No Boundary

I have read many of Ken Wilber's books and this is one of the better ones. The spotlight reviews do a very good job of pointing out the shortcoming and strengths as well as summarizing Ken's general ideas. I won't repeat what they have said here, but will add my own thoughts. This book has a different tone and structure than many of Mr. Wilber's other books. There is less repitition and somehow he seems to be more accessible and lyrical in his descriptions and metaphors. If you read later Wilber, you will find it lacks some of the feeling tone of this earlier work. In this book, Ken talks about boundaries and how they are often mental constructs. For example, the boundary that defines me could be taken arbitrarily as my skin. However, I might say I have a body, rather than that I am a body. This implies perhaps that I am a mind that is associated with a body and that I'm moving the line between self and other to the head. In a similar fashion, it is possible that a may have a transpersonal experience in which case my boundary moves out beyond my skin. The idea is much like the arbitrary division between a tree's roots, limbs and branches. These divisions don't necessarily exist as distinct boundaries on the tree, but arise from the analytical nature of thought. In general, the book looks at a synthesis of Western and Eastern psychological and spiritual approaches to growth. It challenges tacit assumptions on both sides and tries to get the reader to take a broader perspective on reality while honoring what is good in each particular tradition. It is an extremely thought-provoking work and includes a lot of good scholarship. I find it to be highly complimentary to Wilber's later work and often more eloquent. If you are looking for the best, most comprehensive and readable introduction to Wilber's work, I recommend A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYTHING. If you are interested in a good developmental psychology book from Wilber's point of view, then the ATMAN PROJECT will not disappoint. It covers development from birth to enlightenment and it quite fascinating. If you own these three books you will have a good overview of Wilber's most important ideas without a lot of overlap. If you are interested primarily in his latest thinking, then INTEGRAL SPIRITUALITY may also be a good choice.

I used to torment a friend with the question, "Where are the edges of the universe?" Ken Wilber's second book, written nearly thirty years ago, confronts its reader with the more important question, "Where are the edges of the self?" Our lives, he observes, are largely spent drawing boundaries (p. 18) between life and death, good and bad, pleasure and pain, heaven and hell, success and failure. We "live a life of opposites" (p. 16), and we are "bewitched by boundaries" (p. 25). But "the ultimate metaphysical secret," Wilber writes, "is that there are no boundaries in the universe" (p. 30). Seeing through the illusion of opposites is liberation--"the discovery of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth" (p. 28).This book is like a sign along the road, pointing the way toward enlightenment. In his examination of "our most cherished boundary" (p. 43), self/not-self, Wilber integrates psychology, philosophy, post-modern thought, and religious doctrine of East and West. He shows how "we progressively limit our world and turn from our true nature in order to embrace boundaries" (p. 3). We believe that our skin (p. 5), mind (p. 6), or ego (p. 7) separates us from our not-self when, in fact, we "possess a remarkable spectrum of consciousness, a vast rainbow of extraordinary potentials and possibilities, and those potentials do indeed run from matter to body to soul to spirit" (p. xii). Wilber recognizes that the ordinary person "will probably listen in disbelief if it is pointed out that she has nestled in the deepest recesses of her being, a transpersonal self, a self that transcends her individuality and connects her to a world beyond conventional space and time" (p. 110).Saint Augustine wrote that the business of life "is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen." NO BOUNDARY may be read as a book about personal growth, restoring to health the eye of the heart, and "expanding one's horizons, a growth of one's boundaries, outwardly in perspective and inwardly in depth" (p. 13). Among other approaches, Wilber turns to the Buddhist doctrines of dharmadhatu, which teaches us "between every thing and event in the universe there is no boundary" (p. 38), and suffering. "A person who is beginning to sense the suffering of life," he writes, is "beginning to awaken to deeper realities, truer realities, for suffering smashes to pieces the complacency of our normal fictions about reality and forces us to become alive in a special sense--to see carefully, to feel deeply, to touch ourselves and our worlds in ways we have heretofore avoided. It may be said, and truly I think, that suffering is the first grace" (p. 76).If we learn to "see through the illusions of our boundaries," he writes, "we will see, here and now, the universe as Adam saw it before the Fall: as organic unity, a harmony of opposites, a melody of positive and negative, delight with the play of our vibrative existence. When the opposites are realized to be one, discord

Perhaps one of the best books on the market trying to understand the relationship between Eastern Religious and Philosophical traditions and the development of Western Psychology. Ken Wilber develops an interesting and perhaps complete picture of the paradigms which these two world try to deal with. The book also helps to explain why the East never really developed psychology and why the West almost lost it's mystic heritage. "No Boundary" synthesised much of what I thought that I understood, but could never explain.

Ken Wilbur is one of the most intelligent and cohesive thinkers I have ever read. He unites many branches of philosophy and psychology in this book. He provides understanding why so many truths contradict each other. Ponder this: (paraphrased from the text)Unity consciousness, or no-boundary consciousness, by definition has no boundary. As such, you could say that there is no boundary which seperates us from It in this moment. Logic tells us that this must be true. The only thing which prevents us from experiencing No-Boundary Awareness right now, is our resistance to it. The book is not exactly "light" reading, but if you are willing to put on your thinking cap, it is certainly fascinating