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A
Brief History of Everything
is an altogether friendly and accessible account of men and women's place in a
universe of sex, soul, and spirit, written by an author of whom
New
York Times
reporter
Tony Schwartz says: "No one has described the path to wisdom better than
Ken Wilber."
Wilber
examines the course of evolution as the unfolding manifestation of Spirit, from
matter to life to mind, including the higher stages of spiritual development
where Spirit becomes conscious of itself. In each of these domains, there are
recurring patterns, and by looking closely at them, we can learn much about the
predicament of our world—and the direction we must take if "global
transformation" is to become a reality.
Wilber
offers a series of striking and original views on many topics of current
interest and controversy, including the gender wars, modern liberation
movements, multiculturalism, ecology and environmental ethics, and the conflict
between this-worldly and otherworldly approaches to spirituality. The result is
an extraordinary and exhilarating ride through the Kosmos in the company of one
of the great thinkers of our time.
An altogether friendly and accessible account of men and women's place in the universe of sex, soul and spirit, this vivid summary of the new and emerging American wisdom provides radical commentary on hot topics of the day, from political correctness to spiritual enlightenment.
The
Pattern That Connects
Q:
So we'll start the story with the Big Bang itself, and then trace out the
course of evolution from matter to life to mind. And then, with the emergence
of mind, or human consciousness, we'll look at the five or six major epochs of
human evolution itself. And all of this is set in the context of
spirituality—of what spirituality means, of the various forms that it has
historically taken, and the forms that it might take tomorrow. Sound right?
KW:
Yes, it's sort of a brief history of everything. This sounds altogether
grandiose, but it's based on what I call "orienting generalizations," which
simplifies the whole thing enormously.
Q:
An orienting generalization is what, exactly?
KW:
If we look at the various fields of human knowledge—from physics to biology to
psychology, sociology, theology, and religion—certain broad, general themes
emerge, about which there is actually very little disagreement.
For
example, in the sphere of moral development, not everybody agrees with the
details of Lawrence Kohlberg's moral stages, nor with the details of Carol
Gilligan's reworking of Kohlberg's scheme. But there is general and ample
agreement that human moral development goes through at least
three
broad stages.
The
human at birth is not yet socialized into any sort of moral system—it is
"preconventional." The human then learns a general moral scheme that
represents the basic values of the society it is raised in—it becomes
"conventional." And with even further growth, the individual may come to
reflect on his or her society and thus gain some modest distance from it, gain
a capacity to criticize it or reform it—the individual is to some degree
"postconventional."
Thus,
although the actual details and the precise meanings of that developmental
sequence are still hotly debated, everybody pretty much agrees that something
like those three broad stages do indeed occur, and occur universally. These are
orienting
generalizations:
they show us, with a great deal of agreement, where the important forests are
located, even if we can't agree on how many trees they contain.
My
point is that if we take these types of largely-agreed-upon orienting
generalizations from the various branches of knowledge—from physics to biology
to psychology to theology—and if we string these orienting generalizations
together, we will arrive at some astonishing and often profound conclusions,
conclusions that, as extraordinary as they might be, nonetheless embody nothing
more than our already-agreed-upon knowledge. The beads of knowledge are already
accepted: it is only necessary to string them together into a necklace.
Q:
And so in these discussions we will build toward some sort of necklace.
KW:
Yes, in a sense. In working with broad orienting generalizations, we can
suggest a broad orienting map of the place of men and women in relation to
Universe, Life, and Spirit. The details of this map we can all fill in as we
like, but its broad outlines really have an awful lot of supporting evidence,
culled from the orienting generalizations, simple but sturdy, from the various
branches of human knowledge.
| Foreword | ||
| A Note to the Reader | ||
| Introduction | 1 | |
| 1 | The Pattern That Connects | 17 |
| The Kosmos | 18 | |
| Twenty Tenets: The Patterns That Connect | 19 | |
| Agency and Communion | 21 | |
| Transcendence and Dissolution | 22 | |
| Four Drives of All Holons | 23 | |
| Creative Emergence | 24 | |
| Holarchy | 27 | |
| The Way of All Embrace | 30 | |
| 2 | The Secret Impulse | 31 |
| Higher and Lower | 32 | |
| Depth and Span | 33 | |
| Kosmic Consciousness | 38 | |
| The Spectrum of Consciousness | 40 | |
| 3 | All Too Human | 44 |
| Foraging | 45 | |
| Horticultural | 48 | |
| Agrarian | 50 | |
| Industrial | 53 | |
| 4 | The Great Postmodern Revolution | 57 |
| The Postmodern Watershed | 58 | |
| Two Paths in Postmodernity | 61 | |
| On the Edge of Tomorrow | 64 | |
| Transcendence and Repression | 66 | |
| 5 | The Four Corners of the Kosmos | 69 |
| The Four Quadrants | 71 | |
| Intentional and Behavioral | 75 | |
| Cultural and Social | 77 | |
| An Example | 80 | |
| The Shape of Things to Come | 82 | |
| 6 | The Two Hands of God | 84 |
| Mind and Brain | 85 | |
| The Left and Right Hand Paths | 87 | |
| The Monological Gaze: The Key to the Right Hand Paths | 88 | |
| Interpretation: The Key to the Left Hand Paths | 90 | |
| What Does That Dream Mean? | 91 | |
| Social Science versus Cultural Understanding | 95 | |
| Hermeneutics | 97 | |
| All Interpretation Is Context-Bound | 98 | |
| Nonhuman Interpretation | 99 | |
| Spiritual Interpretation | 101 | |
| 7 | Attuned to the Kosmos | 105 |
| Propositional Truth | 106 | |
| Truthfulness | 107 | |
| Justness | 112 | |
| Functional Fit | 114 | |
| Conclusion: The Four Faces of Spirit | 118 | |
| 8 | The Good, the True, and the Beautiful | 120 |
| The Big Three | 120 | |
| The Good News: Differentiation of the Big Three | 123 | |
| The Bad News: Dissociation of the Big Three | 126 | |
| The Task of Postmodernity: Integration of the Big Three | 130 | |
| The Spiritual Big Three | 131 | |
| 9 | The Evolution of Consciousness | 137 |
| Higher Stages of Development | 138 | |
| Ladder, Climber, View | 140 | |
| Basic Structures: The Ladder | 141 | |
| The Self: The Climber | 142 | |
| A Fulcrum | 143 | |
| New Worlds Emerge: Changing Views | 145 | |
| Pathology | 148 | |
| Stages of Spiritual Unfolding | 150 | |
| Flatland Religion | 152 | |
| Freud and Buddha | 154 | |
| 10 | On the Way to Global: Part 1 | 157 |
| The Primary Matrix | 158 | |
| Birth Trauma | 160 | |
| The False Self | 160 | |
| Fulcrum-1: The Hatching of the Physical Self | 162 | |
| Fulcrum-2: The Birth of the Emotional Self | 163 | |
| Fulcrum-3: The Birth of the Conceptual Self | 168 | |
| Every Neurosis Is an Ecological Crisis | 169 | |
| Early Worldviews: Archaic, Magic, Mythic | 172 | |
| Fulcrum-4: The Birth of the Role Self | 174 | |
| Paradigm Shifts | 175 | |
| Satanic Abuse and UFOs | 177 | |
| 11 | On the Way to Global: Part 2 | 180 |
| Evolution versus Egocentrism | 180 | |
| Fulcrum-4 (Continued): Life's Social Scripts | 182 | |
| Fulcrum-5: The Worldcentric or Mature Ego | 185 | |
| Diversity and Multiculturalism | 188 | |
| Fulcrum-6: The Bodymind Integration of the Centaur | 190 | |
| Aperspectival Madness | 192 | |
| On the Brink of the Transpersonal | 193 | |
| 12 | Realms of the Superconscious: Part 1 | 197 |
| Where the Mind Leaves Off | 198 | |
| The Transpersonal Stages | 199 | |
| Fulcrum-7: The Psychic | 202 | |
| Deep Ecology and Ecofeminism | 204
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