Ken Wilber Online: Introduction to Volume 4 of The Collected Works

A Note to the Reader:
This volume contains the book Integral Psychology, which was written specifically for this volume and is published here for the first time. Integral Psychology is a condensed version of an as-yet unpublished two-volume text of psychology, spirituality, and consciousness studies. As such, Integral Psychology is at this time the definitive statement of my general psychological model, and my other writings in the field should be coordinated with its views. Those who are reading this volume for ideas on psychology/spirituality, might therefore wish to read Integral Psychology first, and then use the other texts in this volume (and my other works) to fill in the details of the overview offered in Integral Psychology.

Introduction to the fourth volume 4 of the Collected Works

T he works in this volume all explore the implications of an evolutionary view of the Kosmos, from matter to mind to spirit. What would psychology, sociology, cultural studies, philosophy, and spirituality look like if we adopted an evolutionary or developmental approach? What fundamental insights might we gain? What recalcitrant dilemmas might be softened? What intractable problems might begin to yield? I hasten to add that evolution or development by no means covers the whole story of the Kosmos; it is simply a very important part of the whole story, a part that, when the following works were originally written, was alarmingly being ignored.

Interestingly, psychologists have recently conducted significant research on the development of the idea of development itself. That is, using extensive tests of how individuals picture the world around them (their "worldviews"), psychologists have been able to determine the general stages through which worldviews develop (including in different cultures and subcultures). As we will see later in this volume, there is a remarkable uniformity to the general findings. To give one example now, the work of Deirdre Kramer suggests that the worldviews of men and women progress through these stages:

Preformism--This is a simple lack of differentiation.

Formism/mechanism--Features are differentiated but not integrated; static forms therefore predominate and are related by gross mechanistic generalizations.

Static relativism/contextualism--This involves a rejection of static forms and the beginning of relativity and contextualism. When this view matures, full systems come into view, and the next stage emerges:

Static systems--At this stage, reports Kramer, the individual "constructs systems of self, other, and interpersonal relationships that subsume apparent contradictions into more integrated, coherent structures [which include] the integration of consistencies and inconsistencies into systems."[1] But these structures and systems are still static: "While the concepts may feature holism, they are generally static--they do not stress the dynamic, changing, actively constructed nature of such systems." When the dynamic nature of systems is grasped, the next stage emerges:

Dynamic relativism/contextualism--This stage is marked by "an awareness that social-cognitive systems are culturally and historically bound." In other words, this is a contextual/constructivist stance, with relativism and pluralism defining all frames of reference. These frames are all dynamic and constantly subject to change. "In a contextual/relativistic worldview, random change is basic to all reality, and knowledge is embedded in its broader context, whether the context is the cultural/historical one, the cognitive framework, or the immediate physical and psychological context." Likewise, "The broader social, historical, moral, and physical context influences how one will approach and act in a situation. What aspect of a situation one focuses on will influence his or her interpretation or understanding of the situation. Every person, society, group and situation is unique (because every situation is unique and change is random)."

But precisely because there is as yet no way to interrelate these pluralistic contexts--since each remains "incommensurate" with the others (or put still another way: since there is no "meta-narrative" that mutually interrelates all the different contexts)--this worldview is ultimately fragmented and chaotic: "Prediction is impossible, as all people and events are unique and continually change in unsystematic ways. Consequently, contradiction runs rampant. There is no order to such a universe; any order imposed externally or via one's cognitive framework." That is, all order is imagined to be imposed by structures of power or ideology (patriarchy, logocentrism, anthropocentrism, androcentrism, speciesism, phallocentrism, etc.). Because multiple contexts are grasped, but because the rich networks of interconnections between multiple contexts is not grasped, this worldview remains disjointed and fragmented. However, when the relationships between multiple contexts are discovered, the next worldview begins to emerge:

Dynamic dialecticism--Here all multiple contexts are seen to be mutually interactive over both space and time, constituting an organic order that emerges from the nonpredictable play of its parts. Each whole is a part of other wholes indefinitely, related by tension, resolution, and recurrence. "In an organicist/dialectical worldview, all phenomena are in continual movement or activity, characterized by the ongoing tension between events, their [limitation], and the resolution of that [limitation] into momentary structures that soon begin to create new tensions, initiating the cycle again. The dialectical whole (i.e., the momentary structures) is characterized by emergence (i.e., the whole redefines and transcends its constitutive elements) and reciprocity (i.e., a change in any one element in a system influences and in turn is influenced by a change in other parts of the system). Thus, in a dialectical system, all elements are interrelated and reflections of the same underlying, essential unity."

What particularly separates this worldview (dynamic/developmental dialecticism) from its predecessor (dynamic relativism/contextualism) is its increased capacity to hold multiple contexts in mind, across both space and time: "In a dialectical system there is a relationship among such contexts. In a contextualist system there is no such relationship.... A contextual perspective would contend that the opposing value systems of two cultures or two generations are unrelated"--because they are supposedly incommensurable and purely relativistic. But a further growth of consciousness allows the recognition of deeper and wider connections, which discloses, among other things, a directionality to the changes that were thought to be random at the preceding level of development: "At the dynamic dialectical level, perfect prediction is also impossible, because of the emergent quality of evolving structures. However, there is nevertheless a direction to such change, and a relationship among contrasting [pluralistic and contextual] systems." This directionality and relationship is dynamic, dialectical, developmental, and evolutionary. "Change occurs through evolution, where conflicts are resolved and redefined by newer, more encompassing solutions which yield new conflicts, and so on. People, groups and society naturally evolve through different phases. The whole of the organization transcends and gives meaning to parts."

(This directionality is exemplified in the theories of Hegel, Aurobindo, Whitehead, Teilhard de Chardin, Ilya Prigogine, Jurgen Habermas, Jean Gebser, Michael Murphy, among others, and includes such notions as increasing relative autonomy, increasing complexity, increasing differentiation-and-integration, and increasing dialectical inclusiveness: transcend and include, or negate and preserve).[2]

Kramer notes that at the previous stage of dynamic relativism, "systems are differentiated into meta-systems of culturally and historically relative, dynamic systems that cannot be explained apart from their immediate cultural or historical contexts. Finally, at the dynamic dialectical level, these contexts are reintegrated into a more encompassing structure where such contexts are seen as arising in relation to one another and evolving in a systematic fashion."

Thus, as Kramer summarizes the situation, the next-to-highest stage of worldview development involves "the differentiation of dynamic systems into culturally and historically defined contexts"; while the next stage goes one step further and integrates those differentiations, resulting in "the dialectical integration of cultural and historical systems into evolving social structures." Thus, this highest stage of development is a stage that is conscious of development. Or, as Julian Huxley used to say, evolution becomes conscious of itself.

Now, I do not myself believe that "dynamic dialectical systems" is the very highest level of worldview development possible. As is the case with such studies--and precisely because evolution produces greater depth, less span (i.e., there are fewer representatives of the higher levels)--exactly what constitutes "the" highest level is open to further research. In my own system, for example, the stage of dynamic dialecticism--which is generated by what I call vision-logic--is simply the opening to even higher stages of transrational, transpersonal development. That is, dynamic dialecticism (or mature vision-logic) might be thought of as the highest of the mental realms, or the highest philosophy capable of being grasped by the ordinary mind, beyond which lie transmental or supramental developments altogether (psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual).

Nonetheless, this mature vision-logic, with its dynamic/dialectical/developmental worldview, is the level through which most of the great modern philosopher-sages (such as Hegel, Whitehead, Gebser, and Aurobindo) have written and continue to write, even though they are often expressing insights seen at the even higher, transpersonal, transmental levels--and for the simple reason that, in order to mentally communicate at all, the mental realms must be used. These great philosopher-sages speak through the highest of the mental realms--the vision-logic mind--even as they are trying to communicate even higher transmental truths and realities.

Vision-logic is certainly the level through which I have attempted to write most of my works, although how well I have succeeded remains to be seen. But in trying to write from a "late" or "high" vision-logic, my major nemesis has almost always been the worldview of "early" or "low" vision-logic, namely, the worldview of dynamic relativism and extreme pluralism, also known as deconstructive postmodernism.[3]

I have always viewed vision-logic (which Gebser called the integral-aperspectival mind) as itself developing in two or three major substages. What most defines vision-logic at any stage is simply its capacity for systems thinking, and, at the very least, systems must first be differentiated, and then integrated. Early or low vision-logic (along with late formal operational thought) recognizes and differentiates systems, and then--as Kramer's studies suggest--late or high vision-logic integrates these disparate systems, contexts, and cultures into dynamic/dialectic/developmental structures of an underlying unity or mutuality.[4]

As I would later suggest (in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and The Marriage of Sense and Soul), the western Enlightenment (or modernity), using its late formal operational and early vision-logic capacities, managed to differentiate the major cultural value spheres of science, art, and morals, but failed to integrate them. Postmodernity, whose task was to take up this integration and complete it, began most promisingly by even more clearly differentiating the many pluralistic cultural spheres--and then promptly aborted its own development at that delicate point, leaving the world with no way to relate the many different contexts that postmodernism had unearthed. Leaving the world, that is to say, in a completely fragmented, chaotic, fractured state, often while loudly claiming that its postmodern deconstructions were the only way to heal the planet, heal America, heal the world, and so forth. Under the ostensibly noble guise of pluralism, relativism, incommensurate paradigms, and cultural diversity, postmodernism opened up the world to a richness of multiple voices, but then stood back to watch the multiple voices degenerate into a Tower of Babel, each voice claiming to be its own validity, yet few of them actually honoring the values of the others. Each was free to go its own way, whereupon everybody went in vigorously different ways. "Consequently, contradictions run rampant. There is no order to such a universe...." This did not ultimately liberate the many pluralistic voices, but merely sent them scurrying off, isolated and alienated, to the far corners of a fragmented world, there to suckle themselves in solitude.

For this reason, I have always defined myself as a constructive postmodernist, in contrast to a merely deconstructive postmodernist.[5] In The Marriage of Sense and Soul I would identify three especially important ideas that tend to define most forms of postmodernism: contextualism, constructivism, and pluralism. All three of those are earmarks of early vision-logic or the dynamic relativism worldview, which means all three are very important--but very limited--aspects of a post-Enlightenment, postmodern worldview. For they are completed and fulfilled only as they themselves are mutually interrelated with their own wider contexts, producing not merely aperspectivism (multiple contexts) but integral-aperspectivism, or the multiple contexts brought together in an integrated and dynamic dialecticism (of a mature vision-logic). Thus, constructive postmodernism (as I use the term) takes up the multiple contexts freed by dynamic relativism, and then integrates them into mutually interrelated networks (of dynamic dialecticism), as opposed to deconstructive and extreme postmodernism, which simply remains arrested at a lower-order worldview, fragmented and stuck in a morass of unrelated differentiations and mutually suspicious contexts, each choking in its own isolated world.

None of these particulars was fully clear to me as I wrote the works in this volume. All that I was really aware of was that the dynamic dialectical worldview was everywhere under attack by the dynamic relativism worldview, and that the promises of a constructive postmodernism were quickly hardening into extreme, recalcitrant, deconstructive postmodernism. Cultural relativism, like a corrosive acid eating into steel, was rapidly destroying many hard-gained, crossculturally valid truths; and in their place, an important acknowledgment of many cultural relativities, but all left lying in a rubble of narcissism and nihilism.

"Reply to Critics," included in this volume, is perhaps noteworthy because it was the first of my many defenses of dynamic dialecticism against dynamic relativism, although I did not use those specific terms, nor did I particularly think of this argument itself in developmental ways. What I did think was how pernicious extreme postmodernism had become. This short book was written right after A Sociable God, and in the same terse, abstract style. I had just met Treya at the time, and personal events soon crowded out professional writing--so much so that I actually forgot I had written this book; I just rediscovered it while looking over earlier writings for the Collected Works. It is published here for the first time. What is so astonishing about this piece is how perfectly it reflects the struggle between dynamic relativism and dynamic dialecticism. It would be almost two decades before an evolutionary/developmental/dialectical worldview would again start to come to the forefront in cultural studies. In the meantime, all of the pieces in this volume were written against the surging currents of extreme postmodernism, anti-evolutionism, contextualism, and relativism.

The volume opens with "A Unified Theory of Development," which was originally published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology as "Two Patterns of Transcendence." It was perhaps the clearest statement up to that time of my "phase-3" model of development and evolution (which, in the context of the four quadrants, is the model I still hold);[6] namely, the idea of relatively universal basic structures (levels or waves of development) through which numerous different developmental lines or streams proceed in a largely independent fashion. The basic waves themselves are simply a sophisticated version of the Great Nest of Being, matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, with each senior nest transcending and including its predecessor(s). Through the levels (or nests or waves) of this Great Holarchy, at least a dozen different developmental lines (such as cognition, affects, morals, self-identity, and needs) proceed relatively independently, so that a person can be at a very high level of development in some lines, a medium level in other lines, and a low level in still others--all at the same time. Overall development, then, follows no set pattern or linear sequence whatsoever, even though many of the individual lines do.

This phase-3 model was first presented in "Ontogenetic Development: Two Fundamental Patterns," in The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, vol. 13, no. 1, 1981 (which was included in volume 3 of the Collected Works). That was followed by a two-part series in the same journal, "The Developmental Spectrum and Psychopathology: Part 1, Stages and Types of Pathology; Part 2, Treatment Modalities," which were then included in Transformation of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development (included in this volume), which I coedited with Harvard psychologists Jack Engler and Daniel P. Brown (with contributions by Mark Epstein, Jonathan Lieff, and John Chirban). Both Engler and Brown had done pioneering--and still unsurpassed--research into the crosscultural stages of the meditative path. What they found--using, I might add, a perspective of dynamic dialecticism--was the following: "The major [spiritual] traditions we have studied in their original languages present an unfolding of meditation experiences in terms of a stage model: for example, the Mahamudra from the Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist tradition; the Visuddhimagga from the Pali Theravada Buddhist tradition; and the Yoga Sutras from the Sanskrit Hindu tradition [these were subsequently checked against Chinese and Christian sources]. The models are sufficiently similar to suggest an underlying common invariant sequences of stages, despite vast cultural and linguistic differences as well as styles of practice.... The results strongly suggest that the stages of meditation are in fact of crosscultural and universal applicability (at a deep, not surface, analysis)." In the same volume we included an in-depth study by Harvard theologian John Chirban of the stages of spiritual development evidenced by saints in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Chirban's conclusion: "Although each saint describes his own experience (often in his own unique way), basic parallels emerge as one compares the stages of the saints with one another. This sameness confirms the catholicity of their experience..."--and the catholicity (or universal applicability) of the basic waves of consciousness themselves, which are similarly reflected in these numerous crosscultural sources.

Two of the papers in this volume--"Death, Rebirth, and Meditation" and "Stages of Meditation"--explore the highest waves of the Great Nest according to anuttaratantrayoga, or "Highest Yoga Tantra," which, next to Dzogchen, is said to be the highest of the Buddha's teachings. This Yoga possesses an unsurpassed grasp of the extraordinary interrelation between conscious states and bodily energies. According to this teaching, in order to master the mind, one must concomitantly master the body's subtle energies--chi, prana, rLung, ki--and this Yoga is an exquisite system of harnessing these subtle energies at every stage of development, right up to and including the enlightened state of Clear Light Emptiness.

Those who maintain that, when it comes to consciousness, Buddhism eschews the Great Chain and only recognizes the five skandhas--form, sensation, perception, impulse/image, and conceptual consciousness--have not examined the Highest Yoga teachings, which maintain that those five levels of consciousness apply only to "gross consciousness," beyond which lie several levels of what is referred to as "subtle consciousness," and beyond those, several levels of "very subtle [or causal] consciousness"--in other words, the entire Great Nest, which is also in full accord with the general Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of the nine levels/waves of consciousness--five senses, sense-mind, higher mind, collective mind, and pure nondual buddhamind. These Highest Yoga teachings are carefully outlined in these two papers, and their relevance to a full spectrum view of human growth and development is obvious, I believe.

Another important item becomes quite clear as one studies (and practices) these texts of higher development. Several critics have, over the years, scolded me for implying that there are strong similarities between, for example, the Buddhist Dharmakaya (and Emptiness) and the Vedanta causal body (and nirguna Brahman).

And yet, according to Highest Yoga tantra, one type of the Dharmakaya is experienced in deep dreamless sleep (formless consciousness); the Sambhogakaya, in the dream state; and the Nirmanakaya, in the waking state. But notice: according to Vedanta, the causal body is experienced in deep dreamless sleep, the subtle body is experienced in the dream state, and the gross body in the waking state. Therefore, if you believe that there are similarities in deep dreamless sleep between individuals, it follows that there are some profound similarities between the Buddhist Dharmakaya and the Hindu causal body. (And likewise, similarities between the Buddhist Sambhogakaya and Hindu subtle body, and the Nirmanakaya and gross body.)

Of course there are many important differences between these Buddhist and Hindu notions, and those need to be rigorously honored. And yet--simultaneously--there seem to be important and profound similarities. In all of my writings I have tried to emphasize both--certain similarities in deep features, important differences in surface features--and thus I am always a little chagrined when accused of championing only one or the other.

Pulling together all of these strands of development--conventional and contemplative, orthodox and meditative, Western and Eastern--suggested that there is indeed a nearly universal spectrum of consciousness (in deep, not surface, features), through which individuals develop at their own pace and in their own way. That is what Transformations of Consciousness accomplished, I believe. Comparing and contrasting numerous maps of development from around the world--and using some of them to fill in gaps in the others--resulted in a "master template" of overall consciousness development, a master template that was, in fact, a sophisticated and modernized version of the Great Nest of Being.

At the time, of course, the Great Nest was under brutal attack by hordes of the dynamic relativists (from deconstructionists to feminists to deep ecologists). The Great Nest was said to be inherently (and here follows a list of dirty words) hierarchical, patriarchal, elitist, logocentric, eurocentric, phallocentric, phallologocentric, anti-ecological, repressive, and marginalizing. None of those is true. The Great Nest, as I have often pointed out, is not a hierarchy in the sense of a rigid one-way ranking, with the senior dimensions rejecting and repressing the lower (which is how it is always pictured by its critics), but rather is a holarchy, where each senior dimension transcends and includes its predecessor(s), as in the holarchy atoms, molecules, cells, organisms.[7] Cells don't repress molecules, they embrace them. Likewise with the Great Nest: each senior dimension enfolds, envelopes, and embraces all of the preceding dimensions: spirit transcends and includes soul, which transcends and includes mind, which transcends and includes body, which transcends and includes matter--a series of concentric spheres of loving embrace, with spirit transcending all and embracing all. That some types of hierarchies can be misused to repress or oppress condemns the misuse, not all hierarchies per se.

Likewise with the other condemnations hurled at the Great Nest by the politically correct. In a footnote written at the time, I was already trying to blunt the attacks: "The 'politically correct' (PC) claim is that all of modern civilization is now dominated by thinking that is Eurocentric, logocentric, and sexist, and that the only politically adequate or correct view is therefore one that is, by contrast, radically egalitarian and pluralistic [dynamic relativism/contextualism], and denies that any worldview can be 'better' than another. The problem with this view is that, while it claims to be admirably liberal--in that nothing can be said to be 'better' or 'higher'--it ends up absolutely reactionary: if nothing is better, then there is and can be no liberal agenda, there can be no impetus to improve a present state of affairs according to a blueprint of a 'better' state of affairs. It utterly lacks a coherent and integrative vision of possibilities [as Kramer would discover for all dynamic relativism]. Moreover, radical pluralism is itself a Eurocentric, logocentric notion.

"The perennial philosophy [and Great Nest], on the other hand, first arose in the matriarchy, and thus cannot be charged with inherent sexism; it arose in illiterate peoples, and thus is not logocentric; and it first flourished in what are now Second and Third World countries--it is hardly Eurocentric. Furthermore, it offers what PC thought cannot: an integrative vision that, while allowing each expression its own free space, points to a 'better' state of affairs: namely, the supreme identity. It thus has inherent in it a genuine liberal agenda: increasing freedom on both an individual and societal level."[8]

I have always felt, from the time of my first book to today, that starting one's studies with the perennial philosophy is a sane, generous, and wise idea, if for no other reason than that the Great Nest is not a metaphysical postulate or abstruse philosophy, but rather represents some five thousand years of codifications of direct phenomenological experiences of the higher dimensions of human consciousness disclosed by consensually validated means. Put simply, the Great Nest is primarily a summary of direct meditative experiences, it is not an abstract metaphysics or ungrounded philosophy, and if we are looking for clues to unlocking the human potential, it would take a fool to ignore the perennial philosophy, the world's first great psychotechnology for entering higher states of consciousness. But, of course, some would say that with extreme postmodernism, fools were on the rampage, and the perennial philosophy was one of the first great casualties.

Having said that, I should also point out that, in addition to being one of the perennial philosophy's staunchest defenders, I have been one of its harshest critics. Notice that in the previous paragraph I said the perennial philosophy is a good place to start--but it is not a good place to stop. The fact is, as accurate as the Great Chain theorists were in mapping much of higher individual development, they did not grasp the intricacies of cultural context; they did not understand that the Great Chain itself evolves over time; they did not understand the correlations of states of consciousness with brain neurophysiology; they did not understand the interdependence of modes of production and worldviews. In short, they did not generally differentiate the Great Chain into the four quadrants (see Integral Psychology, this volume). Even though some of the more sophisticated Great Chain theorists (Plotinus, Asanga, Vasubandhu, Fa-tsang, Tsong-ka-pa) had access to higher forms of vision-logic (they were clearly operating with meta-systematic thought, even though they were also transcending it in contemplation), nonetheless they simply lacked the data, the empirical evidence, that would fill the content of their vision-logic with information about different cultures, radically different social contexts, the nature of brain physiology, and the anthropological records showing evidence of phylogenetic evolution--and therefore their dynamic dialectical worldview was largely confined to the unfolding of systems across time in individuals only (meditation was conceived by all of them in a developmental stage model, a micro-evolutionary dialecticism). But their overall view of the Great Chain was thus, by default, closer to the nature of Kramer's "static systems" view, which is exactly why, in just recent times, the traditional Great Chain was open to devastating criticism (correct as far as it went) from the dynamic relativists--a criticism I definitely share. As I strenuously argued in The Marriage of Sense and Soul and Integral Psychology , the Great Chain desperately needs to be modernized and postmodernized: it needs to recognize the importance of cultural context, relativistic surface structures and contexts, correlations with modern scientific discoveries, sensitivity to minorities that the mythic-agrarian structure marginalized, the important of pluralistic voices, and so on.

Rather, what I have objected to in the torrent of attacks by the dynamic relativists is that, instead of trying to understand the enduring contributions of the perennial philosophy and the Great Chain theorists, and then weeding out their inadequacies, partialities, falsehoods, and limitations--so as to integrate their enduring truths with the newly emerging truths of modernity and postmodernity--the dynamic relativists have simply trashed the entire show, thrown one huge and precious baby out with a ton of bathwater, and sat back smugly congratulating themselves on having deconstructed what was, in fact, the collective wisdom of several millennia of the greatest men and women this planet has ever seen.

My approach to the perennial philosophy has been, instead, to try to take up and preserve those abiding truths that are as significant today as when they were first discovered, and then integrate them with the newly emerging truths of modernity and postmodernity. The idea is take the static systems view of the Great Nest, process it through the differentiations offered by dynamic relativism (e.g., the differentiation of the four quadrants, or simply the Big Three contexts of art, morals, and science), and then expose those multiple contexts to the integration offered by dynamic dialecticism (or developmental/integral embrace). This in effect integrates the best of premodernity (the Great Nest), modernity (differentiation of the Big Three), and postmodernity (integration of the Big Three via mature vision-logic, which was supposed to be the actual aim of postmodernism before it derailed into accentuating the previous differentiations while celebrating its incapacity to integrate them). All of these themes, as we will see, form the starting point of Integral Psychology.

So I have always been most ambivalent when a critic identified me as a "perennial philosopher," when that is clearly a half-truth at best. In fact, just as I have spent much time trying to salvage the essentials of the Great Nest from the dynamic relativists, I have also spent much time trying to move the Great Nest into the modern and postmodern world--against the wishes of the traditional perennial philosophers, such as Frithjof Schuon, Rene Guenon, Seyyed Nasr, and Ananda Coomaraswamy. For all of those theorists generally embrace a static system view of the Great Chain; they imagine that its truths are embedded in the mind of God in an unchanging and unchangeable fashion (as if God were incapable of thinking up a new idea); they actively deny versions of the Great Chain that are updated via dynamic relativism and dynamic dialecticism; their "archetypes" are not patterns of unfolding and evolving habits, but everlasting concrete imprints hammered into the world by a vigorously uncreative God.

When that static-system conception is taken to the next level of worldview development, all of those permanent, unyielding, static forms are deconstructed (and rightly so) by dynamic relativism--on the way to their reintegration by dynamic dialecticism into evolving systems of inter-contextual embrace (all-level, all-quadrant). The traditional perennial philosophers simply refuse, on point of honor, to see their systems mutually interacting with the modern and the postmodern world, but rather see in the latter variations on the theme of the Great Satan: the modern world rejects the Great Chain, so it must be deeply confused, whereas many of the traditional items modernity rejects stand in dire need of rejection. But the perennialists have pulled themselves out of this mutual dialogue, and instead have taken to nagging the world to get back to that good ole time religion. But Spirit-in-action, in one of its forms as the unfolding world, has simply moved on, it seems.[9]

Transformations of Consciousness took as a reference point an enduring truth of the Great Nest of Being: them unfolding of ever-richer realms of consciousness, from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit. My chapters focused on outlining a full-spectrum model of consciousness, which consisted of three major components: 1) the basic structures or levels or waves of consciousness--matter, vital body (sensation, perception, impulse), mind (image, symbol, concept, rule/role, formal-reflexive, vision-logic), soul (psychic, subtle), and spirit (causal, nondual); 2) the numerous different developmental lines or streams (such as self-identity, self-needs, and morals) that proceed through those major waves; and 3) the self (or self-system), which has to integrate all of the various waves and streams.

Focusing on the self and its journey through the basic waves of the Great Nest, I examined the major milestones in the self's development. Each milestone of self-development I called a fulcrum, which is a 1-2-3 process of fusion/embeddedness, differentiation/transcendence, and inclusion/integration. That is, the growth of the self involves a progressive identification with a particular wave in the Great Nest, followed by a differentiation from (and transcendence of) that wave, which is then included and integrated from the next higher wave in the Great Holarchy.[10] The self's evolution is thus transcend-and-include, as deeper and higher waves of the Great Nest of Being unfold in its own case, from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit.

Of course, development is not nearly as sequential as that sounds; and, given the fact that there are actually numerous different developmental lines all moving relatively independently through the Great Nest, the self's overall development is very uneven and nonlinear--it can make progress in cognitive, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and other lines in a very uneven way, nor must any of those lines be completed before the others can begin. There is nothing sequential or stage-like about overall development.

Although I stated that position quite often, beginning in 1981, the most common criticism of my work has been that it is a rigidly linear, stage-by-stage model--a so-called "ladder" view of development. Of course, it didn't help that I often drew the spectrum of consciousness in a ladder-like way (as in fig. XY). But that "ladder" simply represents the various waves through which the numerous different developmental streams can progress independently, at their own rate, in their own way, so that, as I said, overall development follows no linear sequence at all.

The critics who misrepresented my position took that "ladder" as the total story of development as I conceived it, which not only ignored the many independent streams, all cascading over each other in a richly nonlinear way, but also ignored the important role played by altered states. As I had made clear, beginning with A Sociable God (1983), a person at virtually any stage of development can have various types of peak experiences and other altered states, including spiritual peak experiences of the transpersonal realms, and these follow no set sequence, either. (All of these topics are discussed at length in Integral Psychology.)

What seemed to confuse a few critics is that, even though overall development is not linear or sequential, a great deal of empirical evidence continues to demonstrate that many of the individual developmental lines themselves (such as cognitive, ego, and moral) do in fact unfold in a relatively invariant, holarchical sequence (they unfold through the universal waves of the Great Nest of Being--preconventional to conventional to postconventional to post-postconventional. This evidence is discussed at length in Integral Psychology, and summarized in figs. II and III in that book, which we will discuss in a moment).

The preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that this sequentiality is also true for the developmental line of self-identity, or what Jane Loevinger has investigated as "ego development." I call this immediate sense of self-identity the "proximate self" because it is intimately experienced as an "I" (in distinction to the distal self or "me"). And, as I started to say, each time the proximate self moves through a basic wave of the Great Nest, it goes through a fulcrum of its development: it first identifies with a new wave, then disidentifies with and transcends that wave, then includes and integrates that wave from the next higher, wider wave. I summarized the Great Nest as possessing nine basic waves of consciousness (sensorimotor, phantasmic-emotional, rep-mind, rule/role mind, formal-reflexive, vision-logic, psychic, subtle, and causal/nondual), and therefore I outlined the nine correlative fulcrums that the self goes through in a complete evolution or development through the entire Great Nest.

Each time the self steps up to a new and higher sphere in the Great Nest of Being, it can do so in a relatively healthy fashion--which means it smoothly differentiates and integrates the elements of that level--or in a relatively pathological fashion--which means it either fails to differentiate (and thus remains in fusion/fixation/arrest) or it fails to integrate (which results in repression, alienation, fragmentation). Each wave of the Great Nest has a qualitatively different architecture, and thus each fulcrum (and pathology) likewise has a qualitatively different structure. I therefore outlined nine levels of pathology (psychosis, borderline, neurosis, script, identity, existential, psychic, subtle, causal), and suggested the correlative treatment modalities that seem to best address these different waves of pathology (pacification, structure building, uncovering, cognitive, introspection, existential, the path of yogis, saints, and sages). All of these--the nine basic structures, the correlative self-fulcrums, the types of self pathology that can be generated if something goes wrong at each fulcrum, and the treatment modalities that seem bested suited to each--are listed in figure XY.[11]

Needless to say, these were meant only as the most general of generalizations, useful insofar as they alert us to the very different contours of the various waves in the Great Nest of Being, and the correlatively different fulcrums of the self's journey through those waves. All too often, one particular psychotherapeutic approach (psychoanalysis, Gestalt, neurolinguistic programming, holotrophic breathwork, transactional analysis, biological psychiatry, etc.) is used for all types of psychopathologies, often with unfortunate results. Rather, the one thing we learn from the existence of the multiple waves of the spectrum of consciousness is just how many different dimensions of existence there are, and how a sensitivity to these multiple dimensions demands a multiplicity of treatment modalities.

The nine general levels of therapy that I outlined are meant to be suggestive only; they are broad guidelines as to what we can expect, based on a careful reading of the evidence compiled by numerous different schools of developmental psychology and contemplative spirituality (an overview of this evidence is given in Integral Psychology). There is, needless to say, a great deal of overlap between these therapies. For example, I list "script pathology" and "cognitive therapy" as being especially relevant to fulcrum-4, which is where the self identifies, for the first time, with the rule/role mind. That is, the self can begin to take the role of others and learn the rules of its society. If something goes wrong during this general developmental period (which typically covers ages 6 to 12), the result is a "script pathology," a series of distorted, untrue, unfair ideas and scripts about one's self and others. Cognitive therapy has excelled in rooting out these maladaptive scripts and replacing them with more accurate, benign, and therefore healthy ideas and self-concepts. But to say cognitive therapy focuses on this wave of consciousness development is not to say it has no benefit at other waves, for clearly it does. The idea, rather, is that the farther away we get from this wave, the less relevant (but never completely useless) cognitive therapy becomes. Developments in fulcrums 1 and 2 are mostly preverbal and preconceptual, so conceptual reprogramming does not directly address these levels; and developments beyond fulcrum-6 are mostly transmental and transrational, so mental reprogramming, in and of itself, is limited in its effectiveness. So it is not that a given therapy applies only to one narrow wave of development, but that, in focusing on one or two waves, most forms of therapy increasingly lose their effectiveness when applied to more distant realms.

Also, it is generally true, as I first suggested in The Spectrum of Consciousness , that the therapies of one level will acknowledge and often use the therapies from lower levels, but they are reluctant to recognize any level higher than their own. Thus, classical psychoanalysis will recognize the importance of instinctual and emotional drives, but downplay the importance of cognitive scripts themselves. Cognitive therapists emphasize the importance of those scripts but downplay or ignore the importance of the total psychophysical organism (or centaur), which humanistic and existential therapists emphasize. And existential therapists often vehemently deny the importance or even existence of the transpersonal and transrational levels. By assigning each therapy a general level on the overall spectrum of consciousness, I was also taking those particular facts into account--the therapy at one level will usually acknowledge and even use all of the therapies from lower levels, rarely from any higher (whose existence, in fact, they usually pathologize).

Transformations of Consciousness focused almost exclusively on interior developments in individuals--focused, that is, on what I would later call the Upper Left quadrant. Its conclusions are still quite sound for that quadrant, I believe, but a more balanced view would also include insights from all four quadrants, even when trying to understand individual development and pathology (as explained in Integral Psychology). The subjective events in individual consciousness are always intimately interrelated with objective events (such as brain physiology), intersubjective events (such as cultural background and context), and interobjective events (such as social institutions and the techno-economic base). As Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and A Brief History of Everything explained at length, all four of those quadrants mutually interact (they are embedded in each other), and thus all of them are required in order to understand any of them. The conclusions of Transformations of Consciousness are still valid, they simply need to be inserted into a four-quadrant view, which would include an understanding of the role of neurophysiology on consciousness development and neuropharmacology on psychopathology (Upper Right), as well as the role of multiple cultural contexts (Lower Left) and modes of social production (Lower Right)--all of which, as we will see, are emphasized in Integral Psychology. Ironically, now that biological psychiatry and cognitive science have attempted to reduce all interior consciousness to objective its--reduce Upper Left to Upper Right--the conclusions of Transformations of Consciousness need all the more desperately to be included in an integral view of consciousness.

The great sages, we might suppose, have traversed all, or certainly most, of the waves in the Great Nest of Being; but since that it relatively rare, to put it mildly, few therapists would ever see all nine fulcrums of self development. Many therapists told me, after reading Transformations of Consciousness, that what they saw in therapy did not look like that nine-level map! I quite agree. In fact, most forms of typical psychotherapy deal only with a few levels: mostly fulcrum-3 (which involves uncovering and integrating repressed feelings and shadow elements), fulcrum-4 (which involves belongingness needs and cognitive reprogramming of harsh scripts), and fulcrums 5 and 6 (which involve self-esteem and self-actualization). In terms of "contacting feelings" and "uncovering the shadow," most therapeutic work occurs at fulcrum-3, which is the point where the conceptual mind first emerges and differentiates-and-integrates the body (typically during the oedipal/electra period, ages three to six). Therapies that have focused on this important fulcrum include, of course, psychoanalysis, and two of its more popular and effective offshoots, Gestalt Therapy and Transactional Analysis (both of which also focus on cognitive scripts, which thicken at fulcrum-4, but both of which aim to dig deeper, into fulcrum-3, and expose the psychodynamics and repressed feelings that often underlie script pathology). I have therefore included "A Working Synthesis of Transactional Analysis and Gestalt Therapy," which was published in Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice (and was actually written in phase-1, with an awkward style, but it is still quite generally valid, in my opinion). It more accurately gives the flavor of one type of actual therapy (focused on fulcrum-3) than does my abstract overview in Transformations of Consciousness.[12]

"Paradigm Wars" was a simplified overview of the levels of development, their correlative worldviews, and the pathologies that could occur at each. As a simplified overview, it did not specifically distinguish between basic structures, the correlative worldviews, the self and its fulcrums, and the related pathologies, but simply discussed them all together as a single unfolding through the Great Nest. Its simple point was that each level of development has a different view of the world--a different worldview, a different paradigm--and that consequently, each of us has, in simply growing up, already gone through at least a half-dozen paradigm revolutions , from archaic to magic to mythic to rational to integrative (on the way to transmental levels altogether).

"Two Humanistic Psychologies?" was in part a response to Rollo May, who, along with Albert Ellis and Kirk Schneider, had at the time begun a concerted attack on the general transpersonal orientation (made wonderfully unforgettable by Albert Ellis's serious claim that the transpersonalists were the people most likely to start a nuclear holocaust). I answered all three of them in various publications, of which "Two Humanistic Psychologies?" covers all the relevant points. I had just moved to San Francisco from Cambridge, and was living with Frances Vaughan and Roger Walsh. Rollo and I had struck up a friendship and began holding seminars together at his exquisite house in Tiburon. We were good friends, I believe, but Rollo became increasingly exasperated at the many flaky trends in the transpersonal movement--as had I and most serious transpersonalists. He lashed out at the entire movement, perhaps understandably, and I responded (as I likewise did with Schneider and Ellis). This paper still stands, in my opinion, as a succinct statement of the crucial differences between the humanistic-existential worldviews and those of a more spiritual and transpersonal nature--as well as pinpointing exactly what can go so very wrong with all of them. Rollo spotted the catastrophes, completely missed the truths.

Right before I moved to San Francisco (in 1983) I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I had gone to try to help salvage ReVision Journal, which Jack Crittenden and I had cofounded when I was still in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Jack--and the journal--was in Cambridge, which is why I moved there). At the time, ReVision's stated philosophy was one of dynamic dialecticism plugged into the entire Great Nest of Spirit (it has since become a bastion of dynamic relativism, which is why Jack and I are no longer associated with it).[13] I drew together many of the articles we had published into a book, The Holographic Paradigm, which I published right before I left for San Francisco. Its introduction is included in this volume. (I was in the awkward position, as editor, of being virtually the only contributor who did not believe the holographic paradigm was based on good science or good mysticism, for reasons I explained in Eye to Eye, and for reasons that can be found in the introduction to Quantum Questions, included in this volume. Naturally, the book became an international bestseller.)

I happily arrived in San Francisco and settled down in Frances's beautiful house, where a downstairs room was graciously made available for me. My move was financed by a generous grant from the Foundation for Inner Peace and Judith Skutch, publisher of a Course in Miracles. I myself was not a devoted fan of the Course, but I did find it profound and moving in many ways, and was glad to add my expertise to elucidating its meaning in any way I could. The Course community--most of whom lived in Tiburon--included Judith Skutch and her husband, Whit Whitson; Bill Thetford, the coscribe of the Course (Helen, the main scribe, had recently died), one of the most gentle, beautiful, wise, and dear men I have ever known (he, too, has deceased); his friend Pat Hopkins; Bob Skutch, a founding member of the Foundation; and Frances and Roger, who saw in the Course a version of the perennial philosophy that spoke in terms most modern men and women could hear. When I published Eye to Eye (included in volume 3), I dedicated it to all of those people "for providing a place and means to write, and for simply being the gifts that they are."

Right after I had assembled Eye to Eye, A Sociable God hit the bookstores, and its dynamic dialecticism was aggressively attacked by the waves of dynamic relativists who were in the process of drenching academia. "Reply to Critics" was written in response. But by then I had met Terry Killam, proposed to her ten days later, and our wedding was scheduled four months thence. We were renting Sam Keen's rustic old house in Muir Beach, madly in love, oblivious to the world--which didn't stop me from completing two more books in those four months: Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (whose introduction is included in this volume), and then Transformations of Consciousness.

Throughout Transformations of Consciousness (and throughout several of the works included in this volume), there is frequent reference to a work-in-progress called System, Self, and Structure, which I have been working on (and mostly not working on) for fifteen years. Meant to be a comprehensive textbook of integral psychology, its writing has been repeatedly interrupted by dramatic life events, so much so that I have always wondered if I seriously wanted to write it (I have, after all, managed to write everything I really wanted to). A central part of this two-volume text is a detailed discussion of almost two hundred different theorists, from developmental psychologists to cultural anthropologists to contemplative sages. Included in the book are dozens of charts, outlining around one hundred of the developmentalists that I discuss.

For this volume of the Collected Works, I decided that I would include these charts, which are rather striking--and then decided that the only way to do so would be with extensive commentary, whereupon I decided to simply write a condensed version of System, Self, and Structure and include that as well. It is published in this volume for the first time, under the title Integral Psychology, along with many of the charts.

These charts are especially important in giving the more accurate correlations of my system with others'. For example, in books from Transformations of Consciousness to A Brief History of Everything, I have as a simplification correlated concrete operational thinking with conventional morality, and formal operational with postconventional. More accurate correlations recognize that conventional levels of morality are also constructed by formal operational thinking, and that some postconventional levels are constructed by postformal thinking. These more accurate correlations are carefully given in the charts, which should be used for my actual correlations as of this writing.

At the same time, I should say that I take, and have always taken, a rather loose approach to exact correlations among different systems. I do not believe that there is one correct picture of human development, of which these various researchers are giving partial glimpses. Development is more like the Mississippi River, with literally thousands of real and different currents all scurrying toward the ocean of One Taste, and different types of research tools (from Kohlberg's moral tests to Loevinger's sentence completion test to Selman's tests of role taking to the Profiles of Meditative Experience test) all plug into the Mississippi at a different point and give us different readings. There are as many different developmental levels and lines as there are different tests plopped into the River. There is no reason to suppose that these many different tests--there are hundreds of them from around the world--will simply line up perfectly next to each other so we can all see that they are identical. Rather, they are all measuring fairly different currents in this great Stream of samsara; some of the currents are quite close to each other (moral development and ideas of the good life, for example); some of them are far removed (cognitive development and psychosexual development). But all of them are anchored in the very real currents of a very real River. Moreover--and here is the general dynamic dialecticism claim--the River itself has a series of major waves that are fairly universal, through which all these independent streams run. And therefore we can--to some degree--line up these various streams or developmental lines according to which general waves they are moving through at any given time. The basic waves (or basic structures) are listed in each of the diagrams, and then the various developmental lines and streams are listed next to them. Most of these correlations are accurate, I believe, to about plus-or-minus 1.5 stages, and many of the specific correlations were given by the theorists themselves. At the very least, one is indeed struck with the general similarity in these hundreds of streams as they rush through the same basic waves of the great River of life.

Integral Psychology is at this time the definitive statement of my psychological model, and my other writings in the field should be coordinated with its views. In fact, as suggested in the prefatory Note, it might be a good idea to read Integral Psychology first, and then use the other texts in this volume (and my other works) to fill in the details of the overview offered in Integral Psychology.

I completed Transformations of Consciousness about a month before Treya and I were married. Ten days after the wedding ceremony, she was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer. The next volume (Grace and Grit) tells that story. Transformations of Consciousness was the last theoretical book I would write for ten years. Treya changed my life dramatically, for the good in every way, and it would take that long for me to grow into the grace that was so freely offered. We would spend the next five years fighting a losing battle with the disease, though in the process we both won our souls.

[1] All Kramer quotes are from "Development of an Awareness of Contradiction Across the Life Span and the Question of Postformal Operations," in Michael L. Commons et al, Adult Development, Volume 1, Comparison and Applications of Developmental Models, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1989.

[2] See Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.

[3] See David Ray Griffin's SUNY series on postmodernism.

[4] In short, the move from formop to early vision-logic to late vision-logic is a move from universal formalism to pluralistic relativism to universal integralism. (See Boomeritis for a full discussion of these phases.)

More technically, transitional vision-logic (along with late formal operational thought) recognizes systems (static formal systems), early vision-logic differentiates systems (relativism/pluralism) and begins to relate them (meta-systematically but relativistically), middle and late vision-logic integrates these systems paradigmatically and cross-paradigmatically (dynamic dialecticism). See the discussion and charts in Integral Psychology at the end of this volume.

As that discussion makes clear, there is general agreement as to the higher stages of these types of differentiations-and-integrations, resulting in relativistic systems (low), systems of systems (middle), and systems of systems of systems (high). But there is still a great deal of disagreement as to how much of these integrations can be accomplished by formal operational thought, and how much is due to a qualitatively higher cognitive activity of postformal (vision-logic) thought. For this reason, when I sometimes vacillate on how to divide these capacities between formop and vision-logic, it is not a vacillation as to the actual stages themselves, but simply as to what to call them. Some researchers feel that formal operational thought itself is capable of handling all systematic, relativistic, meta-systematic, and dialectical thinking, but most researchers feel that at least some of those capacities require postformal (vision-logic) operations. I obviously agree with the latter, but exactly where to draw the line between formal and postformal remains highly disputed. But none of this should obscure the actual stages of increasing differentiation-and-integration that everybody agrees are occurring. As rough generalizations, I refer to modernity and Enlightenment thinking as being under the province of late formop and early vision-logic--which recognizes and differentiates systems (especially the cultural value spheres of art, science, and morals); and I refer to postmodernity (in its best sense) as being middle-to-late vision-logic, with its mandate to integrate those differentiations. This includes those thinkers who, no matter when they lived, spoke essentially through a mature vision-logic--e.g., Hegel, Whitehead, Aurobindo, Schelling, Plotinus, Habermas, Longchenpa, Gebser, Murphy.

Another factor uniting most of the theories of higher (postformal) stages of adult development is the discovery that, just as we find a move from relativistic/contextual to dialectical/integrative, so we find a move from relativism (where no one perspective can be said to be better) to commitment (as in Perry's well-known research), where, even though various perspectives are relative, nonetheless deeper contexts can be found that allow and even demand a commitment--that is, there are ways to anchor the good, the true, and the beautiful, even in the midst of relativism. Or, put another way, relativism is again superceded by the recognition of deeper and wider patterns relating various contexts. Once again development is found to proceed from a rigid universal formalism (where all judgments are felt to be certain) to a pluralistic, relativistic contextualism (where no judgements are possible) to a genuine commitment (where judgments are again possible, but tempered and enriched by multiple contexts unified in a global perspectivism). The historical parallels are again obvious: from a modernity grounded in uniformitarianism and certain of its (allegedly) universal laws (many of which were simply the laws of wealthy bourgeois white males); to an early postmodernism swamped in unending relativities and pluralistic contexts, paralyzed by an inability to judge anything; to a constructive postmodernism (slowly emerging), which sets all contexts in a universal-global perspective and can therefore unify and integrate the pluralities, and thus make consistent judgments about relative worth and relative development--and therefore ground an authentic commitment. See Boomeritis for a further discussion this topic.

[5] See David Ray Griffin's SUNY press series on postmodern philosophy; see also Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and particularly Boomeritis.

[6] I have, for convenience, divided my overall work into four general phases. Phase-1 was Romantic (a "recaptured-goodness" model), which posited a spectrum of consciousness ranging from subconscious to self-conscious to superconscious (or id to ego to God), with the higher stages viewed as a return to, and recapture of, original but lost potentials. Phase-2 was more specifically evolutionary or developmental (a "growth-to-goodness" model), with the spectrum of consciousness unfolding in developmental stages or levels. Phase-3 added developmental lines to those developmental levels--that is, numerous different developmental lines (such as cognitive, conative, affective, moral, psychological, spiritual, etc.) proceeding in a relatively independent manner through the basic levels of the overall spectrum of consciousness. Phase-4 added the idea of the four quadrants--the subjective (intentional), objective (behavioral), intersubjective (cultural), and interobjective (social) dimensions--of each of those levels and lines, with the result being--or at least attempting to be--a comprehensive or integral philosophy. The Atman Project is a phase-2 work, Transformations of Consciousness is phase-3, and Integral Psychology is phase-4.

[7] See The Eye of Spirit.

[8] This was published in Grace and Grit but was written around 1984.

[9] My numerous criticisms of the perennial philosophy have been published in several places. "The Neo-Perennial Philosophy"--a criticism of the static systems view in favor of a dynamic dialecticism--was written at the same time as most of the works in this volume; it was published in Quest magazine (and included in The Eye of Spirit). Strong criticisms of the perennial philosophy can be found throughout The Eye of Spirit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and Integral Psychology, as well as the introductions to the volumes 2 and 3 in the Collected Works. Many of these criticisms are summarized in One Taste.

[10] The word "holon" first makes its appearance in Transformations of Consciousness, although the concept itself has been present since my first book: in Spectrum of Consciousness, each level was described as a whole that is part of the whole of next level, a concept for which Koestler's wonderful term "holon" was made to order.

[11] In the original version of the two JTP papers that were included in Transformations of Consciousness, I included a discussion of the prenatal and perinatal phases of development, which I referred to as fulcrum-0. For various editorial reasons, fulcrum-0 was not included in the final version of the JTP papers, nor therefore in Transformations of Consciousness. In A Brief History of Everything I used the original version of the diagram of the fulcrums, which included fulcrum-0, its pathology and treatment modalities, and I have put that original version back into Transformations of Consciousness in this volume (see figure). There is, however, no discussion of that fulcrum in the text; readers are referred to Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and The Eye of Spirit for a full discussion of the perinatal fulcrum.

[12] Since most of the books I have published are in fact abstract overviews and summaries, I am always looking for opportunities to publish more detailed pieces. The paper on Gestalt and Transactional Analysis concluded that it was legitimate to characterize the general ego structure as a tripartite structure: the P-A-C ego, consisting of (at least) Parent, Adult, and Child ego states. All of that research was condensed into a paragraph or two in The Atman Project, with no indication of the extensive documenting evidence. In fact, it wasn't until Sex, Ecology, Spirituality that I had the luxury of including endnotes that began to elucidate the types of reasoning and research that went into the abstract summaries and overviews in the body of the text.