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Title: One Taste by Ken Wilber ISBN: 1-57062-547-6 Publisher: Shambhala Pub. Date: 08 August, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.22 (18 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Wilber Revealed
Comment: Most of Wilber's books do not reveal much about the man behind the work. For most academic writers that is fine. But Wilber's writing, though seemingly theoretical or academic at times, is in fact about the most intimate of topics: coming to know ourselves. Perhaps because his writing is so broad in scope and yet ultimately so intimate in its implications, Wilber thought his readership might be entitled to a peek at how he is doing with his own personal atman project. This book lets the reader peek away,and you may or may not like what you see.
This was the first Wilber book I read. I had known about him for years, but my reading list is long and I just didn't pick his work up, until a respected friend gave me a copy of One Taste, and I could no longer put it off. I am now reading my eighth of his books. With that perspective, I offer these thoughts.
First, the part that may trouble some. KW does come off as pretty darn egotistical in this book. He seems to realize it and mentions in the introduction that these diary entries were (supposedly) not written with intent to publish, and therefore what may seem like boasting and namedropping were in fact just factual entries meant for himself. These now candidly published entries might to the outside reader seem a bit...immodest. This would be a trivial matter but for the nature of KW's work, which after all is ultimately about transcending the ego.
I found KW's disclaimers about that less than entirely convincing, but the fact that he may still personally be a spiritual work in progress in my mind does not diminish the brilliance of his work. I was electrified when I read this. I have been a serious student of philosophy and spiritual practice for 30 years, and I find KW's work among the most brilliant and, to me, practically helpful work I have seen. Some say he does no original thinking, but only synthesizes the work of others. Yes, he only synthesizes the work of an unprecedentedly enormous body of thought, writing and accounts of mystical experience in a staggering array of fields over millenia, in ways no one else has before. I think this would qualify as original thought. Some say he doesn't write well. I find that he explains the ideas of many great thinkers more understandably than they do themselves. He relates their work to that of other great thinkers in ways that I,and I suspect most, never saw before. His writing can be moving and inspirational as well.
I'm not sure I would recommend One Taste as the first Wilber book to read, although it worked fine for me. It is one of his most accessible books. One reviewer thought his references were too obscure, but, this being a journal, KW has taken less care than usual to explain all his references, because this was ostensibly originally written for himself. Readers already familiar with his other work will be less baffled. One Taste has the advantage of being one of his most recent books. Because KW is constantly refining his thought, this gives the reader a look at his most current thinking. I give it four stars instead of five, because I wasn't interested in many of the boring personal details ("I went shopping today"), but the meaty parts are first rate. I find his work so personally helpful in my own practice precisely because it is a synthesis of so much other work. He links it together in ways I could never have myself (which, to my knowledge, no one else has done either) and has helped me to take a more integral approach to what had before been disparate and disconnected elements of my practice and study.
Rating: 4
Summary: Tasty reading.
Comment: Of Shakespeare, Emerson wrote, "his mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not see," and I think the same can be said of Ken Wilber. Written in 1997, just before Wilber's fiftieth birthday, this collection of "daily reflections" can be read as both a personal and philosophical journal. Observing him integrating "matter, body, mind, soul and spirit . . . the entire Great Nest of Being" (p. 58) in "the real world" of grocery shopping, paying bills, renting videos, promoting his books, "restaurant sampling, bar hopping, boutique shopping" (p. 89), and dancing while on vacation in Miami's South Beach, the territory beyond the horizon seems perhaps within reach. Whether Wilber is cooking his "world famous vegetarian chili" for friends (p. 259), or witnessing people in a shopping mall (pp. 77, 232), his journal reveals that integral spirituality is possible "through all states--waking, dreaming, and sleeping" (p. 51). "Yesterday I sat in a shopping mall for hours, watching people pass by," he writes in one entry, "and they were all as precious as green emeralds. The occasional joy in their voices, but more often the pain in their faces, the sadness in their eyes, the burdenous slowness of their paces--I registered none of that. I saw only the glory of green emeralds, and radiant buddhas walking everywhere . . . a paradise in a shopping mall" (p. 77).
In this book, Wilber explains that even at the level of "One Taste" cosmic consciousness, you can still get cancer, still fail at a marriage, still lose a job, still be a jerk;" reaching higher levels of integral development does not mean that the lower levels go away (p. 129).
In the introductory note to his book, Wilber writes, "I am not a private person, in the sense of secretive; I'm just not a public person, in the sense of seeking the limelight. Nonetheless, as one who has written extensively about the interior life, it seemed appropriate, at some point, to share mine" (p. vii). Measuring his interior life with these journal entries, Wilber indeed seems more fully conscious, more constantly aware than most of us. Although he references former teachers and many spiritual friends, as a side note, Wilber's journal is silent on whether he has an ongoing teacher of his own, and whether he is actively engaged in any sangha in Boulder, where he lives.
Reading Wilber is exciting, and ONE TASTE is no exception. I would place it in the easy category of reading Wilber. This is a five-star book, worth tasting. I have given it four stars only when measured against several of his other books, including NO BOUNDARY and A THEORY OF EVERYTHING.
G. Merritt
Rating: 5
Summary: Ken spills the beans
Comment: An unconventional book for old baldie. Half of this book is very deep writing on the nature of reality and the other half is a description of Ken running around with his new girlfriend. Half the substance of this book has already appeared on the Shambhala website. Ken spills the beans that he does and has for some time experienced the ultimate non-dual state of consciousness.
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Title: A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber ISBN: 1570627401 Publisher: Shambhala Pub. Date: 06 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: A Theory of Everything : An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality by Ken Wilber ISBN: 1570628556 Publisher: Shambhala Pub. Date: 16 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Integral Psychology : Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy by Ken Wilber ISBN: 1570625549 Publisher: Shambhala Pub. Date: 16 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality : The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition by Ken Wilber ISBN: 1570627444 Publisher: Shambhala Pub. Date: 02 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Grace and Grit : Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber by Ken Wilber ISBN: 1570627428 Publisher: Shambhala Pub. Date: 06 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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