This book is one of my favorite books. I say that because it represents a higher paradigm, actually the ultimate paradigm, which means it's continually subject to even higher paradigms. Behind all teachings, concepts, ideology, religion and science is psychology. Even though there are methods of psychology restricted to particular schools of thoughts, psychology itself exists behind that. And integral psychology is the higher of paradigms. Another wards, every book read, every concept, teaching, every system, no matter how accurate, significant, reliable, and proven empirically and so forth, when taken alone as the "one truth," amounts to reductionism. In most cases, empirical observation is known as flatland, as the observable facts are without the "forgotten truth" (Huston) and subjective reality which cannot be "proven" in objective terms.
Wilber is very detailed and the pages of footnotes confirms this, each point painstakingly laid out, many times repeatedly with emphasis on another particular angle. I've read the "Atman Project," "Theory of Everything," "Eye of The Spirit," and it's recommended to also read, "Sex Ecology and Spirituality" (you should see all the footnotes in that book!), "Spectrums of Consciousness," .....Eden," "History of Everything," "A Sociable God," "Sense and Soul," there's some more too, every book is connected to the Integral psychology. This book is really an eye opener and I highly recommend it. When to comes to the transformation and development of consciousness, Wilber's is an expert on the subject, devouring all other authors on this subject, either complimenting or criticizing it in one of his publications. I used to think I perceive all of my paradigms from a larger liberal paradigm and yet now I question such simplicity. And yet can I call this book that? After all, it will not take in one model as "all," but transcend it into another.
Pardon this over simplification, especially when it comes to Wilber - It's the four quadrants that I think can be weighed against every teaching. For instance I love Fijof Capra's "Tao of Physics," and it is an awesome analysis of the web of relational links found in physics and the Eastern counterparts. And yet, the book itself is monological, another wards it's an important work but only from the Upper Right Quadrant or objective lens. And so this needs to be taken in account with the other quadrants, the individual subjective, the collective subjective molds of thoughts we think through and the collective objective systems we perceive reality through as well. So every book, whether it's Freud's awesome repression psychoanalysis, which is limited to the Upper Left Quad or individual subjective, or Jung's archetypes which is limited to mostly the Lower Left Quad or collective subjective, or Marx's manifesto, which is limited to the Lower Right Quad or collective objective social system, or David Bohm's Implicate Order, which is limited to the Upper Right , which is the Individual Objective, all these are greatly significant, yet taken alone as dominant act in reductionism. His four quadrant approach is just fantastic in relations to evaluating fairly what ever it is you are reading. I was reading the Tao of Physics and it relates so well the outline of the web of relational links in quantum and eastern thoughts and yet it only falls within the upper right quadrants. I was reading Marx - lower right, Freud - upper left and so on. No matter how wonderful the theory in psychology, in political science, in neurology or biology, in cultural linguistics - they all fall within one or maybe two of the quadrants, all pieces, but never the whole and that is the point here. None can claim absolute, as this is reductionism, while each part is a whole makes up a larger whole/part which is part of a whole/part and so forth.
Now there are streams and levels within each quadrant and Wilber can get exhaustive here if he wants to - most of the footnotes are as significant as the chapter they are noted in and he loves going on footnote tangents, worthy of every morsel.
I'm impressed in the way Wilber defines much of the grown of consciousness in Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields or collective forces, waves and streams and various levels, which can be advanced more rapidly through altered states and yet cannot be omitted or overridden but most be personally developed and experienced in all.
The chapters on premoderism to modernism, but of more significance to myself, the chapter on modernism to postmodernism was the best I've had explained. using the deconstructuralism and both the validity and reductionist aspects - truly enlightening! Wilber is a special writer and personally, I think will go down in history as significant and prolific
There are many facets to this book. One is the pre-trans fallacy, where Wilber argues against his former teaching of romanticism of returning to the pre-ego self, as here he now teaches that the later development, as in the subtle and casual realms of consciousness are areas that include and transcend the ego, a whole/part within a larger whole, as opposed to the trashing of the ego and returning to the pre-ego. It is here that Jung's archetypes represent the subtle and if a collective consciousness relating to before the ego then a pre and not a trans development.
Also argued are Stan Grof's adaptation of Rankian analysis incorporated into his analysis of the LSD experience in the return to the pre-ego and what's more argued is the ideas of returning to the birth process psychologically or having to be re-born as in a return. Instead it is a return only to re-experience in the sense of re-living or returning only to loosen the particular repression and to then move back forward to both include and transcend the ego development. You must first fully develop the ego to the strongest or highest extent before transcending it to the higher development.
I just purchased books by Jenny Wade, Michael Murphy, Jurgen Habermas, Pappa Free John, Stan Grof, and a few more in conscious development and influences on Wilber.
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