Once again, Ken Wilber has served up a monumental meal. To attempt to review "Sex, Ecology And Spirituality" briefly does not do it justice. First of all, it is not an easy book to read since it introduces new vocabulary and concepts that must be digested in order to move on in the book. Also it introduces authors and concepts from such a wide range of disciplines that most of them are unfamiliar, even to those of us who consider ourselves well read. The notes themselves are book length; nothing is left to conjecture about the original source of the material.
Once you get past the philosophical framework, which describes in detail the twenty tenets of the evolutionary process, the book is easier going, that is, if you consider easy an analysis of the four major divisions of paths to knowledge: the objective, subjective, individual and collective. Each of these paths, if followed with single mindedness, leads to a particular "flat land" of their own making, failing to consider the other three. It was intriguing that a couple of days before I finished this article, I was attending a local Institute of Noetic Sciences Study Group meeting and we got into a heated discussion of the need for objective "public" verification of inner experience. Needless to say, we failed to take to heart the essence of the Wilber work. But it was instructive. Just as Wilber points out we were reduced to ad hominem attacks in order to justify our world views.
Wilber also does an excellent job of describing the various spiritual approaches by introducing examples of those spiritual approaches. The nature-based spiritual approach exemplified by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Deity-centered approach exemplified by St. Teresa of Avila, the Causal Level, represent by Meister Eckhart, and the non-dual as presented by Sri Ramana Maharshi.
This is a very cerebral book. The insane battle of limited perceptions continue to rage. One question that came up in the Noetic Sciences discussion was whether this was just a head trip or was this also a "gut level" understanding from an emotional level. In order to answer this question, I chose to include the rather long quotation below. The poet steps forth and portrays Wilber's vision of the spiritual in an emotionally moving outpouring.
As Plotinus knew: Let the world be quiet. Let the heavens and the earth and the seas be still. Let the world be waiting. Let the self-contraction relax into the empty ground of its own awareness, and let it there quietly die. See how Spirit pours through each and every opening in the turmoil, and bestows new splendor on the setting Sun and its glorious Earth and all its radiant inhabitants. See the Kosmos dance in Emptiness, see the play of light in all creatures great and small; see finite worlds sing and rejoice in the play of the very Divine, floating on a Glory that renders each transparent, flooded by a Joy that refuses time to terror, that undoes the madness of the loveless self and buries it in splendor.
Indeed, indeed, let the self-contraction relax into the empty ground of its own awareness, and let it there quietly die. See the Kosmos arise in its place, dancing madly and divine, self-luminous and self-liberating, intoxicated by a Light that never dawns nor ceases. See the worlds arise and fall, never caught in time or turmoil, transparent images shimmering in the radiant Abyss. Watch the mountain walk on water, drink the Pacific in a single gulp, blink and a billion universes rise and fall, breathe out and create a Kosmos, breathe in and watch it dissolve.
Let the ecstasy overflow and outshine the loveless self, driven mad with the torments of its self embracing ways, hugging mightily samsara's spokes of endless agony, and sing instead triumphantly with Saint Catherine, "My being is God, not by simple participation, but by a true transformation of my Being. My me is God!" and let the joy sing with Dame Julian, "See, I am God! See! I am in all things!See! I do all things!" And let the joy shout with Hakuin, "This very body is the body of Buddha!and this very land the Pure Land!
And this Earth becomes a blessed being, and every I becomes a God, and every We becomes God's sincerest worship, and every It becomes God's most gracious temple.
And come to rest that Godless search, tormented and tormenting. The knot in the Heart of the Kosmos relaxes to allow its only God, and overflows the Spirit ravished and enraptured by the lost and found Beloved. And gone the Godless destiny of death and desperation, and gone the madness of life committed to uncare, and gone the tears and terror of the brutal days and endless nights where time alone would rule.
An I-I rise to taste the dawn, and find that love alone will shine today. And the Shining says: to love it all, and love it madly, and always endlessly, and every fiercely, to love without choice and thus enter the all, to love it mindlessly and thus be the All, embracing the only and radiant Divine, now as Emptiness, now as Form, together and forever, the Godless search undone, and love alone will shine today.
That pretty much moves me folks, it is genuinely an inspired I-I production. To read this book is an effort, but one with many rewards, both intellectual and emotional.