Big States, Small States, and Peak Experiences

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Here Ken Wilber offers one of his finest presentations on states of consciousness, bringing a great deal of clarity to one of the most important conceptual maps of our time. 
 

Many of us have long intuited that the world's great spiritual traditions must share some common core—that is, despite the significant differences on the surface, every religion is an expression of some universal source, which is then interpreted through the cultural lens of a particular society at a particular point in history. 
 

And more importantly, we know that this isn't a matter of belief, but of experience—this universal source can itself be tasted in a direct and immediate way.  In fact, almost every major religion has been built around the teachings of mystics, all of whom have had actual first-hand experiences of divinity, while trying to translate their state experiences for the everyday world in the form of words, deeds, and practices.
 

But here's the catch—while every religion shares a common core of mysticism, and while every mystic has had his or her own personal taste of the divine, not all mystical experiences are identical.  Here Ken offers a simple but comprehensive way to make sense of these different states of consciousness, essentially bringing our entire history of esoteric spirituality to the table while teasing apart the many different flavors of transcendence.