Author: Ken Wilber
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 364
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8120818369
Description
This book launched the transpersonal psychology revolution. In a profound, comprehensive, and unique study of consciousness, Wilber was the first to suggest in a systematic way that the great psychological systems of the West could be integrated with the noble contemplative traditions of the east.
To this day Spectrum of Consciousness remains the unequivocal classic in the area of transpersonal psychology, and has been the prominent reference point for all subsequent attempts at integrating psychology and spirituality.
Like radiation and light, consciousness, suggests Wilber, established a multiplicity of aspects as it steps down into time and space. Thus, as a spectrum, it can be studied legitimately on one or more of its wavelengths. Viewing consciousness in this wag, we can see that seemingly disparate disciplines each speak to a different wavelength of awareness.
EXPERTS FROM REVIEWS:
For twenty years, Ken Wilber’s writings have been awakening the Western culture from the dogmatic slumber of reductive thinking. We must understand very logical step of his journey, for it is our own collective journey. Wilber’s works constitute an articulated path into the open space of primordial awareness, the only basis for a compassionate global civilization.
-Lex Hixon,
Author of Mother of the Buddhas and Mother of the Universe
Ken Wilber’s conception of spectrum psychology can be regarded as an important contribution towards the integration of the various disciplines investigating the differential aspects of human consciousness, from behaviouristic psychology to mysticism to psychologia perennis.
-Georg Feuerstein, author of Holy Madness, Sacred Paths,
and co-author of Voices on the Threshold of Tomorrow
With this book, Ken Wilber has established himself as one of the foremost scholars working in the field of noetic studies… This book deserves a most careful reading by anyone interested in the nature of Mind.
-Kenneth Ring, author of Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the Near-Death Experience and Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience
As a model of philosophical egalitarianism, Wilber’s act of reconcilement among facets of the perennial psychology is even more salutary today, in this world of intensely polarized belief systems and claimed perceptions, than it was in 1973.
-Richard Leviton, Senior Writer, Yoga Journal, author of the Imagination of Pentecost
Though Mr Wilber is less than half my age, I nevertheless have picked up useful points from his presentation of subtle and important issues I have been working with for thirty years.
-Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions
Contents
Foreword by John White
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
PART ONE-EVOLUTION
Prologue
Two Modes of Knowing
Reality as consciousness
Time / Eternity, Space / Infinity
Evolution of the Spectrum
Surveying the Traditions
PART TWO-INVOLUTION
Integrating the Shadow
The Great Filter
Man as Centaur
A No-Man’s Land
That Which is Always Already
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments