[Well, today, as part of the ongoing Archival Revival at Enlightenment.Com, I went ahead and posted the full interview transcript from my 2001 in-depth interview with Ken Wilber at his home in Boulder. I also posted a new commentary, that puts this particular effort in context, and it's that commentary that follows this parenthetical remark. If you want to read the interview transcript itself, click here.]

An Enlightenment Interview with

Ken Wilber

(and a brand new Jordan Gruber commentary, as of December 10, 2007,
with some thoughts on the circumstances and impacts of this pivotal interview)

What follows it the full written transcript from Speaking of Everything (2001), a double-CD audio interview that Jordan Gruber conducted with Ken Wilber, at Ken's home, in April of 2001, not so very long ago. Note that Speaking of Everything has been available at Amazon.Com, but soon will be out of print. A few, rare, copies signed by Ken Wilber himself are still for sale for $50 each; if you're interested, send me a shout at jordan@enlightenment.com.

Ironically, when this double-CD set first came out as a finished product during the end of 1982, it was extremely popular, breaking Amazon.Com's top ten for the "Music" category. Why was it so popular? Well, it was nicely done, and included some Alex Grey artwork and a great design by our friend Brooks Cole of Holocosmos, but the real and obvious reason why this thing was flying off our shelves was the fact that at that point there had never before been a "live" interview with Ken Wilber available, that is, one where you could hear his actual voice in a non-scripted context.

As I've written elsewhere, getting Ken to agree to let me interview him was easy. But getting there physically, was very logistically difficult. And on top of the difficult of the trip, getting the actual audio recording device to function correctly was another huge real-time hurdle. But all of that pales in comparison to Ken's reluctance to have the interview released publicly.

To the extent that Enlightenment.Com is still "made," that was a make-or-break moment for us. I essentially importuned Ken, both in person and later by email, to let him let me make a product out of the recording. In fact, I sent him a copy of the interview so that he could see that, despite his misgivings, he had a decent-sounding voice and that he didn't come off as anything but a very caring, very decent, and enormously intelligent and likeable fellow.

Well, finally he agreed, we made the product, and it gave many thousands of people their very first opportunity ever to hear an actual recording of this brilliantly informative and entertaining creative genius. (And even though I now join in the ranks of those who are critical of Ken on multiple fronts, there's still absolutely no doubt whatsoever that he has a stunning mind. As I say in the interview, with complete admiration, hero worship, and perhaps some naivete:

"You know that people ride on your words. They eagerly read the latest Ken interview, and they go, "Ah hah," and it changes them. It's a burden. It's an office. It's a…you're Ken Wilber! I know that seems weird for me to say that to you but, you know, hey, you're actually Ken Wilber!")

So, essentially, my partners and I were able to bring the world more of Ken Wilber then it had ever had before. Whether this was just an inevitable development for Ken of played a crucial turning point, it was very shortly after this first-ever-voice-of-Ken-availability that many recordings of Ken, including video (something I asked for but was turned down on numerous occasions), began to appear. Today, Ken is available in great depth, from multiple sources, including his own Integral Institute and Tami Simon's wonderful Sounds True.

So, consider this interview as just a bit of frozen memetic history, or consider it as containing, in potential form, an initial and integral representation of some of the dynamics, writ large, that now make Ken seem quite a bit more problemmatic these days. In any case, enjoy the interview in its written form, and if you'd like to hear the original recording, why not go ahead and get a copy for yourself?

best to you,

Jordan Gruber

As you may know, Matthew Mogen, who works for Zaadz, has been inspired to bounce for a whole year, ever day, and to blog about his experiences as one means of keeping his commitments. See his blog to track his current progress: http://matthew.zaadz.com/blog

Well, Matthew graciously consented to being interviewed about his progress and his experiences several times throughout the year. This is the first of this interviews, and you can listen to it by clicking on the following link:

http://www.enlightenment.com/media/audiointerviews/rebounding/Matthew_Mogen/matthew_1_rebound.mp3

Matthew discusses many interesting subjects, including some health challenges at the very beginning (some ear concerns, blisters on his feet), and the fact that, unlike me, he prefers bouncing without music (he prefers a quiet mind).

He also discusses some of the changes he's seen and felt to date, including the fact that he seems to have a lot more stamina when going for long walks.

Keep on bouncing, Matthew!

Enlightenment.Com Newsletter -- 2007 Wrap-Up

[Note: This was sent to the Enlightenment.Com newsletter list yesterday, 
December 28, 2007.  If you'd liketo sign up to receive future newsletters, 
please send a blank message to Enlightenment-Com-on@mail-list.com

   Contents of this Enlightenment.Com Newsletter:

1. Welcome to our new, simplified, newsletter format.
2. The State of the Site
3. The Archival Revival: Mostly Completed!
4. A New in-depth Audio Interview with Steve McIntosh, author
of *Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution*
5. ChiBounding: Prices about to rise on Bellicon Rebounders
6. Thanks!

[Note: This newsletter was written by Jordan Gruber,
Enlightenment.Com's Founder and CEO, and he takes responsibility
for all errors and omissions found here and throughout 
Enlightenment.Com. Please email me, mailto:jordan@enlightenment.com,
if you have any questions or concerns.]

---------------------------

1. Welcome to our new, simplified, plain-text newsletter. As you may
remember, about a year ago we were in deep financial distress,
which  resulted in our switching servers to save money. 
As part of the switch we lost our newsletter capability, which is
why you haven't received a newsletter in several months.

But now we are working with a newsletter provider, and can once
again reach out to you. We won't be sending them more than once a month 
at most, and more likely every other month. If you'd like to
unsubscribe, a link is provided near the bottom of this newsletter.

---------------------------

2.          *The State of the Site*

So, you might ask, how is Enlightenment.Com doing these days?

Well, I would have to say that overall, we're doing really well.

First, we've managed to get through another financial and energetic
choke point when we switched servers to a much lower-cost
server over the summer. This switch caused a great deal of 
disruption, but it seems that, overall, we've gotten
through nearly all of that -- the small commissions we receive on
sales of Bellicon rebounders is keeping the site financially
afloat -- and we are ready to really dig into our next
dozen years as an online entity.

Keep in mind that Enlightenment.Com is among the oldest
continuously running psycho-spiritual websites, as well as 
among the very first to provide blogs, audio, video, and more.
Having once been very far ahead of the curve, we're now
a bit behind in some things. But for now, we're quite content
to still be around, and to be able to occasionally provide you with
new, interesting, or useful bit of content or news.  

Second, we're very pleased that the Archival Revival is mostly
completed. Look on our front page, http://enlightenment.com, and
check under book reviews, audio interviews, video interviews, 
written interviews, and so on, and you'll see that there is
quite a lot of content available for free.

Third, along these same lines, we have been adding *new content*,
including the full transcript of our 1st-ever 
audio interview with Ken Wilber at
http://www.enlightenment.com/media/interviews/wilber1.html.
We also have some brand new material up, such as the very
recent audio interview with integral author Steve McIntosh 
(just go to http://enlightenment.com and look under audio interviews).
Or, take a look at, or rather, a listen to, Jim Fadiman's audio
interview on transpersonal psychology, recorded just a few
months ago.

[Some of the old content is pretty cool too. For example, take
a look at the video interviews with Richard Ely, Sacred Geologist.
Or the Charley Tart videos.]

Fourth and finally, we are still here, still paying attention, still
looking long-term at what, exactly, a site like "Enlightenment.Com"
is supposed to be. That is, in a perfect world, or at least one better than
this one, what would a site called "Enlightenment.Com" add to the 
world?

Personally, I have always endeavored to make it possible for
such a site to provide some kind of impartial access to information 
about "what works" amongst the vast range  of 
psycho-spiritual tools, techniques, teachings, and
teachers. So, when the time is right for us to be among 
the first Web 3.0 psycho-spiritual websites -- or whatever it 
is that will really come next to the web -- 
we'll do our best to continue to be here for you. Digital Darshan, 
I'm quite sure, is still in our collective cyber-future...

---------------------------

3. The Archival Revival is now mostly completed. Go to 
http://Enlightenment.Com and simply use the various pull-down
menus to take you to:

     * Written Interviews (10 available right now)
     * Video Interviews (4 available right now)
     * Audio Interviews (7 available right now)
     * Book Reviews (18 available right now)
     * Journals (1 available right now, more coming!)
     * Essays, Fiction, Misc. (6 available right now)

One thing that will be coming back online are my (Jordan's) 
Classic Enlightenment Journals. I will be putting these back
because a good deal of my thought went into them and 
they provide background for some of the ongoing themes that underly 
Enlightenment.Com. That is, they illustrate and perhaps begin to 
implement the deep memetic underbelly of Enlightenment.Com.

Additionally, as the adding of Steve McIntosh's new audio interview
shows (put up today, December 27th, 2007), 
the Archive is continuing to grow with brand new material
even as the rest of the old material is being added. 

Now, there are some things that we have never yet put up --
the full interview with Byron Katie, for example -- and we'll
be putting those up too over time. So, we hope you enjoy what's
here and what's going to be coming here in the future.

---------------------------

4. A new audio interview with Steve McIntosh, author of *Integral
Consciousness and the Future of Evolution*, is now available from
the front page of http://Enlightenment.com under the pull-down menu
under "Audio Interviews."

Steve has written a great new book that I like a lot. In fairness,
Steve is one of my oldest friends -- he was a year ahead of me when
we met on Law Review at the University of Virginia School of Law --
and to this day we are very close. Also, I take pride in the fact
that I was among the first people to introduce Steve to the ideas
of Ken Wilber, as I had been reading Ken from the time I was in
my early twenties. 

The interview is in audio format, and segmented into five different
clickable .mp3 files (just click and your web browser should be 
able to handle the file). Just to give you a brief taste of what
the book is about, here's what I wrote about it on Amazon:

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Much Needed Synthesis of Integral Thoughts (e.g., consciousness 
evolution) and Thinkers (e.g., Ken Wilber), September 10, 2007
By Jordan Gruber "CEO, Enlightenment.Com"

Instructive, impassioned, and articulate, Steve McIntosh has gifted 
us with a provocative synthesis of integral thought and thinkers. 
Both historical retrospective and moral-evolutionary prognosis, 
*Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution* challenges us 
to test what we already know against what we hope may one day be 
possible.

Fans of Ken Wilber may have differing reactions to the fair-handed 
but discerning treatment of their intellectual hero that makes up 
a relatively small part of this book. In addition to his very 
thorough walk-through of integral thought and thinkers, McIntosh 
also provides fresh and original insights, especially with regard 
to integral politics and the actual real-time functioning of 
the inter-subjective realm of being.

As a life-long student of integral thought and thinking, 
I heartily recommend this book to anyone who wishes to 
continue including-yet-transcending the bounds of their own 
spiritual and philosophical inquiries.

---------------------------

5. ChiBounding: Prices about to rise on Bellicon Rebounders

Well, ChiBounding remains my primary integral practice focus.
I'm now closing in on 5 and a half years of a daily bouncing
practice, and I can honestly say that I love it as much as
ever. I've written a great deal about ChiBounding on the 
Zaadz website at http://pods.zaadz.com/digital_darshan, including
everything from health benefits to a free .pdf book that will
give you as much detail as you might want.

And I've written an essay on why, exactly, ChiBounding is 
*my integral practice* at 
http://enlightenmentdotcom.zaadz.com/blog/2006/6/a_practice_thats_integral
_to_your_life (you may
have to cut and paste the entire link for this to work).

By the way: I'm not the only one bouncing daily. Matthew Mogen, who
works for Zaadz.com, has committed to bouncing daily for a year and
blogging about it. His blog is: http://matthew.zaadz.com/blog. He
credits me for directly inspiring him, and I'm thrilled that someone
else is undertaking the same sort of rebounding experiment that
I am.

Lastly, I'm happy to say that I am now actively engaged in producing
a set of much simpler, illustrated, materials that will, I hope,
induce many more folks to try daily rebounding and ChiBounding. But
more about that in the next newsletter.

So, one of the great things about rebounding these days is that unlike
in the old days, the equipment is much better. There are rebounders
made of springs that can take a heavy workout, and even better,
there are now European-made rebounders that use bungy-bands, that
provide a much nicer bounce, and that are really far better than
anything that has come before. 

BUT THE PRICES ON THESE 
EUROPEAN-MADE BELLICON BUNGY-BASED
REBOUNDERS ARE GOING UP ON JANUARY 1ST, 2008,
by about $50 on average. 

So this is one last chance before 2007 ends to save yourself $50 or 
so and get the best rebounder that you can at
http://www.Enlightensource.com/buybellicon.html.

In truth, I would like to see the prices of these come way down,
and that will happen to some extent, we hope, over the
next few years, as the dollar strengthens
and as manufacture of the units moves to the U.S. Another 
possibility is that someone else will produce a quality
bungy-based product, but as of yet, there is no news
of that. [As always, I'll tell you everything I know 
about bungy-based and spring-based rebounding equipment 
as soon as I hear anything new.]

But for now, this is the best rebounding exercise equipment 
I know of, and as far as I'm concerned, rebounding is one of 
the best full-on psycho-spiritual or integral
exercises regimes available. (Fun, simple, easy, safe, 
highly effective, nearly infinitely adaptable.) So please 
take a look if you think you might have any long-term interest
in this fabulous form of integral exercise.

 http://www.Enlightensource.com.

---------------------------

6. Thanks!

Thanks for reading this newsletter. Thanks for sticking with
Enlightenment.Com for the long-run. Thanks for all your personal
work and practice and discipline and energy. Thanks for being
who you are. Special thanks to all those who have over the
years supported me and the website. Thanks to my two 
partners, Jeramy and Gabriel. Thanks to all our lovely 
families and friends and pets. So, thanks for many reasons,
and we at Enlightenment.Com wish all of you 
a very wonderful new year.

Best Blessings and Warmest Wishes,

Jordan Gruber
Founder, CEO, Enlightenment.Com

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