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Kosmic Consciousness: The Ken Wilber Sessions, by Wilber, K. (2003). Sounds True, Incorporated, $99.95, Compact Disc [ISBN 1591791243].
Most organizational analysts, whether scholars or practitioners, inevitably value integrative frameworks that reveal otherwise hidden interconnections among facts, premises, and theories about organizations. Arguably, Ken Wilber has arisen in the past decade as a veritable master at providing integration across the realms of humanity, evolution, consciousness, and organization. Fortunately, I first encountered his ideas in his book, A Brief History of Everything (1996), before reading its massive foundation, Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality (1995), which covers 524 pages of text, 239 pages of intricately-documented endnotes, and 33 pages of approximately 800 references.
Last Fall, a new source and different medium for Wilber's ideas arose, provided by Sounds True as a series of interviews packaged on a set of 10 compact disks, titled Kosmic Consciousness: The Ken Wilber Sessions (2003). To date, this ??-disk set provides probably the most accessible coverage of Wilber's expansive framework. For the first time, readers can experience Wilber not only as a mastermind but also as down-to-earth and humorous, as he responds to questioning about his "integral" perspective. The key to unlocking this access comes as much from interviewer Tammy Simon (Sounds True publisher) as it does from Wilber's one-on-one level communications. Tammy Simon does an excellent job of asking appropriate and helpful questions, and of probing for clear explanations and practical examples.
Without a doubt, Wilber's framework can benefit most organizational scholars and practitioners alike, not because it provides answers to day-to-day questions, but rather because it provides a useful map on which to arrange, interrelate, and contextualize other ideas. As a map, it helps to inform executive more than managerial issues including diagnosis, framing of questions, and filling of gaps that inevitably arise when analyzing complexities of organizations. Each of the first five compact disks addresses a different pattern, which together comprise Wilber's framework. The other disks explore applications and extensions, thus providing opportunities for enrichment of the framework. The five patterns of Wilber's framework are quadrants, lines, levels, states, and types. Each is as potentially insightful for helping to understand a single person as it is for understanding an organization, society, and in some instances humanity as a whole. By interrelating...