spirituality. When he discusses the Judeo/Christian tradition he points to the contemplative traditions within them (Father Keating, e.g.) but never addresses the essence of the tradition itself. Surely Kabbalah and the mystical/monastic tradition in Christianity are not the heart and soul of these traditions although they might fall within the broad scope of their historical manifestations. I would like to imagine a conversation, e.g. of Ken Wilber with Marin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas,along with a liberation theologian like Sebastian Kappen S.J. and a poltical theologican as Johann Baptist Metz. I don't believe these religious teachers would primarily approach the Judeo/Christian tradition as a contemplative tradition. Rather was not Jesus a prophet in very much the style of the Hebrew prophets? And was the practice of Jesus and the Prophets not primarily monastic meditation but an immersion in the sufferings of the people of their day? Was not service the primary praxis? This does not deny the need for prayer or contemplation but it does not isolate this practice either as the quintessential praxis of the Hebrew or Jesus's way of life. When Wilber discusses the "Spirit in 2nd Person" he points to only the "alone with the Alone" version. This is not the Judeo/Christian approach. Rather it is through service to our brothers and sisters in the world that we encounter the great Mystery, the great Thou. The ego purification comes about not primarily in one's solitude but rather in one's ego being rubbed raw in the existential immersion in the pain of the world.The dark night of the soul comes about in the midst of the world as it did for Jesus and the prophets. As Abraham Heschel once wrote: "The more deeply immersed I become in thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the prophets sought to convery: that morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings." It would seem to me that if we look at Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan as pointing to the very essence of his way, could we not say that we could have all the highest states, all the highest stage persectives, and the deepest of awareness and yet walk right by the man in the ditch fully AQAL-ed (so to speak). In Wilber's scheme maybe we could say that the Judeo/Christian tradition prioritizes the moral/ethical line as well as emphasing the exterior doing of a way along with the interior growth of the inner person? Wilber once made the comment that a spiritual path coul

Some major leaps in the AQAL model

In one of his previous books "Sex Ecology and Spirit", Ken Wilber introduced a wildly ambitious schema that (as one previous reviewer accurately calls it) attempts to butt-weld western psychology onto eastern spirituality. His All-Quadrant-All-Levels (AQAL) model is a dizzyingly complex schemata that tries to appease, well, pretty much every major thinker in the eastern and western canon. Despite the ponderous weight of "Sex, Ecology and Spirit", there were major holes in his exposition, and "Integral Spirituality" was written, I suspect, to plug some of those holes. I believe that there are 2 major problems that Wilber addresses in "Integral Psychology". The first problem is that, although Wilber spent the bulk of "Sex, Ecology and Spirit" savagely critiquing the limits of a menagerie of postmodernist thinking, he did not incorporate the insights of postmodernism into his AQAL model. The second problem is that, in "Sex, Ecology and Spirit", even though he divides the world into four irreducible quadrants in his AQAL model (the individual interior, the individual exterior, the social interior, and the social exterior), he reads the history of the Enlightenment as the differentiation of only three spheres of values (aesthetics, morals and science). Clearly, one sphere of value missing. Scholars of Wilber might find then, that the first 5 chapters of "Integral Spirituality" are a tedious re-tread of the AQAL model found in previous books. But this particular presentation of the AQAL model offers something fundamentally different. It embraces postmodern insights into its core, by providing a much more nuanced discussion of inter-subjectivity. That's why Wilber makes such a big deal, as another reviewer pointed out, of critiquing the "Myth of the Given" and the "Philosophy of Consciousness" in these chapters. These critiques encapsulate the basic insight of twentieth century postmodernism, and it is something that Wilber did not do in previous books. One result is that Wilber argues that eastern traditions are blind to their cultural biases - biases that are fundamentally invisible to meditative introspection. These cultural biases can only be detected using hermeneutics/sociological techniques, the bread-and-butter of postmodernist thinkers. Wilber accuses every major meditative tradition of being naive (or monological) in their belief in the absolute reality of the cultural manifestations of their traditions. That is why many genuine teachers of Eastern traditions, might also be misogynists, sexual deviants and abusive figures of authority. This is a major clarification and culminates in a very satisfying chapter about the Shadow and the Self, or how western psychology might supplement meditative practices. The other major problem tackled in "Integral Spirituality" resolves an anomaly in previous discussions of the european Enlightenment. In previous books, Wilber described the Enlightenment as the moment in western history when values first d

Integral Spirituality Delivers

This isn't the best book Ken Wilber has ever written. IMHO, it's SES (Sex, Ecology, Spirituality read concurrently with the notes). Wilber didn't write every book to be an SES and I don't see how it's even possible. It appears that he is now writing for serious students of his work. There is a considerable amount of necessary review of Wilber I - IV material in Integral Spirituality to understand the rest of the book. However, it's probably (probably because 1. I can't run a controlled experiment on myself 2. My 1st person perspective is not enough to generalize for everyone else) not enough of a review for anyone coming to this for the first time. The new material presented in this book is 1. Indeed new 2. Integrates the new with Wilber I - IV 3. Has an emergent quality; trancends and includes 4. Offers first person perspective, state and stage transformation exclusive of Ken's previous material.

Spirituality with intelligent thought: not a bad idea

The previous reviewer has done a great job summarizing the content in this book, so I'll just make a few simple comments. This book will probably be most enjoyed by people who have some familiarity with Ken Wilber's work (thought this is not necessary). Not a lot of time is spent defining and suiting his theory (thank goodness, since he's already done that in a hand-full of previous books). It was refreshing to see Wilber present some significant new ideas, some revisions of previous ideas, and he also began to relate different parts of his model to each other in a more dynamic fashion (thought there is still a long way to go). Like a lot of his work this reads like a summary of a much larger work (he has admitted as much about some previous books). It leaves me wishing to see the ideas in the book fleshed out in even more detail. I guess I'll just have to wait a little longer for that. No rush. If you are interested in situating the different ways of perceiving/approaching spirituality and how they might relate to each other and/or if you are interested in an intelligent attempt to engage a very broad array of human experience and understanding you will probably find the book interesting. The best comment I can make about this book and Wilber's work in general: if you engage it deeply it offers a very useful and at times beautiful vision of "reality." Oh yeah, I found the book fun to read and at times even funny, but that might just be me.