The Religion of Tomorrow

A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions

Year: 2017 · Format: Book

Description

Wilber's longest and most systematic later work: a proposal for how the world's major religious traditions could integrate developmental psychology and post-metaphysical spirituality without losing their contemplative core.

In-Depth Overview

At roughly 800 pages, The Religion of Tomorrow is Wilber's longest and most systematic later-period book, and functions as an integral-post-metaphysics-era counterpart to SES — a full restatement of the mature system focused specifically on religion. It's organized in four parts. Part One frames the project as a "Fourth Turning" of the Dharma (extending the traditional three turnings of Buddhist teaching): a proposal that the world's contemplative traditions can absorb modern and postmodern developmental psychology without losing their depth. Part Two lays out states and structures of consciousness as two distinct developmental streams — states (gross, subtle, causal, witnessing, nondual) as temporary and available to anyone regardless of stage, structures as earned, sequential waves of development one grows through — the same states/stages distinction from Integral Spirituality, elaborated here at much greater length and applied specifically to spiritual practice and the interpretation of mystical experience.

Part Three turns clinical: a treatment of shadow material and how unintegrated psychological "baggage" — disowned emotions, unresolved trauma, unconscious defenses — distorts spiritual practice and experience, drawing on the same 3-2-1 shadow work introduced practically in Integral Life Practice. Part Four assembles the pieces into a full picture of what an integral spirituality looks like when growing up (structures), waking up (states), cleaning up (shadow), and — a fourth term used elsewhere in his later work — showing up (quadrants/practice) are pursued together rather than any one in isolation. It's the most complete single statement of Wilber's mature system as applied to religion and contemplative practice specifically, at the cost of being considerably longer and more repetitive than the shorter core books.

Notes

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