No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth

by Ken Wilber

Book Overview

The most persistent form of alienation in human beings is the fragmentation of their identities into separate and distinct parts, such as subject and object, mind and body, reason and instinct, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1570627436
• ISBN13: 9781570627439
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Shambhala
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent introduction to Wilber's early thought and a synthesis of Eastern and Western approaches t

I have read many of Ken Wilber's books and this is one of the better ones. The spotlight reviews do a very good job of pointing out the shortcoming and strengths as well as summarizing Ken's general ideas. I won't repeat what they have said here, but will add my own thoughts. This book has a different tone and structure than many of Mr. Wilber's other books. There is less repitition and somehow he seems to be more accessible and lyrical in his descriptions and metaphors. If you read later Wilber, you will find it lacks some of the feeling tone of this earlier work. In this book, Ken talks about boundaries and how they are often mental constructs. For example, the boundary that defines me could be taken arbitrarily as my skin. However, I might say I have a body, rather than that I am a body. This implies perhaps that I am a mind that is associated with a body and that I'm moving the line between self and other to the head. In a similar fashion, it is possible that a may have a transpersonal experience in which case my boundary moves out beyond my skin. The idea is much like the arbitrary division between a tree's roots, limbs and branches. These divisions don't necessarily exist as distinct boundaries on the tree, but arise from the analytical nature of thought. In general, the book looks at a synthesis of Western and Eastern psychological and spiritual approaches to growth. It challenges tacit assumptions on both sides and tries to get the reader to take a broader perspective on reality while honoring what is good in each particular tradition. It is an extremely thought-provoking work and includes a lot of good scholarship. I find it to be highly complimentary to Wilber's later work and often more eloquent. If you are looking for the best, most comprehensive and readable introduction to Wilber's work, I recommend A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYTHING. If you are interested in a good developmental psychology book from Wilber's point of view, then the ATMAN PROJECT will not disappoint. It covers development from birth to enlightenment and it quite fascinating. If you own these three books you will have a good overview of Wilber's most important ideas without a lot of overlap. If you are interested primarily in his latest thinking, then INTEGRAL SPIRITUALITY may also be a good choice.

A Useful Framework for Spiritual Thinking

This is my first introduction to Wilber's writings. I had been referred to him by several people, including a well known spiritual guru in the UK who said that Mr. Wilber was likely to be recognised as the greatest philosopher of our times and that he is reputed to read several hundred books as background to his works. I had in fact been referred to the Theory of Everything but had been given this book as a present.Wilber's writing style is clear and simple, although it is true that he does repeat ideas. The latter appears more to be a way of making sure that his audience follows his ideas which, although clear, could sometimes appear to be based on complex notions to the uninitiated or "lay" reader.In essence, he lays out a framework, one of the first clear attempts I have seen to do this, that positions most if not all religious, spritual, and philosophical attempts at explaining conciousness. What does this mean? He asks the familiar question of what is the meaning of life: of "I". He then goes to show that in the contradictions that emerge in the different answers is actually a set of differences that can be explained by the level of conciousness at which the question is being addressed.He is extremely well read and uses examples from almost all of the religions, from pschology and psychoanalysis, as well as from philosophy, to develop his ideas. One unfortunately wishes that this was not a book of a hundred or so pages but rather a book of several thousand as one senses that he could go on with his discussions to far deeper levels. In fact, he suggests at the end of the many chapters further reading (worth the price of the book in itself).For someone interested in spiritualty, buddhism, mysticism, and pschology this book is a must. First because he is a great philosopher, second because he writes very well, and third because he gives one a holistic view that many other writers do not.Having read his book I feel far more comfortable wading through the rest of my reading as things seem to have a far greater clarity of perspective.

"All in one and one in all."

I used to torment a friend with the question, "Where are the edges of the universe?" Ken Wilber's second book, written nearly thirty years ago, confronts its reader with the more important question, "Where are the edges of the self?" Our lives, he observes, are largely spent drawing boundaries (p. 18) between life and death, good and bad, pleasure and pain, heaven and hell, success and failure. We "live a life of opposites" (p. 16), and we are "bewitched by boundaries" (p. 25). But "the ultimate metaphysical secret," Wilber writes, "is that there are no boundaries in the universe" (p. 30). Seeing through the illusion of opposites is liberation--"the discovery of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth" (p. 28).This book is like a sign along the road, pointing the way toward enlightenment. In his examination of "our most cherished boundary" (p. 43), self/not-self, Wilber integrates psychology, philosophy, post-modern thought, and religious doctrine of East and West. He shows how "we progressively limit our world and turn from our true nature in order to embrace boundaries" (p. 3). We believe that our skin (p. 5), mind (p. 6), or ego (p. 7) separates us from our not-self when, in fact, we "possess a remarkable spectrum of consciousness, a vast rainbow of extraordinary potentials and possibilities, and those potentials do indeed run from matter to body to soul to spirit" (p. xii). Wilber recognizes that the ordinary person "will probably listen in disbelief if it is pointed out that she has nestled in the deepest recesses of her being, a transpersonal self, a self that transcends her individuality and connects her to a world beyond conventional space and time" (p. 110).Saint Augustine wrote that the business of life "is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen." NO BOUNDARY may be read as a book about personal growth, restoring to health the eye of the heart, and "expanding one's horizons, a growth of one's boundaries, outwardly in perspective and inwardly in depth" (p. 13). Among other approaches, Wilber turns to the Buddhist doctrines of dharmadhatu, which teaches us "between every thing and event in the universe there is no boundary" (p. 38), and suffering. "A person who is beginning to sense the suffering of life," he writes, is "beginning to awaken to deeper realities, truer realities, for suffering smashes to pieces the complacency of our normal fictions about reality and forces us to become alive in a special sense--to see carefully, to feel deeply, to touch ourselves and our worlds in ways we have heretofore avoided. It may be said, and truly I think, that suffering is the first grace" (p. 76).If we learn to "see through the illusions of our boundaries," he writes, "we will see, here and now, the universe as Adam saw it before the Fall: as organic unity, a harmony of opposites, a melody of positive and negative, delight with the play of our vibrative existence. When the opposites are realized to be one, discord

Excellent synergy for Eatern Religion and Western Psychology

Perhaps one of the best books on the market trying to understand the relationship between Eastern Religious and Philosophical traditions and the development of Western Psychology. Ken Wilber develops an interesting and perhaps complete picture of the paradigms which these two world try to deal with. The book also helps to explain why the East never really developed psychology and why the West almost lost it's mystic heritage. "No Boundary" synthesised much of what I thought that I understood, but could never explain.

Matrix Thinkers Rejoice: Unity is calling you

Ken Wilbur is one of the most intelligent and cohesive thinkers I have ever read. He unites many branches of philosophy and psychology in this book. He provides understanding why so many truths contradict each other. Ponder this: (paraphrased from the text)Unity consciousness, or no-boundary consciousness, by definition has no boundary. As such, you could say that there is no boundary which seperates us from It in this moment. Logic tells us that this must be true. The only thing which prevents us from experiencing No-Boundary Awareness right now, is our resistance to it. The book is not exactly "light" reading, but if you are willing to put on your thinking cap, it is certainly fascinating