Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

In the first chapter, "The Web of Life", Wilber uses Arthur Lovejoy's account of the Great Chain of Being to show how the mechanistic, materialistic modern worldview triumphed over the West's traditional, holistic, hierarchical view. The prevalence of pathological, dominating hierarchies throughout history has given hierarchy a bad name. But hierarchy is ultimately inescapable. Thus, we should concentrate on discovering which hierarchies actually do exist and on healing them.

In the second chapter, "The Pattern That Connects", Wilber uses Arthur Koestler's account of holism and holarchy and Ludwig von Bertalanffy's General Systems Theory to describe approximately twenty tenets of all holons. Wilber calls the holistic version of the Great Chain of Being the "Great Nest of Spirit", because this account emphasizes that higher levels include as well as transcend lower ones.

In the third chapter, "Individual And Social", Wilber describes Erich Jantsch's account of co-evolution and self-organizing systems.

In the fourth chapter, "A View From Within", Wilber describes what he calls two fundamental aspects of existence: the "Left-hand path" (interiority) and the "Right-hand path" (exteriority). Gross reductionism—atomism, for example—consists of reducing a whole to its parts. Subtle reductionism—systems theory, for example—consists of reducing the interior to the exterior. Charles Taylor's work is used to show that the Enlightenment paradigm suffers from both gross and subtle reductionism. When Individual and Social spheres are added to the Interior and Exterior aspects of existence, four quadrants emerge.

In the fifth chapter, "The Emergence Of Human Nature", Wilber uses Jean Gebser's account of the development of human consciousness to show how the West progressed from the magic to the mythic to the rational mentalities. This acknowledgment that all of existence is in development adds a third fundamental dimension—depth, or verticality—to Wilber's model of consciousness.

In the sixth chapter, "Magic, Mythic And Beyond", Wilber uses Jean Piaget's theory of developmental psychology to describe the individual development of the contemporary human being. The "Pre/Trans Fallacy" is described. This is Wilber's term for "romantic" approaches, like deep ecology and ecofeminism, that often mistake earlier and more exclusivist modes of being for more mature, more inclusive modes.

In the seventh chapter, "The Farther Reaches Of Human Nature", Wilber uses Jürgen Habermas' account of socio-cultural development to describe collective human development. Wilber describes vision-logic, a non-dominating, global awareness of holistic hierarchy, in which the pathological dissociations of Nature from Self, interiority from exteriority, and creativity from compassion are transformed into healthy differentiations. The validity claims of mystics are compared to Thomas Kuhn's account of scientific paradigms.

In the eighth chapter, "The Depths Of The Divine", Wilber uses the accounts of four mystics to describe the possibilities for further individual spiritual development: the Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson on nature mysticism, the Christian saint Teresa of Avila on deity mysticism, Meister Eckhart on formless mysticism, and the Hindu guru Ramana Maharshi on nondual mysticism.

In the ninth chapter, "The Way Up Is The Way Down", Wilber describes Neo-Platonist Plotinus' nondual metaphysics. "Ascending" philosophies are those that embrace the One, or the Absolute. "Descending" philosophies are those that embrace the Many, or Plenitude. Both ascent (driven by Eros, or creativity) and descent (driven by Agape, or compassion) are indispensable for a healthy, whole view. Plato's metaphysics, which also included both ascending and descending drives, is described. Plotinus' attack on Gnosticism is described in order to trace differences between healthy and pathological approaches to ascent.

In the tenth chapter, "This-Worldly, Otherworldly", Wilber describes various attempts to repair modernism's fractured and flattened worldview, especially Schelling's existential idealism.

In the eleventh chapter, "Brave New World", Wilber describes the liberating advantages as well as the spiritually crippling disadvantages of the modern, scientific mentality.

In the twelfth chapter, "The Collapse Of The Kosmos", Wilber uses Taylor's account of the effects of the Enlightenment paradigm to show how vertical depth was collapsed into horizontal span and how the ascending drive was dissociated into the "Ego camp" (Immanuel Kant's and Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Transcendent Ego) and the "Eco camp" (Baruch Spinoza's deified Nature). Utilitarianism is described as mistaking sensory pleasure for Spirit, which ultimately resulted in a fixation on hedonism and sex in modern society.

In the thirteenth chapter, "The Dominance Of The Descenders", Wilber describes how the West tried to embrace the Many through science, but failed to embrace the One through mysticism. The result was the rise of Thanatos (Sigmund Freud's death drive), and Phobos (existential fear), which are the respective pathological versions of Agape and Eros.

In the fourteenth chapter, "The Unpacking Of God", Wilber describes aspects of particular historical nondual views that could possibly heal the noetic fissures in the West, especially spiritual practice as understood by Zen and Dzogchen Buddhism.

The afterword, "At The Edge Of History", includes a meditation on Emptiness as the ground of Being in which all entities are ontologically healed.