Description

From the Wikipedia:

"Integral theory is a synthetic metatheory developed by Ken Wilber. It attempts to place a wide diversity of theories and models into one single framework. The basis is a "spectrum of consciousness," from archaic consciousness to ultimate spirit, presented as a developmental model. This model is based on development stages as described in structural developmental stage theories; various psychic and supernatural experiences; and models of spiritual development. In Wilber's later framework, the AQAL (All Quadrants All Levels) model, it is extended with a grid with four quadrants (interior-exterior, individual-collective), synthesizing various theories and models of individual psychological and spiritual development, of collective mutations of consciousness, and of levels or holons of neurological functioning and societal organisation, in a metatheory in which all academic disciplines and every form of knowledge and experience are supposed to fit together.

Wilber's integral theory has been applied in a number of domains. The Integral Institute currently publishes the peer-reviewed Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, and SUNY Press has published twelve books in the "SUNY series in Integral Theory." Nevertheless, Wilber's ideas have mainly attracted attention in specific subcultures, and have been mostly ignored in academia."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_theory_(Ken_Wilber))

2. Jennifer Gidley on the concept of Integral:

"The genealogy of the term integral is somewhat contested among contemporary integral theorists and researchers. In the middle of last century cultural philosopher Jean Gebser (Gebser, 1949/1985) used the term integral to refer to a new, emergent, structure of consciousness. However, unknown to Gebser when he published his first edition of The Ever-Present Origin (Gebser, 1949/1985, p. xxix), Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo had begun in 1914 to use the terms integral knowledge and integral consciousness, in a series of writings later published as The Life Divine (Aurobindo, 1914/2000). Sri Aurobindo refers to integral knowledge as “a Truth that is self-revealed to a spiritual endeavour” (Aurobindo, 1914/2000, p. 661). This is also aligned to Gebser’s use of integral: “Integral reality is the world’s transparency, a perceiving of the world as truth: a mutual perceiving and imparting of truth of the world and of man and all that transluces both” (Gebser, 1949/1985, p. 7). What has not yet been recognised in the integral literature, to my knowledge, is that even before Sri Aurobindo began writing about integral knowledge, Steiner20 was already using the term integral21 in a similar way.22 Steiner’s earliest use of integral, to my knowledge, is the following comment he made on integral evolution in a lecture in Paris on the 26th May, 1906.

- The grandeur of Darwinian thought is not disputed, but it does not explain the integral evolution of man… So it is with all purely physical explanations, which do not recognise the spiritual essence of man's being. (Steiner, 1928/1978, para. 5) [Italics added]

Steiner also used the term integral in a way that foreshadowed Gebser’s use. Gebser (Gebser, 1949/1985) claimed that the integral structure of consciousness involves concretion of previous structures of consciousness, whereby “the various structures of consciousness that constitute him must have become transparent and conscious to him” (p. 99). Gebser also used the term integral simultaneity (p. 143) to express this. This echoes Steiner’s characterisation of “the stages on the way to higher powers of cognition … [where one eventually reaches] a fundamental mood of soul determined by the simultaneous and integral experience of the foregoing stages” (Steiner, 1909/1963, § 10, para. 5). [Italics added]

The term integral has been popularised over the last decade by Ken Wilber and to a lesser extent by Ervin László with their respective integral theories of everything23 (László, 2007; Wilber, 1997, 2000a). Much of the contemporary evolution of consciousness discourse that uses the term integral to point to an emergent, holistic/integrative and spiritually-aware consciousness—draws on the writings of Gebser and/or Sri Aurobindo, either directly, or indirectly through reference to Wilber’s integral theory (D. G. Anderson, 2006; Combs, 2002; Earley, 1997; Feuerstein, 1987; Montuori, Combs, & Richards, 2004; Murray, 2006; Neville, 2006; Roy, 2006; Swanson, 2002; Thompson, 1998; Wilber, 1997). An ecology of integrals, has been suggested including “six intertwined genealogical branches of integral: those aligned with Aurobindo, Gebser, Wilber, Gangadean, László and Steiner24… among which there are varying degrees of commonality and contestation” (Hampson, 2007, p. 121)."

(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/47374341_Evolving_education_a_postformal-integral-planetary_gaze_at_the_evolution_of_consciousness_and_the_educational_imperatives)

Discussion

The Wilberian Approach to Development

Marcel van Marrewijk:

"In Sex, Ecology and Spirituality, Ken Wilber made a large contribution to evolutionary developments. He supports Graves when stating: “Evolution proceeds irreversibly in the direction of increasing differentiation/ integration, increasing organization and increasing complexity”. This “growth occurs in stages, and stages are ranked in both a logical and chronological order. The more holistic patterns appear later in development because they have to wait the emergence of the parts that they will then integrate or unify. This ranking refers to normal hierarchies (or holarchies) converting “heaps into wholes, disjointed fragments into networks of mutual interconnection”As the natural orientations emerged, they clearly show an increase of integratedness and complexity, each stage including and transcending the previous ones.

From evolutionary literature, Wilber concludes twenty “patterns of existence” or “tendencies of evolution” which are summarized below: reality is not composed of things or processes; it is not composed of wholes nor does it have any parts. Rather it is composed of whole/parts, or holons4. This is true of the physical sphere (atoms), as well as of the biological (cells) and psychological (concepts and ideas) sphere, or simply said, apply to matter, body, mind and spirit. Atoms or processes are first and foremost holons, long before any ‘particular characteristics’ are singled out by us.

Holons display four fundamental capacities: self-preservation, self-adaptation, self-transcendence and self-dissolution. Its agency — its self-asserting, self-preserving tendencies—expresses its wholeness, its relative autonomy; whereas its communion—its participatory, bonding, joining tendencies—expresses its partness, its relationship to something larger. Both capacities are crucial: any slight imbalance will either destroy the holon or make it turn into a pathological agency (alienation and repression) or a pathological communion (fusion and dissociation). Self-transcendence (or self-transformation) is the system’s capacity to reach beyond the given, pushing evolution further, creating new forms of agency and communion. Holons can also break down and do so along the same vertical sequence in which they were built up.

These four capacities or ‘forces’ are in constant tension: the more intensely a holon preserves its own individuality, preserves it wholeness, the less it serves its communions or its partness in larger and wider wholes and vice versa. This tension can be manifested, for instance in the conflict between rights (agency) and responsibilities (commun ions), individuality and membership and autonomy and heteronomy.

If holons stop functioning, all the higher holons in the sequence are also destroyed, because those higher wholes depend upon the lower as constituent parts. We might say that Wilber as well as Graves, Beck & Cowan have created an almost identical phase wise orientation to reality however based on different lines of reasoning.

Wilber’s rich analysis of science and (eastern) religion has culminated in a four-quadrant perspective towards Reality. The upper quadrants represent individual holons, the lower half of the diagram, social or communal holons. The left side is the interior and the right side the exterior form or structure of holons.

The upper-right quadrant represents the objective, empirical observations of holon behaviour, such as atoms, gases, fish or humans. The upper-left quadrant stands for the I-world: the interior form of an individual holon: subjective intentions and awareness. Characteristic sciences focused on this quadrant are psychoanalysis, phenomenology and mathematics. The lower-right quadrant represents the ‘its-world’. With reference to humans, it shows the exterior forms of social systems such as the development from kinships to nations-states, but also tools and technology, architectural styles, forces of production, concrete institutions and even written material. The lower-left quadrant corresponds with the we-perspective of Reality, the Cultural dimension. Weber introduced an intersubjective sociologist approach, Verstehen, that characterizes this quadrant. It is the realm of relational exchange creating collective values, consciousness, worldviews and common meaning and interpretations.

The upper quadrants coincide with Graves’ Biopsychosocial features of the Mind Capacity and the lower ones with Life Conditions. In both concepts, the quadrants are aligned: Each point in any of these quadrants correlate with a specific set of points in the other quadrants."

(https://www.scirp.org/html/1-9900003_1309.htm)

See the graph at [1]

Characteristics

From the Wikipedia:

Four quadrants

Upper-Left (UL) "I" Interior Individual Intentional

e.g. Jane Loevinger and Sigmund Freud

Upper-Right (UR) "It" Exterior Individual Behavioral

e.g. Skinner

Lower-Left (LL) "We" Interior Collective Cultural

e.g. Jean Gebser and Jurgen Habermas

Lower-Right (LR) "Its" Exterior Collective Social

e.g. Marx

The AQAL-framework has a four-quadrant grid with two axes, namely "interior-exterior," akin to the subjective-objective distnction, and "individual-collective." The left side (interior) mirrors the individual development from structural stage theory, and the collective mutations of consciousness from Gebser. The right side describes levels of neurological functioning and societal organisation.

Wilber uses this grid to categorize the perspectives of various theories and scholars:

Interior individual perspective (upper-left quadrant) describes individual psychological development, as described in structural stage theory, focusing on "I";
Interior plural perspective (lower-left) describes collective mutations in consciousness, as in Gebser's theory, focusing on "We";
Exterior individual perspective (upper-right) describes the physical (neurological) correlates of consciousness, from atoms trough the nerve-system to the neo-cortex, focusing on observable behaviour, "It";
Exterior plural perspective (lower-right) describes the organisational levels of society (i.e. a plurality of people) as functional entities seen from outside, e.g. "They."

Each of the four approaches has a valid perspective to offer. The subjective emotional pain of a person who suffers a tragedy is one perspective; the social statistics about such tragedies are different perspectives on the same matter. According to Wilber all are needed for real appreciation of a matter.

According to Wilber, all four perspectives offer complementary, rather than contradictory, perspectives. It is possible for all to be correct, and all are necessary for a complete account of human existence. According to Wilber, each by itself offers only a partial view of reality. According to Wilber modern western society has a pathological focus on the exterior or objective perspective. Such perspectives value that which can be externally measured and tested in a laboratory, but tend to deny or marginalize the left sides (subjectivity, individual experience, feelings, values) as unproven or having no meaning. Wilber identifies this as a fundamental cause of society's malaise, and names the situation resulting from such perspectives, "flatland".

The model is topped with formless awareness, "the simple feeling of being," which is equated with a range of "ultimates" from a variety of eastern traditions. This formless awareness transcends the phenomenal world, which is ultimately only an appearance of some transcendental reality. According to Wilber, the AQAL categories—quadrants, lines, levels, states, and types—describe the relative truth of the two truths doctrine of Buddhism.[note 9]

Levels or stages

The basis of Wilber's theory is his developmental model. Wilber's model folows the discrete structural stages of development, as describedin the structural stage theories of developmental psychology, most notably Loevinger's stages of ego development.[note 11] To these stages are added psychic and supernatural experiences and various models of spiritual development, presented as additional and higher stages of structural development. According to Wilber, these stages can be grouped in pre-personal (subconscious motivations), personal (conscious mental processes), and transpersonal (integrative and mystical structures) stages.

All of these mental structures are considered to be complementary and legitimate, rather than mutual exclusive. Wilber's equates the levels in psychological and cultural development, with the hierarchical nature of matter itself.

Lines, streams, or intelligences

According to Wilber, various domains or lines of development, or intelligences can be discerned.[36] They include cognitive, ethical, aesthetic, spiritual, kinesthetic, affective, musical, spatial, logical-mathematical, karmic, etc. For example, one can be highly developed cognitively (cerebrally smart) without being highly developed morally (as in the case of Nazi doctors).

States

States are temporary states of consciousness, such as waking, dreaming and sleeping, bodily sensations, and drug-induced and meditation-induced states. Some states are interpreted as temporary intimations of higher stages of development.[37][38] Wilber's formulation is: "States are free but structures are earned." A person has to build or earn structure; it cannot be peak-experienced for free. What can be peak-experienced, however, are higher states of freedom from the stage a person is habituated to, so these deeper or higher states can be experienced at any level.[note 13]

Types

These are models and theories that don't fit into Wilber’s other categorizations. Masculine/feminine, the nine Enneagram categories, and Jung's archetypes and typologies, among innumerable others, are all valid types in Wilber's schema. Wilber makes types part of his model in order to point out that these distinctions are different from the already mentioned distinctions: quadrants, lines, levels and states.[40]

Holons

Holons are the individual building blocks of Wilber's model. Wilber borrowed the concept of holons from Arthur Koestler's description of the great chain of being, a mediaeval description of levels of being. "Holon" means that every entity and concept is both an entity on its own, and a hierarchical part of a larger whole. For example, a cell in an organism is both a whole as a cell, and at the same time a part of another whole, the organism. Likewise a letter is a self-existing entity and simultaneously an integral part of a word, which then is part of a sentence, which is part of a paragraph, which is part of a page; and so on. Everything from quarks to matter to energy to ideas can be looked at in this way. The relation between individuals and society is not the same as between cells and organisms though, because individual holons can be members but not parts of social holons.[note 8]

In his book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Wilber outlines twenty fundamental properties, called "tenets", that characterize all holons. For example, they must be able to maintain their "wholeness" and also their "part-ness;" a holon that cannot maintain its wholeness will cease to exist and will break up into its constituent parts.

Holons form natural "holarchies", like Russian dolls, where a whole is a part of another whole, in turn part of another whole, and so on. Each holon can be seen from within (subjective, interior perspective) and from the outside (objective, exterior perspective), and from an individual or a collective perspective."