An Interview With Ken Wilber
In 1972, Ken Wilber wrote his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness. He was twenty-three years old, working as a dishwasher, studying Zen by mail with several roshis, and writing in his spare time.
For about an hour I had maintained the professional distance that is the boon or bane of modern journalism, depending on how you look at it. Calling from Berkeley, I was interviewing Dean Halverson of International Students, Inc., an evangelical Christian organization in Colorado Springs. Halverson and I have both conducted exhaustive research into the spiritual document known as A Course In Miracles, although from significantly different viewpoints. I called Halverson for some background on his writing about the Course in recent years for the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, a Berkeley-based organization devoted to examining Eastern religions and new age spirituality from an evangelical Christian perspective.
Running in the morning — thinking, as usual, of how I might improve myself, live closer to my feelings, devote myself more completely to God — I’m stopped by two women, who want directions to some church. Jolted from my reverie, annoyed that they’ve asked me rather than someone walking by, I tell them exasperatedly I don’t know. They thank me politely; I run on.
A few old men were sitting in front of the store, watching a car come through the heat waves. The buzzards rose up from a dead dog to let it pass.
It must have been a real publicity bust for Marilyn and her people. I mean, here it is thirty years later, and I’ve never seen anything about it in all the flood of words about her since.
The summer I was fifeen my father moved out, my breasts grew in, and my mother told me to call her Eve.
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Melissa is telling me about the ten years she spent in Rome, working for a famous Italian film director. She chooses her words as precisely as if she were carving a rose from marble. Ah, the images she creates! Long, intriguing lunches on a piazza with an international film crew. Lovers, male and female, married and single, famous and unknown. Films made in locations all over Europe. Passion. Decadence. Romance.
This person called up and said, “You’ve got to come and take this seminar. It will completely change your life in just one weekend.” And I said, “Well, I don’t want to completely change my life this weekend. I’ve got a lot of things to do on Monday.”
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