SIX YEARS AGO, in 1989, I set out across the country on my own search for wisdom. In the course of my travels, I interviewed and worked with more than two hundred psychologists, philosophers, physicians, scientists, and mystics who claimed to have the answers I was after. By the time I wrote What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America, it was clear to me that Ken Wilber was in a category by himself. He is, I believe, far and away the most cogent and penetrating voice in the recent emergence of a uniquely American wisdom.
It has been nearly twenty years since Ken Wilber published The Spectrum of Consciousness. Written when he was twenty-three, it established him, almost overnight, as perhaps the most comprehensive philosophical thinker of our times. Spectrum, which Wilber wrote in three months after dropping out of graduate school in biochemistry, made the case that human development unfolds in waves or stages that extend beyond those ordinarily recognized by Western psychology. Only by successfully navigating each developmental wave, Wilber argued, is it possible first to develop a healthy sense of individuality, and then ultimately to experience a broader identity that transcends—and includes—the personal self. In effect, Wilber married Freud and the Buddha—until then divided by seemingly irreconcilable differences. And this was just the first of his many original contributions.
The title of this book is deceptively breezy. A Brief History of Everything delivers just what it promises. It covers vast historical ground, from the Big Bang right up to the desiccated postmodern present. Along the way, it seeks to make sense of the often contradictory ways that human beings have evolved—physically, emotionally, intellectually, morally, spiritually. And for all its breadth, the book is remarkably lean and compact.
Indeed, what sets A Brief History of Everything apart both from Spectrum and from Wilber’s eleven subsequent books is that it not only extends the ideas advanced in those earlier works, but presents them now in a simple, accessible, conversational format. Most of Wilber’s books require at least some knowledge of the major Eastern contemplative traditions and of Western developmental psychology. A Brief History is addressed to a much broader audience—those of us grappling to find wisdom in our everyday lives, but bewildered by the array of potential paths to truth that so often seem to contradict one another—and to fall short in fundamental ways. For those readers who want still more when they finish this book, I recommend Wilber’s recent opus, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, which explores many of the ideas here in more rigorous detail.
No one I’ve met has described the path of human development—the evolution of consciousness—more systematically or comprehensively than Wilber. In the course of my journey, I ran into countless people who made grand claims for a particular version of the truth they were promoting. Almost invariably, I discovered, they’d come to their conclusions by choosing up sides, celebrating one set of capacities and values while excluding others.
Wilber has taken a more embracing and comprehensive approach, as you will soon discover. In the pages that follow, he lays out a coherent vision that honors and incorporates the truths from a vast and disparate array of fields—physics and biology; the social and the systems sciences; art and aesthetics; developmental psychology and contemplative mysticism—as well as from opposing philosophical movements ranging from Neoplatonism to modernism, idealism to postmodernism.
What Wilber recognizes is that a given truth-claim may be valid without being complete, true but only so far as it goes, and this must be seen as part of other and equally important truths. Perhaps the most powerful new tool he brings to bear in A Brief History is his notion that there are four “quadrants” of development. By looking at hundreds of developmental maps that have been created by various thinkers over the years—maps of biological, psychological, cognitive, and spiritual development, to name just a few—it dawned on Wilber that they were often describing very different versions of “truth.” Exterior forms of development, for example, are those that can be measured objectively and empirically. But what Wilber makes clear is that this form of truth will only take you so far. Any comprehensive development, he points out, also includes an interior dimension—one that is subjective and interpretive, and depends on consciousness and introspection. Beyond that, Wilber saw, both interior and exterior development take place not just individually, but in a social or cultural context. Hence the four quadrants.
None of these forms of truth, he argues in a series of vivid examples, can be reduced to another. A behaviorist, to take just a single case, cannot understand a person’s interior experience solely by looking at his external behavior—or at its physiological correlates. The truth will indeed set you free, but only if you recognize that there are many kinds of truth.
A Brief History of Everything operates on several levels. It’s the richest map I’ve yet found of the world we live in, and of men and women’s place in it. In the dialectic of progress, Wilber suggests, each stage of evolution transcends the limits of its predecessor, but simultaneously introduces new ones. This is a view that both dignifies and celebrates the ongoing struggle of any authentic search for a more conscious and complete life. “No epoch is finally privileged,” Wilber writes. “We are all tomorrow’s food. The process continues, and Spirit is found in the process itself, not in any particular epoch or time or place.”
At another level, Wilber serves in A Brief History as a demystifier and a debunker—a discerning critic of the teachers, techniques, ideas, and systems that promise routes to encompassing truth, but are more commonly incomplete, misleading, misguided, or distorted. Too often we ourselves are complicit. Fearful of any change and infinitely capable of self-deception, we are too quick to latch on to simple answers and quick fixes, which finally just narrow our perspective and abort our development.
Wilber’s is a rare voice. He brings to the task both a sincere heart and a commitment to truth. He widens his lens to take in the biggest possible picture, but he refuses to see all the elements as equal. He makes qualitative distinctions. He values depth. He’s unafraid to make enemies, even as he is respectful of many voices. The result is that A Brief History of Everything sheds a very original light, not just on the cosmic questions in our lives, but on dozens of confusing and unsettling issues of our times—the changing roles of men and women; the continuing destruction of the environment; diversity and multiculturalism; repressed memory and childhood sexual abuse; and the role of the Internet in the information age—among many others.
I cannot imagine a better way to be introduced to Ken Wilber than this book. It brings the debate about evolution, consciousness, and our capacity for transformation to an entirely new level. More practically, it will save you many missteps and wrong turns on whatever wisdom path you choose to take.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYTHING is one of the most popular books I have written, which is heartening in that it contains a good deal of the integrative vision that I have tried to develop. “Integrative” simply means that this approach attempts to include as many important truths from as many disciplines as possible—from the East as well as the West, from premodern and modern and postmodern, from the hard sciences of physics to the tender sciences of spirituality. As one critic put it, this integrative approach “honors and incorporates more truth than any approach in history.” I would obviously like to believe that is true, but you can best be the judge of that as you read the following pages.
And even if it were true, so what? What does an “integrative approach” even mean? And what does it have to do with me in today’s world? Well, let’s have a quick look at what it might mean in business, science, and spirituality.
Scholars of the many and various human cultures—premodern, modern, and postmodern—have increasingly been struck by their rich diversity: the beautiful, multicultural, many-hued rainbow of humanity, with multiple differences in religion, ethics, values, and beliefs. But many scholars have also been struck by some of the similarities of these cultures as well. Certain patterns in language, cognition, and human physiology, for example, are quite similar wherever they appear. Humans everywhere have the capacity to form images, symbols, and concepts, and although the contents of those concepts often vary, the capacity is universal. These universal and cross-cultural patterns tell us some very important things about the human condition, because if you have found something shared by most or even all humans, you have probably found something of profound significance.
What if we took all of these common patterns and put them together? What kind of picture would we get?
This would be very much like the human Genome Project (the complete mapping of the genes of human DNA), except that this would be a type of human Consciousness and Culture Project: the mapping of all those cultural capacities that humans everywhere have access to. This would give us a rather extraordinary map of human potentials, a great map of human possibilities. And it would further help us to recognize any of those potentials that we—that you and I—might not yet be fulfilling. It would be a map of our own higher stages of growth and a map of our own greater opportunities.
You might be surprised to know that a good deal of this Consciousness and Culture Project has in fact been completed. The result of the research of thousands of workers from around the world, the Consciousness and Culture Project has already disclosed a profound range of higher states of consciousness, stages of growth, patterns of spirituality, and forms of science that often dwarf the more restricted versions sanctioned in our present culture of scientific materialism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the postmodern celebration of surfaces.
As you will see, these greater potentials and possibilities are a crucial ingredient in the bigger picture that is presented in the following pages—a bigger picture that is a kind of “theory of everything.” A “theory of everything” is just that: if we assume that all the world’s cultures have important but partial truths, then how would all of those truths fit together into a richly woven tapestry, a unity-in-diversity, a multicolored yet single rainbow?
And once that rainbow is clear, how does it apply to me? Perhaps very simply: a more accurate, comprehensive map of human potentials will directly translate into a more effective business, politics, medicine, education, and spirituality. On the other hand, if you have a partial, truncated, fragmented map of the human being, you will have a partial, truncated, fragmented approach to business, medicine, spirituality, and so on. In garbage, out garbage.
Thus, no matter what your field of endeavor, a “theory of everything” will likely make it much more effective. So it is not surprising that this more comprehensive map of human possibilities has seen an explosion of interest in virtually all fields, including politics, business, education, health care, law, ecology, science, and religion. For those interested in some of these recent applications, see A Theory of Everything—An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality.
But the basics are all here, in this volume, which will give you all that you need of this comprehensive map to see if it is useful for you. And although this comprehensive map might sound complex, once you get the hang of it—as I will try to show in the following pages—it is surprisingly simple and easy to use, and by the time you finish reading, you will have all the tools you need to begin applying it if you wish.
One last point: the whole idea of a more comprehensive map is to enrich, not deny, your own present understanding. Some people are threatened by a more integral approach, because they imagine that it somehow means that what they are doing now is wrong. But this would be like a great French chef being threatened by Mexican cooking. We are simply adding new styles, not condemning those that already exist. I love French cooking, but I also like Mexican. They are not going to cease being what they are if both are fully appreciated. Most of the resistance to an integral approach comes from French chefs who despise Mexican cooking—an attitude that is perhaps less than helpful.
And so, in the following pages, you will find an international style of “cooking”—a universal smorgasbord of human possibilities, all arrayed as a shimmering rainbow, an extraordinary spectrum of your own deeper and higher potentials. This map is simply an invitation to explore the vast terrain of your own consciousness, the almost unlimited potentials of your own being and becoming, the nearly infinite expanse of your own primordial awareness, and thus arrive at that place which you have never left: your own deepest nature and your own original face.
In the following pages I do not offer any formulas for getting rich quickly or for discovering immediate solutions to all personal problems. What is explained are reliable, tested and verified ways to experience satisfying spiritual growth and live happily and effectively. My thesis is simple: for prosperity to be real or authentic, it must be based on an awareness of spiritual realities and on compliant cooperation with the principles which enable it to be experienced.
In 1994, a department of the United Nations published a progress report to provide information about global conditions and human affairs. It reported that, in comparison to conditions fifty years previously, more people had access to food and literacy levels were higher. Even so, almost two billion people, most of them in economically undeveloped regions of the world, were impoverished. Approximately one third of the planet’s human inhabitants were illiterate. The gap between rich people and poor people had widened. In some countries, the average annual income per person was less than three hundred dollars. Ten countries had nearly seventy percent of the world’s poorest people.
Other sources report that global human population is increasing at the rate of eighty million people every year: approximately six and a half million a month; one and a half million each week; more than two hundred thousand each day. According to a report published by World Watch Institute, there are already some signs of faltering growth trends in countries that were expected to have the greatest population increases in the near future. Population in thirty-two industrialized countries has stabilized because of declining birthrates.
A few countries, including Russia, Italy, the United States, and Japan, have declining populations. In some developing countries where population growth will probably be slower in a few years, more people are dying. India, Pakistan, and Nigeria, for instance, are beginning to experience difficulty in feeding, housing, and educating increasing numbers of children while having to confront the challenges of falling water tables, deforestation, and soil erosion caused in part by rapid population growth in recent decades. Some observers of global trends are of the opinion that human population growth will slow down because developing countries will begin to encourage smaller families or unrestrained birth rates will result in the spread of famine and disease. The major threats to human security on the planet are conflicts within nations because of socioeconomic deprivation and differences, and ethnic and religious intolerance.
The period in human history through which we are now passing is characterized by rapid changes in the outer realm, while indications of accelerated intellectual growth and spiritual awakening are increasingly observable in the transformations occurring in the social order. That we are being confronted by effects of powerful evolutionary causes is obvious to anyone who is sufficiently perceptive to examine the evidence. I look upon the world scene with an abiding sense of wonder and am serenely optimistic about our near and distant future possibilities. I hope you are viewing the unfolding drama of life with a thankful heart and pronouncing it good.
Because of these unfolding circumstances, and the widespread interest in matters related to facilitating expanded states of consciousness and improving functional abilities, the information in this edition of An Easy Guide to Meditation will, I feel, be helpful to many readers. The first book issued under this title was published in 1978 and distributed in many editions in several countries. Now, to make the message even more widely available, the text has been newly written, the format is designed for convenient reference, and the price is within the means of anyone with a sincere interest in the subject.
After reading this book, and putting into practice some of the recommended routines, please consider sharing copies with people whom you know to be interested in enhancing their lives. Having a harmonious relationship with the Presence and Power that produced the realm of nature and enlivens it, and which, ultimately, determines satisfying outcomes for all worthwhile endeavors, is certainly a most favorable condition for all of us.
During my early teenage years I pondered the meaning of life and aspired to clearly know it. Near the end of my eighteenth year I was fortunate to meet my guru Paramahansa Yogananda in Los Angeles, California, and to be accepted by him for training. Now, as I write these words, forty-five years have passed; each has provided invaluable opportunities for continued spiritual growth and service. I have traveled the world to share this information and have discovered that, behind the screens of social fabric and cultural influences, all people are, at the core, the same: that one, divine essence is the reality of us all.
Everything I recommend in these pages, I do, or have done. The basic principles, practices, and guidelines are universal. I did not originate them. They are not mine, nor do they belong to anyone. Some of the insights shared here, and explanations of how I view our relationship with the Infinite, are my own because I, like everyone else, see from my personal perspective. Take to heart whatever is meaningful to you. Use your intellectual skills to determine the meaning of whatever is not immediately clear to you. Use your intuitive abilities to see beyond words and concepts, to truth — that which is factual. Doing this is the only approach to understanding the processes of life that will satisfy your heart.
If you are a beginning meditator, the guidelines in the early chapters will be sufficient to enable you to practice with benefit. If you a more experienced meditator, review your practice to be sure you are doing it correctly, then use the various techniques and procedures to improve your meditative skills. Even if you are not inspired when you first sit to meditate, sit still anyway, and wait in the silence. In time, your innate, soul urge to have awareness restored to flawless clarity will implement the meditation process and direct its actions to a successful conclusion.
Planet Earth is our present dwelling place but it is not our permanent abode. Where did we come from? Why are we here? What are we supposed to do while here? What will become of us when we depart this world? How can we awaken to higher understanding and live with meaningful purpose? These are questions we should ask until the true answers are known. I pray that the allness of life becomes known to you, and that all your needs are met and your destiny is fulfilled.
Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (English Edition)
From one of America’s most brilliant writers, a New York Times bestselling journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness.
At the heart of Buddhism is a simple claim: The reason we suffer—and the reason we make other people suffer—is that we don’t see the world clearly. At the heart of Buddhist meditative practice is a radical promise: We can learn to see the world, including ourselves, more clearly and so gain a deep and morally valid happiness.
In this “sublime” (The New Yorker), pathbreaking book, Robert Wright shows how taking this promise seriously can change your life—how it can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and how it can deepen your appreciation of beauty and of other people. He also shows why this transformation works, drawing on the latest in neuroscience and psychology, and armed with an acute understanding of human evolution.
This book is the culmination of a personal journey that began with Wright’s landmark book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal, and deepened as he immersed himself in meditative practice and conversed with some of the world’s most skilled meditators. The result is a story that is “provocative, informative and...deeply rewarding” (The New York Times Book Review), and as entertaining as it is illuminating. Written with the wit, clarity, and grace for which Wright is famous, Why Buddhism Is True lays the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age and shows how, in a time of technological distraction and social division, we can save ourselves from ourselves, both as individuals and as a species.
Any book with a title like Why Buddhism Is True should have some careful qualification somewhere along the way. We might as well get that over with:
1. I’m not talking about the “supernatural” or more exotically metaphysical parts of Buddhism—reincarnation, for example—but rather about the naturalistic parts: ideas that fall squarely within modern psychology and philosophy. That said, I am talking about some of Buddhism’s more extraordinary, even radical, claims—claims that, if you take them seriously, could revolutionize your view of yourself and of the world. This book is intended to get you to take these claims seriously.
2. I’m of course aware that there’s no one Buddhism, but rather various Buddhist traditions, which differ on all kinds of doctrines. But this book focuses on a kind of “common core”—fundamental ideas that are found across the major Buddhist traditions, even if they get different degrees of emphasis, and may assume somewhat different form, in different traditions.
3. I’m not getting into super-fine-grained parts of Buddhist psychology and philosophy. For example, the Abhidhamma Pitaka, a collection of early Buddhist texts, asserts that there are eighty-nine kinds of consciousness, twelve of which are unwholesome. You may be relieved to hear that this book will spend no time trying to evaluate that claim.
4. I realize that true is a tricky word, and asserting the truth of anything, certainly including deep ideas in philosophy or psychology, is a tricky business. In fact, one big lesson from Buddhism is to be suspicious of the intuition that your ordinary way of perceiving the world brings you the truth about it. Some early Buddhist writings go so far as to raise doubts about whether such a thing as “truth” ultimately exists. On the other hand, the Buddha, in his most famous sermon, lays out what are commonly called “The Four Noble Truths,” so it’s not as if the word true has no place in discussions of Buddhist thought. In any event, I’ll try to proceed with appropriate humility and nuance as I make my argument that Buddhism’s diagnosis of the human predicament is fundamentally correct, and that its prescription is deeply valid and urgently important.
5. Asserting the validity of core Buddhist ideas doesn’t necessarily say anything, one way or the other, about other spiritual or philosophical traditions. There will sometimes be logical tension between a Buddhist idea and an idea in another tradition, but often there won’t be. The Dalai Lama has said, “Don’t try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a better Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.”
NEW YORK, April 18, 2018 — Author Robert Wright discusses insights from his recent book Why Buddhism Is True with Juju Chang of ABC News. (1 hr., 19 sec.)
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (英語) ペーパーバック – 2001/2/1
Eckhart Tolle (著)
The bestselling self-help book of its generation - which has now sold over a million copies in the UK alone. Eckhart Tolle demonstrates how to live a healthier and happier life by living in the present moment. To make the journey into The Power of Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle offers simple language and a question and answer format to show us how to silence our thoughts and create a liberated life. Surrender to the present moment, where problems do not exist. It is here we find our joy, are able to embrace our true selves and discover that we are already complete and perfect. If we are able to be fully present and take each step in the Now we will be opening ourselves to the transforming experience of The Power of Now. It is in your hands. Discover The Power of Now.
The Power of Nowの原文も読んでみました。長年にわたりいろいろな悟りに関する本を読んだり実践してきましたが、今ひとつ納得出来ない状態でした。この本を読んで、ああそうだったのかと今までの疑問が溶けてしまいました。[Power of now]を実践するには、相当時間がかかるとは思いますが、明確な行くべき方向がわかったので、安心感のある生活に変わっていきつつあります。勝手に働き続ける思考（エゴ）から脱出する方法もわかりやすく書かれています。
Oprah Winfrey Interviews "THE POWER OF NOW" & "A NEW EARTH" Author Eckhart Tolle (SuperSoul Series)
The Power of Now is essential reading, and Eckhart's follow-up books (Stillness Speaks and A New Earth) explain the core principle that has resonated so deeply with me and thousands of others:
The only moment we ever really have is this one. Happiness isn't in the future or the past, but in mindful awareness of the present.
Spiritual Teacher and author Eckhart Tolle was born in Germany and educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge.
At the age of twenty-nine a profound inner transformation radically changed the course of his life. The next few years were devoted to understanding, integrating and deepening that transformation, which marked the beginning of an intense inward journey.
Later, he began to work in London with individuals and small groups as a counselor and spiritual teacher. Since 1995 he has lived in Vancouver, Canada.
Eckhart Tolle is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Power of Now (translated into 33 languages) and the highly acclaimed follow-up A New Earth, which are widely regarded as two of the most influential spiritual books of our time.
There is an eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. Many people use the word God to describe it; I often call it Being. The word Being explains nothing, but nor does God. Being, however, has the advantage that it is an open concept. It does not reduce the infinite invisible to a finite entity. It is impossible to form a mental image of it. Nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being. It is your very presence, and it is immediately accessible to you as the feeling of your own presence. So it is only a small step from the word Being to the experience of Being.
BEING IS NOT ONLY BEYOND BUT ALSO DEEP WITHIN every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don’t seek to grasp it with your mind. Don’t try to understand it.
You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.
To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of “feeling-realization” is enlightenment.
The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form.
The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation, from yourself and from the world around you. You then perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciously, as an isolated fragment. Fear arises, and conflicts within and without become the norm.
The greatest obstacle to experiencing the reality of your connectedness is identification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive. Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering.
Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate “other.” You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is.
The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly — you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.
It’s almost as if you were possessed without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself.
THE BEGINNING OF FREEDOM is the realization that you are not the possessing entity — the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.
You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind.
The Suicide of the West author explains his anti-Trumpism, evolution on culture-war issues, and growing attraction to libertarianism.
In his new book, Suicide of the West, National Review's Jonah Goldberg talks of what he calls "the Miracle"—the immense and ongoing increase in human wealth, health, freedom, and longevity ushered in during the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution.
At turns sounding like Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter, and economist Deirdre McCloskey, Goldberg writes, "In a free market, money corrodes caste and class and lubricates social interaction….Capitalism is the most cooperative system ever created for the peaceful improvement of peoples' lives. It has only a single fatal flaw: It doesn't feel like it."
As his book's title suggests, Goldberg isn't worried the world is running out of resources. He's troubled by our unwillingness to defend, support, and improve customs, laws, and institutions that he believes are crucial to human flourishing.
"Decline is a choice," he writes, not a foregone conclusion. While he lays most of the blame for our current problems on a Romantic left emanating from Rousseau, he doesn't stint on the responsibility of his own tribe of conservative fear-mongers and reactionaries.
