A Brief History of Everything Paperback – February 6, 2001

This book brings transcendentalism into its proper perspective. Ken's creation of the 4 Quandrants brings enlightenment to the very concept of enlightenment, making way for a clear mind to identify the all-inclusive reality of transceding the ego and returning back into the oneness of Spirit WHILE living healthily, honestly, and with understanding in this world of form. ALL who have seen the light of their true being, even if only a glimpse, MUST read this book. It not only serves as the proverbial "finger pointing to the moon," but it also points to the science behind the moon and the steps that must occur before one can get to the moon, plus what the moon is NOT. Spirit is not merely consciousness, but it also manifests as birds, rocks, water, hair, teeth, and hands: spirit is the source of all, seen and unseen. Ken brings this to light in a most enlightening way, and gives you a few chuckles in the process. He also demonstrates the dichotemy of truth and fallacy that many Eco-based transcendentalists' and Ego-based transcendentalists' philosophies and beliefs hold.Buddhists, Taoist, Unitarians, Gnostic Christians, Spiritualists, Hindus, Sufis, Kabbalahists (more so you guys with the K than the Q) and a whole host of others will greatly appreciate Ken's years of research and practice that have culminated in this work. In short, READ THIS BOOK!

Regarding Ken Wilber's A Theory of Everything, and A Brief History of Everything. Wilber's books are very interesting, in his synthesis of latest thinking from all over the spectrum of knowledge--evolutionary biology, economics, psychology, history, physics, etc., to name a few--and his building a unified framework or world view that is profoundly inclusive of ideas from all of these fields. He is a "mapmaker" of sorts, an abstractionist and pattern-finder, plotting out how things relate in the various spheres of knowledge, and hanging them together in a single richly-textured fabric--of categories, structures, hierarchies and relationships. Everything from religion to evolution to particle physics are fit within the framework. I have some questions about the validity of some of the premises on which he hangs some of his notions, but the quadrant system he presents--and the common patterns he observes in all of these various spheres of knowledge--is quite amazing. It is interesting and thought provoking reading, if you are interested in a synthesis of the latest ideas on how "everything" hangs together (the "theory") and how it has come to be this way (the "history").

This is the first Ken Wilber book i have read. I read it because i had read somewhere else that this book espoused a viewpoint of how religions, societies, political systems, etc evolved. In fact, he does that. It is an interesting explaination. I get the sense however as i read this stuff that he is manufacturing this system. I almost feel that he is making up his own vocabulary, which generally gets in the way, to explain this.When i was much younger, i read quite a bit in the existential and sociological works area. This refreshed my memory of that exercise. You have to really dig down and spend some time thinking about this stuff to have a chance at grasping it. The question becomes whether it is worth it? Is there a benefit from spending a great deal of time reading this guy's works? I do not have simple answer. I know very little about the man himself. I guess the first question would be whether he himself has risen to some higher level of conciousness as a result of his deep thinking here? I do see some applications of thinking about various social, societal, inter-personal interactions. I just am not sure yet whether i buy into this framework of thought.

If you need an introduction to Ken Wilber’s work on Integral Theory, this, for me, seems the place to start. Though it goes into some necessary detail explaining the four quadrants and different levels, this book is more than just a summary, showing how evolution works in the quadrants of the individual (I and it) and the collective (us and its) in dealing with both exterior and interior states (stages) of evolution within social structures, communities, cultures and individualistic ideas and thoughts. I’ve not read a more comprehensive understanding of the “why” of our growth and progress as individuals and collective humanity. It answered a lot of questions I had regarding how a person or group can seemingly be at one stage of development within their belief systems and yet maintain a different stage of development in perspective or ideological system when they are often juxtaposed. I’m on to “Sex, Ecology, Spirituality” next. Thanks, Ken, for writing and for your work. I know I’ve barely scratched the tip of the iceberg.

Ken Wilber speaks to my mind and soul! It isn't light reading, but it is amazingly intellectual. I was a Liberal Studies major in college. I had a pulse on the essence, the truth of what he proposes, and explains. I am delighted to discover his works and ideas. They really speak truths that resonate with me. This was the first Ken Wilber book I have read. At the advice of a friend who turned me on to Ken I had listened to two of his books before reading this. It was excellent advice. Wade in the the pool before attempting to learn to swim. I listened to The Marriage of Sense and Soul and The One, Two Three of God before reading this. Now I am onto reading A Simple feeling of Being and listening to Kosmic Contagiousness. I must say 3 months ago I never read his stuff, but now if you ask me "who is the one person dead or alive you would like to meet and spend a day with? I would say make it a week and it is Ken Wilber!" A day just wouldn't be enough.

Livro com muito interesse, para uma prospecção futura.

Este es un excelente libro para comenzar a leer a Ken Wilber.

In Wilber’s ontology, the building blocks of reality are holons: wholes that themselves form part of greater wholes, all the way up and down. So for instance, atoms form molecules, which in turn make up cells, which constitute organisms, and so on – thus creating holarchies (hierarchies of holons). The emergence of consciousness, for Wilber, is not a particular problem, as he deems it already present in elementary particles, though much less so than in holons with greater “depth”: humans, for example. Moreover, holons have an inside and an outside, as well as an individual and collective aspect: thus one arrives at four quadrants, each with its own type of holarchy, or growth hierarchy – “I”, “We”, “It”, “Its”; with their respective lines of personal, cultural and scientific development. Spirit, which manifests as all four quadrants, is both the highest, all-encompassing stage as well as the very ground and being of everything. To grow beyond a given stage is to first differentiate from it, then to transcend and include it; if not, things are either stuck or take on a pathological form. It is central to Wilber’s “Integral Theory” that development needs to proceed in all quadrants and along all lines apace if real and healthy progress is to be made.Wilber is a great categoriser and systematiser, and the explanatory power of his conceptual map does indeed prove itself in the illuminating way he analyses various pathologies that have arisen along the way, be it scientific materialism (the denial of the interior dimension), eco-romanticism (the reduction of the spiritual to mere exterior nature), or postmodern relativism and multiculturalism (the denial of growth hierarchies). Outlining the history of both cultural and individual growth, he throws in (among other things) superb summaries of the philosophies of Plotinus and Schelling, all along the way to the Nondual realisation.To offer anything resembling an adequate critique of Wilber’s system would go entirely beyond this brief review, and I will not do so here. Just a few points: The distinction between interior and exterior, for example, does not in itself answer the deep philosophical question as to why reality is such as to motivate the distinction - it states it but does not explain it. As for the relationship between interior and exterior – between, for example, having a certain emotion and a certain brain state – Wilber says that they are “correlated”, but does not sufficiently explain how this is to be understood. His “integral vision” is meant to integrate at a higher level (“transcend and include”) what modernity differentiated but could not pull together: aesthetics, morals and science. But what that level would look like remains somewhat nebulous: “The general idea is simply that we need to exercise body, mind, soul, and spirit – and do so in self, culture and nature.” (p. 311) To be sure, he has written more on how this is to be done in later works; nevertheless, his vision seems to me to be more a promise so far than a reality.Despite his relative fame, Ken Wilber has perhaps not been given the credit he deserves: Spiritual seekers tend to regard him as too obsessively focussed on theorising, while hard-headed theoreticians are suspicious of his spiritual outlook. And yet his achievement is precisely that he has pulled spiritual theory and practice together. He has dedicated a lifetime to sifting through, organising and synthesising vast amounts of material, from both East and West, and the result is a conceptual map which in its combination of clarity and comprehensiveness is probably unmatched by any other. Certainly I have benefited a great deal in clarifying my own thinking by reference especially to his various states and stages, to their characterisations and to the principles and pitfalls that govern the transitions between them – things that had been quite muddled in my mind.Above all, whether he is quite right or not, he has surely made a significant contribution to pointing out the way towards the realisation of much higher potentials than we typically live up to, a challenge for us to get serious and grow up if we are not to destroy our planet and ourselves. I therefore think that anyone who strives for higher things would do well to be familiar, at least in outline, with Wilber’s thought, both as a fruitful theoretical framework and for its very practical implications. This book, a distillation of most of his system, is as good a starting place as any to becoming acquainted with it.

Arrived in time in perfect condition and was exactly what I wanted at a good price.

Ken Wilber is great!