Wilber's holism
A key idea of Wilber's is the
holon, which came from the writings of Arthur Koestler. He observed that it seems every entity and concept shares a dual nature: as a whole unto itself, and as a part of some other whole. For example, a cell in an organism is a whole and at the same time a part of another whole, the organism.
Another example is that a letter is a self-existing entity and simultaneously an integral part of a word, which then is part of a sentence, which is part of a paragraph, which is part of a page; and so on. Everything from quarks to matter to energy to ideas can be looked at in this way.
In his book
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Wilber outlines approximately twenty tenets that characterize all holons. These tenets form the basis of Wilber's model of manifest reality.
AQAL: "All Quadrants All Levels"
AQAL (pronounced
aqual or
ah-qwul) represents the core of Wilber's work. AQAL stands for "all quadrants all levels", but equally connotes 'all lines', 'all states' and 'all types'. These are the five irreducible categories of Wilber's model of manifest existence. In order for an account of the Kosmos to be complete, Wilber believes that it must include each of these five categories. For Wilber, only such an account can be accurately called "integral." In the essay, "Excerpt C: The Ways We Are in This Together", Wilber describes AQAL as "one suggested architecture of the Kosmos".
All of Wilber's AQAL categories...quadrants, lines, levels, states, and types...relate to relative truth in the two truths doctrine of Buddhism, to which he subscribes. According to Wilber, none of them are true in an absolute sense: only formless awareness, "the simple feeling of being," exists absolutely.
An account or theory is said to be AQAL, and thus
integral (inclusive or comprehensive), if it accounts for or makes reference to all four quadrants and four major levels in Wilber's ontological scheme, described below. The AQAL system has been critiqued for not taking into account the lack of change in the biological structure of the brain at the human level (complex neocortex), this role being taken instead by human-made artifacts.
Quadrants
Each holon, or unit of reality that is both a whole and a part of a larger whole, has an interior and an exterior. It also exists as an individual and (assuming more than one of these entities exists) as a collective. Observing the holon from the outside constitutes an exterior perspective on that holon. Observing it from the inside is the interior perspective, and so forth. If you map these four perspectives into quadrants, you have four quadrants, or dimensions (these are unrelated to the three spatial dimensions).
To give an example of how this works, consider four schools of social science. Freud psychoanalysis, which interprets people's interior experiences, is an account of the interior individual (or, in the diagram, the upper-left) quadrant. B. F. Skinner's behaviorism, which limits itself to the observation of the behavior of organisms, is an exterior individual (upper-right) account. Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics interprets the collective consciousness of a society, and is thus an interior plural (lower-left) perspective. Marxist economic theory, according to Wilber, examines the external behavior of a society (lower-right).
All four pursuits – psychoanalysis, behaviorism, philosophical hermeneutics and Marxism – offer complementary, rather than contradictory, perspectives. It is possible for all to be correct and necessary for a complete account of human existence. Also, each by itself offers only a partial view of reality. On his view, Wilber has integrated these four areas of knowledge through an acknowledgement of the four fundamental dimensions of existence. Further, according to Wilber, these four perspectives are equally valid at all levels of existence.
The right sides of the quadrants are concerned with empirical observation...what does it do? The left sides of the quadrants focus on interpretation...what does it mean? Wilber contends that modernity evidences a pathological separation from healthy evolution due to a near-complete focus on the right sides, with the denial of the left sides as having
no meaning being a fundamental cause of society's malaise. This pathology is what Wilber calls "flatland".
Lines, streams, or intelligences
According to Wilber, all holons have multiple lines of development, or intelligences...in fact, over two dozen have been observed. They include cognitive, ethical, aesthetic, spiritual, kinesthetic, affective, musical, spatial, logical-mathematical, karmic, etc. One can be highly developed cognitively (cerebrally smart) without being highly morally developed (as in the case of Nazi doctors). However, Wilber acknowledges, you cannot be highly morally developed without the pre-requisite cognitive development. So not all of the developmental lines are ontologically equivalent.
Levels or stages
The concept of levels follows closely on the concept of lines of development. The more highly developed you are in a particular line, the higher level you are at in that line. Wilber's conception of the level is clearly based on several theories of developmental psychology, including: Piaget's theory of cognitive development, Kohlberg's stages of moral development, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, and Jane Loevinger's stages of ego development.
One such scheme describes the ethical developmental line, for example:
- Egocentric (similar to Carol Gilligan's 'Selfish' stage)
- Ethnocentric or Sociocentric (Gilligan's 'Care' stage)
- Worldcentric (Gilligan's 'Universal Care' stage)
- Being-centric (Gilligan's 'Integrated' stage)
Within each broad stage, there are sub-levels. Spiral Dynamics is one theory that elaborates on these sub-levels.
Another broad organization of the levels contains three categories:
- pre-personal (subconscious motivations)
- personal (conscious mental processes)
- transpersonal (integrative and mystical structures)
This organization reveals more of Wilber's synthesizing activity. Freudian drives, Jung archetypes, and myth are pre-personal structures. Empirical and rational processes are at the personal level. Transpersonal entities include, for example, Aurobindo's Overmind, Emerson's Oversoul, Plato's Forms, Plotinus'
nous, and the Hindu Atman, or world-soul.
The exceptional feature of Wilber's approach is that, under this methodology,
all of these mental structures...subconscious, rational, mystical...are considered complementary and legitimate, rather than competing in a zero-sum conceptual space. And that is perhaps Wilber's greatest accomplishment...the opening up of a space wherein more ideas, theories, beliefs, and stories can be considered true, responsible, and acceptable.
Many criticize the strict hierarchical nature of Wilber's conception of the level in psychological and cultural development, which he compares to the hierarchical nature of matter itself. Sub-atomic particles are composed of quarks. Atoms are made of sub-atomic particles. Molecules are made of atoms. Cell organelles are made of molecules, etc. One must attain the lower levels before the higher levels because the higher levels are
constituted by the lower level components. Thus, when represented graphically, the levels should appear as concentric circles, with higher levels transcending
but also including lower ones. Wilber also attacks the equating of hierarchy with patriarchy using a similar line of argument.
States
States refer to those aspects of consciousness that are temporal, passing, experiential, and phenomenal. Wilber's later works develop close relations between states and levels/lines (or structures) but the relations between these two major aspects of consciousness are often misconstrued. The misunderstanding is based on the idea that a person can "peak experience" a higher structure which, as Wilber has said, would be like a first year piano student playing for a moment like a seasoned virtuoso. Even though the vocabulary (subtle, causal, nondual) of states and of higher structures is similar, higher states do not equate with higher structures. Wilber's mantra to quell this misunderstanding is: "States are free but structures are earned." One has to
build or earn structure, it can't be peak experienced for free. What can be peak experienced however are higher states of freedom from the structure one already inhabits so at any level one can experience these deeper/higher states.
In his book
Integral Spirituality (Shambhala 2006) Wilber identifies a few varieties of states: the most important, with regard to the consciousness of most higher animals, are the three diurnal cycling
natural states: waking, dreaming, and sleeping. Within waking and dreaming states there are
phenomenal states which arise from interior sources such as bodily sensations, emotions, mental ideas, memories, or inspirations, or from exterior sources such as our sensorimotor inputs, seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting. A third category of states,
altered states, is divided into two groups, 1)
Exogenous or induced states: states which are intentionally generated from outside or exterior influences such as psychedelic and other drug-induced states; hypnosis and hypnotherapy; psycho-therapeutic techniques; gestalt therapy; psychodrama; voice dialogue techniques; biofeedback states; forms of guided imagery; and 2)
Endogenous or trained states: states which are intentionally generated from inside or from interior influences such as various performance enhancement techniques in sports therapy; meditative training which work on calming, relaxation, equanimity states; and mental imaging and visualization such as tonglen meditation. Some techniques such as Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) work with both endogenous and exogenous types. A fourth category of states is spontaneous or peak states which refer to unintentional or unexpected shifts of awareness from gross to subtle or causal states of consciousness.
Wilber has done extensive research on connecting modern states researchwith the understanding of states in the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta.Aligning with Vedanta theory, Wilber equates waking with
gross consciousness, dreaming with
subtle consciousness, and sleeping with
causal or formless consciousness. In keeping with the Vedanta system he adds fourth and fifth "natural" states of Turiya and Turiyatita, respectively Witnessing consciousness and Nondual consciousness which technically are not states in that they are understood as being the state of all states.
Types
These are valid distinctions that are not covered under Wilber’s other categorizations. Masculine/feminine, the nine Enneagram categories, and Jung's archetypes and typologies, among innumerable others, are all valid types in Wilber's schema. Wilber makes types part of his model in order to point out that these distinctions are different from, and in addition to the already mentioned distinctions: quadrants, lines, levels and states.
Theory of truth
Wilber argues that manifest reality is composed of four domains, and that each domain, or "quadrant" has its own truth-standard, or test for validity, as follows:
Interior individual/1st person - "If we look at the actual
interior of an individual [entity], then we have an entirely different type of validity claim. The question here is not, is it raining outside? The question here is, When I tell you it is raining outside, am I telling you the truth or am I lying? You see, here it is not so much a question of whether the map matches the objective territory, but whether the mapmaker can be trusted.... you can always check and see if it's raining... Interior events are located in states of consciousness, not in objective states of affairs, and so you can't empirically nail them down with simple consensus location. I might lie to you. I might lie to myself. I might misrepresent and not know it."
Interior collective/2nd person - "The
subjective world is situated in an
intersubjective space, a cultural space... without this cultural background... I wouldn't have the tools to interpret my own thoughts to myself. So here the validity claim is not so much objective propositional truth, or subjective truthfulness, but
intersubjective fit. This cultural background provides the common context against which my own interior thoughts and beliefs will have some sort of meaning, and so the validity criteria here involves the "cultural fit" [of a statement] within this background... What is so remarkable about common understanding is not that I can take a simple word like "dog" and point to a real dog and say "I mean that." What is so remarkable is that
you know what
I mean by that. [So it is] a matter of how we arrange collectively, our ethics, morals, laws, culture, group or collective identities, background contexts..."
Exterior individual/3rd person - "We check to see if the proposition
corresponds with or fits the facts, if the map accurately reflects the real [exterior] territory... if we cannot disprove it we may assume it is accurate enough. But the essential idea is that... my statement somehow refers to an
objective state of affairs, and it fairly accurately somehow corresponds with those objects or processes or affairs. [...] All of which is fair enough and important enough, and I in no way deny the general importance of empirical representation. It's just not the whole story..."
Exterior collective/3rd person - "The main validity claim is
functional fit, how entities fit together in a system... So in systems theory you will find nothing about ethical standards, values, morals, mutual understanding, truthfulness, sincerity, depth, integrity, aesthetics... It describes the system in purely objective exterior terms, from without. It doesn't want to know how collective values are intersubjectively shared in mutual understanding. Rather, it looks at how their objective correlates
functionally fit in the overall system."
"All four of these are valid forms of knowledge, because they are grounded in the realities of the nature of every holon. And therefore all four of these truth claims can be confirmed or rejected by a community of the adequate [those competent in that knowledge]. They each have a different validity claim which carefully guides us, through checks and balances, on our knowledge quest. They are all falsifiable within their own domains, which means false claims can be dislodged by further evidence ...."
The pre/trans fallacy
Wilber purports that many claims about non-rational states make a mistake he calls the pre/trans fallacy. According to Wilber, the non-rational stages of consciousness (what Wilber calls "pre-rational" and "trans-rational" stages) can be easily confused with one another. On Wilber's view, One can reduce trans-rational spiritual realization to pre-rational regression, or one can elevate pre-rational states to the trans-rational domain. For example, Wilber claims that Freud and Jung commit this fallacy. Freud considered mystical realization to be a regression to infantile oceanic states. Wilber alleges that Freud thus commits a fallacy of reduction. Wilber thinks that Jung commits the converse form of the same mistake by considering pre-rational myths to reflect divine realizations. Likewise, pre-rational states may be misidentified as post-rational states. Wilber characterizes himself as having fallen victim to the pre/trans fallacy in his early work.
Mysticism and the great chain of being
One of Wilber's main interests is in mapping what he calls the "neo-perennial philosophy", an integration of some of the views of mysticism typified by Aldous Huxley's
The Perennial Philosophy with an account of cosmic evolution akin to that of the Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo. He rejects most of the tenets of Perennialism and the associated anti-evolutionary view of history as a regression from past ages or yugas. Instead, he embraces a more traditionally Western notion of the great chain of being. As in the work of Jean Gebser, this great chain (or "nest") is ever-present while "relatively" unfolding throughout this material manifestation, although to Wilber "... the 'Great Nest' is actually just a vast morphogenetic field of potentials ..." In agreement with Mahayana Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta, he believes that reality is ultimately a nondual union of emptiness and form, with form being innately subject to development over time.
Wilber argues for the value of mystical realization and in opposition to metaphysical naturalism:
Wilber on science
Wilber describes the current state of the "hard" sciences as limited to "narrow science", which only allows evidence from the lowest realm of consciousness, the sensorimotor (the five senses and their extensions). What he calls "broad science" would include evidence from logic, mathematics, and from the symbolic, hermeneutical, and other realms of consciousness. Ultimately and ideally, broad science would include the testimony of meditators and spiritual practitioners. Wilber's own conception of science includes both narrow science and broad science, e.g., using electroencephalogram machines and other technologies to test the experiences of meditators and other spiritual practitioners, creating what Wilber calls "integral science".
According to Wilber's theory, narrow science trumps narrow religion, but broad science trumps narrow science. That is, the natural sciences provide a more inclusive, accurate account of reality than any of the particular exoteric religious traditions. But an integral approach that evaluates both religious claims and scientific claims based on intersubjectivity is preferable to narrow science.
Current work
In 2005, at the launch of the Integral Spiritual Center, a branch of the Integral Institute, Wilber presented a 118-page rough draft summary of his two forthcoming books. (1.3 MB PDF file) The essay is entitled "What is Integral Spirituality?", and contains several new ideas, including Integral post-metaphysics and the Wilber-Combs lattice.
"Integral post-metaphysics" is the term Wilber has given to his attempts to reconstruct the world's spiritual-religious traditions in a way that accounts for the modern and post-modern criticisms of those traditions.
The Wilber-Combs Lattice is a conceptual model of consciousness developed by Wilber and Allan Combs. It is a grid with sequential states of consciousness on the x axis (from left to right) and with developmental structures, or levels, of consciousness on the y axis (from bottom to top). This lattice illustrates how each structure of consciousness interprets experiences of different states of consciousness, including mystical states, in different ways.
Influences on Wilber
Wilber's philosophy has been influenced by Madhyamaka Buddhism, particularly as articulated in the philosophy of Nagarjuna. Wilber has practiced various forms of Buddhist meditation, studying with a number of teachers, including Dainin Katagiri, Taizan Maezumi, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche, Penor Rinpoche and Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche. Advaita Vedanta, Trika Shaivism, Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Ramana Maharshi, and Andrew Cohen can be mentioned as further influences. Wilber has on several occasions singled out Adi Da's work for the highest praise (while expressing reservations about Adi Da as a teacher). In
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Wilber refers extensively to Plotinus' philosophy, which he sees as nondual. While Wilber has practised Buddhist meditation methods, he does not identify himself as a Buddhist.
Wilber's conception of spiritual evolution and psychological development and "the great nest of being" draws on Adi Da, Sri Aurobindo, James Mark Baldwin, Erik Erikson, Howard Gardner, Jean Gebser, German idealism, Clare W. Graves (Spiral Dynamics), Jürgen Habermas, Erich Jantsch, Robert Kegan, Lawrence Kohlberg, Abraham Maslow, Jean Piaget, and Plotinus.