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You can support the development of this website* – at no cost to yourself – by buying books/DVDs via the Amazon links below. Thank you.

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NB These earlier books by Ken Wilber are fascinating, though less ‘integral’ as they don't explicitly include all the 5 core elements: Quadrants, Levels, Lines, States and Types - see What is the integral approach?)

Wilber, Ken, The Collected Works of Ken Wilber Vol I (1999)

Contains The Spectrum of Consciousness, No Boundary - Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth and selected essays.

Wilber, Ken, The Collected Works of Ken Wilber Vol II (1999)

Contains The Atman Project - A Transpersonal View of Human Development, Up from Eden - A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution and selected essays.

Wilber, Ken, The Collected Works of Ken Wilber Vol III (1999)

Contains A Sociable God - Toward a New Understanding of Religion and Eye to Eye - the Quest for the New Paradigm.

Wilber, Ken, The Collected Works of Ken Wilber Vol IV (1999)

Contains Integral Psychology - Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy, Transformations of Consciousness - Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development, and selected essays.

Wilber, Ken, The Collected Works of Ken Wilber Vol V (2000)

Contains Grace and Grit - Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber.

Wilber, Ken, The Collected Works of Ken Wilber Vol VI (2000)

Contains Sex, Ecology, Spirituality - The Spirit of Evolution.

Wilber, Ken, The Collected Works of Ken Wilber Vol VII (2000)

Contains A Brief History of Everything and The Eye of Spirit - An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad.

Wilber, Ken, The Collected Works of Ken Wilber Vol VIII (2000)

Contains The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion and One Taste - The Journals of Ken Wilber.

Wilber, Ken, Eye to Eye - the Quest for the New Paradigm (1983, 2001)

Fascinating discussions of new religious movements, physics, mysticism and the New Holographic Paradigm, the Ultimate state of consciousness, the ‘three eyes of knowing’, scientism etc.

Includes Wilber’s ground-breaking and influential analysis of “The Pre/Trans Fallacy” – which would target the ‘new age narcissism’ (often masquerading as spiritual transcendence) that was also critiqued by Lasch, Maslow and others.

“It is one thing… to recontact the body so as to reintegrate it, quite another to recontact the body and stay there”, was amongst the insights that ensued for Wilber.

Third edition, revised. (I’m glad I risked $4 to pick up this book – by an author I’d not then heard of – from a second hand bookshop in Detroit in 1989, on my frist trip to the US: my introduction to Wilber’s work).

Wilber, Ken, Grace and Grit – Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber (1991, 2001)

The powerful, and ultimately – of course – terribly sad, autobiographical story of Ken and his second wife Treya’s losing five-year battle with her breast cancer. So, it’s far from the usual spiritual escapism of many books in the New Age section – the couple even spend their honeymoon in a San Francisco hospital room.

Apparently the book could now be set to become a film, starring Jennifer Aniston as Treya.

Wilber intersperses the story with some of his philosophical and spiritual investigations and understandings – which also inform their understanding and choices of alternative and conventional medical treatments. This, then, is in part a “nightmarish tour through medical hell”, leavened with the couple’s – sometimes failed – attempts to live up to their spiritual beliefs. Indeed during this period of Ken’s marriage to Treya he puts his work on hold and becomes her full-time support person.

Includes extracts from Treya’s journal, plus – on a lighter note – Ken’s ‘world-famous recipe for vegetarian chilli.’ Which includes beer. Yum.
Revised edition.

Rothberg, Donald and Kelly, Sean, Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers - Views and Voices (1998)

Huston Smith writes: “A probing seminar with the most seminal transpersonal psychologist to date.”

An edited collection of papers, many from the 1997 California Institute of Integral Studies conference on Ken Wilber.

Includes: Integral Institute founder members Roger Walsh, Michael Murphy and Michael Zimmerman – along with Stanislav Grof, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, Peggy Wright, Jurgen Kremer, Michael Washburn, Jeanne Achterberg, Kaisa Puhakka, Robert McDermott and Michele McDonald-Smith.

Foreword by Stanley Krippner.

Ken Wilber, No Boundary - Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth (1979, 2001)

An earlier popularised work on the spectrum of therapies and psychologies, East and West. Includes psychoanalysis, Jungian analysis, meditation, Zen, Gestalt, Focusing, TM, existentialism, tantra etc. Exercises are given in each chapter.

Originally published in 1979 by the Zen Center of Los Angeles, where Wilber was then studying under Maezumi Roshi.

Ken Wilber, One Taste - The Journals of Ken Wilber (1999, 2000)

Wilber’s diary of 1997. Predictably wide-ranging, it covers topics such as: integral transformative practice, post-egalitarianism, EEG of Wilber meditating, the Unabomber and eco-terrorism, representative practices from each of the four quadrants, downsides of the New Age movement and retro-romanticism, gay culture, and the 1 per cent of the population that is actually practicing authentic transcendence and compassionate embrace.

Deepak Chopra writes: “Ken Wilber is a source of inspiration and insight to all of us. Read everything he writes. It will change your life.”

Ken Wilber, Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists (1984, 2001)

A collection edited by Wilber, who also demolishes the enduring claim – popularised by ‘New Paradigm’ and New Age writers like Fritjof Capra – that there are important parallels between quantum theory and mystical experiences.

Includes (non-technical) excerpts from Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, de Broglie, Planck, Jeans, Pauli and Eddington.

Wilber reveals that these great physicists in reality turned to mysticism for true knowledge of the world, becoming modern mystics.

Ken Wilber, Dick Anthony and Bruce Ecker (eds.) Spiritual Choices - The Problem of Recognising Authentic Paths to Inner Transformation (1987)

Fascinating collection of advice and analysis from Wilber and leading researchers on New Religions Movements. Covers the problems of cults and gurus and looks at Buddhism, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh/Osho, est, Jonestown, Romantic subjectivism vs modernity etc.

Other contributors include: Frances Vaughn, John Welwood, Ram Dass, Werner Erhard, Claudio Naranjo and Jacob Needleman.

“I consider this book essential reading for anyone who wants to choose a spiritual path intelligently,” says leading transpersonal psychologist Prof. Charles Tart.

Wilber, Ken, The Atman Project - A Transpersonal View of Human Development (1980, ?)

John White, author of What is Enlightenment – Exploring the Goal of the Spiritual Path, writes: “The long sought Einstein of consiousness research”.

The Atman Project "unites Eastern and Western approaches into a single, coherent framework, integrating views from Freud to Buddha, Gestalt to Shankara, Piaget to Yogachara, Kohlberg to Krishnamurti".

An early classic – with a more Romantic/Jungian approach. Leading ‘New Paradigm’ thinker Peter Russell lists this as one of the top books that has changed his life in the last 30 years.
New edition.

Wilber, Ken, The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977, 1993)

Ken Wilber’s first, ground-breaking, work – where he synthesises Western psychological development models with Eastern spiritual development.

Twentieth anniversary edition.

Ken Wilber, The Essential Ken Wilber - An Introductory Reader (1998)

Extracts that cover key topics, including ‘Healing the Bodymind Split’, ‘Of Physicists and Mystics’, ‘The Witness Exercise’, ‘Was Carl Jung a Mystic?’, ‘Contemplating Art’, ‘Buddhism and the Stages of Development’ and ‘The Pre/Trans Fallacy’.

Ken Wilber (ed.),The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes: Exploring the Leading Edge of Science (1982)

Anthology featuring Ken Wilber, David Bohm, Stanley Krippner, William Irwin Thompson, Marilyn Ferguson, Karl Pribram etc. In typically iconoclastic style, Wilber was about the only contributor to the volume who did not believe that physicist-philosopher David Bohm’s ‘holographic paradigm’ was based on good science or adequate mysticism.

Ken Wilber, The Simple Feeling of Being - Embracing Your True Nature - Visionary, Spiritual and Poetic Writings (2004)

A compilation of excerpts from the spiritual/mystical – rather than theoretical – writings of Ken Wilber. (ie This is not an introduction to Wilber’s integral model).

Section titles incude: The Witness, Immediate Awareness, Passionate Philosophy and The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness.

Ken Wilber, Jack Engler and Daniel P. Brown, Transformations of Consciousness - Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development (1986, 2008)

“A full-spectrum model of human development.”

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, writes: “This is the most important and sophisticated synthesis of psychologies East and West to emerge yet”.

This collection outlines Wilber’s developmental model and its application in therapy. Other contributors cover topics including the psychiatric complications of meditation practice, developmental stages in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, stages of mindfulness meditation etc.

With chapters by John Chirban, Mark Epstein and Jonathan Lieff.

Ken Wilber, Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution (1981, 1996)

John Rowan, leading transpersonal/integral therapist and author of The Transpersonal: Spirituality in Psychotherapy and Counselling, writes: “An enormous, a ground-breaking, an enthralling book”.

Ranging across history, psychology and anthropology, Wilber outlines the human evolutionary journey towards God consciousness (rejecting the Romantic view of falling away from – and perhaps one day recovering – an earlier transpersonal Eden. Hence the title).

Covers everything from ‘The Ancient Magicans’ to today’s ‘Republicans, Democrats and Mystics’ (where he makes a fascinating distinction between the Left which tends to view our problems as caused by external oppressions and inequalities – objective-causation – and the Right which conversely lays the blame on internal failings, human nature, evil, irresponsibility – subjective-causation. The ‘mystics’ represent a Third Way beyond this stalemate, advises Ken.)

This expansive work also looks at ontogeny-phylogeny parallels, average mode vs the growing tip of consciousness in various eras etc. It is illustrated with line drawings.

Copyright © 2007 Matthew Kalman