Up From Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution
by Ken Wilber
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Wilber tells the story of humankind's evolutionary journey over some six million years, from its primal past to its dazzling cosmic future. For if men and women have come up from the beasts, Wilber says, they will likely end up with the gods. "Ken Wilber draws on evidence breathtaking in its sweep to outline a view of the trajectory of human evolution. In so doing, he joins the ranks of the grand theorists of human consciousness like Ernst Cassirer, Mircea Eliade, and Gregory Bateson."--Dr. show more Daniel Goldman, author of Emotional Intelligence Philosopher Ken Wilber has been mapping the territory of consciousness since the 1970s. His first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, launched the transpersonal psychology movement. show lessTags
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This book completely reframed my understanding of humanity in a wonderful way. Drawing on mythology and psychology, as well as his deep understanding of eastern metaphysics, Mr. Wilber explains how to understand human history as the evolution of consciousness.
Up from Eden portrays the saga of human evolution in several major stages. Beginning with the archaic world, primitive in its beliefs and practices, it moves to the stage of magic--rituals, totems, the struggle for life and death in a world of participation mystique. The next step is the mythic world--the great classica civilizations of the world's mythologies, magnificent in their expression, but hiding a dark side of human sacrifice and ritual immolation. And finally, we reach the present stage of rationality, brilliant in it's logic, but alienated from its past organic roots, scarred by a repression of the body by the mind.But the story continues: based on the past evidence, Up from Eden suggests the higher stages toward which future show more evolution might now be moving: the very stages facing us tomorrow. And in that final vision, the world views of science and religion are boldly brough together in a startling synthesis.Up from Eden is a culmination of Ken Wilber's work in the field of consciousness and transpersonal theory. show less
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76+ Works 8,930 Members
Ken Wilber is one of the most widely read and influential American philosophers of our time. His writings have been translated into over twenty foreign languages. He lives in Denver, Colorado.
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Up From Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution
- Original title
- Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution
- Original publication date
- 1981
- Epigraph
- He whose vision cannot cover
History's three thousand years,
Must in outer darkness hover,
Live within the day's frontiers.
Goethe
Westostlicher Diwan
Man may be excused at feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed the... (show all)re, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future.
Charles Darwin
The Descent of Man - First words
- Nothing can stay long removed from God, nor long divorced from that Ground of Being outside which nothing exists, and history -- not as a chronicle of individual or national feats, but as a movement of human consciousness -- ... (show all)is the story of men and women's love affair with the Divine.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)But instead of transcending their boundaries in truth, they merely attempt to break and refashion them at will, and caught in this Atman project of trying to make their earth into a substiture heaven, not only do they destroy the only earth they have, they forfeit the only heaven they might otherwise embrace.
- Blurbers
- Goleman, Daniel; Schwartz, Tony; Vaughan, Frances; Ring, Kenneth; White, John; Grof, Stanislav (show all 10); Rowan, John; Russell, Peter; Wesley, Silas; Snelling, John
- Original language
- English
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 227
- Popularity
- 142,720
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.08)
- Languages
- English, German, Spanish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 14
- ASINs
- 6
