This volume of the Collected Works contains two books, The Marriage of Sense and Soul--Integrating Science and Religion and One Taste (the journals I kept while writing and publishing Sense and Soul ). Both are devoted, in their own ways, to the relationship of science and spirituality, the former, in a scholarly fashion, the latter, according to my own personal experiences. I believe both books are advancing points that are not getting a hearing in the typical debates on these issues. I also suspect that these points will, for the most part, continue to be neglected, because they champion a direct experience of Spirit, and not simply ideas about Spirit. In other words, I am attempting to include direct contemplative and meditative spirituality in this debate, whereas most writers on the topic simply want to discuss the philosophical or scientific ideas involved: not direct experience but abstractions. It is as if a group of scholars were discussing the beaches of Hawaii, and instead of going to Hawaii and looking for themselves, they simply pulled out a bunch of geography books and studied them. They study the maps, not the territory itself, which always seemed rather odd to me.

     Surely there is room for both--direct spiritual experience, and more accurate maps and models of those experiences. The books in this volume are dedicated to both.

     The Relation of Science and Religion

     Numerous theorists have classified the typical stances that have been taken as to the relation of science and religion. All of these schemes are basically quite similar, moving from warfare, to peaceful coexistence, to mutual influence and exchange, to attempted integration.

     Ian Barbour, for example, gives: (1) Conflict: science and religion are at war with each other; one is right and the other wrong, and that is that. (2) Independence: both can be "true," but their truths refer to basically separate realms, between which there is little contact. (3) Dialogue: science and religion can both benefit from a mutual dialogue, where the separate truths of each can mutually enrich the other. (4) Integration: science and religion are both part of a "big picture" that fully integrates their respective contributions. [1]

     Eugenie Scott gives: (1) Warfare: science trumps religion, or religion trumps science; death to the loser. (2) Separate realms: science deals with natural facts, religion deals with spiritual issues; they neither conflict nor accord. (3) Accommodation: religion accommodates to the facts of science, using science to reinterpret, but not abandon, its core theological beliefs; a one-way street. (4) Engagement: both science and religion accommodate to each other, interacting as equal partners; a two-way street. [2]

     In Sense and Soul , I give my own classification of the most common stances; here is a brief summary:

     (1) Science denies religion . This is still one of the most common stances among today's scientists, aggressively represented by such thinkers as Richard Dawkins, Francis Crick, and Steven Pinker. Religion is, pure and simple, either a superstitious relic from the past, or, at best, a survival gimmick that nature uses to reproduce the species.

     (2) Religion denies science . The typical fundamentalist retort is that science is part of the fallen world and thus has no access to real truth. God created the world--and the entire fossil record--in six days, and that is that. The Bible is the literal truth, and so much the worse for science if it disagrees.

     (3) Science and religion deal with different realms of being, and thus can peacefully coexist . This is one of the most sophisticated stances, and it has two versions, strong and weak:

     Strong version: epistemological pluralism --which maintains that reality consists of various dimensions or realms (such as matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit), and that science is dealing mostly with the lower realms of matter and body, and religion is dealing mostly with the higher realms of soul and spirit. In any event, both science and religion are equally part of a "big picture" that makes ample room for both, and their respective contributions can be integrated into this big picture. The traditional Great Chain of Being falls into this category (see fig. 1). Representatives of something like this general view include Plotinus, Kant, Schelling, Coomaraswamy, Whitehead, Fritjof Schuon, Huston Smith, and Ian Barbour.

     Weak version: NOMA ("nonoverlapping magisteria")--Stephen Jay Gould's term for the idea that science and religion are dealing with different realms, but these realms cannot be integrated into any sort of big picture since they are fundamentally incommensurate. They are both to be fully honored, but they cannot be fully integrated. By default, this is a very common stance among many scientists, who profess belief in some sort of Spirit, but cannot imagine how that would actually fit with science, so they render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto God what is left over.

     (4) Science itself offers arguments for Spirit's existence. This stance claims that many scientific facts and discoveries point directly to spiritual realities, and thus science can help us directly reveal God/dess. For example, the Big Bang seems to require some sort of Creator principle; evolution appears to be following an intelligent design; the anthropic principle implies that some sort of creative intelligence is behind cosmic evolution, and so on. This is similar to Scott's one-way street accommodation, where science is used to enrich religion, but usually not vice versa. It is also similar to what Barbour calls "natural theology" as opposed to "a theology of nature" (in the former, Spirit is found directly from a reading of nature, as with many ecophilosophers; in the latter, a revealed Spirit is used to interpret nature in spiritual terms. Barbour favors the latter, which is part of category 3). This is a very common approach to this topic, and probably the most common among popular writers on the "new scientific paradigm which proves or supports mysticism."

     (5) Science itself is not knowledge of the world but merely one interpretation of the world, and thus it has the same validity--no more, no less--as art and poetry . This is, of course, the typical "postmodern" stance. Whereas the previous approach is the most common among popular writers on the topic of science-and-religion, this approach is the most common among the academic and cultural elite, who are not dedicated to constructing any sort of integration, but in deconstructing anything of worth that anybody else has to say on the issue. There are some truly important issues raised by postmodernists, and I have attempted to strongly include those points in a more integral view (see The Marriage of Sense and Soul , chap. 9). But left to its own devices, postmodernism is something of a dead-end (see One Taste , Nov. 23 entry).

     Now, most theorists offer those kinds of classifications happy that they cover all the bases, a summary of all of that is available. I offered that classification as a summary of everything that has not worked. All of those lists--from Barbour's to mine--are lists of failures, not successes. More accurately, some of those approaches (especially 3, 4, and 5) have provided key ingredients for what might yet be a truly integrated view, but none of them have sufficiently included the core of religion that I feel must be fully brought to the integrative table, namely: direct spiritual experience. And where some theorists do at least acknowledge spiritual experience (such as Barbour), [3] they are silent as to the revolutions in cognitive science, brain science, and contemplative phenomenology, which taken together point to a much more spectacular integration of science and religion than has heretofore been suggested.

     I have summarized this more integral view as "all-level, all-quadrant," and I will now briefly outline its major points.

     Nonoverlapping Magisteria?

     Let us start with Stephen Jay Gould's approach--religion and science are both important, but belong to different and nonoverlapping realms--which is a view that a great number of both scientists and religionists maintain. Gould states, "The lack of conflict between science and religion [Gould is maintaining stance 3, weak version] arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of expertise--science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives." [4] Gould acknowledges that, of course, science and religion "bump up against each other" all the time, and that friction provides much interesting light, and often unpleasant heat. But ultimately there is neither conflict nor accord between them, because they are apples and oranges.

     In order to maintain this view, Gould has to create a rather rigid dualism between nature and human: "nature" will be the realm of facts (disclosed by science), and "human" will be the realm of values and meaning (disclosed by religion). "Nature can be truly 'cruel' and 'indifferent' in the utterly inappropriate terms of our ethical discourse--because nature does not exist for us, didn't know we were coming, and doesn't give a damn about us (speaking metaphorically)." Apparently, for Gould, humans are not fully part of nature; if we were, then human would simply be something that nature is doing. But nature doesn't give a damn about us, because "us" (or the part of us that engages in religion/ethics) and "nature" (of brute fact and no values) are two nonoverlapping realms. "I regard such a position as liberating, not depressing, because we then gain the capacity to conduct moral discourse--and nothing could be more important--in our own terms , free from...nature's factuality." [5]

     It is this awkward dualism in any of its many forms--facts and values, nature and human, science and religion, empirical and spiritual, exterior and interior, objective and subjective--that has driven the attempts to find some sort of bigger picture that seamlessly weaves together these two realms, and does not simply proclaim them to be forever fated to work different sides of the street.

     It is an intensely difficult and intricate problem. The standard theological response to the dualism "empirical versus spiritual" is to claim that Spirit created the empirical world, and thus they are related in that sense. If we can accord with God (and avoid evil), then we will be saved; if we deviate from God (and commit evil), we will be damned. But then the equally standard problem: if God created the world, and the world contains evil, then didn't God create evil? If so, then isn't God responsible for evil? So why blame me? If the product is broken, the fault lies with the manufacturer. (It appears that the relation of empirical and spiritual is not so easy to solve, after all.)

     The eco-spirituality theorists fare no better. Instead of a transcendent, other-worldly God who creates nature, they postulate a purely immanent, this-worldly God/dess, namely, nature and nature's evolutionary unfolding. If we can accord with nature, we will be saved; if we deviate from nature, we will be doomed. But then the same problem: If nature (via evolution) produced humans, and humans produced the ozone hole, then didn't nature produce the ozone hole? If not, then there is some part of humans that is not part of nature, and therefore nature cannot be the ultimate ground of existence. Nature cannot be a genuine God or Goddess or Spirit--because nature is clearly not all-inclusive and thus must simply be a smaller slice of a much bigger pie. If so, what exactly is that Big Pie? And how, once again, do we actually heal this dualism between nature and human?

     Many traditional theorists--from Plotinus to Huston Smith to Seyyed Nasr--attempt to handle these difficulties by resorting to the Great Chain of Being (a stance that is category three, strong version). The idea is that there really aren't just two rigidly separate realms (such as matter and spirit), but at least four or five realms, infinitely shading into each other (such as matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit). The uppermost realm is the nondual ground of all the other realms, so that ultimate spirit suffers no final dualisms. However, as spirit steps down into creation, it gives rise to various dualisms that, although unavoidable in the manifest realm, can be healed and wholed in the ultimate or nondual realization of spirit itself.

     Of all of the typical stances on the relation of science and relation, I have the most sympathy with that one (epistemological pluralism and the nested holarchy of truths), as I make clear in Sense and Soul . However, as I also point out in that book, the traditional presentation of the Great Chain suffers a series of grave limitations, many of which are no different from those faced by the simpler dualistic models, such as Gould's. For the traditionalists in effect postulate four or five nonoverlapping magisteria instead of just two, and even though those multiple magisteria (the many levels in the Great Chain) are often viewed as enveloping nests, the question still remains: what exactly is the relation of the higher realms, such as the spiritual, with the lower, such as the material?--and specifically in this sense: is science really confined exclusively to the lower realms (matter and body), and thus has little or nothing to tell us about the higher realms themselves (soul and spirit)? Is the relation between science and religion really that of a five-floor building, where science tells us all about the lower two floors, and religion tells us all about the higher two floors? The most respected responses in this debate--from Huston Smith to Ian Barbour to Stephen Jay Gould--are all variations on that theme (category three, strong or weak).

     But what if, instead of science telling us about one floor and religion about another, they both told us something different about each and every floor? What if science and religion were related, not as floors in a building, but as equal columns in a mansion? Not one on top of the other, but each alongside the other, all the way up and down? What then?

     One thing is certain: this is an approach that has not yet been tried. Since the others have been tried and found wanting, this might be worth investigating.

     The Brain of a Mystic

     Start with a simple example. A meditator is hooked to an EEG machine. As the meditator enters a deep contemplative state, the EEG machine shows an unmistakably novel series of brainwave patterns (such as the production of high amplitude delta waves, which usually occur only in deep dreamless sleep). Moreover, the meditator claims that, in her direct experience of this delta state, she is having experiences for which the word "spiritual" seems most fitting: she is experiencing a sense of expanded consciousness, an increase in love and compassion, a feeling of encountering the sacred and numinous in both herself and the world at large. Other accomplished meditators who enter this state show the same objective set of brainwave patterns and report similar subjective states of spiritual experiences. What are we to make of this?

     There is already a substantial body of research indicating that something like the above scenario happens quite often. [6] Let us simply assume, for the sake of argument, that the scenario is generally true. First of all, this shows immediately that the realms of science and religion, often thought to be "nonoverlapping magisteria," are in fact overlapping like crazy.

     What the standard NOMA argument (category three, in both its strong and weak form) tends to completely overlook is that, even if values and facts are in some sense separate realms, when a person experiences subjective values, those values have objective factual correlates in the brain itself. This is absolutely not to say that values can be reduced to brain states, or that spiritual experiences can be reduced to natural occasions. It is to say that spiritual realities (the magisteria of religion) and empirical realities (the magisteria of science) are not as compartmentalized as the typical solutions to this debate imagine.

     The integral model that I am proposing--namely, "all-level, all-quadrant"--attempts to provide a framework in which all of those "facts," if you will, can be accommodated. The facts, that is, of both interior realities and exterior realities, "spiritual" experiences and "scientific" experiences, subjective realities and objective realities. It finds ample room for the traditional Great Chain of Being and Knowing--from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit--but it plugs those realities into empirical facts in a definite and specifiable fashion, as you will see in the books in this volume.

     All-Level, All-Quadrant

     As a preview, let's use a few simple diagrams to outline this integral approach.

     Figure 1 is the traditional Great Chain of Being. Because each senior level transcends but includes its juniors, this is actually the Great Nest of Being, as the figure shows. Notice that science (e.g., physics, biology, psychology) is indeed on the lower floors, and religion (theology, mysticism) is on the top floors. (This is the basis for category three, which, as we saw, is probably the most influential stance among those sympathetic with spirituality.) But this also gave the traditional Great Chain its "otherworldly" ontology; much of the upper floors were literally "out of this world" and had few if any points of contact with the material realm. (More specifically, the class of events marked D and E had virtually no direct correlations with A and B; hence, "otherworldly.")

     The rise of modern science issued several lethal blows to that traditional conception. For example, modern research clearly demonstrated that consciousness (e.g., mind), far from being merely transcendental noumenon, was in fact anchored in many ways in the organic, material brain--so much so that many modern scientists simply reduce consciousness to nothing but a play of neuronal systems. But we needn't follow scientific materialism to realize that consciousness is far from the disembodied essence imagined by most religious traditions. At the very least consciousness is intimately correlated with the biomaterial brain and the empirical organism, so that, whatever else their relation, science and religion are not simply "nonoverlapping magisteria."

     The rise of modern science (particularly in the eighteenth century) was actually part of a whole series of events that have been described as "modernity" (many of which I discuss in The Marriage of Sense and Soul ). But they can all be summarized using Max Weber's idea of the "differentiation of the cultural value spheres" (the "values spheres" refer essentially to art, morals, and science). Where most premodern cultures failed to differentiate these spheres very clearly, modernity differentiated art, morals, and science and let each pursue its own truths, in its own way, free from intrusion or violation from the others. This resulted in the spectacular growth of scientific knowledge, a flurry of new approaches to art, and a sustained look at morals conceived in a more naturalistic light--resulted, that is, in many of the things that we now call "modern."

     As I try to show in the following books, these "Big Three" spheres (art, morals, and science) basically refer to the realms of I, we, and it. Art refers to the aesthetic/expressive realm, the subjective realm described in first-person or "I" language. Morals refers to the ethical/normative realm, the intersubjective realm described in second-person or "we" language. And science refers to the exterior/empirical realm, the objective realm described in third-person or "it" language (which can actually be divided into two realms--the individual or "it" and the collective or "its"). This gives us four major realms: I, we, it, and its. Examples of each are given in figure 2 (all of this will be explained in detail in the following pages).

Click here to enlarge

     In figure 2, notice that the two upper quadrants are singular or individual, and the two lower quadrants are plural or collective. The two left-hand quadrants are "interior" or "subjective," and the two right-hand quadrants are "exterior" or "objective." Notice also that all of the entities in each of the quadrants have correlates in the others (e.g., emotions go with limbic systems), but none of them can be reduced to the others without being robbed of their essential features.

     Figure 1, then, is a summary of the traditional, premodern, or "religious" worldview, and figure 2 is a summary of the modern or "scientific" worldview. For the moment, let's "integrate" them by simply superimposing one on the other. Of course, it is nowhere near that simple, and I have given extensive explanations of what this integration actually involves in books such as Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and Integral Psychology . But since this is a short introductory overview, let's just superimpose the modern conception on the premodern, as shown in figure 3. Also look at figure 4, which is figure 3 labeled to show the relation of the interior states (of bodily feeling, mental ideas, and spiritual experiences) with the exterior, material realms (investigated by objective science).

     If the conception shown in figures 3 and 4 is actually valid, then we will have gone a long way toward integrating a premodern religious view with a modern scientific view. We would have integrated the Great Nest of Being with the differentiations of modernity, one of the immediate gains of which would be a rather seamless integration of the religious and scientific realms and worldviews, in a way that would not violate the canons of either (or so I try to show in the following pages).

     This integral approach would also satisfy the one criterion that we earlier said had not yet been tried, namely, that science (or exterior realities) and religion (or interior realities) would develop, not with one on top of the other (as in fig. 1), but with both alongside each other (as the Left- and Right-Hand aspects of an "all-level, all-quadrant" approach, as shown in fig. 4). Figure 4 can therefore easily explain the tricky scenario of the meditator hooked to the EEG machine. She is experiencing very real interior, subjective, spiritual realities (Upper-Left quadrant), but these also have very real exterior, objective, empirical correlates (Upper-Right quadrant), which the EEG machine dutifully registers. Science and religion are thus giving us some of the correlative facets--interior and exterior--of spiritual realities, and that is a key ingredient of their integration in a larger and more encompassing view.

     Good Science

     Wait just a minute, says the empirical scientist. I can follow the argument right up to the point that you give actual reality to the spiritual realms. Granted meditators are experiencing something, but it might be nothing more than a subjective emotional state. Who says it involves actual realities , in the same way that science deals with realities?

     Here is where Sense and Soul takes a few more novel turns. To begin with, up to this point I have left "science" and "religion" (or "spirituality") undefined. [7] I have simply used those terms in the general way that most people use them. But in several books (such as A Sociable God , Eye to Eye , and Sense and Soul ), I carefully outline the many different meanings that have been given to "science" and "religion" ( A Sociable God , for example, outlines nine common but dramatically different meanings of "religion.") And much of this "science and religion" debate is a garbled mess because dozens of different definitions are being used without being identified.

     In the area of spirituality, for instance, we need at the very least to distinguish between horizontal or translative spirituality (which seeks to give meaning and solace to the separate self and thus fortify the ego) and vertical or transformative spirituality (which seeks to transcend the separate self in a state of nondual unity consciousness that is beyond the ego). Let us simply call those "narrow religion" and "broad religion" (or shallow and deep, depending on your preferred metaphor).

     Likewise, with science, we need to distinguish between a narrow and a broad conception. Narrow science is based mostly on the exterior, physical, sensorimotor world. It is what we usually think of as the "hard sciences," such as physics, chemistry, and biology. But does this mean that science can tell us nothing about the interior domains at all? Surely there is a broader science that attempts to understand not just rocks and weasels but humans and minds? Well, in fact, we do acknowledge these types of broader sciences, sciences that are not rooted merely in the exterior, physical, sensorimotor world, but have something to do with interior states and qualitative research methodologies. We call these broader sciences the "human sciences" (the Germans call them the "geist" sciences, "geist" meaning mind or spirit). Psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, semiotics, the cognitive sciences--all of these "broad sciences" attempt to use a generally "scientific" approach to the study of human consciousness. We have to be very, very careful that these approaches do not fall into merely aping the positivistic simplicity of the narrow sciences. But my point is that the difference between narrow science and broad science is already widely acknowledged. (We will return to this in a moment, but if you look at figure 4, narrow sciences are those that study the Right-Hand or material quadrants, and broad sciences are those that attempt to study at least some aspects of the Left-Hand quadrants.)

     The Marriage of Sense and Soul then proceeds to discuss just what it is that specifically defines deep religion and broad science. Start with broad science.

     As we have already seen, we cannot define science--narrow or broad--by saying that it bases all of its knowledge on the sensorimotor world, because even narrow science (e.g., physics) uses a massive number of tools that are not empirical or sensorimotor, such as mathematics and logic. Mathematics and logic are interior realities (nobody has even seen the square root of negative one running around out there in the empirical world).

     No, "science" is more a certain attitude of experimentation, honesty, and collaborative inquiry, and it grounds its knowledge, wherever it can, in evidence (whether that evidence is exterior, as in the narrow sciences, or interior, as in the broad sciences). The following three factors, I suggest, tend to define scientific inquiry in general:

     1. A practical injunction or exemplar . If you want to know whether it is raining or not, you must go to the window and look. The point is that "facts" are not lying around waiting for all and sundry to see. If you want to know this, you must do this--an experiment, an injunction, a pragmatic series of engagements, a social practice: these lie behind most forms of good science. This is actually the meaning of Kuhn's notion of "paradigm," which does not mean a super-theory but an exemplar or actual practice.

     2. An apprehension, illumination, or experience . Once you perform the experiment or follow the injunction--once you pragmatically engage the world--then you will be introduced to a series of experiences or apprehensions that are brought forth by the injunction. These experiences are technically known as data. As William James pointed out, the real meaning of "datum" is immediate experience .[8] Thus, you can have physical experiences (or physical data), mental experiences (or mental data), and spiritual experiences (or spiritual data). All good science--whether narrow or broad--is anchored to some degree in data, or experiential evidence.

     3. Communal checking (either rejection or confirmation) . Once we engage the paradigm (or social practice) and bring forth a series of experiences and evidence (or data), it helps if we can check these experiences with others who have also completed the injunction and seen the evidence. A community of peers--or those who have adequately completed the first two strands (injunction and data)--is perhaps the best check possible, and all good science tends to turn to a community of the adequate for confirmation or rejection. This is where the principle of falsifiability is very useful. Although the fallibility criterion cannot stand on its own, as Sir Karl Popper believed, it is often an important ingredient in good science. The idea is simply that bad data can be rejected by a community of the adequate. If there is no way that your belief system can be challenged, then there is no way to dislodge it at all, even if it is patently incorrect--and therefore whatever else you have, your beliefs are not very scientific (they are instead what is called "dogma," or a truth-claim backed only by authoritative fiat). Of course, there are many realities that are not open to the fallibility test--for example, you cannot reject, or even doubt, your own consciousness, as Descartes knew. But this third criteria simply says that good science constantly attempts to confirm (or reject) its knowledge claims, and the fallibility criterion is often used as one part of this third strand of good science.

     Deep Religion

     Those three criteria are general characteristics of good science. More specifically, they are characteristics of the way that good science, in any domain (physical, mental, spiritual), attempts to gather data and check its validity. Most forms of science also advance hypotheses to account for the data, and these hypotheses are then checked by a further application of the three strands of good science (further experiments, more data, see if they confirm or reject the hypothesis). In short, narrow science (whose data come mostly from the exterior realms or Right-Hand quadrants) and broad science (whose data come mostly from the interior realms or Left-Hand quadrants) both attempt to be good science (or science that follows the three strands of evidence accumulation and verification).

     Let us then look briefly at religion. We have already seen that, as with science, there is a narrow religion (which seeks to fortify the separate self) and a broad or deep religion (which seeks to transcend the self). But what exactly is deep religion or deep spirituality , and how can it be verified? The claim, after all, is that in some sense deep spirituality is disclosing TRUTHS about the Kosmos, and is not merely a series of subjective emotional states. And here The Marriage of Sense and Soul makes it most novel and radical claim: Deep spirituality is the broad science of the higher levels of human development.

     The Integral Revelation

     That is not the whole story of deep spirituality, but it is a crucial part of the story, a part that has not yet received sufficient attention. If you look at figure 1, which is the traditional Great Chain of Being, notice that there is a general unfolding from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit. These were traditionally (in Plotinus, for example) held to be both ontological levels of being and chronological levels of individual development (again, not in a rigid linear fashion, but in fluid and flowing waves). If you look at figure 2, you will see that the individual levels of development stop at vision-logic and the centaur. The reason figure 2 does not contain the higher, transpersonal, supramental waves of consciousness (such as soul and spirit) is that this figure simply represents average evolution up to the present, and thus it does not show the higher waves of superconscious unfolding (although individuals can develop into these higher waves in their own cases). But the claim of the great wisdom traditions is that there are indeed higher stages or waves of consciousness development, so that we have available to us not just matter and body and mind, but also soul and spirit. I have indicated these higher waves in both figure 3 and 4.

     The thesis developed in a series of books (including Eye to Eye ; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality ; The Eye of Spirit ; and The Marriage of Sense and Soul ) is that deep spirituality involves the direct investigation of the experiential evidence disclosed in the higher stages of consciousness evolution (stages I have called psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual--which are simply summarized as "soul" and "spirit" in the figures). These deep-spiritual investigations, as I suggested in those books, follow the three strands of all good science (not narrow science, good science). They rely on specific social practices or injunctions (such as meditation); they rest their claims on data and experiential evidence; and they constantly refine and check these data in a community of the adequate--which is why they are correctly referred to as contemplative sciences (which is certainly how they understand themselves).

     Thus, with reference to figure 1, deep spirituality is the broad science of those phenomena, data, and experiences labeled D and E. (In fig. 4, D is labeled soul and E is labeled spirit.) But notice--and here is part of the novel claim of this approach--the interior data and experiences of soul and spirit (in the Upper-Left quadrant) have correlates in the sensorimotor evidence in the Upper-Right quadrant (see fig. 4). In other words, the deep spirituality of the Upper Left, which is investigated by broad science, has correlates in the Upper Right, which is investigated by narrow science. The contemplative and phenomenological sciences (the broad sciences of the interiors) can thus join hands with good science for direct experiential data in the Upper Left and with narrow science for correlative data in the Upper Right. (I repeat, the scientific aspects--both broad and narrow--of the higher realms are not the whole story, but they are a crucial part of the story that has constantly been overlooked; and they are certainly an important ingredient of any truly integral approach to this topic.) [9]

     Thus, an "all-level, all-quadrant" approach intimately integrates science and religion across many different fronts. It integrates deep religion with broad science by showing that deep spirituality is a broad science of the farther reaches of human potential. It also integrates deep religion with narrow science, because even deep-spiritual data and experiences--which must be understood in their own terms, and not reduced to any other level or quadrant--nonetheless have real correlates in the material brain, which can be decisively investigated with narrow science (as in the case of our meditator hooked to an EEG). It even makes room for narrow religion, as we will see in a moment. In all of these cases, an "all-level, all-quadrant" approach offers at least the possibility of a seamless intermeshing of what were previously though to be "nonoverlapping magisteria."

     Viva la Difference!

     This integral approach also respects the vital differences between the various types of science and religion. To say that an inquiry is following the disposition of good science is not to say what the content or actual methodology of that inquiry will be. It only says that this inquiry engages the world (injunction), which brings forth experiences of the world (data), which are then checked as carefully as possible (confirmation). But the actual form of the inquiry--its methods and its content--will vary dramatically from level to level and from quadrant to quadrant. Unlike positivism, which allowed only one method (empirical) in only one realm (sensorimotor), this approach allows as many methods and inquiries as there are levels and quadrants. In figure 4, for example, narrow science (empiric-analytic) investigates the Right-Hand quadrants; but in the interior quadrants, there are four levels in both individual and collective, giving us at least eight different methodology/contents.

     Thus, to give a very simple version, the phenomena labeled A, B, C, D, and E are all quite different entities, and methodologies have developed that deal with each of them in their own terms. In Eye to Eye I gave exhaustive reasons why none of these types of inquiries could be reduced to the others (I distinguished between sensorimotor experience, empiric-analytic, hermeneutic/phenomenological, mandalic, and gnostic). To the extent that all of those inquiries attempt to use injunctions (or pragmatic engagements), rest their claims in experiential evidence, and try to verify their claims as carefully as possible, then they call can be called "good science." But beyond that, they differ dramatically, and those differences are fully honored--and even championed--in this integral approach.

     Put it yet another way: With reference to figures 3 and 4, each level (body, mind, soul, and spirit) has its own art, morals, and (narrow) science--its own "I" realm (UL), its own "we" realm (LL), and its own "it" realms (UR and LR). Not only does each quadrant have its own methodology, often times each level within each quadrant has its own special approaches. In The Marriage of Sense and Soul (as well as Eye to Eye , SES, Quantum Questions , The Eye of Spirit , and Integral Psychology ) there are countless examples of these different quadrant-levels and the ways in which their own uniqueness should be honored.

     Narrow Religion

     The critical response to Sense and Soul was enthusiastically positive, with one major exception. By far the most common criticism (and almost the only criticism) was that by downplaying and often ignoring narrow religion, I was asking altogether too much from the religious side of the marriage. The average believer, the critics said, would never give up the myths and stories that constitute perhaps 95% of most forms of spirituality. Not only did the professional critics hammer this point, so did most of my friends who tried giving the book to, say, their parents, only to have their parents shake their heads: "What, no resurrection of Jesus? No Moses and the covenant? No facing Mecca each day in prayer? This isn't my religion." And so on.

     Well, guilty. There is no doubt that I focused almost entirely on direct spiritual experiences (of the psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual realms), and ignored the much more common religious dimension of translative spirituality. In all fairness, I did not deny that dimension or even suggest that it should be rejected. From Sense and Soul : "At the same time, this does not mean that we will lose all religious differences and local color, and fall into a uniform mush of homogenized...spirituality. The Great Chain is simply the skeleton of any individual's approach to the Divine, and on that skeleton each individual, and each religion, will bring appropriate flesh and bones and guts and glory. Most religions will continue to offer sacraments, solace, and myths (and other translative or horizontal consolations), in addition to the genuinely transformative practices of vertical contemplation. None of that necessarily needs to change dramatically for any religion...." [10]

     I did make two charges, however, which I still believe are true. One, if narrow religion makes empirical claims (i.e., claims about entities in the Right-Hand quadrants), then those claims must be put to the test of empirical (narrow) science. If religion claims that the earth was created in six days, let us test that empirical claim with empirical science. Most of those types of religious claims have spectacularly failed the test; you are free to believe them, but they cannot claim the sanction of either good science or deep spirituality. Two, the real core of religion is deep religion or deep spirituality, which tends to relax and lessen narrow-religion zeal, and thus, to the extent you are alive to your own higher potentials, you will find narrow religion less and less appealing.

     Of course, the critics are right that most people embrace a translative or narrow religion--whether belief in the Bible, or belief in Gaia, or belief in holistic systems theory--and do not wish to radically transform the subject of those beliefs. In my model, those types of mental beliefs refer to the magic, mythic, rational, or vision-logic levels of development. But I also wanted to address the higher or transpersonal realms beyond those mere beliefs--the superconscious and supramental realms that constitute the core of deep spirituality and the contemplative sciences. An "all-level, all-quadrant" model makes room for all of those occasions, from premental to mental to supramental.

     Applications of the Integral Model

     The October 14 entry in One Taste gives a short list of some of the applications that other researchers have made of this "all-level, all-quadrant" model in various fields. (Of course, "all-level, all-quadrant" is just a simple summary of the holonic approach, which actually includes quadrants, levels, lines, states, types, and realms, as will become more apparent throughout this Introduction. But it is useful to simplify all of that as "all-level, all-quadrant.")

     By the time that One Taste was published (in early 1999), the interest in this type of integral approach had grown considerably. Part of it started when Bill Clinton read The Marriage of Sense and Soul and wrote a handwritten letter about it. He gave the book and letter to Al Gore, who, in a long piece in The New Yorker magazine, called it "one of my favorite new books." [11] The fact that the liberal New Yorker summarized the contents of Sense and Soul --without smirking--seemed to make these ideas somehow kosher to the intelligentsia. Whatever the various reasons, applications of a more integral vision have blossomed in business, education, health care, even prison reform.

     I mention all this because I am asked about this issue more than any other--asked, that is, about the various types of applications of the holonic or integral model in the "real world." Here is brief sampling of what is going on.

     Politics. I have been working with Drexel Sprecher, Lawrence Chickering, Don Beck, Jim Garrison, Jack Crittenden, and several others toward an all-level, all-quadrant political theory (in addition to working with the writings of political theorists too numerous to list). We have been involved with advisors to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Tony Blair, and George W. Bush, among others. There is a surprisingly strong desire, around the world, to find a "Third Way" that unites the best of liberal and conservative--President Clinton's Vital Center , George W. Bush's Compassionate Conservatism , Germany's Neue Mitte , Tony Blair's Third Way , and Thabo Mbeki's African Renaissance , to name a few--and many theorists are finding an all-level, all-quadrant framework to be the sturdiest foundation for such.

     Here is what I consider to be my own particular theoretical orientation, developed largely on my own, which has then become a framework for discussions with these other theorists, who bring their own original ideas for a cross-fertilization. I will first indicate my own thoughts, and then the areas where these other theorists have helped me enormously.

     In the last chapter of Up from Eden ("Republicans, Democrats, and Mystics"), I made the observation that, when it comes to the cause of human suffering, liberals tend to believe in objective causation, whereas conservatives tend to believe in subjective causation. That is, if an individual is suffering, the typical liberal tends to blame objective social institutions (if you are poor it is because you are oppressed by society), whereas the typical conservative tends to blame subjective factors (if you are poor it is because you are lazy). Thus, the liberal recommends objective social interventions: redistribute the wealth, change social institutions so that they produce fairer outcomes, evenly slice the economic pie, aim for equality among all. The typical conservative recommends that we instill family values, demand that individuals assume more responsibility for themselves, tighten up slack moral standards (often by embracing traditional religious values), encourage a work ethic, reward achievement, and so on.

     In other words, the typical liberal believes mostly in Right-Hand causation, the typical conservative believes mostly in Left-Hand causation. (Don't let the terminology of the quadrants confuse you--the political Left believes in Right-Hand causation, the political Right believes in Left-Hand causation; had I been thinking of political theory when I arbitrarily arranged the quadrants, I would probably have aligned them to match).

     The important point is that the first step toward a Third Way that integrates the best of liberal and conservative is to recognize that both the interior quadrants and the exterior quadrants are equally real and equally important. We consequently must address both interior factors (values, meaning, morals, the development of consciousness) and exterior factors (economic conditions, material wellbeing, technological advance, social safety net, environment)--in short, a true Third Way would emphasize both interior development and exterior development.

     Let us therefore focus for a moment on the area of consciousness development. This is, after all, the hardest part for liberals to swallow, because the discussion of "stages" or "levels" of anything (including consciousness) is deeply antagonistic to most liberals, who believe that all such "judgments" are racist, sexist, marginalizing, and so on. The typical liberal, recall, does not believe in interior causation, or even in interiors, for that matter. The typical liberal epistemology (e.g., John Locke) imagines that the mind is a tabula rasa , a blank slate, that is filled with pictures of the external world. If something is wrong with the interior (if you are suffering), it is because something is first wrong with the exterior (the social institutions)--because your interior comes from the exterior.

     But what if the interior has its own stages of growth and development, and is not simply piped in the from the external world? If a true Third Way depends upon including both interior development and exterior development, then it would behoove us to look carefully at these interior stages of consciousness unfolding. And here some surprises await the typical liberal.

     This is where my work has been helpful to political theorists who are working on a Third Way (in both its liberal and conservative versions). In books such as Integral Psychology , I have correlated over one hundred developmental models of consciousness, East and West, ancient and modern, which helps to give us a very solid picture of the stages of development of the subjective realm--not as a rigid series of unalterable levels but as general guide to the possible waves of consciousness unfolding.

     If the first step toward a truly integrated Third Way is to combine the interior and the exterior (the Left-Hand and the Right-Hand, the subjective and objective), the second step is to understand that there are stages of the subjective --stages, that is, of consciousness evolution. To help elucidate these stages, we can use any of the more reputable maps of interior development, such as those of Jane Loevinger, Robert Kegan, Clare Graves, William Torbert, Susanne Cook-Greuter, or Beck and Cowan's Spiral Dynamics. For this simplified overview, I will use just three broad stages: preconventional (or egocentric), conventional (or sociocentric), and postconventional (or worldcentric).

     The traditional conservative ideology is rooted in a conventional, mythic-membership, sociocentric wave of development. Its values tend to be grounded in a mythic religious orientation (such as the Bible); it usually emphasizes family values and patriotism; it is strongly sociocentric (and therefore often ethnocentric); with roots as well in aristocratic and hierarchical social values and a tendency toward patriarchy and militarism. This type of mythic membership and civic virtue dominated cultural consciousness from approximately 1,000 BCE to the Enlightenment in the West, whereupon a fundamentally new average mode of consciousness--the rational-egoic--emerged on an influential scale, bringing with it a new mode of political ideology, namely, liberalism.

     The liberal Enlightenment understood itself to be in large measure a reaction against the mythic-membership structure and its fundamentalism, in two aspects especially: the socially oppressive power of myths with their ethnocentric prejudices (e.g., all Christians are saved, all heathens go to hell), and the nonscientific nature of the knowledge claimed by myths (e.g., the universe was created in six days). Both the active oppression instituted by mythic/ethnocentric religion and its nonscientific character were responsible for untold suffering, and the Enlightenment had as one of its goals the alleviation of this suffering. Voltaire's battle cry--which set the tone of the French Enlightenment--was "Remember the cruelties!"--the suffering inflicted by the Church on millions of people in the name of a mythic God.

     In place of an ethnocentric mythic-membership, based on a role identity in a hierarchy of other role identities, the Enlightenment sought an ego identity free from ethnocentric bias (the universal rights of man) and based on rational and scientific inquiry. Universal rights would fight slavery, democracy would fight monarchy, the autonomous ego would fight the herd mentality, and science would fight myth: this is how the Enlightenment understood itself (and in many cases, rightly so). In other words, at its best the liberal Enlightenment represented--and was a product of--the evolution of consciousness from conventional/sociocentric to postconventional/worldcentric.

     Now had liberalism been just that--the product of an evolutionary advance from ethnocentric to worldcentric--it would have won the day, pure and simple. But, in fact, liberalism arose in a climate that I have called flatland. Flatland--or scientific materialism--is the belief that only matter (or matter/energy) is real, and that only narrow science has any claim to truth. [12] (Narrow sense, recall, is the science of any Right-Hand domain, whether that be atomistic science of the Upper Right, or systems science of the Lower Right.) Flatland, in other words, is the belief that only the Right-Hand quadrants are real.

     And liberalism, arising directly in the midst of this scientific materialism, swallowed its ideology hook, line, and sinker. In other words, liberalism became the political champion of flatland . The only thing that is ultimately real is the Right-Hand, material, sensorimotor world; the mind itself is just a tabula rasa , a blank slate that is filled with representations of the Right-Hand world; if the subjective realm is ill, it is because objective social institutions are ill; the best way to free men and women is therefore to offer them material-economic freedom; thus scientific materialism and economic equality are the major routes of ending human suffering. The interior realms --the entire Left-Hand domains--are simply ignored or even denied. All interiors are equal, and that ends that discussion. [13] But this desire to alleviate human suffering is applied universally--all people are to be treated fairly, regardless of race, color, sex, or creed (the move from ethnocentric to worldcentric). Thus, liberal political theory was coming from a higher level of development, but a development that was caught in pathological flatland. Put bluntly, liberalism was a sick version of a higher level.

     That is the great irony of liberalism. Theorists have long agreed that traditional liberalism is inherently self-contradictory, because it champions equality and freedom, and you can have one or the other of those, not both. I would put this contradiction as follows: Liberalism is itself the product of a whole series of interior stages of consciousness development--from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric--whereupon it turned around and denied the importance or even the existence of those interior levels of development! Liberalism, in championing only objective causation (i.e., flatland), denied the interior path that produced liberalism. [14] The liberal stance itself is the product of stages that it then denies --and there is the inherent contradiction of liberalism.

     Liberalism thus refused to make any "judgments" about the interiors of individuals--no stance is better than another!--and instead focused merely on finding ways to fix the exterior, economic, social institutions, and thus it completely abandoned the interiors (values, meanings, interior development) to the conservatives. The conservatives, on the other hand, fully embraced interior development--but only up to the mythic-membership stage, which is nonetheless healthy as far as it goes: a healthy version of a lower level. (Mythic-membership, civic virtue, the blue meme, the conventional/conformist stage of development--these are all normal, healthy, natural, necessary stages of human development, and this sturdy social structure is still the main base of traditional conservative politics.) [15]

     So here is the truly odd political choice that we are given today: a sick version of a higher level versus a healthy version of a lower level--liberalism versus conservatism. [16]

     The point is that a truly integrated Third Way would embrace a healthy version of the higher level--namely, rooted in the postconventional/worldcentric waves of development, it would equally encourage both interior development and exterior development--the growth and development of consciousness and subjective wellbeing, as well as the growth and development of economic and material wellbeing. It would be, in other words, "all-level, all-quadrant."

     Moreover, from this spacious vantage point, the prime directive of a genuine Third Way would be, not to try to get everybody to a particular level of consciousness (integral, pluralistic, liberal, or whatever), but to insure the health of the entire spiral of development at all of its levels and waves. (The nature and importance of the prime directive is explored in the Introduction to Volume Seven of the Collected Works .) Thus the two steps toward a truly integral Third Way are: (1) uniting subjective and objective, and (2) seeing stages of the subjective and thus arriving at the prime directive. [17]

     That is the general orientation that I have brought into the political discussions with the aforementioned theorists. From Chickering ( Beyond Left and Right ) and Sprecher I have adopted the important distinction between "order" and "free" wings within both conservatism and liberalism, referring to whether emphasis is placed on collective or individual ends. They also define Left as believing in objective causation and Right as believing in subjective causation. [18] This results in the widely used Chickering/Sprecher quadrants of order Right, free Right, order Left, free Left. [19] The order wings of both Left and Right wish to impose their beliefs on all, usually via government, whereas the free wings of both ideologies place the rights of individuals first. For example, those who wish the state to use its authority to reinforce conventional roles and values are order Right, while the politically correct movement and feminists who wish to use the state to enforce their version of equality are order Left. Free-market economic libertarians are generally free Right, civil libertarians are generally free Left.

     Those political quadrants happen to align, in significant ways, with my four quadrants, because the upper quadrants are individual or "free," and the lower quadrants are collective or "order"; the interior quadrants are right/conservative, and the exterior quadrants are left/liberal. [20] This shows us which quadrant a particular theorist thinks is the most important (and therefore should be manipulated or addressed in attempting to achieve policy outcomes). The idea, of course, is that all four quadrants are unavoidably important in reality. Thus, an "all-level, all-quadrant" approach once again can serve as a theoretical basis for a truly integrated political orientation.

     Jack Crittenden ( Beyond Individualism ) has been applying the notion of compound individuality developed in Up from Eden to political and educational theory, and has constantly added to my own understanding of these ideas. Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics (developed with Christopher Cowan) is a wonderful elucidation of Clare Graves's pioneering work, and has had numerous applications in the "real world," from politics to education to business, and I have benefited greatly from those many discussions as well. Beck probably has as good an understanding of the prime directive as anybody, and my own formulations have been enriched by his and Cowan's work. Jim Garrison, as president of the State of the World Forum, has had invaluable experience about how an integral vision will--and often will not--play out on the world stage. Michael Lerner's "Politics of Meaning," though often committed to order Left, is a powerful attempt to get liberals to look at the interior quadrants (meaning, value, spirituality), which they have classically avoided like the plague, an avoidance that has had dire consequences (e.g., the interiors have been left to the conservatives and their often reactionary, mythic-membership values, which are fine as a partial foundation of society, disastrous when left exclusively to their own devices). In all of this, we are looking for hints as to what a second-tier or integral Constitution might look like. [21]

     This is a small sampling of some the political implications and applications of an "all-level, all-quadrant" approach, not merely as I have developed it, but as numerous theorists have done so, with their own original and highly significant ideas, which are now increasingly finding a mutual support.

     Medicine. Nowhere are the four quadrants more immediately applicable than in medicine, and the model is being increasingly adopted by health care facilities around the world. A quick trip through the quadrants will show why an integral model can be helpful. (In this example we are talking about physical illnesses--a broken bone, cancer, heart disease, etc.--and how best to treat them, since that is the focus of most orthodox medicine.)

     Orthodox or conventional medicine is a classic Upper-Right quadrant approach. It deals almost entirely with the physical organism using physical interventions: physical surgery, drugs, medication, and behavioral modification. Orthodox medicine believes essentially in the physical causes of physical illness, and therefore prescribes only physical interventions. But the holonic model claims that every physical event (UR) has at least four dimensions (the quadrants), and thus even physical illness must be looked at from all four quadrants (not to mention levels, which we will address later). The integral model does not claim the Upper-Right quadrant is not important, only that it is, as it were, only one-fourth of the story.

     The recent explosion of interest in alternative care--not to mention such disciplines as psychoneuroimmunology--has made it quite clear that the person's interior states (their emotions, psychological attitude, imagery, and intentions) play a crucial role in both the cause and the cure of even physical illness. In other words, the Upper-Left quadrant is a key ingredient in any comprehensive medical care.

     But individual consciousness does not exist in a vacuum; it exists inextricably embedded in shared cultural values, beliefs, and worldviews. How a culture (LL) views a particular illness--with care and compassion or derision and scorn--can have a profound impact on how an individual copes with that illness (UL), which can directly affect the course of the physical illness itself (UR). In fact, many illnesses cannot even be defined without reference to a shared cultural background (just like what you consider to be a "weed" often depends on what you are trying to grow in the first place). The Lower-Left quadrant includes all of the enormous number of intersubjective factors that are crucial in any human interaction--it includes the shared communication between doctor and patient; the attitudes of family and friends and how they are conveyed to the patient; the cultural acceptance (or derogation) of the particular illness (e.g., AIDS); the very values of the culture that the illness itself threatens. All of those factors are to some degree causative in any physical illness and cure (simply because every holon has four quadrants). Of course, in practice, this quadrant needs to be limited to those factors that can be effectively engaged--perhaps doctor and patient communication skills, family and friends support groups, and a general understanding of cultural judgments and their effects on illness. Studies consistently show, for example, that cancer patients in support groups live longer than those without similar cultural support. Some of the more relevant factors from the Lower-Left quadrant are thus absolutely crucial in any comprehensive medical care.

     The Lower-Right quadrant concerns all those material, economic, and social factors that are almost never counted as part of the disease entity, but in fact--like every other quadrant--are causative in both disease and cure. A social system that cannot deliver food will kill you (as famine-racked countries demonstrate daily, alas). But even in developed countries: If you have a lethal but treatable disease, and your insurance plan is the only source of funding you have, and your plan does not cover your disease, then you will die. The cause of your death: poverty. We usually don't think like this, because we say, "The virus killed him." The virus is part of the cause; the other three quadrants are just as much a cause. When the FDA was holding up drugs that might help AIDS, a gentleman with the disease stood before Congress and said, "Don't let my epitaph read, 'He died of red tape.'" But that is exactly right. In the real world, where every entity has all four quadrants, a virus in the UR quadrant might be the focal issue, but without a social system (LR) that can deliver treatment, you will die. That is not a separate issue; it is central to the issue, because all holons have four quadrants. The Lower-Right quadrant includes factors such as economics, insurance, social delivery systems, and even things as simple as how a hospital room is physically laid out (does it allow ease of movement, access to visitors, etc.)--not to mention items like environmental toxins.

     In short, a truly effective and comprehensive medical plan would be all-quadrant, not to mention all-level (the idea is simply that each quadrant or dimension--I, we, and it--has physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels or waves--see fig. 4--and a truly integral treatment would take all of these realities into account). Not only is this type of integral treatment more effective, it is for that reason more cost-efficient--which is why even organizational medicine is looking at it more closely. Of the hundreds of theorists doing wonderful work in this regard, I might mention John Astin, who has written perceptively on the application of holonic theory to complementary and alternative medicine; [22] Pat Odgen and Kekuni Minton; [23] Gary Schwartz and Linda Russek; [24] and Barbara Dossey and Larry Dossey, who have used holonic theory to supplement their own extensive and original work in "the great chain of healing." [25]

     Business. Applications of the holonic model have recently exploded in business, perhaps, again, because the applications are so immediate and obvious. The quadrants give the four "environments" or dimensions in which a product must survive, and the levels give the types of values that will be both producing and buying the product. Research into the values hierarchy--such as Maslow's and Graves's (e.g., Spiral Dynamics), which has already had an enormous influence on business and "VALS"--can be combined with the quadrants (which show how these levels of values appear in the four different environments)--to give a truly comprehensive map of the marketplace (which covers both traditional markets and cybermarkets). Of course, this can be used in a cynical and manipulative way--business, after all, is business--but it can also be used in an enlightened and efficient fashion to more fruitfully match human beings with needed products and services (thus promoting the health of the overall spiral).

     Moreover, management training programs, based on an integral model, have also begun to flourish. Daryl Paulson, in "Management: A Multidimensional/Multilevel Perspective," shows that there are four major theories of business management (Theory X, which stresses individual behavior; Theory Y, which focuses on psychological understanding; cultural management, which stresses organizational culture; and systems management, which emphasizes the social system and its governance). Paulson then shows that these four management theories are in fact the four quadrants, and that an integral model would necessarily include all four approaches. He then moves to the "all-level" part, and suggests a simplified but very useful four stages that the quadrants go through, with specific suggestions for implementing a more "all-level, all-quadrant" management. [26]

     Other pioneers in this area include Geoffrey Gioja and JMJ associates, whose Integral Leadership seminars (three general levels in the four quadrants) have been presented to dozens of Fortune 500 companies ("We believe that until recently, the transformational approach of organizational change has been the unmatched champion for producing breakthroughs, both subjective and objective. We now assert that the transformational approach has been eclipsed by the integral approach"); John Forman of R. W. Beck Associates, who uses an "all-level, all-quadrant" approach to correct the flatland distortions of systems theory; On Purpose Associates (John Cleveland, Joann Neuroth, Pete Plastrik, Deb Plastrik); Bob Anderson, Jim Stuart, and Eric Klein (co-author of Awakening Corporate Soul ), whose Leadership Circle brings an "all-level, all-quadrant" approach to "Integral Transformation and Leadership" ("The main point is that the evolution of all of these streams of development in all of the quadrants are intimately bound up with each other. Spiritual intelligence is literacy in the practice of transformation. Spiritual intelligence is fast becoming a leadership imperative"); Leo Burke, Director and Dean of Motorola's University College of Leadership and Transcultural Studies, who oversees the training of some 20,000 managers around the world; Ian Mitroff ( A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America ); Ron Cacioppe and Simon Albrecht ("Developing Leadership and Management Skills Using the Holonic Model and 360 Degree Feedback Process"); Don Beck of Spiral Dynamics, which has been used in situations totaling literally hundreds of thousands of people; and Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, who are working with an all-level, all-quadrant approach coupled with very specific change technologies built around the optimal management of energy--physical, emotional, and mental. Tony is now writes the monthly Life/Work column for Fast Company , and can be contacted there. [27]

     Education. Because I am a "integral" or "holistic" thinker, people often imagine that I support what are generally called "holistic" educational approaches, whether conventional or alternative. Alas, such is not generally the case. Many "holistic" approaches are, in my opinion, either sadly flatland (based on conventional systems theory, or merely the Lower-Right quadrant), or they stem from a philosophy that Spiral Dynamics calls "the green meme," which means a type of pluralistic approach that nobly attempts not to marginalize other approaches, but in fact marginalizes hierarchical development, and thus often ends up sabotaging actual growth and evolution. In any event, all of these typical "holistic" approaches overlook the prime directive, which is that it is the health of the overall spiral, and not any one level, that is the central ethical imperative. A truly integral education does not simply impose the green meme on everybody from day one, but rather understands that development unfolds in phase-specific waves of increasing inclusiveness. To use Gebser's version, consciousness fluidly flows from archaic to magic to mythic to rational to integral waves, and a truly integral education would emphasize, not just the last wave, but all of them as they appropriately unfold.

     There are a large number of truly integral theorists working with these ideas and the applications of an all-level, all-quadrant education. In many instances, both the organizational structure of the schools (administration and faculty) and the core curriculum offered to students have been organized around an all-level, all-quadrant format. This has occurred both in conventional schools and in schools for the developmentally challenged. I hope increasingly to address this important issue in future writing.

     Integral Transformative Practice . Closely related to integral education is "integral transformative practice" (ITP), which is, in a sense, integral education that includes the higher or transpersonal waves of development. Mike Murphy and George Leonard pioneered the first practical ITP in their book, The Life We Are Given . I have continued to work closely with Mike in elucidating the theoretical underpinnings of such a practice. There are now approximately forty ITP groups around the country (if you are interested in starting or joining such, you can contact Murphy and Leonard via their publishers). The Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention (of the Stanford University Medical School) is monitoring this practice, which has already had some rather extraordinary effects--testament to what an integral transformative practice can facilitate. There are many other, similar types of all-level, all-quadrant approaches being developed around the country, and I expect to see an explosion of interest in these types of more comprehensive programs, simply because they are more effective in initiating transformation.

     Consciousness Studies . The dominant approach to consciousness studies in this country is still that of narrow science (i.e., a cognitive science based exclusively on the Upper-Right quadrant). As I suggest in Integral Psychology , a more comprehensive approach to consciousness studies would involve all four quadrants, or simply the Big Three of I, we, and it (first-person phenomenal accounts of consciousness; second-person intersubjective structures; and third-person scientific mechanisms and systems). This type of "1-2-3" of consciousness studies has already begun, as evidenced in such books as The View from Within , edited by Francisco Varela and Jonathan Shear, and by many articles carried regularly in The Journal of Consciousness Studies . The next stage of a more comprehensive approach will include not just "all-quadrant" but "all-level," and in Integral Psychology I outline ways in which that important next step might be implemented.

     Relational and Socially Engaged Spirituality . The major implication of an all-level, all-quadrant approach to spirituality is that physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual waves of being should be simultaneously exercised in self, culture, and nature--in the I, we, and it domains. There are many variations on this theme, ranging from integral transformative practice to socially engaged spirituality to relationships as spiritual path. The number of truly impressive groups and organizations pioneering these types of approaches is too large to list. But perhaps mention could be made of the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, Diana Winston, Donald Rothberg, Tikkun, and Robert Forman and the Forge Institute (of which I am a member), who are attempting to bring some fresh perspectives to this noble endeavor.

     Integral Ecology . The approach to ecology set forth in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality is, critics agreed, a unique approach. Whether the critics liked the book or not, they agreed it was unique because it managed to combine ecological unity, systems theory, and nondual mystical consciousness, but without privileging the biosphere and without using the Web-of-Life notion, which I maintain is a reductionistic, flatland conception. Rather, an "all-level, all-quadrant" approach to ecology allows us to situate the biosphere, the noosphere, and the theosphere in their appropriate relationships in the Kosmos at large, and thus we can emphasize the crucial importance of the biosphere without having to reduce everything to the biosphere.

     The key to these relationships--and the reason why they have so often been confused--can be seen in figure 4. Notice that the body (biosphere), mind (noosphere), and soul/spirit (theosphere) are all indicated on the figure. Each senior wave transcends and includes it junior, as shown by the enveloping nests. In that sense , it is quite correct to say that the mind transcends and includes the body, or that the noosphere transcends and includes the biosphere, or that history transcends and includes nature. The biosphere is a crucial component of the noosphere, but not vice versa (as most ecologists incorrectly suppose). That is, you can destroy the noosphere--or human minds--and the biosphere will still survive quite handsomely; but if you destroy the biosphere, all human minds are also destroyed. The reason is that the biosphere is a foundation and part of the noosphere, and not vice versa . By analogy, an atom is part of a molecule; if you destroy the molecule, the atom can still exist, but if you destroy the atom, the molecule is also destroyed. Same for biosphere and noosphere: on the interior realms, the biosphere is a part of the noosphere, and not the other way around (as can be clearly seen in fig. 4 and also in fig. 1). So it is not true that human minds (the noosphere) are part of nature (or the biosphere), but rather the reverse.

     But notice , every interior event has a correlate in the exterior, sensory world--the world we often call "nature." Thus, most ecotheorists look at the external, empirical, sensory world, and they conclude that " Everything is a part of nature," because everything does indeed have a correlate in the Right-Hand world. So they conclude that "nature" (or the "biosphere") is the ultimate reality, and they ask that we act in accord with "nature," and thus they reduce everything to some version of ecology or the biosphere or the great Web of Life. But that is only half the story, the Right-Hand half. On the interior or Left-Hand dimensions, we see that nature--or the sensory, felt, empirical dimensions--are only a small part of the bigger story, a small slice of the Bigger Pie, a Pie that includes biosphere, noosphere, and theosphere. And although all of those interior waves have exterior correlates in the world of nature, they cannot be reduced to those exteriors, they cannot be reduced to nature . To do so is simply to embrace yet another version of materialism, bodyism, and one-dimensional flatland: the monochrome world of Right-Hand reality, the empirical-sensory Web of Life. That is ecological reductionism at its worst, a reductionism at the heart of many eco-philosophies.

     On the other hand, an "all-level, all-quadrant" approach to ecology--as summarized in figure 4--allows us to honor the physiosphere, the biosphere, the noosphere, and theosphere, not by trying to reduce one to the others, but by acknowledging and respecting the vitally crucial role they all play in this extraordinary Kosmos. [28]

     Worldviews. Because the holonic model originally arose as an attempt to coherently account for waves, streams, states, realms, and quadrants, one of its claims is to be genuinely holistic. A byproduct of this attempted inclusiveness is a system that is very useful in indexing the various worldviews, philosophies, religions, and sciences that have been offered over the years. The idea, again, is not that any one of these various worldviews has the whole picture (including mine), but that the more of these worldviews can be seamlessly included in a larger vision, the more accurate the view of the Kosmos that emerges. This more encompassing view then acts as an indexing system for the various worldviews, showing their relation to each other and the irreplaceable importance of each.

     There have been countless attempts, over the years, to categorize the various worldviews that are available to men and women. Plato offered brilliant accounts of the alternative philosophies present in ancient Greece. Fa-hsiang categorized the religious systems existing in T'ang China. St. Thomas Aquinas gave exhaustive representations of the most influential of the existing philosophies--to name just a few.

     With the modern era, and the understanding of evolution, many theorists began to give classifications of various worldviews in terms of their development. One of the first, and still most influential, was that of Auguste Comte, founder of positivism, whose famous "Law of Three" stated that humanity's knowledge quest has gone through three major stages: religion, metaphysics, and science, with each stage being less primitive and more accurate (resulting, by happy chance, in the stage occupied by Comte. The constant downside of developmental theories is that the highest stage is usually, by strange coincidence, evidenced by the proponent of the theory. I hasten to point out that I have never made such claim myself, though I am often accused of it). By far the most sophisticated of these developmental classifications of knowledge was that of Georg Hegel, whose undeniably brilliant systematic philosophy found room, he believed, for every major worldview in history, East and West. (Unfortunately, as Bertrand Russell pointed out, all that Hegel actually knew about China was that it existed. This, and subtler problems with the Hegelian system, brought it tumbling down; but we can nonetheless admire Idealism for the brilliance of what it did manage to accomplish). [29] Other well known developmental-historical models (which may involve both growth and decay) include those of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, Pitirim Sorokin, Antonio Gramsci, Teilhard de Chardin, Carroll Quigley, Jurgen Habermas, Gerhard Lenski, Jean Gebser, and Sri Aurobindo.

     More recently, certain philosophers have attempted "overview" models that suggest the types of worldviews that people can form. One of the first was Stephen C. Pepper's World Hypotheses (1942), which claimed there are four of them: formistic (the world exists as categories), mechanistic (the world is cause-effect), contextual (the world is relational), and organismic (the world is interactive and relational). Schwartz and Russek (see the section "Medicine"), building on Pepper, added four more: implicit process (the world has subtler energies and consciousness), circular causality (cybernetic), creative unfolding (emergent adaptation), and integrative diversity (which attempts to integrate them all).

     Another influential classification of worldviews according to available types was that of social systems theorist Talcott Parsons, who laid out worldviews along a (political) continuum of five major positions: Right Systemist, Right Marginalist, Middle Marginalist, Left Marginalist, Left Systemist. While this has some advantages, it actually covers a very narrow, middle-level range of possible worldviews, as we will see. Robert Bellah has cut his analysis at another angle, finding four major worldviews in America: republican, biblical, utilitarian, and romantic. Mark Gerzon finds six: religious, capitalist, disaffected, media, new age, and political. Samuel Huntington sees the world dominated by a clash of eight or nine major cultural worldviews (or civilizations): Western, Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist, and Japanese. But those are good examples of the "meta-analysis" of types of worldviews that many modern scholars have found useful--and they are useful, provided we can find a more encompassing context from which all can be accorded some sort of respect. (Ah, and there's the rub.)

     The notion of levels or dimensions of reality brings yet another type of indexing system. The chakras, for example, represent the various levels of being and knowing available to humans as actual structures in the bodymind. (The chakra system is one of the most prominent and widespread versions of the Great Chain of Being, variations of which are found in virtually all of the world's major wisdom traditions, East and West. The chakras themselves are said to be subtle energy centers in the human body that support correlative types of knowing and being. They are generally given as seven in number, located at: the base of the body; the genital region; the abdomen; the heart region; the throat; the forehead; the crown. There are also said to be numerous auxiliary chakras above and below those. The acupuncture meridians are variations on these subtle energy currents.)

     It is generally agreed that the seven chakras are simply a slightly more sophisticated version of matter (1), body (2), mind (3-4), soul (5-6), and spirit (7). But beyond that it gets a little more complicated. Accounts of the specific nature and function of each chakra vary, often considerably, because most of the main chakras perform different functions depending on whether they are "open" or "closed." The forehead chakra, for example, functions as the seat of logical rationality when closed (or operating in its outward, exoteric form), and yet, when opened (or realizing its highest function), it is the doorway to transcendental insight, mystical visions, and gnosis. For this reason, it is common to reserve the higher chakras (particularly 5, 6, and 7) for their spiritual, transcendental functions, and assign their closed functions to lower chakras (such as 3 and 4). In this example, I will therefore assign reason to the higher-mind (chakra 4), and not to its esoteric capacities (or the root of higher transcendental intelligence, chakra 6). If you have your own favorite version of the chakras, you are welcome to use that, since this example depends only on the notion of seven structural modes of consciousness, and you can fill in the details however you like.

     With those qualifications in mind, I will simply define the chakras as: (1) matter; (2) biological life force, prana, emotional-sexual energy, libido, elan vital; (3) lower-mind, including power and intentionality; (4) higher-mind, including reason, and higher emotions, including love; (5) psychic opening, creative vision, nature mysticism, early stages of spiritual and transcendental consciousness; (6) subtle consciousness, gnosis, genuine archetypes, deity mysticism; (7) radiant spirit, both manifest and unmanifest, the Abyss, the empty Ground, formless mysticism. [30]

     The point is that we can rather easily classify types of worldviews according to the chakra or the level of the worldview itself, and numerous theorists have done exactly that. To give a few examples that the various theorists have suggested, we have: materialistic worldviews, such as Hobbes and Marx (chakra 1): vital and pranic worldviews, such as Freud and Bergson (chakra 2); power worldviews, such as Nietzsche (chakra 3); rational worldviews, such as Descartes (chakra 4); nature mysticism, such as Thoreau (chakra 5); deity mysticism, such as St. Teresa of Avila (chakra 6); and formless mysticism, such as Meister Eckhart (chakra 7).

     As useful as those classifications are, there are certain problems that immediately stand out, and the only way to handle these difficulties is to introduce what might be called a cross-level analysis. For we need to distinguish the level from which a worldview originates, and the level to which it is aimed. For example, Marx is often taken to be an exemplar of a type of materialism (chakra 1), but Marx himself is not coming from chakra 1 or existing at chakra 1. The only thing at chakra 1 is rocks, dirt, inert matter, and the physical dimension itself. Marx is a very rational thinker; he is coming from, or he is functioning at, chakra 4. But Marx, following Feuerbach, believed that the fundamental realities of the world are essentially material: so he is coming from chakra 4, but confining his attention to chakra 1. Similarly Freud: his early libido psychology is coming from chakra 4, but is aimed at chakra 2 (pansexualism). At the other end, so to speak: the Deists were coming from chakra 4 but aimed at chakra 6, and so on.

     In other words, this allows us to trace both the level that the subject is coming from, and the level of reality (or objects) that the subject believes to be most real. This immediately enriches our capacity to classify worldviews. Moreover, it allows us to do a "double-tracking"--the level of the subject, and the levels of reality the subject acknowledges. This is sometimes referred to as the "levels of selfhood" and the "levels of reality"--or simply the level of the subject and the level of the object. [31] (This "cross-level" and "double-tracking" was introduced in A Sociable God and Eye to Eye , and refined in Integral Psychology. )

     To use my own version of the levels of the subject (or the levels of consciousness), we have (to give an abbreviated account): sensorimotor and archaic (chakra 1); typhonic and magical (chakra 2); mythic and early mental (chakra 3); rational-egoic, centauric, and vision-logic (chakra 4); psychic (chakra 5); subtle (chakra 6); and causal (chakra 7). [32] The point is that, especially in the middle range (chakras 3, 4, and 5), the subject or self at those chakras can take as an object any of the other chakras (any of the other levels of reality)--can think about them, form theories about them, create artworks of them. Of course, when a lower chakra tries to grasp a higher chakra, without actually transforming to that chakra, certain inadequacies and limitations haunt the formulations, but that has never prevented people from doing so anyway, and we need to take those into account.

     All of a sudden, the simple seven-level scheme is not so simple. Even if we say that only the middle chakras engage in cross-level work (the lower chakras, such as rocks, do not do so; and the higher chakras tend to be transmental, although they can certainly form mental theories--but we will leave them out for simplicity's sake), that means that chakras 3, 4, and 5 can give their attention to each of the seven chakras, forming a different worldview in each case--which gives us twenty-five major worldviews available from the seven structural levels of consciousness in the human bodymind. [33]

     And, of course, that is just the start. If the holonic conception is "all quadrants, levels, lines, types, states, and realms," those twenty-five worldviews cover levels of self (or subject) and levels or realms of reality (or objects). We still need to include the quadrants in each of those levels/realms; the different lines or streams that move through those levels/realms; the various types of orientations available at each; and the many altered states that temporarily tap into different realms. Moreover, individuals, groups, organizations, nations, civilizations all undergo various kinds of development through each of those variables. All of the above factors contribute to different types of worldviews, and all of them need to be taken into account in order to offer a truly integral overview of available worldviews.

     There is one final requirement. The integral vision, to be truly integral, must find a way that all of the major worldviews are basically true (even though partial). It is not that the higher levels are giving more accurate views, and the lower levels are giving falsity, superstition, or primitive nonsense. There must be a sense in which even "childish" magic and Santa-Claus myths are true. For those worldviews are simply the way the world looks at that level , or from that chakra, and all of the chakras are crucial ingredients of the Kosmos. At the mythic level, Santa Claus (or Zeus or Apollo or astrology) is a phenomenological reality. It will do no good to say, "Well, we have evolved beyond that stage, and so now we know that Santa Claus is not real," because if that is true--and all stages are shown to be primitive and false in light of further evolution--then we will have to admit that our own views, right now , are also false (because future evolution will move beyond them). But it is not that there is one level of reality (e.g., mine), and those other views are all primitive and incorrect versions of my one level. Each of those views is a correct view of a lower yet fundamentally important level of reality, not an incorrect view of the one real level. The notion of development allows us to recognize nested truths, not primitive superstitions. [34]

     I am often asked, why even attempt an integration of the various worldviews? Isn't it enough to simply celebrate the rich diversity of various views, and not try to integrate them? Well, recognizing diversity is certainly a noble endeavor, and I heartily support that pluralism. But if we remain merely at the stage of celebrating diversity, we ultimately are promoting fragmentation, alienation, separation. You go your way, I go my way, we both fly apart--which is often what has happened under the reign of the pluralistic relativists, who have left us a postmodern Tower of Babel on too many fronts. It is not enough to recognize the many ways in which we are all different; we need to go further and start recognizing the many ways that we are also similar. Otherwise we simply contribute to heapism, not wholism. Building on the rich diversity offered by pluralistic relativism, we need to take the next step and weave those many strands into a beautiful web of unifying connections, an interwoven tapestry of mutual intermeshing. We need, in short, to move from pluralistic relativism to universal integralism--we need to keep trying to find the One-in-the-Many that is the form of the Kosmos itself.

     That, I believe, is why we should attempt these types of integrative visions. Will we ever completely succeed? No. Should we keep trying? Always. Why? Because an intention to find the One-in-the-Many aligns our hearts and heads with the One-in-the-Many that is Spirit itself as its shines in the world, radiantly.

     I believe that an integral approach (including quadrants, levels, lines, types, states, and realms, coupled with development) is now one of the most viable attempts to represent the One-in-the-Many, because it explicitly embraces and honors all of the worldview conceptions mentioned in this section (I will give numerous examples in a long endnote, including political analyses of Huntington, Fukuyama, Bellah, and Friedman; and spiritual worldviews as summarized by Evelyn Underhill). [35] This integral overview further acts as an indexing system for all these worldviews, and allows us to appreciate the special and profound contribution that each makes. And, it goes without saying, my own version of this integral vision, even if it were completely true, is destined to pass into yet further, better visions.

     This integral indexing system is already being used in several applications, from "transformational websites" to "world libraries." The World Economic Forum recently invited several panels on an "all-level, all-quadrant" approach, which is perhaps an indication of its pragmatic usefulness.

     Minorities Outreach . Since a truly integral model does not try to take one level or dimension of development (such as pluralistic, transpersonal, or even integral) and try to force it on everybody, but instead follows the prime directive of working for the health of the overall spiral of development, its approach to minorities is considerably different from typical liberal, conservative, or countercultural/holistic approaches. What is required is not to force liberal pluralism, conservative values, or holistic ideas on anybody, but to foster the conditions--both interior and exterior--that will allow individuals and cultures to develop through the spiral at their own rate, in their own way. The same is true for a more integral approach to developing countries. [36] A specific example from UNICEF is worth examining.

     "The Process of Integral Development" and "The Integrative Approach: All-Quadrants, All-Levels, All-Lines" are two in a series of presentations by iSchaik Development Associates, consultants for UNICEF. They outline the four quadrants, with examples from each; they summarize the major levels or waves in each quadrant; and they signal the importance of the numerous developmental lines or streams progressing in a relatively independent manner through the various waves. (See fig. 5, which was prepared by iSchaik Development Associates.) They state that "This is the bigger picture within which all the ideas and developments with which UNICEF is involved must be seen."

     They then move to specifics: "In order to deepen our understanding of the complex and interrelated nature of our world, a mapping of consciousness development in social and cultural evolution is crucial. This must also have an integral approach to ensure that evolution, and thus the state of children, humanity, culture and society, returns to a state of sustainable process." They point out that "this requires a framework that allows us to go deeper than the understanding of the mere objective/surface system or web, and wider than a cultural understanding of diversity." In other words, we must go beyond standard systems analysis (which covers only the LR quadrant), and beyond a mere embrace of pluralism and diversity (which are confined to the green meme). What is required, they maintain, is an "all-quadrants, all-levels, all-lines" approach. With that, they begin a critique of the past performance of UNICEF and the UN.

     "Clearly the process of development must address all four of these quadrants in an integrative fashion if it is to maintain a sustainable direction. But it is equally clear when we look at the evolution of UNICEF's involvement in this process, together with the broader process of human development and how they affect each other, that progress made so far has largely not produced sustainable change. Attempts to understand the process of change, transformation, or development without an understanding of the nature of the evolution or unfolding of (human) consciousness have little prospect for success." [37]

     They then pinpoint a major reason for some of the past failures of UNICEF and the UN. "UNICEF's activities have largely operated in the Upper and Lower Right-Hand quadrants, that is, the quadrants that are objective and exterior (individual and social), and have to a large extent ignored the interior and cultural quadrants." That type of merely Right-Hand approach I have also called "monological" (another word for flatland), and so the analysis proceeds: "Possibly because of an overly monological vision of human development, UNICEF and the UN system have not been successful, or have simply not tried, at any stage, to map the larger picture in which they were involved. This monological vision may well have been necessary in the short term as human consciousness moved through, and is still moving through, the cultural stages of archaic, magic, and mythic, to the rational (and haltingly now to vision-logic or network-logic). But it is now imperative that these organizations adopt a more post or transrational approach, one that incorporates positive ideas from the rational level [and, I would add, positive contributions from all previous waves] but one that also transcends these to a higher or deeper post-rational level of consciousness, in all of the quadrants."

     They then outline the history of UNICEF's various programs, pointing out that, as important as they were, they all focused mostly on Right-Hand initiatives.

     --The 1950s was the Era of Disease Campaigns : "firmly in the Upper-Right quadrant, that is measurable, observable and objective."

     --The 1960s was the Decade of Development : "emphasis now on the Lower-Right quadrant, that is 'functional fit.'"

     --The 1970s was the Era of Alternatives : "but only alternatives that were mostly Right-Hand quadrants."

     --The 1980s was the Era of Child Survival : but no mention of interiors or interior development.

     --The 1990s was the Decade of Children's Rights (all seen in behavioristic terms), which quickly gave way to the Era of Donor Fatigue : "Donors and Governments returned to ["regressed" to] a pre-global state of nationalism stemming from problems at home and a lack of comprehension brought about from the misguided notion of all perspectives being equal ['aperspectival madness' of pluralistic relativism]." I have often argued that each holon, in order to survive, needs a balance of justice and rights (agency) with care and responsibilities (communion), and this they echo by saying that the previous efforts of UNICEF and the UN had "no clear juxtaposition of 'rights' (justice) to jurisprudence (care and responsibility) at the global level."

     Taking all of the above factors into account they conclude that:

     --The 2000s are the Era of the Integral Approach : "This is where the sustainable process of change is seen from an integrative point of view, which explores more deeply the two Left-Hand quadrants of intention and culture. And of course for UNICEF this will have a major emphasis on children, youths, and women." The problem up to this point is that "all ideas during these five decades were monological to a degree that excluded an understanding of the needs for interior/subjective development in individuals and societies in order to make the process of change and especially transformation sustainable."

     They conclude that an "all-quadrants, all-levels, all-lines" approach needs to be taken--carefully and uniquely tailored to each specific situation--in order "to ensure that actions we attempt or programs/ideas/metaphors we propose have any chance of being part of a sustainable, directional, transformative change process."

     Let me point out (as do iSchaik Associates) that any such integral approach needs to be implemented with the utmost care, concern, and compassion. None of the levels or lines or quadrants are meant in any sort of rigid, predetermined, judgmental fashion. The point of developmental research is not to pigeonhole people, or judge them inferior or superior, but to act as guidelines for possible potentials that are not being utilized . The prime directive asks us to honor and appreciate the necessary, vital, and unique contribution provided by each and every wave of consciousness unfolding, and thus act so as to protect and promote the health of the entire spiral , and not any one privileged domain. At the same time, it invites us to offer, as a gentle suggestion, a conception of a more complete spectrum of consciousness, a full spiral of development, so that individuals or cultures (including ours) that are not aware of some of the deeper or higher dimensions of human possibilities may choose to act on those extraordinary resources, which in turn might help to defuse some of the recalcitrant problems that have not yielded to less integral approaches.

     Those are just a few of the areas in which interest in a more integral or "all-level, all-quadrant" approach is having some immediate applications. There are others I have not mentioned: integral feminism, integral law, integral art and literary theory, even integral prison reform. Some of these approaches have been highlighted in a forthcoming book from Shambhala, assembled by a team of editors headed by Jack Crittenden, and tentatively entitled Kindred Visions--Ken Wilber and Other Leading Integral Thinkers , with contributions by Alex Grey, Stan Grof, Jim Garrison, Joyce Nielsen, Ed Kowalczyk, T George Harris, Marilyn Schlitz, Georg Feuerstein, Larry Dossey, Jenny Wade, Juan Pascual-Leone, Michael Lerner, James Fadiman, Roger Walsh, Leland van den Daele, Francisco Varela and Robert Shear, George Leonard, Michael Zimmerman, Father Thomas Keating, Ervin Laszlo, Thomas McCarthy for Jurgen Habermas, Eduardo Mendieta for Karl-Otto Apel, Hameed Ali, Robert Frager, Drexel Sprecher, Lawrence Chickering, Gus diZegera, Elizabeth Debold, Lama Surya Das, Rabbi Zalman-Schachter Shalomi, Mitchell Kapor, Michael Washburn, Don Beck, Frances Vaughan, Robert Forman, Mike Murphy, Max Velmans, Tony Schwartz, David Chalmers, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Howard Gardner, Robert Kegan, John Searle, and Charles Taylor, among many others. All of these men and women have contributed, in their own significant ways, to a more integral and gracious view of the Kosmos.

     Integral Institute

     Many of the theorists contributing to Kindred Visions and many of those presented in the Applications section have joined me and Paul Gerstenberger in starting the Integral Institute. We eventually plan on having branches of integral medicine, integral politics, integral spirituality, integral business, integral ecology, integral education, and so forth. The Integral Institute hopes to be a major umbrella organization for genuinely integral studies, as well as a conduit for substantial funding for integral projects. We intend to open an Integral Center as headquarters for the Institute (in New York and/or San Francisco), and we have already started IntegralMedia with Shambhala. If you are interested in joining the Institute, funding it, or applying for grants, please stay tuned to the Shambhala.com website for further announcements.

     To switch from the theoretical to the personal. Right after I finished writing The Marriage of Sense and Soul , I decided to keep a personal journal for one year. The primary reason for doing so is that most academic writing avoids any sort of personal disclosure or subjective statements, which are taken to be evidence of "biases" or "nonobjective reporting." There is some merit to that requirement, but not always, especially if the area under investigation is the subjective domain anyway. So I decided, for one year, to keep a journal that chronicled my day-to-day activities, including spiritual practice. This would allow people to judge for themselves the nature and depth--or lack thereof--of my understanding of issues about which I have written.

     The journal turned out to be much more difficult and complicated than I thought. To begin with, the fact that I intended to publish it made it almost impossible to write unguardedly--and I don't mean about negative things, but about positive things. Every time something particularly good would happen to me--a nice review of a book, for example--I, as most people would, briefly noted it in the journal. But when readers saw that entry, they would immediately say, "What an egocentric person." What I failed to realize was that, because I planned on publishing the journal, every entry had an implicit frame around it that said "I want you to know this." Thus, if I recorded anything that was positive about myself or my work, it gave the impression, "Here is a narcissistic creep."

     When I finally realized this, it really jammed the process. If I were to make note of these positive developments in a "real" journal--i.e., that would not be published until after I died--it would be the most normal thing in the world. But to do so and then intentionally publish it while alive, well, that just doesn't work. I left a few of these positive entries in--enough to get people to yell "egocentric"--but on balance, almost all of them were left out.

     The same applied to any critical comments about others that I might have. I found that these, too, didn't quite work. I left a few of them in; but on balance, I came to understand the two rules of a journal published while alive: say nothing positive about yourself and nothing negative about others.

     Well, that narrows the scope, eh? What that did leave--and what I wanted to focus on anyway--was a detailed journal of my own meditative and spiritual practices; and a type of philosophical journal, or a chronicle of some of the ideas that I felt were most important as they unfolded in my own case. In that regard, I believe One Taste succeeds. Next to Grace and Grit and SES, I have received more warm and enthusiastic mail from readers of One Taste than from any other of my works.

     What I most wanted to convey in One Taste was some notion of an integral life, a life that finds room for body, mind, soul, and spirit as they all unfold in self, culture, and nature. Not that I have achieved an integral life--I have never claimed that--but simply that it is an ideal worthy of aspiration. In fact, the entire message of One Taste is contained in the Nov. 17 entry.

     Most of our spirituality books are treatises on the spiritual life divorced from real life. When we read a book called "How to Know God" or "Finding Your Sacred Self," we do not expect to see chapters on making money, having sex, drinking wine, and vacationing in Hawaii. It is therefore profoundly jarring to see genuinely spiritual accounts right in the middle of a trip to South Beach--which is exactly why I did it. Again, not that I have mastered this integral endeavor, but simply that I wanted a journal that did not compartmentalize--that did not set spirituality against life, but instead set spirituality in the very midst of daily work, play, parties, illness, vacations, sex, money, and family--and that invited readers to be more friendly toward an integral approach in their own lives.

     Of course, there are times when it is perfectly appropriate to temporarily compartmentalize in order to focus on a specific type of development--whether that be learning to cook, taking up a contemplative practice at a meditation retreat, or going on a nature hike. For spiritual development, I have always been a strong advocate of meditation, in any of its numerous forms. Thus, the second major point I wanted to get across in One Taste is the importance of meditation as part of an integral practice.

     This is particularly crucial for strengthening consciousness and thus allowing it to remain stable as one passes from waking to dreaming to deep sleep. The more we can access this "constant consciousness" or "basic wakefulness" (which is present in all states, waking, dreaming, and sleeping), the more we become alive to Spirit's ever-present Presence. Many people reading One Taste reported that this was the strongest intuition or awakening that they received from the book. They had previously imagined that spirituality involved changing the objects of their awareness--thinking holistically instead of analytically, or trying to feel compassion instead of hatred. But they realized that true spirituality involves inquiring into the subject of awareness, and not simply rearranging the objects of awareness. By resting in the pure subject of consciousness, even as different states come and go, you are increasingly brought face-to-face with radiant Spirit itself, which is your own ultimate Subject or Self, and the Self of the Kosmos at large (at which point both subject and object embrace in One Taste).

     Thus, by far the most common feedback I received from One Taste was: "I started to meditate," or "After reading the book I went on an intensive meditation retreat," or "I vowed to strengthen my meditation practice." That is the single effect I hoped the book would have. Truly, adopting a new holistic philosophy, or thinking in integral terms, or believing in Gaia--however important those might be, they are the least important when it comes to spiritual transformation. Finding out who believes in all those things: there is the doorway to God.

     After the applications of my work, the second most-often asked question is, How do you handle having your work misrepresented? And my response is, not very well, I'm afraid, and I could use any pointers you might have. Since this is such a common question, I suppose I might say a few words about it.

     One critic wrote, "Wilber has become one of the most influential theorists in the world today. Ironically, he is also one of the most misunderstood. One wonders whether he is famous for what he said, or what he didn't." This critic then gave a long list of beliefs that have been ascribed to me, beliefs that either I have never held, or ones that I held many years ago and have long since abandoned.

     This is obviously not to say that there are no trenchant criticisms of my material; only that truly informed criticism is rare, and thus most of the time I am reduced to pleading, "That is not what I said." You don't ask that critics agree with you, only that they first report accurately the view they then attack. Quick example: this year, Stanley Krippner and Allan Combs published a piece quite critical of my work, and they proposed a model that they felt overcame its limitations. The problem is, the model they attacked was the wilber-2 model (a linear ladder model), which I have not held since 1981; and the model they proposed was essentially similar to the wilber-3 model (of structures, states, and realms), which is the model I have presented for the last fifteen years. I wrote a rebuttal, pointing out that I was misrepresented, and Combs responded with an aggressive counter-attack, which ended with "Ken, we do understand your model. We just disagree." Yet his counter-attack still gave as my model the fifteen-year old wilber-2 model, and did not once mention wilber-3 (even though that was the model very similar to the one Combs himself was strongly defending). The claim that "We do understand your model" was thus sadly untrue.

     I hesitate to use that example, because Allan Combs is a very thoughtful and sensitive scholar, and when this misrepresentation was pointed out to him, he immediately and generously took many steps to correct it. Moreover, I am a fan of Allan's work and wish him the very best. My point is simply that, if scholars as gifted as Krippner and Combs can so poorly represent my work, you can imagine how it fares in less sensitive hands. (The editors preparing the criticism section in Kindred Visions report that over 85 percent of the published criticisms of my work are either incorrect or misleading, which is rather startling.)

     I truly understand the difficulties involved here. Often a critic will read one or two books, get excited about some of the ideas and annoyed with others, and then write a critique meant to straighten me out, often unaware that I have addressed the objections in other publications. In order to really understand my "system," a person needs to go through six or seven books at least, and I completely u