So I'm in the middle of reading The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader. Wilber's an interesting guy. He's a perennialist in the sense that he attempts to bring together a number of different religious, mystical and psychological systems into a single integrated structure. He seems most familiar with Buddhism and Hinduism and doesn't really do much to actively incorporate Islam into his work. But the brother over at Inspirations and Creative Thoughts has a couple of interesting posts which emphasize some of those connections anyway.
Inspirations and Creative Thoughts: Integral mysticism in the postmodern world | Integral Spirituality and also I AMness | Integral vision of Ken Wilber and Sufism
See also:
Integral Naked on YouTube
Planet Grenada:
more on perennialism
perennialism and traditionalism
Inspirations and Creative Thoughts: Integral mysticism in the postmodern world | Integral Spirituality and also I AMness | Integral vision of Ken Wilber and Sufism
See also:
Integral Naked on YouTube
Planet Grenada:
more on perennialism
perennialism and traditionalism
5 comments:
Thanks brother for linking and mentioning this post.
Ken Wilber is a great thinker of our time. a valuable visionary.
The point is to integrate, not discriminate..
Wilber thinks globally (all quadrants are engaged),
You are trying to relate socially (4th quadrant)
mysticsaint, you are very welcome.
svetlana, all I'm saying is that I'm actually really sympathetic to the idea that all religions can be "integrated" at the esoteric level but I also wouldn't want to put the cart before the horse. From what I've read of him so far, Wilber uses concrete specific examples from Buddhism, Hindu philosophy, and to a lesser extent Taoism. But whenever he's mentioned Islam or Sufism he is noticably general or vague. It makes me wonder if he's as informed about Sufism and it makes me wonder whether Sufism really does fit into his "Integral vision" or not.
So I'm just penciling in the above concern as a question while I read his stuff. What is wrong with that? How would you recommend that I approach it?
Ken Wilbur is a really interesting thinker, but I think he gets caught up in the realm of concepts sometimes and neglects the real world. A philosophy that is really only understandable to very smart people and often veers so far into the realm of abstract theory as to be inapplicable to real life can be fascinating to me, but ultimately of limited use. It also bugs me that he hangs out extensively with creepy cult figure Andrew Cohen. Incidentally, "Enlightenment Blues: My Years With An American Guru" by Cohen's student, Andre Van Der Braak, should be required reading for anyone thinking of following a spiritual teacher and/or joining a spiritual community, but that's another story.
This is the first I'm hearing about Andrew Cohen (I think) but I'll try to check him out. So far I've read that Wilber has (or had) an ambiguous kind of relationship to Adi Da who is another "cult" leader. At one point I think Wilber considered the guy an actual avatar and the most advanced spiritual teacher ever, but more recently there has been some kind of incomplete disavowal.
http://www.adidawilber.com/
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/adida.cfm/
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