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Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World Hardcover – October 3, 2006
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Applying his highly acclaimed integral approach, Ken Wilber formulates a theory of spirituality that honors the truths of modernity and postmodernity—including the revolutions in science and culture—while incorporating the essential insights of the great religions. He shows how spirituality today combines the enlightenment of the East, which excels at cultivating higher states of consciousness, with the enlightenment of the West, which offers developmental and psychodynamic psychology. Each contributes key components to a more integral spirituality.
On the basis of this integral framework, a radically new role for the world’s religions is proposed. Because these religions have such a tremendous influence on the worldview of the majority of the earth’s population, they are in a privileged position to address some of the biggest conflicts we face. By adopting a more integral view, the great religions can act as facilitators of human development: from magic to mythic to rational to pluralistic to integral—and to a global society that honors and includes all the stations of life along the way.
- Print length240 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherShambhala
- Publication dateOctober 3, 2006
- Dimensions6.38 x 1.08 x 9.3 inches
- ISBN-101590303466
- ISBN-13978-1590303467
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Ken Wilber’s Integral Spirituality is possibly the most important spiritual book in postmodern times. Step by step, with luminous clarity, he unites all spiritual traditions without diluting the potency of any one lineage or tradition. I think this book is an antidote to the religious animosity of our times. Anyone serious about raising the level of consciousness on this planet should read this masterpiece.”—Dennis Genpo Merzel, Roshi
“A work of inspired genius. Integral Spirituality is a seminal text for 21st-century spiritual studies.” —Jim Marion, author of Putting on the Mind of Christ
“One of the most important books on spirituality written in the postmodern era. The Kabbalah of the future will rest on Ken’s work.”—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, coauthor of Jewish with Feeling and Credo of a Modern Kabbalist
“Getting acquainted with Wilber’s Integral Approach can be as thrilling as seeing the first photograph of Earthrise over the moon’s horizon. A crucial task of our time is reconciliation between the wisdom of the world’s religious traditions and the best in contemporary thought. Integral Spirituality offers a new and promising framework for tackling this task and renews my hope.” —Brother David Steindl-Rast, cofounder of www.gratefulness.org
“Integral Spirituality is a book that literally shatters spiritual confusion. Eloquent, compassionate, and deeply helpful, it should be read by every practitioner and lover of Spirit.”—Sally Kempton, author of The Heart of Meditation
“Vast in scope, profound in depth, and far reaching in its implications, Integral Spirituality is, quite simply, the most encompassing account of religion and spirituality available in our time.”—Roger Walsh, Ph.D., University of California, author of Essential Spirituality
About the Author
Ken Wilber is the author of over twenty books. He is the founder of Integral Institute, a think-tank for studying integral theory and practice, with outreach through local and online communities such as Integral Education Network, Integral Training, and Integral Spiritual Center.
Product details
- Publisher : Shambhala; 1st edition (October 3, 2006)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1590303466
- ISBN-13 : 978-1590303467
- Item Weight : 1.37 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.38 x 1.08 x 9.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,319,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #305,927 in Religion & Spirituality (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Ken Wilber is one of the most widely read and influential American philosophers of our time. His recent books include "A Brief History of Everything", "The Marriage of Sense and Soul" and "Grace and Grit".
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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.
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).
Ken's Integral Spirituality represents this process. Each work builds on its predecessors, which, while it opens each new publication to the charge of regurgitation, nevertheless necessitates a restating of the continually evolving schema. Integral Spirituality, represents this process well. In One Taste, Ken, committed to ingesting the literature of "Post-Modernism," was obviously suffering painful indigestion, an understandable reaction given the obfuscating "cleverness" of much second-generation Post-Structuralist literature. That the digestive process, separating the nourishment from the refuse, was advanced, was evident, at least to me, in a draft I read of what was planned as the second of Ken's Kosmos Trilogy, where he explored the notion of perspectives. Integral Spirituality, which focuses on a specific area, represents a further stage in this ingestive process.
Integral Spirituality is a superb book. It situates the diverse elements of spirituality in a context that takes account of the insights of Post-Modernism/ Post-Structuralism. Ken, consistent with his approach from the beginning, has argued that all serious, disciplined, approaches to "reality" have something to contribute to our understanding. Insights from the Pre-modern Great Chain, as well as perspectives from Post-Modernism, both have a significant contribution to make, particularly where their complementarity is acknowledged. However, as Ken argues, methodologies, individual insights, as well as the objects under review, need to be situated within the perspectives of the AQAL matrix in order for their contribution to be appreciated and critiqued. In this work, Ken gives numerous illustrations of how easy it is to be imprisoned by our myopia in the myth of the given, which are helpful and cautionary. He also deals, in greater detail, with the interrelationship of states and stages, including suggested ways in which the former can foster development in the latter. Ken's suggestion that specific disciplines, or approaches, do not need to be dismissed, but situated and complemented by others, is helpful.
In the book, Ken suggests general guidelines for ensuring that valuable contributions are not vitiated, or dismissed, as a consequence of falling victim to "the myth of the given." I would appreciate a specific illustration of this process. Like Ken, I value the work of "AH Almaas". The conundrum for me is how to embed Almaas approach in the AQAL matrix, which is something Ken argues could be easily done, without the re-conceptualization becoming too complex a theoretical construct to work with, especially given the fact that it is likely that the majority of those with whom Ali works are unlikely to be situated in the second tier or above. If we can only work with people - and this is my vocational situation - where they are, and by respecting where they are, and if they are captive to the given, and, in this case, if the concept of "Essence" has meaning for them, or is a useful, if theoretical, transformational fulcrum, how does one avoid reinforcing the "myth of the given" while being practically helpful, in the sense of being a midwife to state or stage transitions? I have my ideas, but I would be interested in Ken's comment!