Wilber's groundbreaking synthesis of religion, philosophy, physics, and psychology started a revolution in transpersonal psychology. He was the first to suggest in a systematic way that the great psychological systems of the West could be integrated with the noble contemplative traditions of the East. Spectrum of Consciousness , first released by Quest in 1977, has been the prominent reference point for all subsequent attempts at integrating psychology and spirituality. Like radiation and light, consciousness, suggests Wilber, establishes a multiplicity of aspects as it 'steps down' into time and space. Thus, as a spectrum, it can be studied legitimately on one or more of its 'wavelengths.' Viewing consciousness in this way, we can see that seemingly disparate disciplines each speak to a different wavelength of awareness. KEN WILBER is the founder of Integral Institute and the cofounder of Integral Life. He is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development. He is the author of more than twenty books, including A Brief History of Everything , A Theory of Everything , Integral Spirituality , No Boundary , Grace and Grit , and Sex, Ecology, Spirituality . The Spectrum of Consciousness By Ken Wilber Theosophical Publishing House Copyright © 1993 Ken Wilber All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8356-0695-0 Contents Foreword by John White, Preface to the First Edition, Preface to the Second Edition, PART ONE – EVOLUTION, I. Prologue, II. Two Modes of Knowing, III. Reality as Consciousness, IV. Time/Eternity, Space/Infinity, V. Evolution of the Spectrum, VI. Surveying the Traditions, PART TWO – INVOLUTION, VII. Integrating the Shadow, VIII. The Great Filter, IX. Man as Centaur, X. A No-Man's Land, XI. That Which is Always Already, Bibliography, Acknowledgments, CHAPTER 1 Prologue Willam James, in an oft-quoted remark, has stated that Our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, while all about it parted from it by the filmiest of screens there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence, but apply the requisite stimulus and at a touch they are there in all their completeness.... No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question.... At any rate, they forbid our premature closing of accounts with reality. This volume is an attempt to provide a framework for just such an account of the universe. Now this framework is, above all else, a synthesis of what are generally but nebulously referred to as "Eastern" and "Western" approaches to the understanding of consciousness; and due to the extraordinarily vast and complex nature of both of these approaches, this synthesis is—in at least some aspects—deliberately simplistic. An analogy from physics might prove helpful in explaining this approach. Our environment is saturated with numerous kinds of radiation—besides the common visible light of various colors, there exist X-rays, gamma rays, infrared heat, ultraviolet light, radio waves, and cosmic rays. Except for that of visible light, the existence of these radiation waves was unknown until around 200 years ago, when William Herschel began the exploration of radiation by demonstrating the existence of "thermal radiation" — now called infrared — using for instruments nothing more than thermometers with blackened bulbs placed in various bands of a solar spectrum. Shortly after Herschel's discovery, Ritter and Wollaston, using photographic instruments, detected ultraviolet radiation, and by the end of the 19th century, the existence of X-rays, gamma rays, and radio waves had been experimentally proven using a variety of techniques and instruments. All of these radiations are superficially quite different from one another. X-rays and gamma rays, for instance, have very short wavelengths and consequently are very powerful, capable of lethally damaging biological tissues; visible light, on the other hand, has a much longer wavelength, is less powerful, and thus rarely harms living tissue. From this point of view, they are indeed dissimilar. As another example, cosmic rays have a wavelength of less than a millionth of a millionth of an inch, while some radio waves have wavelengths of over a mile! Certainly, at first glance, these phenomena all seem to be radically different. Oddly enough, however, all of these radiations are now viewed as different forms of an essentially characteristic electromagnetic wave, for all of these apparently different rays share a large set of common properties. In a vacuum they all travel at the speed of light; they are all composed of electric and magnetic vectors which are perpendicular to each other; they are all quantized as photons, and so on. Because these different forms of el