4.9 out of 5 stars
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From the United States
Patrick D. Goonan
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent roadmap and introduction to Wilber
Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2007
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I have read most of Ken Wilber's work and have been studying his thought for years. The breadth of his work is incredible and difficult for the average person to wrap their arms around. It is also very difficult to know where to start or to position any particular work in the evolution of his thought. This book is an excellent roadmap in this respect.
In a nutshell, this work provides an introduction to Ken Wilber's most important ideas and the man behind them. Ken is a popular figure, but he doesn't attend many conferences, appear in public, do a lot of interviews, etc. This makes it difficult to understand him as a person and contextualize his work with his own personal evolution. This book will give you a good feel for Ken Wilber the person, the major milestones in his life and how they correlate to the evolution of his ideas.
While this is an excellent book and fills in some important gaps, it is not a comprehensive introduction to Ken Wilber's body of work. This would be impossible in a book of this size. However, if you purchased Kosmic Consciousness or A Brief History of Everything to go along with it, you would be in excellent shape to move forward and make good decisions about what to read next. You would also be very well prepared to speak intelligently about Wilber's thought and the development of his Integral Model.
Another product that could be very useful as an accompaniment to reading more of Wilber's books would be Embracing Reality , which is sort of a Cliff's notes of Ken's major works. If you got all three of the resources I mentioned on this page and Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World , you would have a good end-to-end sense of Wilber up to his most current thought.
I personally think Ken Wilber is a very major figure and will go down in history as an extremely important thinker. Among other things, he has a 20 year track record of writing and 30 books which have been in print continuously since he wrote them -- a rare achievement for a largely academic writer. In addition, Random House is compiling the collected works of Ken Wilber who is a living author! It is very unusual for a major publishing house to undertake such a large project while a prolific writer is still living. I think this speaks for itself in terms of the quality and enduring impact of his thought on this period in history. In short, I think what we are seeing now is only the tip of the iceberg. In my opinion, Ken's work has the potential to transform how we do business, medicine, education, ecology and every other major human endeavor.
While I don't think Ken Wilber is flawless and above being human, he is an intellectual giant with a lot to offer modern society in a search for meaning and a model to apply to solve contemporary problems. I am glad to see that he is getting more and more traction in the marketplace.
On a critical note, I think that Wilber himself has evolved into a major figure and I would love to see more editing and organization in his books going forward. In much of his work, there is a lot of repitition, overlap and unnecessary meandering. This certainly does not reflect upon the quality of his thought, but Visser's book certainly helps someone new cut to the chase and get a handle on the best way to navigate the voluminous Ken Wilber body of work.
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R. M. Williams
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent introduction
Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2006
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I've tried to read K.Wilber in the past, i've never got more than through the first few chapters. I realize i ought to come to grips with his ideas and this book is an excellent place to start. For not only does it carefully look at the thought but is stimulating enough to get me (i hope) through some of the hard spots in K.Wilber's writings, in the near future. That makes it an outstanding book, not just informative but inspirational, nice job.
The book is basically a chronological look at the evolution of K.Wilber's transpersonal philosophy/psychology. It is not strictly intellectual but rather does a rather nice job of presenting K.Wilber as a man, as a mediator, and in the tear provoking chapter on his wife Treya, as a care giver for a terminally ill spouse. All in all much more satisfying a look then a strictly intellectual examination of a philosophic system. The major point of the book is that K.Wilber is interested in synthesising the Western scientific viewpoint on human development with the Eastern, primarily Tibetan Buddhist, in order to reach a syncretism of what human beings know about themselves. The book presents his thought as a dialogue with pieces of each world, what K.Wilber was interested in understanding, in the overall context of the development of his systematic philosophy/psychology. The structure is both accessible and interesting, rarely did i find interest flagging, more often i had to set the book down for a minute to think about what i had just read and try to make connections. This book, like the philosophy it outlines is not easy, nor simple, nor without dozens of references and rabbit paths to wander down, it is well documented, both in the text and in excellent endnotes, and as expected a substantial index that i for one used many times.
As for a chapter to read to get an idea of the book, i don't think this is a book you can pickup in the middle and profitably read, i'd stick to either of the first two chapters, introduction and who is ken wilber, although the chapter 5, Love death and rebirth, about his wife is worth a try to read by itself, if only for the window into his soul it presents. Generally, it is a read from the beginning, take notes, run to the computer to google a word or phrase, run to amazon to look at customer reviews of books cited, hightlighting on every page, some pages more than 1/2 coated, etc type of book. It took me about 3 times as long to read as a "normal" book of it's length, mostly because of the constant dialogue with the author i was mentally involved in while reading, not an argument as much as a constant series of questions and desire for more background and explanation.
Well, "who is Ken Wilber?" and "why should anyone care to read him?"
He has for 25 years set himself to a daunting task that only few authors have ever attempted, a comprehensive analysis of what human beings know about themselves and how all these systems can be unified (integrated) into a system that allows them to genuinely talk and interact with each other, rather than catfighting forever. To that endeavor he has read several books per day for decades on end, produced a flow of readable words that fill 11 volumes of his collected works, mediated several hours per day until he had a spiritual vision of non-duality that remains a constant companion. A lifetime apparently well spent in pursuit of his goals.
He has ideas and pictures that are valuable to anyone thinking about these issues. How do people grow and develop? How do cultures grow, is there a similarity between the two? What are we made of? What can i do to develop (although this is not a major goal of the book) further? How do different systems interact, like Western psychology and Eastern mysticism? Can this knowledge be unified so that we can remember it, deal with things that are similar in the same ways while avoiding putting different things into the same unappropriate boxes?
It is questions like this that make a comprehensive system like K.Wilber's worth studying, even if you disagree with several or even all of the basic assumptions and goals. Thinkgs like: the 3 eyes: physical, mental, spiritual; the great chain of being; development from prepersonal, personal to transpersonal, interiority vs exteriority on the same graph as individual vs collective; etc. are all useful conceptions and maps that i can use, certainly a gift from a dynamic and fruitful mind.
So i think this a very good introduction to K.Wilber and i am interested in getting into a few of his books now. with this background i hope it will be a little easier and less confusing then in the past. thanks to the author for a very good book.
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Research Guy
5.0 out of 5 stars Original Contribution
Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2004
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I had expected Visser to play the role of a cheerleading reporter of Wilber's works, and was pleasantly surprised to see that Visser is a capable thinker in his own right. Not only does he manage to clearly and concisely convey the gist of Wilber's vast collection of writings, but he also contributes many insights that help put Wilber's work in context and in perspective. There seems to be a healthy undercurrent of friendly disagreement and tension between Wilber and Visser on a number of issues, and I think Visser displays a remarkable objectivity for one who maintains the main website on Wilber's work.
In sereral places I wished Visser had put even more of his own thoughts into the book, but of course the subject of the book is Wilber's thought, not Visser's. Specifically, Visser had a short section in which he explores the similarities between Theosophy and the Integral perspective. I haven't read all of Wilber's writings, but from what I have read there seems to be a major avoidance of the Western esoteric tradition, with the possible exception that Wilber once wrote that he admired Rudolf Steiner's writings. By esoteric I don't mean Western mysticism, which Wilber covers well enough, but the strand of Kaballism, Rosicrucianism, Anthroposophy, Theosophy, Alice Bailey, etc. There is a vast amount of material there dealing with involution, evolution, stages of consciousness, and so forth, that should rightly be incorporated into a fully integral spirituality. I have found that most Wilberians and Integral thinkers in general show little interest in the occult traditions, and most occultists show little interest in Integral studies. This means we have two almost exclusive strands of practioners trying to cover very similar ground without communicating much with each other. The result is not healthy in my view.
I imagine Wilber avoids the Western esoteric tradition because it does not play well with academics, whom he is trying to reach. But Visser appears to have a Theosophical background and may will be a thinker capable of championing an expansion of integral thought that embraces the esoteric and occult as well as the usualy religio-mystical traditions.
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Patricia A. Gaffney
5.0 out of 5 stars Love Ken Wilber
Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2016
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Love Ken Wilber, one of his most accessible if you find his longer and more dense writing difficult.. as I do sometimes. He is unquestionable a genius and has added immeasurebly to our understanding of the unfied nature and movement of this divinely created and ordered universe we live in.
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Wayne D Allen
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2015
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No more Ken Wilber for me.
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Paul Helfrich
5.0 out of 5 stars Making Ken Wilber Assessible
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2004
March 04, 2004
If you want a well researched, thorough overview of the work of Ken Wilber, then Frank Visser's Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion is a great choice. It covers a broad scope and is a relatively easy read. That's the short version.
The long version must take into account Wilber's five periods or models to date. Visser's book nicely introduces the first four periods in a general way, and sets the stage for further study of the oeuvre. Wilber-5, so-called, has emerged in the last few years and will be published for the first time in the upcoming Kosmos, Vol. 2 (whose working title is Kosmic Karma and Creativity). One of the novel aspects of Wilber-5 is what he calls a post-metaphysical approach (among other things), which relies on empiricism in the three great domains of body, mind, and spirit. So the jury is still out on the niggly details of Wilber-5, and how its critic's will respond. But one thing is certain, once published it may be easy to misconstrue criticism of this Visser opus because it's NOT Wilber-5 and appropriately focuses on the influence of the perennial traditions in Wilber-1 through Wilber-4. But to Frank's credit, he mentions Wilber-5 several times and acknowledges that Wilber's views continue to develop.
Having said that, if you really want to get inside Wilber's head, or at the very least, into his heart, then it's appropriate to study his work beginning with Wilber-1. Why? First, Wilber is a developmental, evolutionary, transcendentalist thinker and doer. It's apt to see how his theory developed as it was informed by his own bodily, mental, and spiritual growth. Second, even though Wilber no longer recommends his first two books, The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977) and No Boundary (1979), they're required reading because we can trace the "integral impulse" at work from the very beginning along with what are now acknowledged flaws (the so-called pre/trans fallacy in particular). That integral impulse included nascent awareness that the three great domains of body, mind, and spiritual science must be included in any integral approach. Put another way, it reflected Ken's precocious understanding that transcendental experience is not solely pathological, and properly developed could greatly inform human development. He also refined transpersonal psychological theory to include the full spectrum of consciousness, from body to mind to soul to nondual spirit, along with identifying appropriate pathology and therapies.
Thus, Visser's book handles Wilber-1 through Wilber-4 with the skillful means of one who is far more than a journeyman with the material. In fact, Frank includes a great deal of biographical material that provides a human face and heart, background in the transpersonal field in general to situate Wilber's oeuvre, major critics, a summary of their differences, as well as his own critiques. He also includes a thorough bibliography of Wilber's work that alone is worth the price of the book! In the closing chapter Visser offers further insights and suggestions that may help refine the inchoate Wilber-5 model based upon his theosophical background.
In summary, if you're seriously interested in learning about Wilber's work, this is a great place to start. Ken personally recommends A Theory of Everything (2000) because it's concise, and A Brief History of Everything (1996). Together, they give a full accounting the major insights of Wilber-1 to Wilber-4, now called AQAL: all quadrants, levels, lines, states, types (and the kitchen sink. It is a thorough model :-).
All in all, let's give Frank Visser a hearty congratulations for a job well done!
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Biased Perspective
4.0 out of 5 stars Provides an understanding of Wilber
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2005
I bought this book b/c I was interested in knowing more about Ken Wilber and his theory. I came away with both so I would consider the book a success. I did find it ironic that Wilber purports to read 3 books a day but did not read this book while providing the foreward to it. I almost felt that he didn't want to endorse the book, not b/c he didn't read it but b/c then he would give others fresh ammo to attack his theory. Nonetheless, I felt the author was complete and performed a remarkable feat in compiling and organizing Wilber's material and theory. Recommended if you are interested in a theory that expands on psychological theories to include the spiritual realm.
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Bert Parlee
5.0 out of 5 stars Wilber Revealed
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2004
As Wilber's Chief of Staff, I observe a lot of people attempting to reflect on his life and work in ways that are often speculative and confused. There are so many things to react to, and people line up to do so. It's refreshing to finally have a text that is able to represent Wilber's work and life in a way that is at once informed, critical, fair and inspiring. Visser echoes and reverberates Wilber's clarity of style, while infusing a revealed humanity in the process. Well done.
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Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion
by Frank Visser, Ken Wilber
4.03 · Rating details · 69 ratings · 5 reviews
This is the definitive guide to the life and work of Ken Wilber, widely regarded as the most comprehensive and passionate philosopher of our times. In this long overdue exploration of Wilber's life and work, Frank Visser not only outlines the theories of this profound thinker, but also uncovers his personal life, showing how his experiences influenced and shaped his writing.
Wilber's impressive body of work, including nineteen books in more than thirty languages, brings together science and religion, philosophy, art, culture, East and West, and places them within the all-encompassing perspective of evolution. Visser's book follows Wilber's four distinct phases as he reveals not only the story behind Wilber's writing, but also the man behind the ideas. In recounting the course of Wilber's life and the motives that led him to the subjects he has written so much about, Visser uncovers the intricacies of one of the world's most important intellectuals. Included in this indispensable resource is a complete bibliography of Wilber's work. (less)
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Paperback, 346 pages
Published September 1st 2003 by State University of New York Press
Original TitleKen Wilber: Thought As Passion (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Pyschology)
ISBN0791458164 (ISBN13: 9780791458167)
Edition LanguageEnglish
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Elizabeth Andrew
Sep 01, 2017Elizabeth Andrew rated it it was amazing
Shelves: spirituality
I'm gobbling up Ken Wilber because his philosophy, which incorporates spirituality into an understanding of human and social development, is a much-needed antidote to the secular, static understanding of humanity we're swimming in with postmodernism. This biography surveys Wilber's early work, so it's a useful summary of a vast amount of material. I find Wilber's upward mobility orientation toward spirituality a bit too masculine and ambitious, but at least he acknowledges the path of descent an ...more
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Willa
Aug 21, 2010Willa rated it really liked it
What ever happened to Frank Visser?? Now adays he is Ken Wilber's greatest pest, writing negatively about him wherever he can, but this book is brilliant and highly informative. It is a great overview of Wilber's long and complex journey in consciousness, and although it misses the last period (Wilber V) it is largely up to date. Visser has really cracked the code and although there are certain views you can agree or disagree with, every Wilber fan should read this book in order to get a more solid understanding of how Wilber's thought has developed over time. (less)
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Kacper A
Jul 12, 2020Kacper A rated it it was amazing
I read that book years ago, after Spectrum of Counciousness and some research that a teenager could do in the Web. I mailed Visser even, but my attitude/twistedness was too deep, so there was no 'intelectual interference' or anything else as i expected. I remember i admired the style of this book and it was surely something different from interviews published in form of a book i used to read then. I jumped quickly to Visser's page and tried to comprehend more and more and more.
I would say this book is good checkpoint to start the trip of understanding Integral Theory.
Once i had a conversation with a woman, who read memoir of Treya - 'Grace and Grit'? - and a love story. She was highly educated but i laughed scornfully in her face that she ended her trip with that. With all respect (to KW/Treya and that woman i speak about): she could just read some harlequin or watch a sensitive porn and the impact would be almost equal.
I mention to her that KW repeats his theory in a way of repeating himself, but that is not accurate ofc, and she told something like: 'Yeah, this is psychologically understandable and is a form of neurotic personality.' The unspoken remark was: guys tend to' overintelectualization'.
lol. (less)
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