Ken Wilber Interviewed on Salon.com
Posted April 28th, 2008 by Corey W. deVos
There is a new interview between Ken and Steve being featured on Salon.com - be sure to check it out!
Link.
You are the river: An interview with Ken Wilber
Interviewed by Steve Paulson
The integral philosopher explains the difference between religion, New Age fads and the ultimate reality that traditional science can't touch.
April 28, 2008 | Ken Wilber may be the most important living philosopher you've never heard of. He's written dozens of books but you'd be hard-pressed to find his name in a mainstream magazine. Still, Wilber has a passionate -- almost cultlike -- following in certain circles, as well as some famous fans. Bill Clinton and Al Gore have praised Wilber's books. Deepak Chopra calls him "one of the most important pioneers in the field of consciousness." And the Wachowski Brothers asked Wilber, along with Cornel West, to record the commentary for the DVDs of their "Matrix" movies.
A remarkable autodidact, Wilber's books range across entire fields of knowledge, from quantum physics to developmental psychology to the history of religion. He's steeped in the world's esoteric traditions, such as Mahayana Buddhism, Vedantic Hinduism, Sufism and Christian mysticism. Wilber also practices what he preaches, sometimes meditating for hours at a stretch. His "integral philosophy," along with the Integral Institute he's founded, hold out the promise that we can understand mystical experience without lapsing into New Age mush.
Though he's often described as a New Age thinker, Wilber ridicules the notion that our minds can shape physical reality, and he's dismissive of New Age books and films like "The Tao of Physics" and "What the Bleep Do We Know." But he's also out to show that "trans-rational" states of consciousness are real, and he's dubbed the scientific materialists who doubt it "flatlanders."
Wilber's hierarchy of spiritual development -- and the not-so-subtle suggestion that he himself has reached advanced stages of enlightenment -- has also sparked a backlash. Some critics consider him an arrogant know-it-all, too smart for his own good. His dense style of writing, which is often laced with charts and diagrams, can come across as bloodless and hyper-rational.
When I reached Wilber by phone at his home in Denver, I found him to be chatty and amiable, even laughing when he described his own recent brush with death. He's a fast talker who leaps from one big idea to the next. And they are big ideas -- God and "Big Self" and why science can only tell us so much about what's real.
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ken Wilber
I have never met Ken Wilber or spoken to him.
I have ben a spiritual "seeker" for many years now, finding much confusion, frustration, and new age wishful thinking.
Thank god for Wilber. He really has "sorted it out" for me, and tens of thousands of other people.
High development on the "cognitve line"... is however, a prerequisite for understanding his work.
Like all fields of development , continuing effort is required to better understand the Integral Operating System, as he calls it..
I have read Exploring Spirituality 3 times, and find it an excellent source for understaning spirituality, without having to buy into a preconceived set of cultish or organisational ideas.
Ken Wilber has ideed reached advanced levels of spiritual enlightenment....
Check him out.
Ken Wilber is terrific!
I discovered him in January, and since then I have read 4 books, and 2 audiobooks, as well as Kosmic Consciousness. I find they are intense, like college tetbooks. I wouldn't have been able to understand this if I hadn't studied world religions, cultures, sociology, history...
I'd love to meet him someday... he doesn't get down to Atlanta much I guess.
celebrity
In this late stage of rampant commercialism people
should be wary of celebrity worship and surrendering
their own sense of empowerment to authority figures who may in
their own right be skilled thinkers,actors,leaders,philosophers,etc.
A quick look at how greed and ignorance have devoured whole the
yoga movement in Americanna should caution us to be on a guard.
Because Wilbur writes about unity consciousness does not mean
that he embodies it or that you will better understand it in your bones.
It is purely an intellectual experience. At best a starter kit with rudimentary
'pointing out' instructions.
The more people make this guy into a celebrity the fatter and
more opaque becomes the finger pointing at the moon. Confusion
ignorance and disempowerment are the consequence.
Wonderful, Ken! Wondering
I appreciate Mr. Wilber's phenominal insights into spirituality and pantheism. It will be important for him and those that "grock" his phylosophy to translate it into language that can be appreciated by the average person on the street.
a very kind, good man...
a very kind, good man... offering revolutionary clarity... tied things together for me and cleared up confusion upon confusion... had been curious about and studied many of the areas he clarifies (systems threory, post-modernism, buddhism, vedanta, various schools of psychology, christianity, mythology) and was neurotically (because i really really wanted/needed to know)(very serious) mystified as how it all fit together... reading Wilber was beyond revolutionary for me... nothing short of essential reading for 21st century "seeker" or student. will never know the clarity you are missing if you stop short of looking into Wilber... like anything else, have to see for yourself by checking it out yourself. will pay you back thousands fold for time you put into it... best investment by far "on the market" (and thats an understatement).
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