BIOGRAPHY:
Kenneth Earl Wilber II (born January 31, 1949, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA) is an American philosopher and writer who developed the theoretical and practical principles of the integral approach, the purpose of which is the synthetic unification of discoveries made in such different spheres of human activity such as psychology, sociology, philosophy, mysticism and religious studies, postmodern movements, empirical sciences, systems theory, as well as in other areas.
In his works, Ken Wilber consistently integrates different points of view on the Universe into a single system. With the concept of “Cosmos” Wilber unites all manifestations of existence, including various areas of consciousness. The term is used to distinguish the non-dual universe (which, according to his view, includes both noetic and physical aspects) from the purely physicalist model of the universe considered by the traditional (“narrow”) sciences.
Wilber is often associated with the transpersonal movement, from which, however, in his later years he significantly distanced himself. In 1998, he founded the Integral Institute, a research center for the study of scientific and social issues within the framework of an integral and non-reductionist approach. He developed approaches to integral psychology and integral politics. Ken Wilber is sometimes called the "Einstein of human consciousness."
Ken Wilber as founder of integral theory
Solving the Mind-Body Problem
Excerpt from Ken Wilber's book "Integral Psychology"
The first major problem that a truly integral (all-level, all-sector) approach helps to resolve is what Schopenhauer called the “world node,” namely, the mind-body problem.
So let's start with a bold assumption: the mind-body problem is largely a creation of flatland. It is not the differentiation of mind and body, which is at least as old as civilization itself, and has never bothered anyone before, but it is the dissociation of mind and body that is a characteristic vice of modern and post-modern consciousness, accompanying the collapse of the Cosmos into flatland. For in flatland we find ourselves faced with a truly insoluble dilemma in the relationship between mind and body: the mind (consciousness, feeling, thought, awareness) - in short, the regions of the Left Side - has absolutely no place in a world described only by the concepts of the Right Side (material body and brain ): the mind becomes a “ghost in the machine.” Then we are faced with two apparently absolute, but contradictory truths: the truth of direct experience, which unmistakably demonstrates that consciousness exists, and the truth of science, which equally unmistakably shows that the world consists only of combinations of fundamental building blocks (quarks, atoms, strings etc.), not possessing any consciousness, and no permutations of these thoughtless elements can lead to intelligence.
Unlike the writers who popularized the topic, serious philosophers who address the mind-body problem are more convinced than ever of its intractability. There is simply no generally accepted way to untie this world knot. Over the past few decades, much of the influential work has, in fact, been devoted to the absolutely insurmountable difficulties facing proposed solutions. Case Campbell summed up the shaky and unreliable consensus: “I suspect we will never know how this trick (the mind-body connection) works. This part of the Mind-Body problem seems insoluble. This aspect of human existence seems destined to remain forever beyond our understanding.”2
However, many solutions have been proposed, the most influential of which are dualistic (interactionism) and physicalist (scientific materialism). The dualistic position was most influential in the early modern era (from Descartes to Leibniz), but since then the physicalist position has steadily strengthened its position and currently occupies a dominant position.3
The physicalist (or materialist) approach states that there is only a physical universe, which is best described by physics and other natural sciences, and in this universe we do not find consciousness, mind, experience or awareness anywhere, and therefore these "internal aspects" are simply an illusion (or, at best, by-products that lack true reality). Some variants of the physicalist approach allow for the emergence of complex higher-level systems (such as the brain, neocortex, autopoietic neural systems, etc.). However, they point out that these higher level systems are still objective realities, having nothing that could be called consciousness, mind or experience, since experience is characterized by "qualia" (Latin), or qualities - such as pain or pleasure, and these qualities are not properties of objective systems. Therefore, objective systems can in no way give rise to these "mental" properties, and therefore these properties are simply illusory by-products of complex systems that have no causal reality of their own.
(In my terminology, this argument goes like this: all objective systems are described in the language of "it", while experience, consciousness, and "qualia" are described in the language of "I", and therefore, if you believe that the world that science describes - is the "really real" world - and, after all, there are many good reasons to believe that science gives us our best hope of finding truth - then you will naturally think that "qualia", experience and consciousness are not "really real" " - that they are illusions or by-products or secondary characteristics of the real world that science discovers.)
Although variations of physicalism are much more widespread than any other view, this is not so much because physicalism itself is good as because its alternatives are much worse. Even the materialists themselves admit that their position faces many problems: here are the statements of some of them. Galen Strausson: “As a committed materialist, I... believe that the phenomena of experience are realized in the brain... [But] if we consider the brain from the point of view of modern physics and neurophysiology, we are obliged to admit that we do not know how experience. .. is or could even be carried out in the brain.” John Searle: "Criticism of the materialist theory usually takes a more or less technical form, but, in reality, behind these technical objections lies a much deeper objection... This theory has bracketed out... certain essential features of the mind - such as consciousness or " qualia,” or semantic content...” Jaigwon Kim, who developed the “complement” theory, which is a very sophisticated version of emergent physicalism, concludes that this approach “is likely to lead to a dead end.” Thomas Nagel concludes that: "physicalism is a position which we are unable to understand because at present we have not the slightest idea how it could be true." Colin McGinn simply states that we will never be able to resolve the question of how consciousness arises in the brain. And these are the conclusions of the physicalists themselves!
So the dualists point out these insoluble difficulties of physicalism and say to the materialists: “We know that consciousness exists in some form because it is one of the basic intuitive knowledge given to man, and therefore in order to refute it, some very compelling reasons. We experience consciousness directly. However, we do not directly experience quarks or atoms (or the fundamental elements of the physical world). Therefore, we do not need to follow your path, that is, start with quarks and then conclude that consciousness does not exist. You should start with consciousness and explain how you come to the absurd conclusion that it does not exist.
Dualists believe that there are at least two realities in the world: consciousness and matter. Neither of them can be reduced to the other; instead, they “interact” (hence another name for this position, “interactionism”). Here, however, dualists face an age-old dilemma: how can two fundamentally different things influence each other? Everyone knows that ghosts pass through walls, they do not push walls, and therefore how can ghostly consciousness have any real effect on the material body? The very desire to show that mind cannot be reduced to matter deprives dualists of the opportunity to show how consciousness can influence matter at all. And therefore it will be very difficult for a dualist to explain how, for example, I can move my hand at all.
(Idealists dealt with this by saying that both consciousness and body are forms of Spirit, and therefore they are not alien or ontologically different entities, but simply two different aspects of the same thing. This is an acceptable solution for those who accept the existence of Spirit , which most modern and post-modern philosophers do not do, and which is why this option is not subject to wide discussion (we will return to this point shortly).
Once again, the dualists themselves point out the intractable difficulties of their position (which they hold largely because the physicalist alternative is worse). Geoffrey Maydell observes that "interactionist dualism appears to be essentially the only plausible scheme in which to find room for the facts of our experience" (since - we might say - interactionism at least recognizes the irrefutable reality of both spheres - the self) and “it”). However, "the nature of the causal connection between the mental and the physical... is highly mysterious" (how does the ghost manage to move the walls?). Sir Karl Popper states the central problem of dualism as follows: “We want to understand how non-physical things, such as goals, intentions, plans, decisions, theories, experiences and values, can play a role in causing physical changes in the physical world.” And here is the conclusion offered by dualistic interactionism: this understanding, says Popper, “is unlikely to ever be achieved.”
What do we mean by "mind" and "body"?
In my opinion, part of this difficulty is due to the fact that both main positions have adopted the theoretical terms of flatland and are trying to juggle these terms to arrive at a solution that turns out to be less than satisfactory - as virtually all sides admit. If we instead take a “whole-level, all-sector” approach, we immediately notice that both “mind” and “body” have two completely different meanings, so that there are actually four in one problem. This is very easy to understand using Fig. 12.
To begin with, "body" can mean the biological organism as a whole, including the brain (neocortex, limbic system, brain stem, etc.) - in other words, "body" can mean the entire Upper-Right quadrant, which I will call "organism". I will also refer to the organism as the “Body” (with a capital “T”), as shown in Fig. 12. Thus, the brain is located in the Body, which is the generally accepted scientific view (and an accurate description of the Upper-Right sector).
Rice. 12. Meanings of “Mind” and “Body”.
However, "body" can also have another meaning, which for the average person refers to the subjective feelings, emotions and sensations of the directly experienced body. When a typical person says, “My mind is fighting with my body,” he means that his will is fighting with some bodily desire or urge (for example, sex or food). In other words, in this commonly used sense, “body” means the lower levels of the inner sphere of a person. In Fig. 12 this “body” (with a small “t”) is shown in the Upper-Left sector and means the feelings and emotions of the felt body (as opposed to the Body, which means the entire objective organism).
Moving from body to mind, most scientists simply equate “mind” with “brain” and prefer to talk only about brain states, neurotransmitters, cognitive research, and so on. I will use the term "brain" in this sense, which refers to the upper levels of the Upper-Right quadrant (eg, neocortex), as shown in Fig. 12.
On the other hand, when the average person says, “My mind is fighting my body,” he does not mean that his neocortex is fighting his limbic system. By “mind” he means the upper levels of his inner sphere, that is, the upper levels of the Upper-Left sector - in other words, his rational will fights with his feelings or desires (the formal-operational fights with the vital and sensorimotor dimensions). The mind is described in phenomenological reports from a first-person perspective and in “I” language, whereas the brain is described in objective reports from a third-person perspective and in “it” language. All this is shown in Fig. 12.
(There is another general sense of mind/body: "mind" can mean the inner dimension in general - or the Left Side - and "body" can mean the outer dimensions in general - or the Right Side.)
Hard problem
This is the world knot, or the internal paradox of flatland: the body is in the mind, but the brain is in the Body.
Both of these statements are true, but in Flatland they appear to be contradictory, and these contradictions make up a large part of the world node.
The felt body is in the mind, as shown in Fig. 1, 3 and 8. That is, the formal operational transcends and includes the concrete operational, which, in turn, transcends and includes vital feelings and sensorimotor awareness: the mind transcends and includes the body (which is why the mind can causally influence the body, and therefore the formal operational can control the concrete operational, which can control the sensorimotor and so on, which is known to any researcher of developmental psychology). This “transcendental” part of the mind (e.g., my mind can raise my hand) is recognized by all physicalists (and then tries to declare it secondary from the point of view of flatland) and all dualists who try to include it in their theories (but do this by postulating dualism, according to - still agreeing with the flatland dissociation, see below).
When the Cosmos collapses into a plane (naturalism, physicalism, scientific materialism), the inner realities of the sphere of “I” are still felt and constitute indisputable intuitive knowledge (the mind can control the body, free will, consciousness, and unity of experience actually exist to a certain extent), but these realities collide with a world considered absolutely real, in which only the “it” realities described by science exist. And in this world, the brain is simply a part of the Body, a part of a natural biological organism, and therefore consciousness must somehow be a function of the brain. But, as scientific authorities tell us, there is absolutely nothing in the brain that even vaguely corresponds to qualia or experience or the realities of mind and consciousness. Therefore, we must either reduce consciousness to the brain (and thereby deny the existence of consciousness as a full-fledged reality), or recognize the real existence of dualism, with the result that we cannot even explain how I can raise my hand (or how one reality affects another).
I believe that both of these solutions are consistent with the flatland paradigm. I'll leave the technical details for a note. More generally, we can simply note the following:
Materialism reduces the mind to the brain, and since the brain is clearly part of the organism, there is no dualism here: the mind/body problem is solved! And this is true - the brain is part of the organism, part of the physical world, and in the resulting purely physical universe there can be no dualism; nor can there be any values, consciousness, depth or divinity. This reductionism is the "solution" that physicalists try to impose on reality - a solution that still enjoys considerable influence in much of cognitive science, neuroscience, systems theory, and so on: let's reduce Left to Right and declare that we have solved the problem.
However, the reason why most people, and even most scientists, are uncomfortable with this "solution" - and why the problem remains a problem - is that despite materialism's claims that there is no dualism, most people believe in the opposite way, because they feel the difference between the mind and the body (between thoughts and sensations) - they feel it every time they consciously decide to make any movement, they feel it in every act of volition - and they also feel the difference between the mind and the Body ( or between the subject here and the objective world there). And people are absolutely right on both counts. Let's look at them in order:
There is a difference between the mind (formal-operational) and the felt body (vital and sensorimotor), and this can be experienced in the inner sphere, or in the regions of the Left Side. This is not dualism, but rather a manifestation of the principle of “transcendence and inclusion,” and any intelligent adult experiences this transcendence, for example, in the fact that the mind is usually able to control the body and its desires. All this is phenomenologically true for the regions of the Left Side. But none of these internal stages of qualitative development (from body to mind to soul to spirit) are revealed when "body" means the Right-Handed organism and "mind" means the Right-Handed brain - all these qualitative differences are completely lost in material monism, which does not solve the problem, but simply invalidates it.
On the other hand, dualists recognize the reality of both consciousness and matter, but usually despair of finding any way to relate them to each other. “Mind” in the general sense of “internal spheres” and “Body” in the general sense of “external spheres” turn out to be separated by an impassable abyss - the dualism of subject and object. And at the level of formal operational thinking (or reason in general), at which this discussion usually takes place, the dualists are right: internal and external are a very real dualism, and it can almost always be shown that any attempts to deny this dualism are superficial - they represent just semantic tricks that claim in words that subject and object are one, but in reality the self still looks from the inside at the world outside, which seems to it as separate as always.
It is here that transnational stages of development can bring a powerful fresh stream into this discussion. Thus, for example, in self-revelation, called satori, it becomes clear that subject and object are two sides of the same thing, that internal and external are two aspects of One Taste. According to the unanimous opinion of those who have come into contact with this wave of development, there is no problem in how to relate them. The problem, rather, is that this genuine non-dual solution cannot be fully understood on a rational level. Essentially, a simple rational statement about the non-duality of subject and object leads to all sorts of insoluble problems and paradoxes. Moreover, if this non-duality could be fully understood from a rational point of view, then the great philosophers, materialists and dualists, would have been able to do it a long time ago, and the mind-body problem would not be such a problem.
No, the reason both sides in this debate generally agree that the mind-body problem is insoluble is not because they are not smart enough to solve it. The reason is that it is solved only at post-rational stages of development, which most rational researchers perceive with suspicion, ignore or completely deny. But in principle this problem is no different from this: a rationalist will claim that there is a proof of the Pythagorean theorem. A person at the pre-rational stage of development will not agree with this evidence, or even be able to understand it. However, the rationalist is absolutely right, which is quite obvious to almost any person who develops to a rational level and studies geometry.
The same is true for the non-dual solution to the mind-body problem. Those who have reached the non-dual stages of consciousness development almost unanimously admit: consciousness and matter, internal and external, self and world have One Taste. Subject and object are simultaneously different realities and aspects of the same thing: true unity-in-diversity. But this unity-in-diversity cannot be expressed in rational language in a way that is understandable even to those who have never had a trans-rational experience. Therefore, the “proof” of the existence of this non-dual solution can only be found in the further development of the consciousness of those who want to know the solution. Although this solution ("you must develop your own consciousness if you want to know all its dimensions") is unsatisfactory for the rationalist (whether he is a physicalist or a dualist), nevertheless, according to a truly integral paradigm, it is the only acceptable form of solution. When we hear Campbell say that the solution to the mind-body problem is “forever beyond our understanding,” we can correct it slightly to say that it is not beyond human understanding, but simply beyond the rational stages of understanding. This solution is post-rational, and it is completely available to anyone who wishes to move in this direction.
Two phases of knot untying
We can represent some of the above dilemmas as shown in Fig. 13, which is a map of flatland. If you compare this map with the one shown in Fig. 8, you will see that all internal areas (body, consciousness, soul and spirit) are reduced to their external (physical) correlates, which are considered the only real ones. As a result, the mind (or consciousness in general) ends up hanging in the air. And this is precisely the problem.
More precisely, the insurmountable problem (the world node) has always been how to relate this mind to both the body (or the lower internal levels of feelings and desires) and the Body (or the objective organism, the brain and the material environment). As we have seen, physicalists reduce the mind to the brain or Body, and are therefore unable to explain the mind's own reality, while dualists leave the mind in limbo, disconnected from its roots (in the body) and from the external world (the Body) - because of which An unacceptable dualism arises.
Rice. 13. Flatland.
Within the framework of the flatland paradigm depicted in Fig. 13, this problem is truly insoluble. As I have already suggested, the solution requires an "all-level, all-sector" approach that places the mind in its own body and directly connects the mind to its own Body. And, ultimately, this is achieved through the revelation of post-rational, non-dual stages of consciousness development.
This means that the solution is partly due to the existence of higher stages of development. But how can we begin to unravel the world's knot if we ourselves have not yet reached these higher stages and cannot count on others to do so? I believe we can at least start by recognizing and incorporating the realities of all four sectors into our model. That is, if we ourselves cannot yet be “all-level” in the development of our own consciousness (from matter to body, mind, soul and spirit), let’s at least try to be “all-sectoral” (which, at a minimum, means including the Big Three in our attempts to explain consciousness).
Thus, I propose two distinct phases in untying the world knot of the mind-body problem. The first represents a shift from reductionist explanations to sector-wide explanations. This recognition of the four quadrants (or simply the Big Three) allows our model to equally include first-person phenomenal accounts (“I”), second-person intersubjective premises (“we”), and third-person physical systems (“we”). it") - which, collectively, we will call “1-2-3 studies of consciousness.”
Then the second phase will be the transition from an “all-sector” to an “all-level, all-sector” approach. We will consider these two steps in this order.
Step one: all sectors
It is not enough to talk about the co-evolution of an organism and its environment; It is not enough to talk about the joint evolution of consciousness and culture. This is "tetra evolution" in which they all evolve together.
That is, the objective organism (Upper-Right Quadrant), with its DNA, neural pathways, brain systems and behavioral patterns, interacts with the objective environment, ecosystems and social realities (Lower-Right Quadrant), and they all actually co-evolve. In the same way, individual consciousness (Upper-Left Quadrant), with its intentionality, structures and states, manifests itself in intersubjective culture (Lower-Left Quadrant) and interacts with it, in turn helping to create it, and therefore they too co-evolve . But just as importantly, subjective intentionality and objective behavior interact with each other (for example, through will and reaction), and cultural worldview systems interact with social structures, just as individual consciousness interacts with behavior. In other words, all four quadrants—organism, habitat, consciousness, and culture—are causes and effects of each other: they “tetra-evolve.”
(It is not important “how” this happens; this “how”, in my opinion, is more fully revealed only in post-rational, non-dual waves of development; at this stage it is only necessary to recognize that this interaction seems phenomenologically certain. Regardless of whether you think It is theoretically possible that your mind interacts with the physical organism, and your organism interacts with the environment: they are all “tetra-interacting”).
As we have already seen, the subjective characteristics of consciousness (waves, currents, states) are closely interrelated with the objective aspects of the organism (especially the brain, neurophysiology and various organ systems), with the background cultural contexts that make the very production of meaning and understanding possible, and with the social institutions on which this culture is based. As I suggested in my book A Brief History of Everything, even a single thought is inextricably linked to all four quadrants—intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social—and is difficult to understand without reference to them all.
Accordingly, in works such as An Integral Theory of Consciousness, I have emphasized the need for an approach to consciousness that differentiates-and-integrates all four quadrants (or simply the Big Three of I, we, and it; or first person, second person and third person descriptions: 1-2-3 studies of consciousness).
This seems like an overwhelming task at first, but in fact, for the first time in history, we are at a point where we have enough pieces of this puzzle to at least begin to put them together. Judge for yourself: in the Upper-Left sector, subjective consciousness, we have a wealth of material and evidence that includes all of perennial philosophy (three thousand years of careful data collection about the internal areas), as well as a significant amount of modern research in developmental psychology. Much of this evidence is summarized in tables that can provide compelling evidence that, although there are millions of details still to be clarified, the approximate contours of the spectrum of consciousness are already clearly emerging. The general analogies evident in many of these tables are especially significant and suggest that we are at least on the right track.
The same can be said with a fair degree of confidence in relation to the Lower-Left sector (intersubjective worldviews) and the Lower-Right sector (material and technical base). About a hundred years of postmodernism have made abundantly clear the importance of pluralistic cultural worldviews and contexts (even such rational theorists as Habermas recognize that all statements are always partly determined by culture); Moreover, scholars generally agree that cultural worldviews evolve from archaic to magical, mythical, mental, and global (although there is moderate disagreement regarding the values corresponding to these systems). Similarly, in the Lower-Right sector, very few scientists dispute the evolutionary sequence of stages in the development of social-productive forces: gathering and hunting, horticulture, agriculture, industry, information society. Although there are still many details to be clarified in both of these sectors - cultural and social - their general outlines are better understood today than at any time in history.
Research in the Upper-Right quadrant - in particular in brain physiology and cognitive science - is still in its infancy, and more fundamental discoveries in these areas will have to wait for a fully integrated view to emerge (this is one of the reasons I wrote about less about this sector than about others: cognitive science and neuroscience, despite the optimistic statements of their champions, have not yet emerged from a naive age). However, our knowledge of this sector is growing rapidly, as is usually the case with children, and for now we have enough information to at least be able to relate neurophysiology to other dimensions of existence, even though its contours remain to be seen clarify.
Thus, the time has clearly come to begin to develop a whole-of-sector approach, or, simply put, an approach that gives equal respect to first-person phenomenal accounts, second-person intersubjective structures, and third-person scientific objective systems: 1 -2-3 studies of consciousness.
There are many signs that this first phase has already begun. The Journal of Consciousness Studies regularly publishes articles advocating such balanced approaches, and a compelling case for their relevance has recently been made in several books. An excellent example is the book Inside View, edited by Francisco Varela and Jonathan Shear. They defend a predominantly neurophenomenological view according to which first-person experience and third-person perspective systems create mutually limiting conditions, often mediated by second-person perspectives. “It would be fruitless to remain isolated with first-person descriptions. We need to reconcile and limit them by forming suitable links with research from a third-person perspective. (And this often implies intermediate mediation, a second-person position). The overall result should be a transition to a unified or global view of the mind, where neither experience (first-person, V-L) nor external mechanisms (third-person, T-P) have a decisive voice. Therefore, a global (integral) perspective requires a clear establishment of mutual limitations, mutual influence and definition.” This is consistent with my idea that all sectors are mutually determining (and “tetra-interacting”).
Another excellent collection that emphasizes the integral approach is Max Wellmans' anthology, Studies in Phenomenal Consciousness. The anthology included articles by Alwyn Scott, Greg Simpson, Howard Shevrin, Richard Stevens, Jane Henry, Charles Tart, Francisco Varela, Wilbur and Walsh, and Wellmans. Transpersonal Research Methods in the Social Sciences by William Broad and Rosemary Anderson is an excellent collection of resources for what the authors call “integral research.”
Step two: all levels
I believe that we need to continue to flesh out this whole-sector approach and then move on to the second phase, which will be all-level.
Many of the sector-wide approaches fully acknowledge the existence of transpersonal areas of consciousness. Thus, for example, Robert Forman points out that at least three transpersonal states must be recognized: the event of pure consciousness (or formless cessation), the dualistic mystical consciousness (or constant causal/witness awareness), and the nondual state (or constant nondual insight). In addition, many whole-sector approaches (including the models of John Shear and Ron Jevning, Francisco Varela, James Austin, Robert Foreman, Broad and Anderson, and many others) explicitly borrow much of their methodology from meditative and contemplative practices.
At the same time, it must be admitted that most of these authors do not fully understand the stage-by-stage concepts of the development of consciousness - for example, the works of Baldwin, Habermas, Loevinger, Graves, Kohlberg, Wade, Cook-Greuther, Beck, Kigen and others - despite the fact that there is strong evidence of their validity. It is not enough simply to note that the realities reflected in first-person accounts and the mechanisms described from a third-person point of view influence and determine each other, and that in both cases this is mediated by the intermediate positions of the second person. It is also important to understand that first-person consciousness develops through many well-studied stages. Moreover, consciousness of the second person position develops, and this development has also been studied in detail. Finally, the ability to develop consciousness from a third-person point of view (for example, Piaget's cognitive abilities), which has also been studied exhaustively. Perhaps because many quadrant theorists come from phenomenology, which itself has difficulty identifying stages, they tend to ignore the waves of consciousness unfolding in all four quadrants. Be that as it may, a truly integral approach, in my opinion, will develop from simply an all-sector approach to an all-sector, all-level approach. Or 1-2-3 for all levels.
Clearly, much more remains to be done. However, an impressive amount of evidence - pre-modern, modern and post-modern - strongly argues for an all-level, all-sector approach. The overwhelming majority of this evidence indicates that we are now on the threshold of, if not a fully integrated view of consciousness, then at least the ability to no longer settle for anything less.
Part I
TERRITORY:
Base
Psychology is the study of human consciousness and its manifestations in behavior. TO functions consciousness includes perception, desire, volition and action. Structures consciousness, some aspects of which may be unconscious, include body, mind, soul and spirit. In number states Consciousness includes normal (for example, wakefulness, sleep with dreams, deep sleep without dreams) and altered states (for example, extraordinary states, meditative states). In number modes consciousness includes aesthetic, moral and scientific. Development consciousness covers the entire spectrum from prepersonal to personal and transpersonal, from subconscious to self-conscious and superconscious, from Id to Ego and Spirit. Correlative And behavioral aspects of consciousness refer to its interaction with the objective external world and with the sociocultural world of shared values and perceptions.
The great problem with psychology during its historical development has been that, for the most part, different schools of psychology have often chosen one of these aspects of the extraordinarily rich and multifaceted phenomenon of consciousness and declared that it was the only aspect worthy of study (or even that it was the only aspect , which actually exists). Behaviorism reduced consciousness to its observable behavioral manifestations.
Psychoanalysis reduced consciousness to the structures of the ego and their interaction with the id. Existentialism reduced consciousness to its personal structures and modes of intentionality. Many schools of transpersonal psychology focus only on altered states of consciousness, without having a coherent theory of the development of the structures of consciousness. Eastern psychology is generally excellent at describing the development of consciousness from the personal to the transpersonal levels, but has a very poor understanding of the earlier development from the pre-personal to the personal. Cognitive psychology makes excellent use of scientific empirical methods, but often ends up simply reducing consciousness to its objective aspects, neural mechanisms and bio-computer functions, thus destroying the life-world of consciousness itself.
On the other hand, what if All Do the above explanations form an important part of the general truth? What if they all had a genuine but partial understanding of the vast field of consciousness? At worst, simply connecting their findings into a common framework could enormously expand our understanding of what consciousness is and, more importantly, what it can become. The attempt to attend to and include all valid aspects of human consciousness constitutes the task integral psychology.
Of course, such an attempt, at least initially, must be carried out at a very high level of abstraction. By coordinating these multiple approaches, we are working with systems of systems of systems, and such coordination can only be achieved through "orienting generalizations." 1 These cross-paradigmatic generalizations are intended, first of all, to simply guide us along the right path, expanding our conceptual framework as widely as possible. This requires a logic of inclusion, a logic of networks and the widest possible reach; a logic of groups within groups within groups, each attempting to reasonably include everything that can be included. This is the logic of seeing not just individual trees, but also forests.
This does not mean that individual trees can be ignored. The logic of networks is the dialectic of the whole and the part. The maximum possible number of parts is checked; then an approximate larger picture is assembled; it is checked with further details and adjusted. And so on ad infinitum: more and more new details constantly change the big picture - and vice versa. For the secret of contextual thinking is that the whole reveals new meanings not available to the parts, and thus the big pictures we build will give new meaning to their constituent parts. Because human beings are condemned to search for meaning, they are condemned to create big pictures. Even the "anti-big picture" postmodernists have given us a very big picture of why they don't like big pictures; this internal contradiction caused them many different troubles, but simply proved once again that people are doomed to create great paintings.
So choose your big picture with care.
When it comes to integral psychology—a special case of integral studies in general—we have a vast array of theories, studies, and practices that are all important trees in the integral forest. In the following pages we will introduce many of them, always keeping the overall perspective in mind.
The elements of my own system, developed in a dozen books, are summarized in Tables 1a and 1b. They include structures, states, functions, modes, lines of development and behavioral aspects of consciousness. We will discuss each of these elements in turn. In addition, we will use sources from the pre-modern, modern and post-modern eras, trying to harmonize the approaches presented in them. And we will start from the foundation of the entire system - the basic levels of consciousness.
1. BASIC LEVELS OR WAVES
Great Nest of Genesis
A truly integral psychology must incorporate the most important discoveries and insights from pre-modern, modern, and post-modern sources.
We will begin with the pre-modern or traditional sources whose concentrated wisdom has been called the perennial philosophy, or the general essence of the world's great spiritual traditions. As Huston Smith, Arthur Lovejoy, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and other scholars of these traditions have pointed out, the perennial philosophy is based on the idea that reality is composed of various levels of existence- levels of being and knowledge, extending from matter to body, mind, soul and spirit. Each level above is superior to but includes all below, so it is a concept of wholes within wholes within wholes ad infinitum, rising from filth to Divinity.
In other words, this “Great Chain of Being” is actually a “Great Nest of Being,” where each higher dimension embraces and includes all the lower ones, like a series of concentric circles or spheres, as shown in Fig. 1. (For those unfamiliar with the concept of the Great Nest, the best short introduction is still E. F. Schumacher's A Guide for the Perplexed ( A Guide for the Perplexed). Other excellent books include Huston Smith's Forgotten Truth and Chogyam Trungpa's Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, which shows that the concept of the Great Nest was present even in the earliest shamanic cultures). 1 The Great Nest of Being forms the basis of the eternal philosophy and therefore must be an essential component of any truly integral psychology.
Rice. 1. Great Nest of Being. Spirit is at the same time the highest level
(casual sphere) and the non-dual Ground of all levels.
For the last three thousand years or so, there has been near unanimous and cross-cultural agreement among the perennial philosophies regarding the general levels of the Great Nest, although the specific number of these levels may have varied widely. Some traditions distinguished only three main Levels or spheres (body, mind and spirit - or material, subtle and causal). Others identify five levels (matter, body, mind, soul and spirit), while others number seven (for example, seven chakras). And in most traditions, in addition, there is a very complex splitting of these levels, often reaching 12, 30 and even 108 sublevels of being and knowledge, which can be found in this unusually rich Cosmos.
However, many representatives of the perennial philosophy - for example, Plotinus and Aurobindo - have found it most useful to highlight about twelve levels of consciousness, and I presented approximately this division in the tables on pp. 258-300. 2 My base levels or base structures are listed in the leftmost column of all tables. These are simply the basic levels of the Great Nest of Being, each of which exceeds and includes all previous levels - whether we use the relatively simple five-level scheme (matter, body, consciousness, soul, spirit) or a slightly more complex version (which I have presented in tables and I will explain as the presentation progresses: matter, sensation, perception, exocept, motivation, image, symbol, endocept, concept, rule, formal, visual-logical, representation, archetype, formless, non-dual).
Let's introduce a useful term: these basic levels represent holons consciousness. A holon is a whole that is part of other wholes. For example, a complete atom is part of a complete molecule, a complete molecule is part of a complete cell, a complete cell is part of a complete organism, and so on. Throughout this book we will see that the universe is fundamentally made up of holons—wholes that are parts of other wholes. Letters are parts of words, words are parts of phrases, and phrases are parts of entire languages. A person is part of a family, which is part of a society, which is part of a nation, which is part of humanity, and so on.
Since each holon is part of a larger holon, the holons themselves exist in the form of nested hierarchies - or holarchies- like the hierarchy atom - molecule - cell - organism - ecosystem. The Great Nest is simply the "big picture" of these levels of increasing wholeness, exactly as shown in Fig. 1. 3 In short, the basic levels are the basic holons (stages, waves, spheres, nests) in the Great Nest of Being.
I use all three terms - basic levels, basic structures and basic waves- in an interchangeable manner, denoting essentially the same phenomenon; however, each has a slightly different meaning that conveys important information. The term "level" emphasizes the fact that it is qualitatively different levels of organization forming a nested hierarchy (or holoarchy) of ever-increasing holistic scope (each level surpassing but including its predecessors, as shown in Fig. 1). The term "structure" emphasizes the fact that these are stable holistic patterns being and consciousness (each structure represents a holon - a whole that is part of other wholes). And the term “wave” indicates that these levels are not clearly separated and isolated, but like the colors of the rainbow, they endlessly change and transform into each other. The basic structures are simply the primary colors in this rainbow. Here is another metaphor: they represent the waves of the Great River of Life, through which its many streams pass.
There is nothing linear or rigidly defined about the behavior of these various waves. As we will see more than once in this book, individual development through the various waves of consciousness is a very fluid and changeable process. Individuals may be on different wavelengths in different circumstances; aspects of their consciousness may be on many different wavelengths; even the subpersonalities of an individual's own being can be on different waves. General development is a very confusing thing! The base levels or waves simply represent some of the more noticeable bends of the great River of Life - nothing more and nothing less.
Tables 2a and 2b (pp. 262-265) briefly describe the base levels or base waves as understood in a dozen different Eastern and Western systems. We will discuss many other systems as we go along. But from the very beginning one must be aware that these levels and sublevels spoken of by the eternal sages are not the product of metaphysical reasoning or sophisticated abstract philosophy. In fact, they are in almost every respect codifications immediate empirical realities, from sensory experience to mental and spiritual experience. These “levels” of the Great Nest simply reflect the entire spectrum of existence and consciousness available for immediate experiential unfolding—from the subconscious to the self-conscious to the superconscious. Moreover, the discoveries of these waves have been tested over the years and become generally accepted in the community. Wherever they appear, they are often very similar, sometimes almost identical, and this fact simply tells us that we live in a structured Cosmos, and these amazing structures can be - and have been - noticed by astute people in almost every culture.
Each higher dimension in the Great Nest - from matter to body, mind, soul and spirit - is superior to and includes all previous ones, so that living bodies are superior to but include inorganic matter, minds are superior to but include their living bodies carriers, enlightened souls are superior to but include the conceptual minds, and the luminous spirit is superior to and includes absolutely everything. Thus, spirit is the highest (purely transcendental) wave and the omnipresent (purely immanent) basis of all waves, going beyond the All, and including the All. The Great Nest is a multidimensional network of love - eros, agape, karuna, maitri - whatever you call it, it does not leave a single corner of the Cosmos untouched by care or alien mysteries of grace.
This idea is as important as it is often forgotten - Spirit is completely transcendent and completely immanent. If we are to attempt to conceptualize Spirit at all, we should at least try to take both of these aspects into account. This is shown in Fig. 1, where the highest sphere represents the transcendental spirit (the word "spirit" in this case is written with a lowercase letter to show that it is just one level among other levels, albeit the highest), and the paper itself on which this drawing is made, represents the immanent Spirit, or Ground, equally present in all levels (in this case, "Spirit" with a capital letter to show that nothing else can be compared with it). Patriarchal religions tend to emphasize the transcendental, “otherworldly” aspect of the spirit; and matriarchal, neo-pagan religions tend to emphasize the entirely immanent or “this-worldly” aspect of the Spirit. Each is important, and a truly integral worldview must have ample room for both. (Which aspect of spirit/Spirit I mean in any given case will be determined by the context, but both are always tacitly implied).
The Great Holarchy of Being and Knowledge - such is the priceless gift of the centuries. This is the essence of the perennial philosophy, and we might say that it is that part of the perennial philosophy that has received the most empirical support. The evidence in its favor continues to accumulate uncontrollably: an extraordinarily rich spectrum of consciousness is available to human beings, stretching from prepersonal to personal and transpersonal states. Critics who try to deny the existence of this spectrum provide no evidence to support their position, but simply refuse to acknowledge the solid evidence that has already accumulated; however, this data remains. And they say that there is a richly structured rainbow of consciousness, stretching from the subconscious to the self-conscious to the superconscious.
At the same time, the fact that representatives of perennial philosophy were the first to notice many of the colors of this extraordinary rainbow does not mean that modernity and post-modernity have nothing to say about this. No one has clarified the nature of concrete and formal operational thinking better than Piaget. And how certain aspects of the early stages of development can be repressed—it really took Freud to really explain that. Modernity and postmodernity have their geniuses; and perennial philosophy has its limitations and shortcomings. A more complete spectrum of consciousness will necessarily include all their guesses and discoveries. But as far as the general nature of the waves in the Great River of Life is concerned, the representatives of the perennial philosophy have often hit the nail on the head.
I will often refer to the perennial philosophy (and the Great Nest of Being) as "pre-modern wisdom." There is nothing derogatory here. And this does not mean that no traces of perennial philosophy can be found in modernity or postmodernity (although, in truth, this is quite a rare occurrence). This simply means that perennial philosophy began in what we call pre-modern times. Also - and this is an important point that often leads to confusion - when we say that pre-modern times had access to the entire Great Nest of Being, we do not mean that every person at that time was fully awakened to all levels of the Great Nest. In fact, shamans, yogis, saints and sages who have awakened to the highest levels of soul and spirit have always been extremely rare. As we will see in Chapter 12, the average person spends most of his time at prerational rather than transrational levels of consciousness. However, "wisdom" means the best that any age has to offer, and careful students have often found that the representatives of the perennial philosophies - from Plotinus to Shankara, Fatsang and Mrs. Tsogyal - are a treasure trove of extraordinary wisdom.
Addressing them is more than accepting some important truths. This is a way of establishing our continuity with the wisdom of the ages; a way to pay homage to our ancestors; a way to transcend and include what came before us and thus flow with the flow of the Cosmos; and most importantly, a way to remind ourselves that although we stand on the shoulders of giants, we stand on the shoulders of GIANTS, and must always remember that.
Therefore, in presenting the basic waves of the Great Nest, I have tried first to appeal to the perennial philosophy in order to outline the general contours of the various levels; and then meaningfully supplement this understanding with the many clarifications (and sometimes corrections) offered by modernity and post-modernity. Take, for example, the teachings of Aurobindo (see table 2b). Notice that he designated the intermediate levels as the lower mind, the concrete mind, the logical mind, and the higher mind. Aurobindo gave very useful verbal descriptions of all these basic structures. However, these intermediate levels also represent structures that have been studied in detail by Western developmental and cognitive psychology and supported by a significant amount of clinical and experimental evidence. Therefore, I tend to use terminology taken from these studies to refer to these intermediate levels - such as rule mind/role mind, concrete operational thinking, formal operational thinking. But all these symbols of development levels are simply different photographs of the great River of Life, taken with different cameras from different points, and they are all useful in their own way. (Of course, blurry or poor photographs are not very helpful, and we can reject any research that does not meet reasonable standards. I have tried to include only the work of great photographers in the tables.)
Throughout the tables, the correlations I provide between different stages and different theories are very general in nature and are intended only to point us in the right direction (and provide a basis for more detailed and thorough correlations). However, many of these correlations were given by the researchers themselves, and ultimately I believe that most of them are accurate to within ±1.5 stages. This is also true of the higher (transpersonal) stages, although here the situation becomes more complex. First of all, as we approach the upper end of the spectrum of consciousness, orthodox Western psychological research gradually ceases to be of use to us, and we must increasingly rely on the testimony of the great sages and contemplatives of West and East, North and South. Secondly, because of this, surface cultural traits are often very different, which makes it much more difficult to find any underlying cross-cultural traits. And third, very few practitioners of one system are sufficiently familiar with the details of other systems, resulting in fewer cross-system comparisons. However, solid and impressive research, some of which we'll look at below, has made significant progress on these correlations, and I tabulate many of these results. The fact of the existence of a common intercultural similarities these higher, transrational, transpersonal stages clearly shows that we are photographing some very real flows in a very real River.
The Great Nest is potential
not a given
There is no need to depict basic structures or basic holons as forever fixed and unchanging entities (like those spoken of by Plato, Kant, Hegel or Husserl). They can, in part, be interpreted as evolutionary trends, more similar to Cosmic memory than to an initially given template. 4 But in any case, one thing is important: the fact that great yogis, saints and sages (as we will see) have already experienced many of the transpersonal realms shows unmistakably that we already have in our constitution the potential abilities for these higher levels. The human body and its brain, in its present state, have the ability to achieve these higher states. Perhaps other states will appear in the future; perhaps new potential opportunities will be revealed; perhaps higher realizations will begin. But the fact remains: right now at least these extraordinary transpersonal realms are already available to us. And whether we say that these higher potentialities are eternally given to us by God, or that they were first created by evolutionarily advanced saints and sages, and then bequeathed to us all in the form of morphogenetic fields and evolutionary tendencies, that they are Platonic Forms, eternally embedded in the Cosmos, or that they arose as a result of blind and senseless random mutation and languid thoughtless natural selection, this does not in the least change the simple fact that these higher potentialities are now available to us all.
The basic structures or basic holons that I describe in general terms - and which are listed in the leftmost column of all tables - represent a reference matrix derived from pre-modern, modern and post-modern sources, each of which fills in the gaps in its own way, abandoned by others. For comparison, Tables 2a and 2b show some of the basic levels as they are thought of in other systems. Under the heading "The General Great Chain" I have listed the five most common elements: matter, body (as the body of a living being, emotional-sexual level), mind (including imagination, concepts and logic), soul (the supra-individual source of self-identity) and spirit (at the same time formless). basis and non-dual unity of all other levels). As I said, these levels are like the colors of the rainbow, so I depicted them as overlapping. But even this is misleading; A more accurate representation would be a series of concentric spheres, with each successive sphere enveloping and including all previous ones (as in Fig. 1). Here the model will not be steps of a ladder, built one on top of the other, but holons in a holarchy, similar to the system “atoms/molecules/cells/organisms”, where each subsequent level contains all the previous ones.
At the same time - and this is not enough to be emphasized simply - the higher levels of the Great Nest are potential possibilities, not absolutes. The lower levels - matter, body, mind - have already arisen on a large scale, so that they already fully exist in this manifested world. But the higher levels - psychic, subtle and causal - have not yet become consciously manifested on a collective scale; for most people they remain potential possibilities of the human body-mind, and not fully actualized realities. In my opinion, the Great Nest of Being is, at its very core, a vast morphogenetic field or development space, in which various potential possibilities unfold and become relevant. Although for the sake of convenience I will often speak of the higher levels as if they were a simple given, they are still very much plastic, still capable of shaping as more and more people reach them in co-evolution (which is why , as I already said, the basic structures are more like the tendencies of the Cosmos than predetermined patterns). As these higher potentialities become actualized, they will be given more form and content, and they will increasingly become everyday realities. Until then, they remain, in part, vast and great potentialities, which nevertheless still have an undeniable appeal, are still present in the world in many important respects, still can be directly realized through higher growth and development and still show significant similarities wherever they appear. 5
Structures and States
The most classical and probably the oldest of the complex versions of the Great Nest is the Vedanta version (Table 2b), which also includes extremely important distinctions between states, bodies and structures. State refers to states of consciousness such as waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. Structure— this is the shell or level of consciousness; Vedanta gives five most important structures: material level, biological level, mental level, higher mental level and spiritual level. Body- this is the energetic basis of various states and levels of the mind; Vedanta distinguishes three types of bodies: the material (gross) body of the waking state (supporting the material mind); subtle body state of sleep with dreams (supporting emotional, mental and higher mental levels); and the causal body of the deep sleep state (which supports the spiritual mind). 6
Note that any given state of consciousness—such as the waking state or the dreaming state—can actually contain several different structures or levels of consciousness. Using Western terminology, we would say that the waking state consciousness may contain several completely different structures consciousness, such as sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational levels. In other words, although states of consciousness are important, structures of consciousness provide much more detailed information about the actual status of personal growth and development, and therefore a full spectrum approach must include both states and structures of consciousness.
In my own system there are two main types structures: basic structures (which we have already talked about) and the structures of various lines of development (which we will discuss below). In both psychology and sociology, structures are simply stable patterns events. Psychological structures can be subdivided and differentiated in many ways - deep and surface, levels and lines, long-term and transitional - and I use all of these distinctions. 7 But, as I said, most often I use only two of them: structures of basic levels of consciousness(for example, sensation, impulse, image, rule, formal-operational, visual-logical, mental, subtle, etc.) and structures of lines of consciousness development(e.g. stages of cognition, affect, needs, morality, etc.). In short, structures are holistic patterns, which are found both in levels and in lines of development.
Basic state are also divided into two general types: natural and modified. To the number natural states of consciousness belong to those described by the eternal philosophy - namely: waking (gross), dreaming sleep (subtle), and deep sleep (causal). According to the perennial philosophy, the waking state is the “home” of our everyday ego. But the dream state, precisely because it is a world entirely created by the psyche, gives us one type of access to states of the soul. And the state of deep sleep, since it is a realm of pure formlessness, gives us one type of access to states of the formless (or causal) spirit. Of course, for most people the dreaming and deep sleep states are less, not more, real than the waking reality, which is true enough from a certain point of view. However, according to the perennial philosophy, these deeper states can be entered with full awareness, and then (as we will see) they reveal their extraordinary secrets. For now we can simply note that, from the perspective of the perennial philosophy, the states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep provide one kind of access, respectively, to the gross ego, the subtle soul and the causal spirit.
(I often subdivide the subtle states into the lower or "psychic" region and the "subtle" region proper, since the former, lying just beyond the gross region, is often associated with a strong contact or feeling of oneness with the entire gross region, which manifests itself in natural mysticism; on the other hand, the subtle realm itself is so superior to the gross realm that it is usually associated with purely transcendental states divine mysticism. The causal sphere, of course, is the region of unmanifest cessation and is the "home" formless mysticism. They all have one thing in common non-dual mysticism. We will be looking at these higher, transpersonal areas throughout this book, so most questions regarding their exact meaning will become clearer as we read further.
The importance of these three (or four) natural states is that every person, regardless of stage or structure or level of development, general spectrum of consciousness available- ego-soul-spirit - at least in the form of temporary states, for the simple reason that all people are awake, dream and sleep deeply.
Altered state of consciousness is an “abnormal” or “extraordinary” state of consciousness, which includes everything from drug-induced states to near-death experiences and meditative states. 8 When peak experience(temporarily altered state of consciousness) a person, while in a waking state, can briefly experience any of the natural states of mental, subtle, causal or non-dual awareness, often leading to direct spiritual experience (such as nature mysticism, divine mysticism and formless mysticism; see below). Peak experiences can occur to people at almost any stage of development. This means that the idea that spiritual and transpersonal states are accessible only at higher stages of development is completely false.
However, although the main states of gross, subtle, causal and non-dual are available to people at almost any stage of development, how these states or realms are experienced and interpreted, depends to some extent on the developmental stage of the person experiencing the peak experience. This means, as I suggested in The Sociable God, that we can create a taxonomy of the kinds of spiritual experiences available to people at different stages of development.
For example, let's just call the earlier stages archaic, magical, mythical and rational. At any of these stages, a person may have transient peak experiences of the psychic, subtle, causal, or non-dual. This gives us a classification of about sixteen types of spiritual experience. To give a few examples: a person at the magical stage of development (who cannot easily put himself in the place of another) may experience a peak subtle-level experience (say, a radiant union with God); this person will be inclined to interpret this unity with God only in relation to himself (for he cannot imagine himself in the place of another person and thus realize that all people - and, in fact, all sentient beings - are equally one with God). He is therefore likely to experience severe ego inflation, perhaps even psychotic in scope. On the other hand, a person at the mythical level of development (who has expanded his self-identity from egocentric to sociocentric, but is characterized by a very concrete literal and fundamentalist thinking) will experience subtle union with God as a salvation granted not only to him (unlike the egocentric), but exclusively to those who accept certain myths (“If you want to be saved, you must believe in my God/Goddess - the only true deity”); thus, this person may become a confirmed fundamentalist, ready to convert the whole world to his brand of revealed religion. Subtle level experience is very real and genuine, but it has to be transferred somewhere, and it is transferred, in this case, in the ethnocentric, fundamentalist mythical-membership mind, which sharply limits and ultimately distorts the contours of the subtle sphere (what else more characteristic of egocentric consciousness). A person on a formal reflective level will most likely experience a subtle union with God in a more rational form, perhaps as rational theism, or as a demythologized Ground of Being, etc.
In other words, a given peak experience (or temporary state of consciousness) is usually interpreted in accordance with the general level of development of the person experiencing the experience. And this gives us, as I already said, about sixteen very general types of spiritual experience: psychic, subtle, causal and non-dual states that fill the archaic, magical, mythical and rational structures. In The Communicative God I gave examples of all these types of spiritual experiences and pointed out their meaning (we will return to this topic below). 9
However, all these peak experiences, no matter how profound they may be, are just temporary, transitory states. In order for higher development to occur, these temporary states must become permanent properties. Higher development, in part, involves turning altered states into permanent achievements. In other words, at higher stages of evolution, transpersonal potentialities that were only available temporarily states consciousnesses are increasingly turning into long-term structures consciousness (states turn into properties).
This is where they become increasingly important meditative states. Unlike natural states (which provide access to the psychic, subtle and causal realms in the natural sleep cycle, but rarely in the waking or fully conscious state), and unlike spontaneous peak experiences (which are fleeting), meditative states provide voluntary and lasting access to these higher realms. As such, they more steadily reveal the higher levels of the Great Nest, which, as practice continues, become constant achievements. 10 In other words, mental, subtle, causal and non-dual states can become stable structures in the human constitution, and that is why these names (psychic, subtle, causal and non-dual) are also used to designate the highest of basic structures in the Great Nest of Being. When they arise continually in the development of the individual, their potentialities, once available only in transitory states, become enduring properties of the enlightened mind.
Basic levels in other systems
As I said, Tables 2a and 2b show the Great Nest and its basic structures, or Levels, as they are understood in some other systems. I'm not saying that these are identical structures, levels, or waves - I'm just pointing out that they have many important similarities in development space, and that's what development space, as we will see, is especially interesting - and especially important for integral psychology.
The oldest of these systems appear to have originated in and around India, perhaps as early as the first or second millennium BC (although the traditions claim to be much older). From this unsurpassed stream of research into consciousness came the chakra system, the sheaths and states of Vedanta, the Buddhist Vijnanas, the vibrational levels of Kashmir Shaivism and the superconscious hierarchy of Aurobindo. Shortly thereafter, and perhaps due to migration (but equally likely due to the universal existence of these potentialities), the spiritual river of Mesopotamia and the Middle East began its powerful movement, including the Persian, North African, Palestinian and Greek streams. The most influential of these streams initiated the tradition of Neoplatonism, represented by movements from Plotinus to Kabbalah, Sufism and Christian mysticism (see tables).
While it has become fashionable among pluralistic relativists to rail against perennial philosophy (and anything "universal" other than their own universal claims about the importance of pluralism), a less biased look at the evidence reveals an absolutely astonishing array of commonalities among the world's great wisdom traditions. And why should this surprise us? Wherever a person lives, his body has 206 bones, two kidneys and one heart; and everywhere the human mind develops the ability to deal with images, symbols and concepts. It seems that in the same way, everywhere, the human spirit develops intuitive ideas about the Divine, and these ideas also have many common features, moreover, deep, and not superficial. Some traditions were more complete than others; some were more accurate. But when we put them all together, we get a general map of the incredibly wide range of human capabilities.
At this stage, people who do not like the concepts of level and stage tend to become suspicious: is the development of consciousness really just a series of linear, monolithic stages, one after another, like the rungs of a ladder? The answer is not at all. As we will see, the basic waves in the Great Nest are simply general levels through which many different lines or streams of development will pass - such as emotions, needs, self-identity, morality, spiritual achievements, and so on - each in its own way, in its own way. at your own pace and with your own dynamics. Thus, general development absolutely not linear, sequential and stepwise. It is the changing flow of many currents through the base waves. We'll be looking at many of these threads soon. But first we need to finish our description of basic waves and their origins.
Time of occurrence of base waves
The leftmost column of Table 3a indicates the average age at which certain basic structures of consciousness arise, up to the formal mind. Research data suggests that most people develop the same structures at approximately the same age - as I suggested, simply because collective development (or evolution) as a whole has already reached a formal level (while the levels underlying higher than the formal, to which collective evolution has not yet reached, man must achieve through his own efforts - and again, partly because they represent higher potentialities, and not something given initially). eleven
Traditions often divide a person’s entire life path into “Seven Ages,” and each age implies adaptation to one of the seven basic levels of consciousness (such as the seven chakras: physical; emotional-sexual; lower; middle; and higher mental; mental; and spiritual ), with each of the seven stages believed to take seven years. Thus, during the first seven years of life, a person adapts to the physical world (especially food, survival and security). Over the next seven years, adaptation to the emotional-sexual-sensual dimension occurs (culminating at puberty). The third seven-year period (usually adolescence) is associated with the emergence of the logical mind and with adaptation to its new perspectives. This brings us to the age of about 21, where the general development of many individuals tends to stagnate. 12 But if development continues, then each subsequent seven-year period brings the opportunity to reach a new, higher level of the evolution of consciousness, and therefore in Table 3a I indicated in brackets the approximate age corresponding to each of the higher basic structures. Of course, this is no more than a generalization, and there are many exceptions, but it is thought-provoking.
Why “seven ages” and, for example, not ten? Again, the exact number of individual colors in a rainbow is largely a matter of subjective choice. However, representatives of perennial philosophy and psychology have discovered that no matter how many subtle divisions we make for one purpose or another (for example, in some types of meditation there are about 30 different specific stages), nevertheless, it makes sense to talk about functional groups basic waves of the Great Nest. There is a sense in which all material levels and sublevels (quarks, atoms, molecules, crystals) are material and not biological (for example, they are not capable of reproducing sexually). Likewise, there is a sense in which all mental levels and sublevels (images, symbols, concepts, rules) are mental and, say, not psychic or subtle. In other words, even if it is sometimes useful to distinguish between dozens (or even hundreds) of subtle gradations of rainbow colors, there is also good reason to say that, in general, most rainbows have only six or seven main colors.
This is what the perennial philosophy means by the "Seven Ages of Man" or the seven chakras or basic structures. For various reasons, I have found that although it is easy to identify about two dozen basic structures (e.g., form, sensation, perception, exocept, drive, image, symbol, endocept, concept, rule, etc.), can be combined into seven - ten formal groups, which reflect easily recognizable stages (as will be seen throughout this book). I present these functional groups of basic structures under very general names, which are also listed in the left column of all tables: (1) sensorimotor group; (2) fantasy-emotional (or emotional-sexual) group; (3) the representing mind (analogous to general pre-operational thinking); (4) rule/role mind (similar to concrete operational thinking), (5) formal-reflexive; (6) visual-logical, (7) mental, (8) subtle, (9) causal and (10) non-dual. 13 Again, these are merely indicative generalizations, but they give us a useful way to deal with a huge amount of data and evidence. But none of these generalizations will prevent us, if necessary, from using more detailed or more simplified maps.
The Great Nest is truly a great holarchy of being and knowledge: levels of reality and levels of knowledge of these levels. That is, representatives of the perennial philosophy considered both ontology and epistemology equally important, as inseparable aspects of the great waves of reality. Modernity has found it necessary to differentiate ontology and epistemology, which could only be welcomed if modernity or post-modernity had completed its development and integrated these distinctions, however, it all ended only in the fact that these two aspects turned out to be completely divorced from each other; and modernity, trusting only its own isolated objectivity, took up exclusively epistemology, while ontology forever disappeared into the black hole of subjectivism.
Thus, the Great Chain, to the extent that modernity recognizes it at all, has become simply a hierarchy of levels of knowledge - that is, a hierarchy of cognitive abilities, like the one studied by Piaget. This approach is not so much wrong as it is terribly one-sided, leaving out the levels of reality that must ground cognition (or, just as sadly, recognizing only the sensorimotor level of reality to which any cognition must precisely correspond in order to be considered “true”). However, if we focus only on cognition for the time being - and since it is certainly true that the Great Chain is partly a vast spectrum of consciousness - then the question can be posed as follows: is the development of the Great Chain at the individual level the same as cognitive development?
Not certainly in that way. First of all, it can certainly be considered that the Great Nest partly represents the great spectrum of consciousness that it is. According to one dictionary definition, “cognitive” is “pertaining to consciousness.” Following this definition, Great Nest development (which at the individual level involves the unfolding of higher and more comprehensive levels of consciousness) can be considered to be very similar in general terms to cognitive development, once we understand that "cognition" or "consciousness" span the range from the subconscious to the self-conscious to the superconscious, and that they equally include both internal and external modes of awareness.
As I said, the problem is that "cognition" has acquired a very narrow meaning in Western psychology, which excludes most of the above. It came to mean perception of external objects. Thus there were excluded all types of “consciousness” or “awareness” (in a broad sense - for example, emotions, dreams, creative visions, subtle states and peak experiences). If content consciousness was not any empirical object (stone, tree, car, organism), then it was said that it does not have cognitive validity. And this applies to all truly interesting states and modes of consciousness.
Piaget further narrowed the meaning of cognition and reduced it to the types of logical-mathematical operations that, as he stated, underlie all other lines of development in all other areas. At this stage, consciousness as a “cognitive ability” was reduced to the perception of only the flat and dull surfaces of empirical objects (what we will call “flatland”). Simply put, any awareness that saw something other than the world of scientific materialism before it was not considered “true” awareness, true “cognition.”
In this sense, the development of the Great Nest at the individual level is most definitely Not"cognitive development". Yet if we take a closer look at Piaget's diagram—and what most subsequent psychologists meant by “cognitive development”—we can discover some very interesting (and very important)—if limited—analogies.
First of all, Western psychological studies of cognitive development still consider a certain type consciousness, no matter how narrow and limited it may sometimes be. So, for example, what Piaget studied as formal operational thinking - which he understood as a specific mathematical structure is one legitimate way to obtain a snapshot of the stream of consciousness at this point, but it does not exhaust all the slices (or snapshots) of consciousness that can be obtained at this particular bend in the River. There are many other, no less reliable approaches to defining consciousness at this stage - from role identification to epistemological styles, worldview systems and moral motivations. But by focusing exclusively on cognitive development, Piaget at least brought to the fore central importancedevelopment of consciousness, although he sometimes perceived it very narrowly.
This significance is underscored by the fact that when specific developmental lines have been studied—such as moral development, self-development, and the development of role identification—it has almost always been found that cognitive development is necessary (but not sufficient) for these other types of development. In other words, before Before you can develop morality, or self-esteem, or any idea of the good life, you must first be able to consciously notice these various elements. Thus, consciousness is necessary, but not sufficient for other types of development.
But this is precisely what the Great Nest theorists claim. The levels of the Great Nest (the basic structures of consciousness) are those levels through which various lines of development will pass, and if there are no basic waves, there will be nothing for the different boats to sail on. This is why these basic structures (whether understood as the sheaths of Vedanta, the levels of consciousness in Mahayana Buddhism, the ontological levels of the sephiroth of the Kabbalah, or the Sufi stages of the soul's path to God) are the backbone, the necessary framework on which most other systems rest.
Thus, although cognitive development (as studied by Western psychology) cannot in any way be equated with the Great Chain or spectrum of consciousness, it is perhaps closest to it (at least up to the levels of the formal mind; beyond At this level, most Western researchers do not recognize any knowledge at all). For this reason—and always keeping the many limitations and caveats firmly in mind—I sometimes use cognitive psychology terms (e.g., concrete operational [conop] and formal operational [formop]) to describe some of the basic structures of consciousness.
However, since cognitive development still has a very specific and narrow meaning in Western psychology and is very, very limited, I also describe it as an independent line of development, separate from the basic structures (so that we can preserve the ontological richness of the basic holons and not reduce them to the cognitive categories of Western psychology). Tables 3a and 3b present the correlations of basic structures with the stages of cognitive development identified by various modern researchers.
One of the most interesting points in these tables is the number of Western psychologists who, based on extensive empirical and phenomenological data, have described a number of stages postformal development - that is, stages of cognitive development beyond linear rationality (i.e., beyond formal operational thinking). Although the term "postformal" can refer to any stage beyond the formal operational, it is usually applied only to the mental and personal, and not to the supramental and transpersonal stages, to designate any stages of development beyond formal operational thinking; it is usually used to designate the mental and personal (personal), rather than the supramental or transpersonal stages. In other words, for most Western researchers, “postformal” is the first main stage after the formal-operational stage, which I call visual-logical. 14 Tables 3a-b show that most researchers found two to four stages of postformal (visual-logical) cognition. These post-formal stages tend to move beyond the formal/mechanistic phases (early formal-operational thinking) to various stages of relativism, pluralistic systems and contextualism (early visual-logical), and from there to the stages of metasystemic, complex, unified, dialectical and holistic thinking (from middle to late visual-logical). This gives us an idea of highest mental regions as dynamic, evolving, dialectical and integrated.
However, very few of these researchers go into overmental areas (mental, subtle, causal and non-dual events - transrational and transpersonal), although many of them increasingly recognize the existence of these higher levels. As several tables clearly show, in order to delineate the contours of these levels, we must often again rely on the testimony of great sages and contemplatives.
In this regard, the question of whether the spiritual/transpersonal stages themselves can be considered higher levels of cognitive development is hotly debated. In my opinion, the answer depends on what you call “cognitive.” If you mean what most Western psychologists mean, which is mental conceptual cognition of external objects, then the answer is no, the higher or spiritual levels are Not mental cognition, since they are often supra-mental, extra-conceptual and non-external. If by “cognitive” you mean “consciousness in general,” including superconscious states, then most higher spiritual experience is, of course, cognitive. But spiritual and transpersonal states have many other aspects—such as higher affects, morality, and a sense of self—so that even given the expanded definition of “cognitive,” they are not Just cognitive. However, the term "cognitive" in its broadest sense means "conscious", and therefore various types of cognitive development form an important part of the spectrum of being and knowing.
Cognitive line of development
Tables 3a and 3b list some of the most prominent and influential cognitive development researchers. Of course, Piaget's work is of central importance. Even with all their flaws, Piaget's discoveries remain an astonishing achievement—undoubtedly one of the most significant psychological studies of the 20th century. He initiated an incredible number of research directions: following the pioneering work of James Mark Baldwin (see below), Piaget demonstrated that each level of development is characterized by its own worldview, with its own perceptions, modes of space and time, and moral motivations (these discoveries were to be laid down in the basis of the work of a number of researchers - from Maslow to Kohlberg, Loevinger and Gilligan); he showed that reality is not simply something given, but is constructed in many important respects (structuralism, which made poststructuralism possible); using your clinical method, he subjected the unfolding of consciousness to careful research, which led to literally hundreds of new discoveries; his psychological research directly influenced everything from education to philosophy (Habermas, like many other philosophers, owes much to him). Few theorists can boast of even ten times less achievements.
As most scholars now believe, the main flaw in Piaget's system is that he tended to regard cognitive development—which he understood as logical-mathematical competence—as the single major line of development, when there is now compelling evidence for the possibility of relatively independent development of many other lines ( ego, moral, affective, interpersonal, artistic, etc.). For example, in the model I present, the cognitive lineage is just one of about two dozen developmental lineages, none of which can claim an exclusive position. (We'll look at these other lines in the next chapter.)
But in terms of the cognitive line itself, Piaget's work is still very relevant; Moreover, after almost three decades of intensive cross-cultural research, it is almost unanimously recognized that the stages of cognitive development identified by Piaget, up to the formal operational level, are universal and do not depend on culture. One example is Life Across Cultures: Cultural Invariants of Human Development, a highly respected textbook written from an avowedly liberal position (which is often suspicious of “universal” stages). The authors analyze in detail the evidence in favor of the stages of sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete-operational and formal-operational thinking described by Piaget. They believe that the cultural environment sometimes changes pace development or accent on certain aspects of the stages—but not the stages themselves or their cross-cultural invariance.
Thus, with regard to the sensorimotor stage, they write: “In fact, the qualitative characteristics of sensorimotor development remain almost identical in all infants so far studied, despite the enormous differences in their cultural environment.” For the pre-operative and specific surgical stages, based on a huge number of studies, including in Nigeria, Zambia, Algeria, Nepal, Senegal, in Asia, among Amazonian Indians and Australian aborigines, the following conclusion is drawn: “What can we conclude, based on this vast amount of cross-cultural data? First, the evidence for the universality of the structures or operations underlying the preoperative period is extremely compelling. Secondly, the qualitative characteristics of concrete operational development (for example, sequences of stages and styles of reasoning) appear to be universal, [although] the pace of cognitive development... is not the same everywhere, but depends on eco-cultural factors.” Although the authors use slightly different terminology, they conclude that the deep characteristics of the stages are universal, but the surface characteristics are highly dependent on cultural, social and environmental factors (as we will later discuss, all four sectors are involved in individual development). “Finally, it appears that although the pace and efficiency with which a child moves through Piaget's concrete operational period varies, children in a variety of societies still progress through it in the sequence predicted by them.” 15
Fewer individuals in any culture (Asian, African, American or otherwise) achieve formal operational thinking, and this can be explained by various reasons. Perhaps the formal operational level is the true higher stage, and therefore fewer people reach it - as I myself believe. Perhaps the formal operational level is a genuine ability, but not a genuine stage as the textbook authors believe (i.e., only some cultures emphasize and therefore teach formal operational thinking). Therefore, the evidence for the existence of a formal Piagetian stage can be considered strong but not conclusive. However, this one point is often used to refute everyone Piaget's stages, while the correct conclusion, supported by a huge amount of data, is that the universality and cultural invariance of all stages up to the formal operational stage has now been adequately demonstrated.
I believe that the stages of cognitive development during and after the formal operational period, including the visual-logical and general transrational stages, are also universal, and as I proceed further I will provide convincing evidence in support of this conclusion. At the same time, when we come to the discussion of childhood spirituality (in Chapter II), we will see that its early stages are identical to the stages of cognitive development described in Piaget's studies, which are convincingly confirmed by cross-cultural research. I think this will help us see these early stages in a more correct light.
As for the line of cognitive development itself, its general research is presented in the works of Michael Commons and Francis Richards, Kurt Fischer, Juan Pascual-Leone, Robert Sternberg, Gisela Labouvie-Vief, Herb Koplowitz, Michel Basseche, Philip Powell, Susan Benac, Patricia Arlene, Jeanne Sinno, and Cheryl Armon, to name just a few prominent researchers (all listed in the tables). 16
Although there are important differences between these researchers, there are also many profound similarities. Most have found that cognitive development occurs through three or four main stages (with numerous substages): sensorimotor, concrete, formal, and postformal. The sensorimotor stage usually occurs in the first two years of life and results in the ability to perceive physical objects. The child then gradually learns to represent these objects using words, symbols and concepts. These early symbols and concepts, as a rule, are inadequate in one way or another (objects with similar predicates are equated; it seems to the child that there is more water in a tall glass than in a short glass, although their volume is the same; concepts are sometimes mistaken for objects to which they relate; etc.). These inconsistencies lead to various kinds of “magical” substitutions and “mythical” beliefs. This is why throughout the tables you will see that many researchers apply names such as “magical, animistic, mythical,” etc. to these early stages of development.
This does not mean that all magical beliefs and myths are just early cognitive inconsistencies, but some of them certainly are - such as eating a cat's eye will make you see in the dark; the rabbit's foot brings good luck, etc. There is a huge difference between mythical symbols perceived as concretely and literally true - Jesus was really born of a virgin, the Earth really rests on three whales, Lao Tzu was really born as a nine-hundred-year-old man - and mythical symbols filled with metaphorical meaning, which appears only together with formal and postformal consciousness. Except where specifically noted, I use the word “mythical” to mean pre-formal, concrete-literal mythical images and symbols, some aspects of which are indeed full of cognitive inconsistencies, since these myths declare as empirical fact many things that can be empirically falsified - e.g. , the volcano erupts because it is angry with you personally; clouds move across the sky because they are watching you, etc. As many researchers from Piaget to Joseph Campbell have noted, these pre-formal mythical beliefs are always egocentrically focused and taken in a literal/concrete sense.
For the same reason, these early stages are often called pre-conventional, pre-operational, egocentric and narcissistic. Because children in the sensorimotor and pre-operational stages cannot yet easily or completely take on the role of another, they are locked into their own ideas. As we will see, such “narcissism” is a normal and healthy characteristic of these early stages and only causes problems if it is not significantly outgrown.
These researchers generally agree that as cognitive abilities increase, the mind begins to more correctly relate to and operate on the sensorimotor world, whether learning to play the violin or classifying objects by size (although many “mythical biases” still remain in the mind). These specific operations carried out with the help schemes And rules, which also allow the self at this stage to assimilate various roles in society and thus move from the egocentric/pre-conventional domain to the sociocentric/conventional domain.
As consciousness further develops and deepens, these specific categories and operations begin to become more generalized and abstract (applicable to an increasing number of possible situations), and therefore more universal. That's why formal operational consciousness can begin to support post-conventional orientation towards the world, in many ways avoiding the ethnocentric/sociocentric world of concrete thinking (mythical-membership).
Although, largely under the pressure of anti-Western cultural studies (with a strong relativistic bias), "rationality" has become a pejorative term, in fact it is rationality that is the source of many positive achievements and abilities (including the abilities that "anti-rational" critics exploit). Rationality (or reason in the broad sense) involves primarily the ability to accept different points of view (which is why Jean Gebser calls it “perspective reason”). According to the research of Suzanne Cook-Greuther, pre-operational thinking is characterized only by the “first person” (egocentric) point of view; concrete operational thinking adds to it a “second person” (sociocentric) point of view; and formal operational thinking goes even further and introduces third-person perspectives (which make possible not only scientific precision, but also unbiased, post-conventional, world-centric judgments of justice and care). Thus, reason can “normalize the norms” of a culture, subjecting them to criticism based on universal (non-ethnocentric) principles of justice. Moreover, the perspectival mind, being highly reflective, makes constant introspection possible. And this is the first structure that can imagine the worlds of “as if” and “what if”: it becomes a true dreamer and visionary.
No matter how important formal rationality is, all these researchers recognize the existence of even higher, post-formal stages of cognition - or higher intelligence - which takes into account even more points of view (the "fourth person" and "fifth person" points of view, according to Cook-Greuther). The combination of many points of view, none of which is preferred, is what Gebser calls integral-aperspective a stage that implies a further deepening of worldcentric and postconventional consciousness. Most researchers agree that this postformal (or visual-logical) development involves at least two or three main stages. Going beyond the abstract universal formalism(formal-operational level), consciousness first moves to the comprehension of dynamic relativity and pluralism (early visual-logical), and then further to the comprehension of unity, holism, dynamic dialectism or the universal integralism(middle to late visual-logical); all these stages are quite clearly visible in tables 3a and 3b (and others will be discussed later). 17
For all the “holistic” nature of these visual-logical stages of development, they still remain stages of the mental domain. Of course, these are the highest limits of the mental spheres, but beyond them lies supramental and actually transrational development. Therefore, I have included in the tables descriptions of the systems of Sri Aurobindo and Charles Alexander as examples of what full-spectrum models of cognitive development might look like. (In Chapter 9 we will consider the movement of this summary cognitive line from the gross to the subtle and the causal.) Note that Aurobindo uses explicitly cognitive terms to designate most of his stages: higher mind, enlightened mind, over-mind, supermind, etc. In other words, the spectrum of consciousness is, in part, the spectrum of genuine cognition, if we use the word “cognition” in its broadest sense. But he does not stop there, and that is why Aurobindo, in addition, describes the affects, morals, needs and self-identifications of these higher levels. But he comes to a very similar general conclusion: cognitive development is primary and necessary (but not sufficient) for these other types of development.
Summary
This is a brief introduction to the basic levels of the Great Nest of Being. The Great Nest is simply huge morphogenetic field which provides development space, in which the potential capabilities of a human being can unfold. The base levels of the Great Nest are the base waves of this unfolding: from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit. We have seen that these basic levels (or structures or waves) can be divided and subdivided in many valid ways. The tables provide descriptions of approximately sixteen waves in the general spectrum of consciousness, but their number - as we will constantly see in the course of further presentation - can be reduced or expanded in a variety of ways.
Through these common waves in the great River flow about two dozen different streams of development, and along all these streams the self floats on its extraordinary journey from dirt to Divinity.
« Psychological Encyclopedia Corsini"("Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology") is an authoritative work published by the University of Pennsylvania, which has become a classic encyclopedia on psychology. The encyclopedia is named after Raymond Corsini (1914–2008), a student of Carl Rogers and an influential American psychologist of the 20th and 21st centuries. (By the way, the 2nd abbreviated edition of this work was translated into Russian under the title “Psychological Encyclopedia edited by R. Corsini and A. Auerbach”, 2006.) The encyclopedic article “Integral Psychology” below was published in the 4th edition of the complete “Psychological Encyclopedia of Corsini” (2010), which was not published in Russian.
INTEGRAL PSYCHOLOGY
Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, Ken Wilber
Esbjörn-Hargens, S., & Wilber, K. (2010). “Integral Psychology” in I. B. Weiner & W. E. Craighead (Eds.) Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology. 4th Edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. pp. 830-833.
The phrase “integral psychology” was first used in the 1940s by Indra Sen, a student of the Indian philosopher-sage Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950), to describe the synthesis of yoga (karma, jnana and bhakti yoga) proposed by Aurobindo. Four decades later, in 1986, Sen published a book in India entitled Integral Psychology: Sri Aurobindo's Psychological System. In parallel, another student of Aurobindo, Haridas Chaudhuri, working relatively independently of Sen, proposed a further development of the psychology of integral yoga, based on the evolutionary philosophy of his teacher. His approach to integral psychology was described in the book The Evolution of Integral Consciousness (1977). More recently, Brant Cortright has written a book entitled Integral Psychology: Yoga, Development and Opening of the Heart (2007), which explores psychotherapy in the context of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga tradition.
Aurobindo's integral yoga psychology essentially consists of three systems: (1) surface/external/frontal consciousness (usually the gross state), including the physical, vital and mental levels of consciousness; (2) the deeper soul system, or soul, located “behind” the frontal at each of its levels (inner physical, inner vital, inner mental and deepest soul; usually a subtle state); and (3) vertical ascending/descending systems, extending from levels above the mind (exalted mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind, supermind; includes the causal and non-dual) to levels below the mind (subconscious and unconscious). They all recline in Sat-Chit-Ananda, or pure non-dual Spirit.
In addition to Aurobindo's trajectory of yoga psychology as articulated by Sen, Chaudhuri, and Courtright (and others), another brand of integral psychology has been proposed by integral theorist Ken Wilber. Wilber's approach to psychology revised and expanded the discoveries of the Aurobind school of philosophy. There is much overlap between the integral psychologies of Aurobindo and Wilber (see Vrinte, 2002). From the early years of his writing career, which began in 1973 (five years before the publication of Chaudhuri's The Evolution of Integral Consciousness), Wilbur drew on the concepts of Sri Aurobindo. Although Wilber's unique approach to psychology has some roots in Sri Aurobindo's evolutionary synthesis of spiritual practice, its ramifications extend into new integral realms.
Wilber's integral psychology was most influenced by a number of prominent psychologists such as James Mark Baldwin, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Norman O. Brown, Abraham Maslow, and Jane Loevinger (as well as many philosophers, theorists, and researchers from several dozen disciplines). In fact, Wilber names the American philosopher and psychologist James Mark Baldwin (1861–1934), rather than Aurobindo, as the first integral psychologist.
In addition to relying on the major discoveries made by individual researchers in various fields, integral psychology represents a true integration of the major schools of psychology: psychoanalytic, humanistic, transpersonal, cognitive, developmental, neuropsychological, cultural, evolutionary, etc. As a result of the synthesis of various psychological Traditions of integral psychology emphasize such concepts as nested hierarchies of multiple intelligences, or abilities, that arise in the process of developing dysfunction, a spectrum of defense mechanisms, and a combination of treatment methods. Wilber's mature view of the integral approach to psychology is presented in his book Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy (1999). In this text, Wilber presents his AQAL model (discussed below) and draws on a cross-paradigmatic approach to describe essential characteristics integral psychology. This text is widely known for the summary tables located at the end of the book, which compare and contrast more than 100 schools of developmental psychology - Western and Eastern, ancient and modern. From this comparison, Wilber created a model of the full spectrum of human psychology, using all systems to fill the gaps present in each of the schools taken separately.
AQAL model
One of the most significant features of Wilber's integral psychology is its applicability to many disciplines. In contrast, Aurobindo's approach is largely limited to yoga and depth psychology research and does not correlate with the actual psychological relationships among the intentional, behavioral, social, and cultural dimensions (i.e., the four quadrants of the AQAL model). Today, professionals from more than 50 disciplines rely on the AQAL model of integral psychology to develop their comprehensive solutions to the complex problems they encounter. The principles of integral psychology have applications in areas such as environmental studies, community development, urban planning, medicine, art, business, leadership, international relations, nursing, education, law, feminist theories, coaching, psychiatry, criminology, futurology, management health systems, religious studies, writing, policy analysis, transdisciplinary studies, gender studies, psychotherapy and sustainable development. (See articles with examples and examples of the use of the integral approach in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice.)
From the breadth of the range of applications of integral psychology, we can conclude that it is useful for almost any integral activity. After all, unless you have a comprehensive view of human psychology, it is difficult to take an integral approach to any area where people are involved. Thus, integral psychology serves as the cornerstone of many integral enterprises. At the center of Wilber's approach to integral psychology is integral theory, which he developed over forty years, publishing more than 20 books (see Visser 2003; Wilber 1999–2000).
Integral theory has five elements: sectors, levels, lines, states and types. These five components, denoted for brevity by the English acronym “AQAL” (abbreviated as “all quadrants, all levels”; read “aqual”), represent irreducible perspectives (viewing angles) that are observed at all scales and contexts of human life. By incorporating these basic elements, the integral psychologist is able to take into account the basic dimensions of any phenomenon. None of these dimensions is accorded any ontological or epistemological primacy, as each aspect is seen as co-emerging with all others in the seamless fabric of reality in each moment of time.
« Sectors”(also translated into Russian as “quadrants”) are four basic irreducible dimensions-perspectives on reality (Wilber, 1995). In every moment there is always an individual and a collective aspect, and within each of them there is also an internal and an external aspect. These four dimensions - the internal and external of individuals and groups - are also described as dimensions of (1) intention ("I": individual internal, subjective), (2) culture ("we": collective internal, intersubjective), (3) behavior (“it”: individual external, objective) and (4) society (“they”: collective external, interobjective).
The remaining four elements of the AQAL model emerge as more in-depth categories within these four dimensions. " Levels" is one way to describe the phenomenon of complexity (complexity) or depth in each sector. For example, in the individual external sector of behavior we observe the degree of physical complexity (complexity) of any individual organism. A dog is physically more complex than an amoeba, and therefore it is located at a higher level. " Lines" is a term to denote the fact that there are different abilities that develop at different levels. For example, in the individual internal sector there are abilities, or lines, that are characterized by a developmental process; these include cognitive, emotional, interpersonal and moral abilities. A graphic description of an individual's development is called a "psychogram." " States"- temporary manifestations of any aspect of reality. For example, stormy weather is a state that occurs in the collective external sector of systems, while euphoria is a state that occurs in the individual internal sector. " Types” are a variety of styles that occur in different dimensions. An example would be one or another type of religious worldview, for example Protestantism, in the collective internal sector of culture or the somatic type of endomorph in the individual external one.
As a consequence of the application of the AQAL model, integral psychology is characterized by at least six main components of human psychology that must be included in any comprehensive theory: four quadrants - behavior, intention, culture and social systems; levels of development, or structures-stages of growth of consciousness; psychological lines of development; ordinary and altered states of consciousness (for example, states-stages of gross, subtle, causal and non-dual); personality and gender types; as well as the self, or “I”-system (also known as the self-system).
"I"-system
The "I" system, or self-system, includes four components: the proximal or immediate "I" (the observing "I"), the distal or distant "I" (the observed "mine" or something that can be described as me"); the antecedent, or pre-existing, “I” (“I–I”, transcendental witness), as well as the total “I” - the totality of all the listed “I”. The immediate “I” is the navigator of development, during which the “I” of one stage becomes the “me” of the next stage. In other words, our sense of self is in a continuous process of identification with new stage structures, which consists of transcending them and subsequent integration within a higher level of psychological organization.
Being the main navigator in the space of psychological development, the self is the locus of such important mental functions as identification (identification; what is called “I”), will (or choices, the freedom of which is limited by the framework and bonds of its current level of development), defense (arranged hierarchically in the process of development), metabolism (turns states into stable characteristics), and also - most important of all - integration (the self is responsible for balancing and integrating all present elements). As the locus of integration, the self is responsible for the balancing and integration of all sectors, levels, lines, states and types in the individual. The "I" system, or self-system, can be understood through the metaphor of a "staircase, the climber and the view" where the "staircase" denotes the basic structures of consciousness, the "climber" is the immediate self, and the "view" is the perspective that opens up to a given “I” when it climbs a certain rung of the ladder. One of the most important contributions of integral psychology is its pointing out that the self at any developmental level (i.e., stage structure) can have access (temporary or stable) to any stage state(s) (Wilber, 2006).
The defining characteristic of integral psychology is its use of integral methodological pluralism (IMP) to build, coordinate, and evaluate relevant perspectives (Wilber, 2006). The IMP has three principles: inclusiveness (the need to engage multiple perspectives and methods in an impartial manner), envelopment (the need to prioritize the importance of the insights generated by those perspectives), and engagement (the need to recognize that phenomena are revealed to subjects through the activities they undertake to understand them). As a result of its adherence to these principles, integral psychology is considered post-metaphysical (i.e., it avoids the postulation of a priori structures by emphasizing the perspectival nature of the reality involved). In other words, a certain phenomenon (phenomenon) can manifest itself - and, in this sense, exist - only within the framework of a certain perspective or world space, consistent with the properties of this phenomenon.
In general, integral psychology uses an inclusive, metaperspective, and postdisciplinary frame of reference to describe psychological phenomena, heal trauma, and resolve sociocultural problems. It is comprehensive in the following sense: it both relies on and provides a theoretical model for identifying the relationships between a great variety of different psychological methods, including those involved in the natural and social sciences, as well as in the arts and humanities. The diversity and breadth of psychology is amazing: there are currently more than 150 different schools of psychology, more than 70 different methods of psychotherapy, and more than 40 specializations. Anything that is not represented by a strengths and weak sides each of these disciplines cannot be called truly integral psychology. It is characterized by a metaperspective because it promotes the integration, coordination, and cross-fertilization of knowledge generated by at least four major perspectives (i.e., quadrants) and eight fundamental methodological families (e.g., phenomenology, hermeneutics, empiricism, and systems theory). Integral psychology is postdisciplinary due to its applicability within specific disciplines, in the interaction between them and in their general synthesis.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chaudhuri, H. (1977). The evolution of integral consciousness. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books.
Cortright, B. (2007). Integral psychology: Yoga, growth, and opening the heart
Sen, I. (1986). Integral psychology: The psychological system of Sri Aurobindo. Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.
Visser, F. (2003). Ken Wilber: Thought as passion. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Vrinte, J. (2002). The perennial quest for a psychology with a soul: An inquiry into the relevance of Sri Aurobindo’s metaphysical yoga psychology in the context often Wilber’s integral psychology. Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass.
Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution. Boston: Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (1999). Integral psychology: Consciousness, spirit, psychology, therapy. Boston: Shambhala. In Russian: Ken Wilber, “Integral Psychology.”
Wilber, K. (1999-2000). The collected works of Ken Wilber(Vols. 1-8). Boston: Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (2006). Integral spirituality: A starting new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world. Boston: Shambhala
Integral psychology. (2007). . AQAL: Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 2 (3).
Integral theory in counseling. (2007). . Counseling andValues, 51 (3).
Wilber, K. (2000). Waves, streams, states and self. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7 (11–12), 145–176. In Russian: Ken Wilber, “Waves, Flows, States and the Self.”
Sean Esbjorn-Hargens
John F. Kennedy University, Pleasant Hill, Ca
Ken Wilber
Integral Institute, Boulder, CO
a common person/ 03/2/2011 Wall means wall. Nothing penetrates into a person, he is not sensitive to what is around him, he is like a stone, almost like a stone. He does not allow life to penetrate into him and flow through him, that's what it means.
Irina Kusa/ 03/2/2011 Dear Ordinary Person!
I didn't understand your last statement. How is it - like a wall?
a common person/ 03/1/2011 Iryna - when a person wakes up, he always becomes in tune with what is around him, but when he sleeps, he is like a wall, everything bounces off.
Iryna/ 02/16/2011 Dear Ordinary Person! Your feedback is consistent with my thoughts. Yesterday I just thought that I should ask about this, and today I received an answer. Thank you.
a common person/ 02/15/2011 to Iryna.
If you want to read the truth, it is better to read books by people who have experienced the truth.
Although it cannot be expressed in words, it is at least something. For example:
Osho
Ramana Maharshi
a common person/ 02/13/2011 Iryna - because philosophers should not describe the truth. Wilbur did not experience what he described. This is just academicism, it’s the same as art critics discussing Van Gogh’s work, I would be much better off talking about this with Van Gogh himself.
Iryna/ 12/11/2010 I agree with the ordinary person.
The tragedy is that I bought the book “The Atman Project” and I can’t bring myself to throw it away.
Complete disappointment.
a common person/ 12/10/2010 The fact of the matter is that this is all just another stupid, meaningless philosophy, again they made complexity out of simplicity, the Atman Project, how beautiful it sounds, but in fact it’s all complete bullshit, there is no Atman, period.
You have been deceived; there is no atman.
Osho/ 12/2/2010 I read it a long time ago, weakly, but the best that is now in psychology. Osho was already dead when transpersonal psychology arose, but he was appreciated)
Trim/ 09.29.2010 Amazing books. These books personally help me connect a lot of things together!
Romka/ 09.29.2010 I agree with Punta... As an Orthodox person, I immediately noticed this... In general, what am I doing on this site??? %)
Punta/ 09/24/2010 Has anyone ever thought that this Wilber is following the establishment? He seriously called Bush... a compassionate man (in Integral Politics) No, I'm really interested. “People like Al Gore, Bill Clinton...” - his words, he actually admires them. All this integral crap is a thinly disguised new globalist philosophy (and maybe even a religion), and it is very massively promoted and imposed. There is no liberation in Wilber's philosophy; he is not a liberator. Well, maybe only in some places, if only he wrote less about politics, about which he doesn’t know a damn thing. It has already been said here that this is dogma. I absolutely agree... A very subtle and cunning dogma. As they all call it, if I’m not mistaken, “guiding generalizations”!!! All the time someone is trying to direct us somewhere.
Love/ 07/12/2010 There are simply not enough words!!! I want to read all the books instantly, but I can’t... I’ve been looking for “Mercy and Courage” on the Internet for a long time, but I can’t find it. I tried to download it from booksmed, but the file was damaged. Does anyone know where else I can find it?
Svetlana/ 05/27/2010 I am writing a doctoral dissertation, trying to apply an integral approach to education and training. Very interesting results related to the enrichment of the theory and practice of pedagogy. I would like to find like-minded people in this area to conduct a parallel experiment in various universities.
My purpose is twofold: first, to offer an introduction to the study of Ken Wilber's integral philosophy within a formally articulated and subsequently published text; and, secondly, not to get lost in dry scientific formulations, but to convey a certain living presence, which precisely characterizes the most important feature of integral philosophy, which strives to transcend limited discourses and practices in order to come to a greater integrity of consciousness and being — in science, culture and society, self-expression and art.
Ken Wilber is an American thinker, born in 1949, the author of more than two dozen books written in the genre of serious theoretical research (the evolution of humanity and the Cosmos, spirituality and religion, developmental psychology, consciousness studies, transpersonal psychology and sociology, philosophy of science, epistemology and transdisciplinarity etc.), as well as popular introductions — accessible excursions into one’s own rich heritage. All of his books, the first of which, “The Spectrum of Consciousness,” was written in 1973 at the age of 23–24, are still actively selling. Wilber's works have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, making him one of the most translated American authors — if not the most translated — writing books on academic subjects.
Wilber's legacy is enormous; over the past forty years, his work has undergone a consistent evolution four to five times, with each stage characterized by a fundamental revision and expansion of the previous paradigm. This was done under the influence of the resulting qualitative criticism and his own extensive cross- and meta-paradigmatic research into “anomalies” (in the sense of the terminology proposed by the famous philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn, whose concepts Wilber refers to very often). Today there are eight volumes of Wilbur's collected works, as well as a number of books not yet included in the new volumes (which, undoubtedly, will be published later). In addition, articles and books are published annually, one way or another considering his legacy in such disciplines as philosophy, psychology, spirituality, art (painting, cinema and theater), etc. Every two or three years an international conference on integral theory is held , which brings together researchers and practitioners from around the world.
When starting to study Wilber's philosophical legacy, it is necessary, if possible, to be prepared for the fact that your own understanding of his works will also undergo changes (in the direction of increasing complexity of the resulting view and worldview). In this sense, it has been repeatedly noted that Wilber’s works propose a “psychoactive” (that is, actively transforming consciousness) mental system of coordinates. It gradually exposes the mind that clings to smaller and narrower practices and perspectives, opening up to it horizons of ever greater integrity. Experience shows that if there is insufficient preparedness and openness, such disclosure can cause an extremely aggressive reaction, often expressed in the form of toxic criticism and unfounded attacks. ad hominem- attacks on the personality of the author (mirrored by the latter in those places of his works that are reserved for the consideration of various criticisms), as well as attacks on researchers of integral theory and practice.
Of course, the critics themselves seem to be confident in their rightness and the righteousness of their irritation and have their own view of Wilber’s work, but two important points need to be noted here. Firstly, in many cases, critics — especially those published on the Internet — do not demonstrate in practice any adequate knowledge of the material in question (the corpus of Wilber’s works and the variety of concepts and perspectives he touches on), which does not prevent them from trying to deconstruct what Wilber created with a cavalry charge ( created as a result of three to four decades of painstaking intellectual work, filled with tens of thousands of hours of not only intellectual reading, but also meditative and contemplative practice). They are trying to do this without offering in return something equivalent in scale, quality and significance in terms of the goals set by the integral project. Other critics have spent literally years trying to prove that Wilbur's work ridiculous and not worthy of attention(performing that type of communicative action that the great German thinker Jurgen Habermas, who greatly influenced Wilber, called “performative contradiction”: they pay too much attention to what is “not worthy of attention” and “fundamentally wrong”). This is one evidence of insufficient self-reflection and self-criticism on the part of the critics themselves.
Secondly, in my opinion, it is much more interesting and practical to use such a rich heritage not to prove one’s own rightness to oneself (such a common form of satisfying one’s ego), but to revise and transform one’s own consciousness and its attitudes through respectful, subtle hermeneutic empathy into the holistic a system of synthetic thought proposed by such an undeniably powerful intellectual as Wilbur. For me personally, gradually becoming acquainted with Wilber's works served as a good litmus test for my own ego: at what points I demonstrate stubborn disagreement and are not ready to even consider hypothetical the possibility that this or that view proposed by Wilber, sometimes contrary to my personal “common sense,” may have (and, as a rule, it does) have a serious basis.
As you may have realized by now, the integral philosophy of Ken Wilber, like that of any other great thinker, cannot be conveyed in its entirety in a single speech. Moreover, there are entire educational courses devoted to a gradually deeper immersion in his philosophy. I consider the stereotypical approach to the presentation of Wilber's integral philosophy by listing the components of his integral model to be unsatisfactory, since it often lacks some kind of living spark, instead of which there is only abstract “talking” about “meta-maps” — such speaking eludes the incredible transformative potential that which is contained in the metasystem of coordinates developed by Wilber and developed by the newly emerging galaxy of integral researchers.
This metasystem coordinates various theories and practices, and itself integral paradigm is defined by Wilber not as theorizing (even with the prefix “meta”: metatheorizing), but as a set practitioner on the involvement of mental, spiritual, social and objective reality. Anything less than the practical use of these dimensions is not integral.
The integral paradigm is defined by Wilber not as theorizing, but as a set of practices
In fact, despite the importance of popularizing complex ideas for society, in my opinion, in the case of Wilber (and many other great thinkers), such popularization can sometimes deprive the listener or reader of something very valuable - namely: a sense of urgency personally get to know his brilliant and original thought, which does not just touch on dry and abstract theoretical issues, issues of categorization and classification of reality and various disciplines. No, Wilber’s integral vision is forged in the painful crucible of searching for answers to the ultimate questions of existence, the existence of each of us, they affect not just the sphere of pure reason, but the sphere of practical reason and the ability to judge — the space of our life world as such; In terms of their scale and existential significance, the questions he raises and the solutions he proposes are comparable to the questions and solutions that existentialists and spiritual thinkers of the present and past struggled with.
I have deliberately, until now, avoided any specific dive into one or another of the main concepts expounded by Wilber (and any of them can be discussed for hours), trying to offer a tangential meta-perspective on the entire “container” of his system as a whole. My experience shows that it is much better and more interesting to reveal some fundamental aspects of the integral approach in a live dialogue (for example, through questions and answers and mutual resonance). In general, criticism of exclusive monologue and a call for active dialogism are sewn into the fabric of integral philosophy. In this sense, she criticizes excessive enthusiasm for abstract theorizing, which is often characterized by dissociation from the body, spirit and sociocultural realities.
However, before we move into a more dialogical mode of questions and answers, I will still respect the proposed genre and format of an academic presentation and use it in an attempt to intrigue you. It may be enough to intrigue some of you, enough respect to allow you to temporarily (and sometimes for quite a long time) step aside from your preconceptions and preconceptions and immerse yourself in the study of the incredibly intense and living legacy of Ken Wilber. The ability for such decentration from one’s personal attitudes is a sign of the maturity of a post-conventional personality (and the exercise of decentration leads to an increase and strengthening of this maturity).
I have a glimmer of hope that, perhaps, after this speech in the study of Wilber’s works, you will not draw unnecessarily hasty and sudden conclusions (and this is one of the most important aspects of the methodology for studying his works). For me and many readers, there is a palpable presence in Wilber’s writings of a certain erotic force — what Wilber called by the Greek term “Eros.” According to Wilber, Eros, as a spontaneous desire for transcendence and novelty, permeates the entire Cosmos. Cosmos with a capital “C” is a Pythagorean term that Wilber borrows to denote all-unity everything in general, the entire totality of the world, the universe. We are talking not just about a physical and dead universe of entropy, but about a living universe of spontaneous self-organization of “order out of chaos”, which over billions of years unfolds through huge tectonic layers of ever-increasing complexity of matter-consciousness. By the power of its self-organization, the Cosmos unfolded from the prescience of quarks and atoms to the irritability of cells and sensory systems of organisms, reaching in its development (which is the entwining of previous levels of complexity of self-organization of spirit and matter) to a feeling and thinking person who has learned to turn his awareness not just to the sensorimotor world of objects , but into oneself, thereby, as a result of meditative contemplation, having found in the heart of one’s inner experience the Spirit itself — an omnipresent and enduring presence, an indescribable and unsolved mystery of being, eluding any formalization, for it is what formalizes, as well as contemplates . How can one not recall the words of Vasily Vasilyevich Nalimov: “The world is a Mystery — we are given only to deepen it.”
It is with the Spirit that Wilber's narrative begins and with the Spirit that it ends. All of Wilber’s works, without exception, are devoted to the rehabilitation of spiritual and transpersonal dimensions as an empirically established space of human development potentials in an age of disillusioned cynicism. We are talking about the universal legitimization of the diversity of transpersonal discourses and practices that have emerged with cross-cultural persistence in the disciplines of religions, mysticism and esotericism throughout the world throughout human history - legitimization in the face of modern and post-modern personality, science and culture. As well as the legitimization of modernity and postmodernity (the diversity of modern and postmodern movements) in the face of pre-modern religions and spiritualities.
All of Wilber’s works, without exception, are devoted to the rehabilitation of spiritual and transpersonal dimensions as an empirically established space of human development potentials in an age of disillusioned cynicism
Wilber argues that we are on the verge of a transition from a world of contradictory opposites, manifested in the irreconcilable confrontation of disciplines, spheres of values, perspectives, to a world of integration, gradually finding a place and context for all existing worldviews, approaches and practices for engaging reality — from religion to science, technology, culture and art. This transition will take a long time and painfully, however, judging by data from studies of the psychology of adult development, for the first time in the history of mankind, a significant part of the planet's population (about 5%) is approaching what can be called the integral stages of the development of consciousness (stages at which there is a refusal from seeing everything through the prism of fragmentation, dualistic games and confrontations, instead of which the contours of an integral vision of colossal integrity and continuity of all processes occurring in the Cosmos - the human and universal Cosmos are gradually outlined).
Wilber's creativity and research thought developed through a sequence of stages, during which he, sometimes radically, revised the main provisions of his theoretical coordinate system and significantly expanded it. Wilber himself and the researchers of his work identify four to five general stages, conventionally called “Wilber-1”, “Wilber-2”, “Wilber-3”, “Wilber-4” and “Wilber-5”.
"Wilbur 1" (1973–1979)- Wilber’s so-called “romantic phase”. The presence of a spectrum of consciousness is postulated, including the level of the mask, the ego, the whole organism, transpersonal levels and unity consciousness. The main idea is that different psychological and esoteric schools and methods do not necessarily contradict each other, but rather are simply aimed at different levels spectrum of consciousness (psychological counseling works with integration of the mask/shadow level; psychoanalysis integrates the ego; bioenergetic, humanistic and existential psychology are aimed at the level of the whole organism; transpersonal psychology works with transpersonal, or transpersonal, ranges of the spectrum; Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, esoteric branches of Christianity, Islam and Judaism are engaged in the development of consciousness of non-dual unity). The romantic phase is called because Wilber at this stage adhered to the views of retro-romanticism - the idea that man (as well as humanity) initially had access to the consciousness of unity, but later for some reason he loses it when more imperfect and limited levels are added to it , distorting its true nature. In the process of psychospiritual development, it was necessary to gradually remove these extra levels (through disidentification from them) in order to return to the original non-dual state of unity consciousness.
"Wilbur 2" (1980–1982)- phase of “development for good”. As Wilber continued his research, he encountered a wealth of evidence that contradicted his original romantic position. First of all, we are talking about information accumulated by various areas of developmental psychology and anthropology. Rejecting the idea that man was originally in a state of unity, and then was “expelled from paradise” and now needs to “return to goodness” and “paradise lost” (typical motifs of retro-romanticism), Wilber proposed a model of progressive human development from prepersonal to personal and transpersonal levels of consciousness (from prepersonal to personal and transpersonal). In his opinion, such a model much more accurately and correctly reflected the actually occurring and very complex processes of human growth and development, numerous information about which had been accumulated in the relevant disciplines of human science. The main idea of this phase can be expressed in the maxim proposed by Jack Engler, an American transpersonal psychologist and researcher of the stages of contemplative development within the Theravada tradition: “Before being nothing, you need to become someone.” Full transpersonal and transrational development, or spiritual transcendence, occurs after the formation, differentiation and integration of a healthy personality who owns rational methods of cognition.
Wilbur 3 (1983–1987)- transitional phase in which Wilber develops his concept of personality development and expands it to include the theory of multiple intelligences, or multiple lines of development. The main idea is that a person’s personality, or self, develops, not linearly ascending along a single “ladder of development,” but unfolding through numerous lines of development, or intellects (one can distinguish lines of development of cognitive intelligence, lines of development of self, emotional intelligence , lines of moral development, interpersonal intelligence, spiritual intelligence, etc.). Each line, or “stream,” of development unfolds stage by stage relatively independently of the others. For example, a person may be well developed in terms of cognitive intelligence (cognitive line), but poorly developed in the emotional sphere.
"Wilbur 4" (1995 - 2001)- the actual stage of integral philosophy, at which the characteristic formulation of the AQAL [“aqual”] model is introduced. AQAL stands for “all quadrants, all levels” — “all quadrants, all levels” — or, more fully, “all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all types, all states” — “all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all types, all states.” Wilber set himself the goal of proposing a world philosophy that would unite the various disciplines of human activity in a consistent synthesis. AQAL could otherwise be called biopsycho-sociocultural approach, which requires taking into account the dynamics of development of stages and states not only in the psychological dimension, but also in the external objective organism, in intersubjective culture and interobjective social systems. His idea was to create a comprehensive frame of reference, which, in his opinion, allows us to arrive at a more integral and non-reductionist integration of science, spirituality, art, culture and society.
"Wilbur-5" (2001–present)- the current phase, which critics conventionally call the phase of “integral post-metaphysics” and “integral methodological pluralism.” According to Wilber himself, it is still premature to talk about differentiation of a separate stage of “Wilber-5”, since all the main prerequisites for post-metaphysics and integral pluralism are found in works that conventionally correspond to the “Wilber-4” period. However, it is still clear that in his works there is a complication of the narrative and an appeal to a higher level of cognitive complexity. Even greater emphasis is placed on the tetraconstruction of reality (that is, the joint evolution of all four quadrants, or dimensions of our existence), the inseparability of epistemology and ontology, the rethinking of metaphysics through the prism of post-metaphysics, which is expressed, in particular, in the criticism of the “myth of the given” (expressed in including in the form of a reflection paradigm, according to which a person in his cognition reflects reality as it is, whereas it is now known that any act of cognition is also an act of engaging and co-constructing this reality).
It makes sense to touch upon the issues of integral post-metaphysics and integral methodological pluralism using the example of the issue of the relationship between science and religion. In 2006, Oxford University Press published The Oxford handbook of religion and science, which included a chapter, “Towards a Comprehensive Integration of Science and Religion: A Post-Metaphysical Approach,” written by Sean Esbjorn-Hargens co-authored with Ken Wilber. This text can serve as reference material for those wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the issue.
This chapter begins with the authors declaring their belief that an integral approach can help to understand the various definitions and understandings of “science” and “religion” and recognize the importance and partial truth of the claims made by each side in this important area of human activity and knowledge. Next, the authors offer an introduction to the most well-known integral approach today—integral theory, or the integral model, proposed by Wilber. The integral model is considered from the point of view of its post-disciplinarity is that it can be successfully used in the context disciplinary approaches (as an example, the authors talk about the integration of various schools of psychology into a single integral psychology), multidisciplinarity(for example, the study of environmental problems from the perspective of multiple disciplines), interdisciplinarity(for example, the application of political science methods to psychological research) and transdisciplinarity(for example, ensuring the interaction of multiple disciplines and their methodologies through a neutral frame of reference).
This post-metaphysical approach is important for many reasons. First of all, any system (scientific or religious) that does not agree with modern Kantian and post-modern Heideggerian thought is unable to maintain any intellectual respectability (whether you agree with these schools of thought or not, one way or another they need to be dealt with). This means that any attempt to integrate science and religion must be, in some sense, post-metaphysical. Secondly, just as Einsteinian physics, when applied to objects moving below the speed of light, collapses into Newtonian physics, so integral post-metaphysics is able to include all pre-modern, modern and post-modern religious and scientific approaches and systems without postulate pre-existing ontological structures. (pp. 527–528)
The authors emphasize that the integral theory is based on the post-Kantian post-metaphysical position that any levels of reality identified in philosophical or religious metaphysical constructions (for example, the concept of levels of being in the “eternal philosophy”) should today be considered as something inseparable from the perceiver, who reveals and co-constructs them consciousness, and not something that exists in itself as a given fact that the researcher simply discovers. And, as a consequence, consciousness itself is studied not by metaphysical speculative reasoning, but by an empirical and phenomenological method, as a result of which a number of limitations of metaphysics are overcome (associated with the speculative nature of constructions, in many cases not indicating the methodology for obtaining and verifying data).
From the point of view of the integral approach, no method can reveal the whole of reality in its entirety, but each of the methods can provide some partial truth
Integral methodological pluralism is a collection of practices and prescriptions (injunctions), based on the idea that “everyone has their own partial truth.” Each practice, or prescription, can relate to both the scientific side of research and the religious side, revealing its own unique aspect of reality. The authors emphasize that, from the point of view of the integral approach, no one method can reveal all of reality in its entirety, but each of the methods can provide some partial truth and some useful perspective, or way of looking at it.
In revealing and incorporating particular truths from all perspectives, integral theory and IMP are based on three principles: the principle non-exceptions[English] non-exclusion] (recognition of statements about the truth of certain phenomena that have passed the test of authenticity within the framework of their own paradigms in the relevant disciplines); principle grasping[English] enfoldment] (some sets of practices are more inclusive, holistic, holistic and comprehensive than others); and principle engaging[English] enactment] (different types of research will reveal their own unique types of phenomena, and what is revealed will largely depend on the individual psychological constitution, social background and epistemological attitudes of the study).
The systematic application of the integral approach, as the authors emphasize, allows one to gain a panoramic vision that embraces knowledge of the past and present of humanity, a variety of disciplines (from physics, chemistry and hermeneutics to meditation and esotericism, neurobiology, phenomenology, psychology, systems theory, etc.). Within the framework of IMP, there is eight zones, or eight “methodological families”, with the help of which you can study any phenomenon, including religious experience:
- phenomenology(study of direct internal experience);
- structuralism(the study of formal, or systematized, patterns of direct internal experience);
- autopoiesis theory(research of behavioral self-regulation processes);
- empiricism(study of objectively observed behavioral manifestations);
- theory of social autopoiesis(study of the dynamics of self-regulation of social systems);
- systems theory(study of the processes of functional adaptation of parts of a social system to an observable whole);
- hermeneutics(the study of intersubjective fields of meaning and understanding from within culture) and
- ethnomethodology(study of formal patterns of mutual understanding from outside culture).
The main statement is that any person at any moment in time is immersed in all these dimensions (the existence and material of which is revealed by appropriate methods of research). The combined application of eight types of methodologies in research is called “integral methodological pluralism.”
Science and religion can and should be considered as “two sides of the same coin”, which can be integrated using an integral approach
Further in the article, the authors describe their ideas about what the integral approach can provide for the emergence of “integral science” and “integral religion”, and then for their synthesis. According to the authors, a comprehensive scientific study of religion within the framework of the integral approach will necessarily include, at a minimum, the integration of the psychology of religion, phenomenology of religion, neurotheology, cognitive-scientific approaches to religion, hermeneutics of religion, anthropology of religion, social autopoiesis and sociology of religion. In conclusion, they emphasize that science and religion can and should be seen as “two sides of the same coin” that can be integrated using an integral approach.
Literature
Esbjörn-Hargens S., Wilber K. Towards a comprehensive integration of science and religion: A post-metaphysical approach // The Oxford handbook of science and religion. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 523 - 546.
Bibliography of Ken Wilber's works
Wilbur-1 (“Romantic period”) - 1973–1979
The Spectrum of Consciousness. - Quest Books, 1977.
No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth. -Shambhala, 1979. In Russian: Wilbur K. No borders: Eastern and Western paths to personal growth. - M.: AST, 2004. (There is an alternative translation entitled “Boundless” on the Internet in the public domain.)
Wilber-2 (“Development for the good”; pre-/over- delusion) - 1980 – 1982
The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development. - The Theosophical Publishing House, 1980. In Russian: Wilbur K. The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development. - M.: AST, 2004.
Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution. - Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1981.
The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes: Exploring the Leading Edge of Science (ed. Ken Wilber). - Shambhala, 1982.
Wilber-3 (Many development lines) - 1983 - 1987
A Sociable God: A Brief Introduction to a Transcendental Sociology. - Shambhala, 1983.
Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm. - Doubleday Books, 1984. In Russian: Wilbur K. Eyes of knowledge: flesh, mind, contemplation. - M.: RIPOL-Classic, 2016.)
Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (ed. Ken Wilber). - Shambhala, 1984.
Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development (ed. Ken Wilber, Daniel Brown, Jack Engler). - Shambhala, 1986.
Spiritual Choices: The Problem of Recognizing Authentic Paths to Inner Transformation (ed. Ken Wilber, Dick Anthony, Bruce Ecker). - Paragon House Publishers, 1987.
Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life of Treya Killam Wilber. - Shambhala, 1991. - In Russian: Wilbur K. Grace and Resilience: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber. - M.: Open World, 2008. (Reprint - M.: Postum, 2013.)
Wilber-4 (“all quadrants and levels”) - 1995 – 2001
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. - Shambhala 1995.
A Brief History of Everything. - Shambhala, 1996. - In Russian: Wilbur K. A short history of everything. - M.: Postum, 2015.
The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad. - Shambhala, 1997. In Russian: Wilbur K. Eye of the Spirit: An Integral Vision for a Slightly Crazy World. - M.: AST, 2002.
The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader. - Shambhala, 1998.
The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion. -Random House, 1998
One Taste: The Journals of Ken Wilber. - Shambhala, 1999. In Russian: Wilbur K. One Taste: The Ken Wilber Diaries. - M.: AST, 2004.
Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. - Shambhala, 2000. In Russian: Wilbur K. Integral psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. - M.: K. Kravchuk Publishing House, 2004.
A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality. - Shambhala, 2000. In Russian: Wilbur K. The Theory of Everything: An Integral Approach to Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality. - M.: Postum, 2013.
Wilber-5 (integral post-metaphysics, integral methodological pluralism) - 2001 - present. V.
Boomeritis: A Novel That Will Set You Free. - Shambhala, 2002. In Russian: Wilbur K. Boomerit: The book that will set you free. - Electronic edition. - M.: Orientalia, AIpraktik, November 2013.
Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World. - Shambhala, 2006. - In Russian: Wilbur K. Integral spirituality: The new role of religion in the modern and post-modern world. - Electronic edition. - M.: Orientalia, AIpraktik, November 2013.
The Integral Vision: A Very Short Introduction to the Revolutionary Integral Approach to Life, God, the Universe, and Everything. - Shambhala, 2007. - In Russian: Wilbur K. The Integral Vision: A Brief Introduction to the Revolutionary Integral Approach to Life, God, the Universe and Everything. - M.: Open World, 2009. (The “Ipraktik” project plans to reissue it in the form of an e-book.)
Since 2014, the release of new long-awaited works by Ken Wilber in English is planned, including the second volume of the “Cosmos” trilogy (the first volume was the book “Sex, ecology, spirituality”) and the work “The Fourth Turning”. The book “Integral Meditation” has also been published; Russian translation is being prepared.