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Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution
Wilber traces humanity's cultural and spiritual evolution. New Foreword by the author.
First published January 1, 1981
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About the author
Ken Wilber
225 books1,244 followersKenneth Earl Wilber II is an American philosopher and writer on transpersonal psychology and his own integral theory, a systematic philosophy which suggests the synthesis of all human knowledge and experience.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
November 6, 2008
WOW. If I could give this book 10 stars, I would. Not the first of his I've read, but the one I've paid most attention to so far in terms of re-reading sections and thinking deeply on it. If you have an interest in the evolution of human spirituality and the search for Spirit and higher consciousness, then his books will speak to you. He has an amazing ability to tie together history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and religious studies in one whole "big picture" package -- his vision never fails to amaze and delight me, and his books often make me laugh out loud, read passages aloud, etc. He's kin to Joseph Campbell both in his views and his lean toward Buddhism, as well as the rigor of his research. I swear that reading Wilber makes you smarter. If you've asked yourself what the meaning of life is, or how you can be a better person, or both, I think his writing gives a lot to chew on -- he's an intellectual, but he writes from a humanist perspective of compassion and true curiosity.
June 26, 2011
Ken Wilber is simply the greatest living philosopher and is considered to be the one man to successfully unite easter and western thought into an intelligent synthesized whole. Your IQ will grow 20 points reading any one of his books.
May 30, 2018
Interesting take on the evolution of consciousness, Wilber does his best to keep it dramatic and entertaining. The Sages are a kind of evolutionary X-Men, the next step on humanities evolutionary ladder.
Is it all true?
Fuck knows?
But it is thought provoking.
Is it all true?
Fuck knows?
But it is thought provoking.
January 30, 2013
This is the most significant book I've ever read. It is a work of pure genius. It is a must read for the searcher. Magnificent.
May 29, 2019
Is the prognosis of Ken Wilber in “Up from Eden” correct?
“Up from Eden” by Ken Wilber is a very good book that convincingly describes the evolution of mankind so far. Towards the end of the book, in logical conclusion Ken Wilber tries to make a prediction for the future.
This sounds quite convincing from the previous level of consciousness, but that is exactly the catch. The experiences of the past are projected from the current level of consciousness into the future.
The higher level of consciousness of the new age is, however, a leap in development to a higher level that integrates everything of the old age and at the same time completely exceeds it. What the three errors of Ken Wilber consist in and what the new age actually looks like, I describe to you on my website:
https://new-age-enlightenment.com/hal...
Currently, “Up from Eden” is a very good book for the past of the old age. If Ken Wilber revises his prognosis regarding the development of mankind, “Up from Eden” could also be valuable for the new age.
Ken Wilber's predicted leap of evolution for the future development of mankind is now taking place with the Final-Enlightenment from Berlin spreading worldwide. We are all invited to participate. It is a wonderful, fascinating turn of time in which we have incarnated.
“Up from Eden” by Ken Wilber is a very good book that convincingly describes the evolution of mankind so far. Towards the end of the book, in logical conclusion Ken Wilber tries to make a prediction for the future.
This sounds quite convincing from the previous level of consciousness, but that is exactly the catch. The experiences of the past are projected from the current level of consciousness into the future.
The higher level of consciousness of the new age is, however, a leap in development to a higher level that integrates everything of the old age and at the same time completely exceeds it. What the three errors of Ken Wilber consist in and what the new age actually looks like, I describe to you on my website:
https://new-age-enlightenment.com/hal...
Currently, “Up from Eden” is a very good book for the past of the old age. If Ken Wilber revises his prognosis regarding the development of mankind, “Up from Eden” could also be valuable for the new age.
Ken Wilber's predicted leap of evolution for the future development of mankind is now taking place with the Final-Enlightenment from Berlin spreading worldwide. We are all invited to participate. It is a wonderful, fascinating turn of time in which we have incarnated.
April 25, 2024
Excerpts:
“But the world of farming is the world of extended time, of making present preparations for a future harvest, of being able to gear the actions of the present towards significant future goals, aims, and rewards. The farmer works not only in and for the present, as does the hunter, but also in and for tomorrow, which demands an expansion of his thoughts and deeds and awareness beyond the simple present, and a replacement of immediate impulsive discharges of the body with directed and channeled mental goals. In short, with the advent of farming, men and women entered an extended world of tense, time, and temporal duration, expanding their life and consciousness to include the future. This, to say the very least, is no small achievement.
Impulse delay and control, the ability to postpone, channel, sublimate, and offset otherwise instinctive body-bound activities and typhonic magic – this is the expanded world of the farmer.” – page 94
“The capacity to farm the natural world with increasing efficiency soon led to the production of extra or surplus food and goods, and it was just this surplus that would soon change the entire face of history. For the more efficient farming became (especially with the invention of the plow), the less consciousness had to concern itself exclusively with food production. That is, for the first time in history, the availability of a surplus of food freed certain individuals for other and more specialized tasks: the development of mathematics, the calendar, the alphabet, and writing, etc. A fact unparalleled in importance for the creation and evolution of civilization itself. It is almost universally agreed that, beginning perhaps as early as the 6th Millennium BC, the food surplus allowed the emergence of specialized classes, such as priests, administrators, educators, etc., who because they no longer had to hunt or farm themselves were freed for more detailed and specialized tasks. By 3200 BC, these specialists had consequently produced the alphabet, mathematics, writing, the calendar - the first truly and purely mental production of the human race. In short, because of farming, consciousness was released from merely physical food and given the time for mental contemplation.” – page 102
“With money, mankind could symbolize a specific a specified amount of material goods, and then instead of having to always drag and transfer these physical goods from point to point, market to market, feel to town, it could in many important cases simply transfer the symbols of the goods instead. In other words money, as a mental symbolic, was a significant transcendence of the physical realm, a small but incalculably important vehicle of evolutionary transcendence; it was a way to move and transfer and operate on the physical realm without having to deal cumbersomely with the limitations of the realm itself. Instead of carrying five tons of wheat with you, you could carry 5 gold coins – that simple.” – page 103
“It is this difficult (but absolutely necessary) awakening to the reality of sexual differentiation that eventually leads up to, and in part propels, the classic Oedipus and Electra complexes, under the general formula known as the “separation of the parents,” wherein the young child “falls in love” with the parent of the opposite sex, and generally feels rivalry with the same-sexed parent; hence the attempt to separate them.
…The Child thus begins developing this emotional-sexual level of being. This development is not geared solely toward the opposite-sexed parent – it is actually a development on the whole. It is a general growth and exercise of emotional-sexuality – or simply feeling in general – which is so globally characteristic of the body realms. Nonetheless, the evidence strongly suggests that the opposite-sexed parent is a definite focal point of this emotional-sexual development. This is apparently why strong frustrations or rejections by the particular parent, at this crucial stage, can so cripple emotional-sexual relations in general, often for the rest of one’s life. Thus, the emotional-sexuality of the child begins to develop on the whole, but it often is focused on, and even explicitly desiring of, the opposite-sexed parent.
… We can summarize this as follows, beginning with the male: The male child wants to possess the mother so as to complete the body unity; i.e., he wants to see himself with his mother, and thus he wants to “oust” the father – this is the “separation of the parents,” with jealousy, anger, and upset toward the father. The child wants to pry the parents apart and thus step in himself with the mother and close the body circle. This is of course impossible, and so, through a rather complicated course whose details need not concern us, the child takes the next-best thing and identifies with the father, since the father already possesses the mother. The boy more or less surrenders the desire to possess the mother and seeks instead to be like the father (“identifications replace object-choices”).
But identification is a mental accomplishment. The child can identify with the father only by using concepts, roles, and so on. And this means a fundamental transformation has occurred from body union to mental union. The child does not take the actual father into his body, he takes the father image into his ego. (This is also part of the formation of the superego, the internalized parent.) This overall identification helps the child form a higher-order self, a properly mental self and a stronger ego capable of more than body-bound desires.
Essentially the same thing occurs in the female child, except of course the roles are reversed.” – pages 231-233
“But the world of farming is the world of extended time, of making present preparations for a future harvest, of being able to gear the actions of the present towards significant future goals, aims, and rewards. The farmer works not only in and for the present, as does the hunter, but also in and for tomorrow, which demands an expansion of his thoughts and deeds and awareness beyond the simple present, and a replacement of immediate impulsive discharges of the body with directed and channeled mental goals. In short, with the advent of farming, men and women entered an extended world of tense, time, and temporal duration, expanding their life and consciousness to include the future. This, to say the very least, is no small achievement.
Impulse delay and control, the ability to postpone, channel, sublimate, and offset otherwise instinctive body-bound activities and typhonic magic – this is the expanded world of the farmer.” – page 94
“The capacity to farm the natural world with increasing efficiency soon led to the production of extra or surplus food and goods, and it was just this surplus that would soon change the entire face of history. For the more efficient farming became (especially with the invention of the plow), the less consciousness had to concern itself exclusively with food production. That is, for the first time in history, the availability of a surplus of food freed certain individuals for other and more specialized tasks: the development of mathematics, the calendar, the alphabet, and writing, etc. A fact unparalleled in importance for the creation and evolution of civilization itself. It is almost universally agreed that, beginning perhaps as early as the 6th Millennium BC, the food surplus allowed the emergence of specialized classes, such as priests, administrators, educators, etc., who because they no longer had to hunt or farm themselves were freed for more detailed and specialized tasks. By 3200 BC, these specialists had consequently produced the alphabet, mathematics, writing, the calendar - the first truly and purely mental production of the human race. In short, because of farming, consciousness was released from merely physical food and given the time for mental contemplation.” – page 102
“With money, mankind could symbolize a specific a specified amount of material goods, and then instead of having to always drag and transfer these physical goods from point to point, market to market, feel to town, it could in many important cases simply transfer the symbols of the goods instead. In other words money, as a mental symbolic, was a significant transcendence of the physical realm, a small but incalculably important vehicle of evolutionary transcendence; it was a way to move and transfer and operate on the physical realm without having to deal cumbersomely with the limitations of the realm itself. Instead of carrying five tons of wheat with you, you could carry 5 gold coins – that simple.” – page 103
“It is this difficult (but absolutely necessary) awakening to the reality of sexual differentiation that eventually leads up to, and in part propels, the classic Oedipus and Electra complexes, under the general formula known as the “separation of the parents,” wherein the young child “falls in love” with the parent of the opposite sex, and generally feels rivalry with the same-sexed parent; hence the attempt to separate them.
…The Child thus begins developing this emotional-sexual level of being. This development is not geared solely toward the opposite-sexed parent – it is actually a development on the whole. It is a general growth and exercise of emotional-sexuality – or simply feeling in general – which is so globally characteristic of the body realms. Nonetheless, the evidence strongly suggests that the opposite-sexed parent is a definite focal point of this emotional-sexual development. This is apparently why strong frustrations or rejections by the particular parent, at this crucial stage, can so cripple emotional-sexual relations in general, often for the rest of one’s life. Thus, the emotional-sexuality of the child begins to develop on the whole, but it often is focused on, and even explicitly desiring of, the opposite-sexed parent.
… We can summarize this as follows, beginning with the male: The male child wants to possess the mother so as to complete the body unity; i.e., he wants to see himself with his mother, and thus he wants to “oust” the father – this is the “separation of the parents,” with jealousy, anger, and upset toward the father. The child wants to pry the parents apart and thus step in himself with the mother and close the body circle. This is of course impossible, and so, through a rather complicated course whose details need not concern us, the child takes the next-best thing and identifies with the father, since the father already possesses the mother. The boy more or less surrenders the desire to possess the mother and seeks instead to be like the father (“identifications replace object-choices”).
But identification is a mental accomplishment. The child can identify with the father only by using concepts, roles, and so on. And this means a fundamental transformation has occurred from body union to mental union. The child does not take the actual father into his body, he takes the father image into his ego. (This is also part of the formation of the superego, the internalized parent.) This overall identification helps the child form a higher-order self, a properly mental self and a stronger ego capable of more than body-bound desires.
Essentially the same thing occurs in the female child, except of course the roles are reversed.” – pages 231-233
June 8, 2017
This and 'The Atman Project' see Wilber's writing at it's most dangerous (I believe this is 'Wilber II' by his own terms but I'm a but rusty on such definitions), dangerous by Wilber's standards, don't expect Burroughs, never the less, if you're familiar with Wilber's writing and haven't read this, you may be surprised by how much attitude the voice of the narrator contains, it seems like he still has something to prove to his readers and to himself before he 'evolves' into the more placid map maker of later books.
March 18, 2013
Brilliant work on the entire history of mankind that felt like it took as long to read is it did to occur...
January 30, 2021
This is my favorite Wilber book. He presents an intriguing perspective on the origin and trajectory of humanness and human transformation. That said, as with all of Wilber's works, the undercurrent of unvalidated knowledge claims that are rooted in mystical, magical thinking undermines the overall synthesis. The most potent takeaway from the book, for me, is the claim (echoed from Ernest Becker) that the aspiration to transcend death is a/the core human drive and all of our significant efforts over time are immortality projects. This notion is not at odds with the implications of biology though Wilber strives to link it, and his other core concepts, back to magical/mystical foundations. Recommended read for those who like speculative explorations and can keep in mind this is NOT scientific, though it is 'sciency' and Wilber's highly systematic constructions attain what Stephen Colbert calls 'truthiness'>.
August 18, 2023
Very eurocentric, but all encompassing. This book has changed the way I view nearly every aspect of human history. His voice is captivating enough to withstand his sometimes academic tone. Incredible book!
August 15, 2020
Life changing. His later stuff: not so much
June 19, 2021
This book was a lot of work. Probably the most mind-expanding thing I’ve read.
August 20, 2022
Mind-blowing. Not an easy read, but every insight gained was more than worth the time and effort. Ken Wilber lives up to the hype!!
December 12, 2023
Not for me. A very thorough description of human psychology evolution and a focus on how our stories and culture reflect that struggle to attain higher consciousness.
May 30, 2013
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.
Want to read
August 19, 2013Wilber is not scholarly. For an informed critical review of Up from Eden, see Kevin R.D. Shepherd's Ken Wilber, Up from Eden.
July 29, 2008
this book, written along with it's companion book, The Atman Project, explores humans ability to transcendtheir previous mode of being and evolve toward Godhead.
September 16, 2010
Ken Wilber is an incredible intellectual and author. He is a great source for those of us who enjoy exploring the crossroads between philosophy, science, and spirituality.
December 11, 2011
Partial Read.
April 14, 2012
Awesome, enlightening, ground-breaking new knowledge.
September 6, 2013
Extraordinary narrative of the evolution of consciousness. But read what Simon ( below) has to say.
Read
September 22, 2015Perfect tie in to The Spectrum of Consciousness
November 19, 2016
One of Ken Wilber's earliest works. Many of of his theories evolved since this book, but it's still one of my favorites of his.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews