Who is Ken Wilber?

Ken Wilber, a visionary thinker of inspired genius, is the developer of an integral “theory of everything” embracing the truths of all the world’s great traditions. He is the author of over twenty books, including A Brief History of Everything; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; Boomeritis; and Religion of Tomorrow—spanning the genres from full-length scholarly works to popular introductions, from essays to daily journals, from personal memoir to fiction. Wilber´s Integral Approach, a radical theory that helps us make sense of our world by including as many perspectives as possible, has vast applications, in areas from business to medicine, psychology to ethics, politics to religion, art to education, sexuality to personal relationships. In 2000, he founded Integral Institute, a think-tank for studying issues of science and society, with outreach through local and online communities such as Integral Education Network, Integral Training, and Integral Spiritual Center. In 2007 Wilber co-founded Integral Life, a social media-hub dedicated to sharing the integral vision with the worldwide community, as well as documenting and catalyzing the progress of the integral movement.

His writings have been translated into over twenty languages. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

Jump to: Recent and Upcoming Releases | Bestsellers | Introductions | Classics | Integral Theory | Collected Works | Videos | Articles

Recent and Upcoming Releases

Bestsellers

Paperback

Grace and Grit: A Love Story

Heartfelt, deeply moving, and incredibly real, this narrative shares the five-year journey of philosopher Ken Wilber and his wife, Treya Kil­lam Wilber, through Treya’s illness, treatment, and death. Ken’s wide-ranging commentary—which questions conventional and New Age approaches to illness and reaches beyond the experience to find wisdom in pain—is combined with Treya’s journals to create a portrait of health and healing, wholeness and harmony, and suffering and surrender. This edition includes a new preface by the author.

Learn more about the Grace and Grit film.

A Brief History of Everything (20th Anniversary Edition)

Join one of the greatest contemporary philosophers on a breathtaking tour of time and the Kosmos—from the Big Bang right up to the eve of the twenty-first century. This accessible and entertaining summary of Ken Wilber’s great ideas has been expanding minds now for two decades, providing a kind of unified field theory of the universe and, along the way, treating a host of issues related to that universe, from gender roles, to multiculturalism, to environmentalism, and even the meaning of the Internet. This special anniversary edition contains as an afterword a dialogue between the author and Lana Wachowski, the award-winning writer-director of the Matrix film trilogy, in which we’re offered an intimate glimpse into the evolution of Ken’s thinking and where he stands today. A Brief History of Everything may well be the best introduction to the thought of this man who has been called the “Einstein of Consciousness” (John White).

Paperback | Audiobook | Shambhala Español

Paperback | eBook

The Religion of Tomorrow: A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions—More Inclusive, More Comprehensive, More Complete

A single purpose lies at the heart of all the great religious traditions: awakening to the astonishing reality of the true nature of ourselves and the universe. At the same time, through centuries of cultural accretion and focus on myth and ritual as ends in themselves, this core insight has become obscured. Here Ken Wilber provides a path for reenvisioning a religion of the future that acknowledges the evolution of humanity in every realm while remaining faithful to that original spiritual vision. For the traditions to attract modern men and women, Wilber asserts, they must incorporate the extraordinary number of scientific truths learned about human nature in just the past hundred years—for example, about the mind and brain, emotions, and the growth of consciousness—that the ancients were simply unaware of and thus were unable to include in their meditative systems. Taking Buddhism as an example, Wilber demonstrates how his comprehensive Integral Approach—which is already being applied to several world religions by some of their adherents—can avert a “cultural disaster of unparalleled proportions”: the utter neglect of the glorious upper reaches of human potential by the materialistic postmodern worldview. Moreover, he shows how we can apply this approach to our own spiritual practice. This, his most sweeping work since Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, is a thrilling call for wholeness, inclusiveness, and unity in the religions of tomorrow.

Introductions to Ken Wilber

Paperback | eBook

The Simple Feeling of Being: Embracing Your True Nature

The author of nineteen books of philosophy and psychology, Ken Wilber is a pioneering thinker who has developed an integral “theory of everything” that embraces the truths of both Eastern spirituality and Western science. Yet while he is best known for his scholarly research into the world's contemplative traditions, Wilber is also an accomplished spiritual practitioner and mystic in his own right. In order to highlight the personal wisdom of this popular author, the editors of The Simple Feeling of Being have assembled a collection of inspirational, mystical, and instructional passages drawn from his publications.

Paperback | eBook

The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader

Ever since the publication of his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, written when he was twenty-three, Ken Wilber has been identified as the most comprehensive philosophical thinker of our times. This introductory sampler, designed to acquaint newcomers with his work, contains brief passages from his most popular books, ranging over a variety of topics, including levels of consciousness, mystical experience, meditation practice, death, the perennial philosophy, and Wilber's integral approach to reality, integrating matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit. Here is Wilber's writing at its most reader-friendly, discussing essential ideas of the world's great psychological, philosophical, and spiritual traditions in language that is lucid, engaging, and inspirational.

Paperback | eBook

One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality

As one who has written extensively about the interior life, meditation, and psychotherapy, Ken Wilber—the leading theorist in the field of integral psychology—naturally arouses the curiosity of his numerous readers. In response to this curiosity, this one-year diary not only offers an unprecedented entrée into his private world, but offers an introduction to his essential thought. “If there is a theme to this journal,” Wilber writes, “it is that body, mind, and the luminosities of the soul—all are perfect expressions of the Radiant Spirit that alone inhabits the universe, sublime gestures of that Great Perfection that alone outshines the world.”

Classics

Paperback | eBook

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution

In this tour de force of scholarship and vision, Ken Wilber traces the course of evolution from matter to life to mind and describes the common patterns that evolution takes in all three of these domains. From the emergence of mind, he traces the evolution of human consciousness through its major stages of growth and development.

Paperback

The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad

In this groundbreaking book, Ken Wilber uses his widely acknowledged "spectrum of consciousness" model to completely rewrite our approach to such important fields as psychology, spirituality, anthropology, cultural studies, art and literary theory, ecology, feminism, and planetary transformation. What would each of those fields look like if we wholeheartedly accepted the existence of not just body and mind but also soul and spirit?

Paperback | eBook

A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality

Here is a concise, comprehensive overview of Wilber's revolutionary thought and its application in today's world. In A Theory of Everything, Wilber uses clear, nontechnical language to present complex, cutting-edge theories that integrate the realms of body, mind, soul, and spirit. He then demonstrates how these theories and models can be applied to real-world problems in areas such as politics, medicine, business, education, and the environment.

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A Sociable God: Toward a New Understanding of Religion

In one of the first attempts to bring an integral dimension to sociology, Ken Wilber introduces a system of reliable methods by which to make testable judgments of the authenticity of any religious movement. A Sociable God is a concise work based on Wilber's "spectrum of consciousness" theory, which views individual and cultural development as an evolutionary continuum. Here he focuses primarily on worldviews (archaic, magic, mythic, mental, psychic, subtle, causal, nondual) and evaluates various cultural and religious movements on a scale ranging from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to Kosmic.

Paperback | eBook

Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm

In this book Wilber presents a model of consciousness that encompasses empirical, psychological, and spiritual modes of understanding. Wilber examines three realms of knowledge: the empirical realm of the senses, the rational realm of the mind, and the contemplative realm of the spirit. Eye to Eye points the way to a broader, more inclusive understanding of ourselves and the universe.

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No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth

A simple yet comprehensive guide to the types of psychologies and therapies available from Eastern and Western sources. Each chapter includes a specific exercise designed to help the reader understand the nature and practice of the specific therapies. Wilber presents an easy-to-use map of human consciousness against which the various therapies are introduced and explained. This edition includes a new preface.

Paperback

Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Greatest Physicists

Prepare to encounter your mind in a radically new way as Ken Wilber introduces Integral Mindfulness, a meditative approach based on Integral Theory and Practice. This leading-edge technique combines, for the first time in history, the ancient paths of meditation and mindfulness—or Waking Up—with modern research into psychological development and human evolution—Growing Up—resulting in a complete and powerfully effective method of personal transformation.

Integral Theory and More

Paperback | eBook

Pocket Library Edition: The Integral Vision

An accessible presentation of the Integral Approach from visionary genius Ken Wilber, designed as an easy introduction to his theory.

What if we attempted to create an all-inclusive map that touches the most important factors from all of the world’s great traditions? Using all the known systems and models of human growth—from the ancient sages to the latest breakthroughs in cognitive science—Ken Wilber distills their major components into five simple elements, ones that readers can relate to their own experience right now. With clear explanations, practical exercises, and familiar examples, The Integral Vision invites readers to share in the innovative approach to spiritual growth, business success, and personal relationships.

This book by Ken Wilber is part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series and has been adapted from the 2009 graphic edition.

Paperback | eBook

Integral Buddhism: And the Future of Spirituality

Ken Wilber shows that traditional Buddhist teachings themselves suggest an ongoing evolution leading toward a more unified, holistic, and interconnected spirituality. Touching on all of the key turning points in the history of Buddhism, Wilber describes the ways in which the tradition has been open to the continuing unfolding and expansion of its own teachings, and he suggests possible paths toward an ever more Integral approach. This work is a precursor to and condensed version of Wilber’s The Religion of Tomorrow.

Paperback | eBook

Integral Meditation: Mindfulness as a Way to Grow Up, Wake Up, and Show Up in Your Life

Prepare to encounter your mind in a radically new way as Ken Wilber introduces Integral Mindfulness, a meditative approach based on Integral Theory and Practice. This leading-edge technique combines, for the first time in history, the ancient paths of meditation and mindfulness—or Waking Up—with modern research into psychological development and human evolution—Growing Up—resulting in a complete and powerfully effective method of personal transformation.

Paperback

Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World

Applying his highly acclaimed integral approach, Ken Wilber formulates a theory of spirituality that honors the truths of modernity and postmodernity—including the revolutions in science and culture—while incorporating the essential insights of the great religions. He shows how spirituality today combines the enlightenment of the East, which excels at cultivating higher states of consciousness, with the enlightenment of the West, which offers developmental and psychodynamic psychology. Each contributes key components to a more integral spirituality.

Paperback | eBook

Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy

The goal of an “integral psychology” is to honor and embrace every legitimate aspect of human consciousness under one roof. This Ken Wilber book presents one of the first truly integrative models of consciousness, psychology, and therapy. Drawing on hundreds of sources—Eastern and Western, ancient and modern—Wilber creates a psychological model that includes waves of development, streams of development, states of consciousness, and the self, and follows the course of each from subconscious to self-conscious to superconscious.

Paperback | eBook

Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening

Integral Life Practice is not just a new approach to self-development and higher awareness, but a way of making sense of—and making best use of—the existing treasure trove of insights, methods, and practices for cultivating a more enlightened life. It offers a uniquely adaptive approach to awakened living that's suitable for everyone: people with busy careers and families, college students, retirees, even hardcore athletes and yogis. It's geared for devout—and irreverent—people of any religion, or no religion!

Paperback | eBook

Boomeritis: A Novel That Will Set You Free

The story of a naïve young grad student in computer science and his quest for meaning in a fragmented world provides the setting in which Wilber contrasts the alienated “flatland” of scientific materialism with the integral vision, which embraces body, mind, soul, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. The book especially targets one of the most stubborn obstacles to realizing the integral vision: a disease of egocentrism and narcissism that Wilber calls “boomeritis” because it seems to plague the baby-boomer generation most of all.

Paperback | eBook

A Post-Truth World

A piercing examination of our current social and political situation through the lens of Integral Theory—by the framework’s founder, cutting-edge philosopher Ken Wilber.

Our overwhelmingly divisive socio-political climate is among the greatest challenges of our time. Not only in America but also internationally, it seems that almost every issue raises incredibly vocal oppositional views. Not least of all, the arising of vast networks of disinformation is a testament to our deepening rifts. With so much hostility, antagonism, cynicism, and discord, how can we mend the ruptures in our society?

Paperback | eBook

Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World

How can we come to agreement to solve our toughest environmental problems? In response to this pressing need, Integral Ecology unites valuable insights from multiple perspectives into a comprehensive theoretical framework—one that can be put to use right now. The framework is based on Integral Theory, as well as Ken Wilber’s AQAL model, and is the result of over a decade of research exploring the myriad perspectives on ecology available to us today and their respective methodologies.

The Collected Works

Videos

Ken Wilber on Spirit

If everything is God, why is God so hard to find? Here Ken discusses the notion of maya, a Sanskrit word that is literally translated as “not that” and often interpreted as “illusion” or “magic.”

Grace and Grit the Film: Movie Teaser

Grace and Grit stars Mena Suvari and Stuart Townsend with Frances Fisher, Rebekah Graf, Nick Stahl, Lydia Hearst, and Mariel Hemingway.

Articles

Comprehensive Map of the Territory of You | An Excerpt from Integral Vision

Lana Wachowski, Writer/Director of “The Matrix,” Interviews Ken Wilber about Brief History

The Past | An Excerpt from Integral Buddhism

Trump and a Post-Truth World Chapter 1

Integral Theory Primer: A Reader's Guide to Ken Wilber by Ali Akalin

The Future of Religion: A Reader's Guide

Book Club Discussion | Trump and a Post-Truth World

Ken Wilber: Remembering Traleg Rinpoche

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