Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution

by Ken Wilber

Book Overview

Hailed as "one of the most significant books ever published," this work of far-reaching vision is a comprehensive exploration of the evolution of human consciousness In this tour de force of scholarship and vision, Ken Wilber traces the course of evolution from matter to life to mind and describes the common patterns that evolution takes in all three of these domains. From the emergence of mind, he traces the evolution of human consciousness through...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1570627444
• ISBN13: 9781570627446
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Shambhala
• Length: 880 Pages
• Weight: 2.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.3" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

SES Will be Written About 100 Years from Now

This is quite possibly the most profound and important book I've read in my life. Wilber has written 17 books (I've read 14 of them), and this is without a doubt, his magnum opus. SES starts with a unique systems theory with swift, elegant explanation, superior examples and demonstrations of knowledge. The kicker comes about 100 pages into the book where Wilber applies the systems theory to consciousness development and anthropological evolution. He then shows how this same pattern of existence develops and envelopes universally through all three modes of awareness, demonstrated through Plato's "Big Three" (the Good, the True, the Beautiful). From there, the 2nd half the book takes you on a philosophical tour de force from Plato all the way to Hegel and Feuerbach, leaving no ideology or pundit unscathed, or perhaps unexhalted; Wilber highlights important contributions of almost every philosophical mind, prejudice and partisan towards no one. Ken fills every page with magnificent commentary, critique and insight from cover to cover. Wilber literally leaves out nothing (theoretically, not factually). There is nothing--save some quantum mechanical theories--that escape his scope and integration. Wilber is the most profound and important thinker in the world today. And it's not only because his ideas are so revolutionary--to the contrary, most of his ideas have been developed before--but it's how plainly he weaves EVERYTHING together into a comprehensable and bite-sized (if you can call 830 pages bite-sized) book. He does this primarily through fantastic writing. He repeats important points in new ways, uses appropriate metaphors, and fleshes everything out rationally for accessibility; not to mention he's quite humorous at times. I can't overstate the importance of this book. I read the critical reviews below and I see nothing but misunderstandings and flawed logic. For instance, Ken never implies religion is the answer to the "flatland" of modernity. He simply states that he BELIEVES transpersonal awareness is the next evolutionary step in consciousness, he never by any means claims it is necessary (in either mythic or mystic forms). An important side note: this is not a good starting point for Wilber readers. If you've never read a Wilber book, start at "A Brief History of Everything" as a sufficient primer.

It will blow your paradigm- over and over again...

Ken Wilber's "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution", is my favorite book. And that isn't a title I award lightly.SES is quite possibly the first attempt at putting together a syncretic, evolutionary worldview since Hegel's "Phenomenology". In an age when truth has been declared dead and multiple perspectives rule the roost, where philosophy lives in the shadow of Nietzsche's madman, Wilber, in this striking volume, challenges post-modernity. Unlike other challengers, arguing for a retreat to conservatism and cynical (or mythic-literal) traditionalism, Ken proposes a different idea- we need to integrate the strengths of Post-modernity (a recognition of the other, a bird's eye view of ideology, and a profound social and ecological awareness), Modernity (scientific rationality, empiricism, democracy), and Pre-modernity (religious wisdom and cultural bounty) into one complete, "integral" package.Sounds like a tough mission for any thinker to take on. Of course, Wilber- living outside the academia, blending his scholastic persuits with Zen practice, and doing his best to live his own philosophy- is no ordinary thinker. In the 551 pages of text (not including extensive endnotes and bibliography), Wilber essentially lays out his "theory of everything". Based in the psychological work of Freud, Piaget, Kohlberg, Maslow, Jung, Gebser, and other thinkers, Wilber first constructs a socio-psychological map of civilization's evolution to date, and shows how it integrates with hard scientific data. Dividing the world into subject and object, Wilber shows how modern empiricism has attempted to colonize the subjective sphere by trying to render it irrelevant- a condition he refers to as "flatland". After providing this analysis, Wilber takes a gander at the cognitive structures still lying in our future, through several examples of such advanced minds- Emerson, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, Ramana Maharshi, and Meister Eckhart. After that, Wilber takes on the disease of the Post-modern world and it's primary culprits- a dissociation between what he refers to as the "Eco" camps (romantic, back-to-nature, web-of-life, holistic) and the "Ego" camps (rationalistic, modernistic, atomistic, disassociating the mind and body), and how these two contradictory (and self-contradictory) worldviews are becoming extremely destructive- in political discourse, academia, and the world in general.Of course, as has been said before about SES, it's very hard to sum up in a simple outline- the book itself is practically a 500+ page outline. The main thrust of the work is to construct a coherent philosophy for the 21st century, and thus Wilber spends little time on details (which will be covered further in the next two volumes, Kosmic Karma and Creativity and The Spirit of Post-Modernity). But, that weakness aside, Wilber has proven himself the finest philosophical mind of the early 21st century, and the first great step beyond Foucault, Derri

Brilliant!

Ken Wilber is probably one of the most brilliant modern thinkers of our time. Among all of the books he has written, this one is "The One" that really explains it all. What an inspiring piece of work! He brings together work in philosophy, spirituality, psychology, sociology, biology, physics and all other fields of study and convincingly explains that it all fits together if we look at it through this framework that he has developed. If there is a philosophical book you should read, this is the one to pick up. If you are not ready for such a comprehensive detailed discussion, read the other absolutely incredible book called "The Ever-transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato. The content is very similar but everything is explained in a much simpler (and shorter) way. Both of these books really deserve some mega-awards!

Wilber integrates and transcends.

Emerson wrote of Shakespeare, "his mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not see," and the same may be said of Ken Wilber. Wilber wrote SEX, ECOLOGY, SPIRITUALITY (hereafter, "SES") during a "three-year silent retreat"--"I lived the hermit's life; I saw exactly four people in four years," he recalls (p. xii), and in SES he lays the foundation for his integral philosophy, which he develops more fully in his subsequent books. Wilber was seeking "a world philosophy," in writing SES, he explains. "I sought an integral philosophy, one that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details--that is finitely impossible, but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos: a world philosophy, an integral philosophy" (p. xii).In SES, Wilber unfolds "a broad orienting map of men and women's place in the larger Kosmos (of matter, life, mind, and spirit)" that "naturally touches on a great number of topics that have recently become 'hot,' from the ecological crisis to feminism, from the meaning of modernity and postmodernity to the nature of "liberation" in relation to sex, gender, race, class, creed; to the nature of techno-economic developments and their relation to various worldviews; to the various spritual and wisdom traditions the world over that have offered telling suggestions as to our place in a larger scheme of things" (p. 6). SES is a "cry of anger and anguish" (p. xxiii) against homogenized "flatland" paradigms, and is likely to alarm ecophilosophers, feminists, and fundamentalists, alike. We are on the "verge of planetary transformation" (p. 204), and Wilber is investing his hope in the "integrative power of vision-logic." He writes, "it is vision-logic with its centauric/planetary worldview that, in my opinion, holds the only hope for the integration of the biosphere and noosphere, the supranational organization of planetary consciousness, the genuine recognition of ecological balance, the unrestrained and unforced forms of global discourse, the nondominating and noncoercive forms of federated states, the unrestrained flow of worldwide communicative exchange, the production of genuine world citizens, and the enculturation of female agency (i.e., the integration of male and female in both the noosphere and biosphere)--all of which, in my opinon, is nevertheless simply the platform for the truly interesting forms of higher and transpersonal states of consciousness lying yet in our collective future--if there is one" (p. 192). Wilber covers a lot of ground in SES, making it difficult to summarize. Immensely challenging at times, and drawn from "voluminous research material," at the center of Wilber's philosophy, "surfaces extend; interiors intend

Diving Judges Take "Degree of Difficulty" into Account

I believe SES is so valuable not only because Ken Wilber has taken the time to master the essential findings of a dozen different academic disciplines, but because he then combines this brilliant scholarship with the insight of a meditation master. In India these rare individuals are called "Pandits" - scholars who have fully opened the "eye of contemplation." Mystics usually do not even attempt to bring the ineffable truths they discover in transverbal states of consciousness into the world of conceptual discourse and sensory evidence. Scientists almost always assume that rationality is the highest faculty we have available to understand our world, and ignore the vast areas of human experience that cannot be easily weighed or measured. Because Wilber is attempting the extraordinarily difficult feat of integrating these two paths, I think we should keep this "degree of difficulty" in mind as we evaluate his work. He may not always keep his toes perfectly pointed as he enters the water, but how many other theoreticians currently working could include anywhere NEAR this many moves (truths) in a single dive (system of thought?) SES (and Integral Theory as a whole) is far from perfect, and Wilber himself certainly is far from perfect (whatever "perfect" might mean)- but if you care about developing a more compassionate, courageous and effective approach to the daunting challenges facing humanity in the coming decades, you will not want to ignore the tremendous intellectual goldmine he offers in SES.