A Sociable God: Toward a New Understanding of Religion

by Ken Wilber

In one of the first attempts to bring an integral dimension to sociology, Ken Wilber introduces a system of reliable methods by which to make testable judgments of the authenticity of any religious movement. A Sociable God is a concise work based on Wilber's "spectrum of consciousness" theory, which views individual and cultural development as an evolutionary continuum. Here he focuses primarily on worldviews (archaic, magic, mythic, mental, psychic, subtle, causal, nondual) and evaluates various cultural and religious movements on a scale ranging from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to Kosmic. By using this integral view, Wilber hopes, society would be able to discriminate between dangerous cults and authentic spiritual paths. In addition, he points out why these distinctions are crucial in understanding spiritual experiences and altered states of consciousness.

In a lengthy new introduction, the author brings the reader up to date on his latest integral thinking and concludes that, for the succinct and elegant way it argues for a sociology of depth, A Sociable God remains a clarion call for a greater sociology.

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Religion, Spirituality, Sociology

188 pages, Paperback

First published August 12, 1984

About the author

Kenneth 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.

Reviews

[Christie]

This book helped me make sense of people of all faiths having the same spiritual experiences, and reassured me that growing out of organized religion is a natural stage of human development.

[Ruben Mes]

Ken Wilber is a genius.

However,

This book disappointed me because I expected more structural analysis on the various expressions/manifestations of religion.

It seems Wilber's early writing does not have this yet, as he only developed his models (AQAL) later, and I found the content in this sense rather lackluster.

His style is more humble than his later writings, such as Integral Spirituality. Despite this, I couldn't help but feel that, deep down, I would find more answers in his later work, perhaps in Religion of Tomorrow. (Please confirm this in the comments if you know)

I liked the last chapter, where he finally got to analysis, but also found it extremely bare-boned. The therapeutic process he described was absolutely amazing however, and I hope to discover more about his view on therapy in No Boundaries'. Note that in his Integral Spirituality, Wilber elaborates on the shadow-work process with his 3-2-1 approach.

I'm researching what an authentic and legitimage religious movement looks like, and while I could admit I got some pointers, I just feel like I wasted my time, money and energy on this book, as I'm pretty sure he'll regurgitate the important points in his later work on religion (such as Religion of the Future), and that I might as well read that one.

It seems like this early work was still quite avant-guard at the time of publishing, and that the integral field has made incredible steps in the last 50 years since then. As such, I can't recommend this book unless you want a historical view in what he did back in the days, or if you really want to specifically receive his methodology of assessing legitimacy and authenticity of religion - and have some concepts prior to doing that research. (I may be able to use it in my thesis, so I've taken notes)

The concepts and models that he uses are rather 'archaic' and are immensely elaborated upon in later works. Hence, it was not very valuable to see his outdated models for the development of consciousness. There were some gold bits, I.e. on legitimacy, that I didn't see as clearly but now realize to be absolutely essential.

You can already hear some of the concepts like the Stages vs States and the pre/trans-fallacy come through, and I could see how this work was a building block for his later theories.

Not recommended. Go for Integral Spirituality instead.

[Stephen M. Theriault]

Wilber rules the philosophical coolness of metaphysics.

[Peter Aronson]

If you believe that transcendental mental states are real, objective, spiritual and can be reliably be reproduced, then Ken Wilber's system for classifying religions on the twin axis of legitimacy and authenticity may make sense to you. If not, the whole structure is a castle built on sand. In any case it does not, despite its claims, in anyway resemble a legitimate part of any social science. So much of this book's reasoning is build on cherry-picking the literature to match the author's preconceptions (this includes literature long abandoned as obsolete or invalid by the fields it came from!), and when the cherry-picked literature doesn't match the author's opinions closely enough, he just blithely suggests what changes he wants to match better. And his use of word evolution is particularly egregious! He doesn't seem to understand evolution isn't goal oriented, but rather believes it to be strictly teleological, where things inevitably evolve from lower to higher forms. Nor does he seem to have any interest in the philosophy or the sciences or the social sciences or he'd know the problems involved with subjective states as if they were part of objective reality.

[Leanne Hunt]

This was for me a pleasing introduction to Ken Wilber's work. I appreciated his clear description of the problems sociologists have with discussing religion, and of the wide variety of religious experience known to man over the centuries and across the globe. His suggestions for a more objective definition of spirituality points to the possibility of a greater appreciation of different faiths in the future. While religion will always be deeply personal, there is a pressing need for a hierarchical classification that recognises the human spirit's potential for growth and evolution.

[Jake]

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.