Maureen, The title is Sex, Ecology, Spirituality : The Spirit of Evolution. The subtitle is probably more suitable than the title. Ken Wilber. On the Jacket, they have Mitch Kapor saying that ".changes everything. .. No one can afford to be ignorant of his revolutionary ideas." This helped me understand, just for example, the strengths and weaknesses of Joseph Campbell's work. (Christie had been watching the interviews and tapes made before he died.) -Fred PS I realized that I should have offered to look on the MII and have you call later for whatever I found that might help you connect. I also realize as I write this that there's not much point in my looking now! Catch-22. PPS The other book is "Elegy for Iris" -- John Bayley; Hardcover (Following stuff is from amazon.com) Reviews From Booklist , February 1, 1995 This is a sprawling synthesis of evolutionary and "systems" theory from the Presocratics to Piaget, permeated by the mysticism of Plotinus. Odd as it may seem for a book with more than 500 pages of text and 200 of notes, it suffers from a tendency to make unsubstantiated or inadequately referenced claims, especially in passing references to various feminisms and postmodernisms. But the reader can take this to be one aspect of the book's oral character: it reads like a composition dictated and transcribed. That is a strength as well as a weakness, since it imparts a lively and passionate tone to a text that could become simply tedious. The book's greatest strengths are its ambitious scope and its relentless attention to the materialist flattening of evolutionary and developmental theories in Western tradition. Wilber follows earlier devotees of Plotinus in insisting on a world composed not of parts and wholes but of wholes that are also parts and parts that are also wholes--wholes within wholes, remarkably similar to the "monads" of Anne Conway and Leibniz. Given a widespread hunger for spirituality and a widespread misunderstanding of materialist readings of development, even a flawed attempt to deepen developmental perspectives with developmental insights from mysticism is a step in the right direction. Steve Schroeder Copyright© 1995, American Library Association. All rights reserved Synopsis One of the great thinkers of our time brings together sex and gender issues, ecological wisdom, and spirituality into a coherent vision for our times. In a tour de force of scholarship and vision, Ken Wilbur traces the course of evolution from matter to life to mind, answering the critical question: Can spiritual concerns be integrated with the modern world? The publisher , April 28, 1997 Ken Wilber Forum available on the web A very active Ken Wilber Forum is available at http://www.shambhala.com/wilber Customer Comments Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 Number of Reviews: 4 polgardy@virtual-media.com from Chicago, IL , December 7, 1998 Mixed Reviews... _SES_ is quite an idea trip. I purchased it after having my understanding of religion and spirituality profoundly deepened by _Up spiritual and philosophical seeking, Wilber has so far been the only thinker who has been able to "make sense" of my own Christian faith, in a way that enables me to continue to embrace it, despite many obvious mythical trappings. In that sense, I am deeply and personally indebted to Ken for the gift of a new conceptual framework, in which to understand my relationship to faith, and my faith's relationship to the evolution of humanity and culture. Insofar as _SES_ carries on the torch of that vision, it continues to make keen observations about the spiritual and cultural future of humanity and planet Earth. Unfortunately, _SES_ also deeply disappointed me in a number of important ways. The _Booklist_ reviewer's critisicm that "it suffers from a tendency to make unsubstantiated or inadequately referenced claims" is a severe understatement; the majority of Wilber's arguments are not so much won as repeated so many times as to seem obviously true. The book is so repetitive that it became frustrating to read, and in spots it was only Ken's lively and interesting language that made it bearable. Unfortunately, the same language is sweeping, black-and-white, and notoriously lacking in the senstivity to nuance and detail that is required machinery in every philosopher's toolkit. Worse, he too often slips into polemical rhetoric to substitute for solid argumentation. His repetitive criticism of "flatland holism," and its close cousin "subtle reductionism," is almost totally lacking in substantive argument over the eight-hundred page trek. His disagreements with systems theories over "depth" and "span" issues are insightful, but a great deal more rigor is necessary before his philosophical foundataions can be ultimately acceptable. His discussions are rich in flavorful and evocative images (which is his undisputed strength), but weak on logic. Perhaps his claim that higher states of consciousness and being transcend formal-operational logic gives him a license to favor colorful intuition over bland argument and proof. However, as he is continuously ready to point out, higher integrations must transcend _and include_ their predecessors. If anything, Ken's treatment of the human spirit should be _more_ rational, not less; and I did not find that to be the case in this work. (Interestingly, the Western thinkers whom he praises most for their insight are some of the most philosophically rigorous in the business -- Plato, Plotinus, Shelling, Kant, Hegel, Gebser, Habermas, to name a few. One of the advantages of reading _SES_ is that it points to a tremendous amount of excellent primary source material.) _Eden_ and _Atman_ are the undisputed presentations of Ken's model of consciousness; they are, in form and content, one of the most significant contributions to the literature on religion, spirituality, and psychology in the second half of the twentieth century. But in _SES_, I think Ken has bit off a little more than he can chew, by attempting to extract a volume from a pamphlet. The result is undigested, repetitive, and philosophically unsatisfying. A reader from Virginia, USA , November 11, 1998 The most important book I own. In the world of psychology/philosophy/religion, this is the greatest book I've ever read. It absolutely stunned me, even after reading some of his other works and getting his whole jist. It helps to have a bit of background in psychology or philosophy or religion to get the most out of it. If not, read his more digestible Brief History Of Everything instead. Regardless, read this guy! A reader from Georgia , September 6, 1998 Sprawling -- well worth an intensive read. This massive work took me weeks to read, but I came away enlightened in many ways. Wilber has a masterful way of putting together ideas as large as the nature of reality, meaning, consciousness, etc. into a profound synthesis. My way of thinking about myself, the world and Spirit were widened and deepened. Both fundamental AND significant -- and before this book I couldn't have told you the difference! Tom Huston (soulplex@aol.com) from Silverdale, WA, USA , June 12, 1998 Wow. Perhaps the most profound book ever written. If you're at all interested in the nature of our existence--past, present, and future--the nature of nature, and the essence of Reality itself, you can find no better book. _SES_ is a stunning masterpiece, extremely readable (compelling, even), and I recommend it to anyone living this Divine dream we call life. Customers who bought titles by Ken Wilber also bought titles by these authors: Donald Jay Rothberg Frances, Ph.D. Vaughan Bruce W. Scotton Michael Washburn A. H. Almaas