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Greetings!
It's good to see so many hits on this site. Part of what I've been trying to do, with the most recent round of writing, is to get the conversation about these various topics jolted into high gear, both in positive and negative, appreciative and critical, ways. This apparently is happening. It's nice to see some very intelligent and thoughtful comments, and also nice to see that we have the requisite number of total nutcases from the Serengeti Freakazoid Plain.
As soon as my schedule clears up a bit, I intend to respond to some of the questions, comments, and flames that are showing up on this site. Of the various entries, I'll try to pick the best, the worst , and any recurrent themes, and offer some feedback.
I can't respond very much right now because I'm working hard to finish a new book, The Integration of Science and Religion The Marriage of Ancient Wisdom and Modern Knowledge. I'm done with the first draft, but, due to various other commitments, this book will probably take me a few more months to complete. I hope to have it done by the holidays.
In the meantime, Shambhala is releasing the most recent book (The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad). I especially enjoyed doing this book, because it was the first time, since doing The Transformations of Consciousness, that I had a chance to address the specifically psychological aspects of the spectrum of consciousness and update my model on this important topic.
Transformations, coauthored with Jack Engler and Daniel P. Brown, was written in 1983 (and released in 1986), and there then followed an almost ten-year absence from writing as Treya and I dealt with her cancer. Treya died in 1989. She wanted me to write of her experience (she was working on a book herself), and I told her I would. I wrote Grace and Grit in 1991. And Then slowly I got back into writing. Three years spent on Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995), then a year on A Brief History of Everything (1996), a more popular account of the material in SES. But even with those books, I did not have the time to update the psychological portion of the model, and that is what The Eye of Spirit does. But there are also chapters on integral feminism, art and literary theory, meditation and psychotherapy, cultural evolution, the perennial philosophy, politics and Spirit, and the nature of ever-present awareness. (Ill include the table of contents for those who are interested.)
As for The Integration af Science and Religion, it's a book I started after my friend Frances Vaughan organized a conference on spirituality for the Fetzer Institute, at the invitation of its president, Robert Lehman, a most impressive and likable gentleman. Frances pulled together a stellar cast, including Huston Smith, Ram Das, Kaisa Puhakka, her husband, Roger Walsh, and several other luminaries. The topics raised at that conference got me started on this book. I'd like to think that I've brought some novel angels to this intractable problem, but that remains to be seen. In any event I hope that the book will move the discussion forward on this most pressing of issues. I'll include the table of contents, so those of you who want to start flaming it early can get started.
And, of course, I am continuing research for volume 2 of the Kosmos trilogy (the first volume was SES). I find this research very hard. I need to read approximately another thousand books, most of them stacked up in my office, looking menacing. It's not so much that they are difficult to read, as mostly unbelievably boring. But, as my friends always tell me, at least its a thousand books they won't have to read.
Take care,
Ken Wilber
November 15, 1996
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