Christoph is a native of Switzerland, where he studied, as an undergraduate, psychology, philosophy and religion. At age twenty-five, he left his country and arrived in the United States with the intention to become a Zen Buddhist monk. Two years later, he was compelled to leave that path and thereafter took up the study of Sufism under the tutelage of an Iranian master teacher. This was followed by a year-long sojourn through India and his engagement with Tibetan Buddhism. Read more on his website sourcepointintegral.com

Center of Gravity

Or Questioning the Obvious

From In-sight and Wilber's altitude marker
to Iblis and McIntosh's Integral Consciousness

Christoph Schaub

Introduction

Is in-sight point-less? In-sight isn't a construct or a belief-system we can learn or study; in-sight isn't something that we can make happen, nor something that we can force; in-sight arises on its own accord. In spite of our in-sight that becoming aware of our body doesn't happen by thinking about it, but rather by feeling and sensing into it, we don't seem to rely on the same logic when it comes to our mind or spirit. Hence, instead of inquiring into our mind, which is how become aware of it, we think about it. Similarly, instead of contemplating the purpose of our human existence, which is how we become aware of our spirit, we either identify ourselves with it, reject it, or blindly believe in it.

Body, mind, spirit and our re-cognition thereof tetra-emerge together in the emptiness, the openness that is called consciousness or God, both of which are simply words that, in and of themselves, don't mean anything, because language only makes sense in relationship. Language cannot be reduced to our body or our feelings, our mind or our thinking, our spirit or our reflecting nor to our re-cognition thereof; for language is inter-dependent and the same applies to our human being who is a manifestation of our tetra-emergent relationships. Feeling, thinking and reflecting happen effortlessly or, put differently, feeling, thinking and reflecting are instinctive to our human constitution, in contrast to re-cognition, which appears to be the result of prolonged focusing. Prolonged focusing is similar to falling in love, in which case our thoughts, feelings and imaginations become temporarily fixated on the person we are in love with. In other words, everyone who has ever fallen in love has experienced what prolonged focusing is. The opposite of this experience is known as depression, into which we can fall as easily as we can fall in love; in both cases we become fixated on a thought, feeling and/or image for reasons we cannot quite explain, because reason doesn't disclose who we are. Of course, we have the choice and freedom to believe that reason is the alpha and omega of human life even though reason can't explain in-sight, re-cognition and wisdom. Reason has us believe that we direct our own life and, to that end, we seek and strive for happiness, contentment and peace, while we fail to re-cognize that none of those qualities that characterize our human existence are self-derived.

We communicate and acknowledge our in-sight into and awareness of “what is” through language, which is the matrix or the perceptual organ of the mind. Language, in other words, speaks to and defines the in-sights of the mind or that which the mind sees, is aware of or has realized. The mind's seeing, awareness or realization is not defined by language; seeing is immediate or “a priori,” while our interpretation thereof follows afterwards or “a posteriori.” The mind's seeing precedes our thoughts; seeing is the cause of our thinking, not the result of it. Put differently, before we can think about anything, we have to see it. Thinking is interpretive and, in that sense, a construct of language, while the in-sight our thinking is derived from and points to isn't. Thinking speaks to or explains our life's decisions; thinking, however, isn't the cause of them, which may sound strange. In his book, Embodiment and Cognitive Science, Raymond Gibbs tells of a study where participants were asked to move their hands whenever they wished. We may think that the brain would signal the decision to move just prior to the movement occurring. Instead what the researchers found is that “the decision to move occurred about 350-400 milliseconds after… the parts of the brain that signaled body movement had already fired” (p. 22). We can interpret this caveat in various ways, one of which is that the in-sight of the mind to move our hand precedes our decision to move it. Mind isn't a material entity, such as the brain, which doesn't mean that mind isn't real; on the contrary, without the mind we couldn't re-cognize the brain in the first place. Re-cognition is the result of the meeting of mind and matter; re-cognition arises where matter and mind intersect. Mind is the perceptual organ of consciousness that is the matrix of our interdependent relationships, of which our manifest or compounded, created and conditioned life consist.

Mind doesn't cease to exist with our death, nor does it emerge with our birth. Mind is re-cognized where we see “what is.” Seeing is the fundamental characteristic of the mind— the perceptual organ of consciousness that, as Ken Wilber defines it in Integral Spirituality, is not “a content or a phenomena. It has no description. It is not worldviews, it is not values, it is not morals, not cognition, not value-MEMEs, mathematico-logico structures, adaptive intelligences, or multiple intelligences. Consciousness is the emptiness, the openness, the clearing in which phenomena arise” (p. 68).

If we define consciousness as the emptiness, in which phenomena arise, then what do we communicate if we call our theory or philosophy a map of consciousness? Can we map the openness, in which phenomena arise or, ask differently, can we map the spaciousness of the sky? We apprehend the emptiness of consciousness through our mind, to which our in-sights speak. In other words, all our constructs, theories and philosophies of life are a map of the mind rather than a map of consciousness, which cannot be defined. Failure to make this distinction causes us to reduce consciousness to a particular map or theory that we believe to represent it. Consciousness cannot be mapped by any kind of theory and the same goes for the spaciousness of the sky, even if we believe otherwise. Our maps speak to and define the mind-space of the spheres they are derived from and into which our life can be distinguished accordingly. To date, we have become aware of the following inter-dependent and tetra-emergent spheres: the physiosphere, the biosphere, the noosphere and the theosphere. We have become aware or self-conscious of these spheres due to in-sights that equally speak to and define their mind-space. These in-sights of our natural, biological, humanistic and spiritual sciences define the mind-space of the physio-, bio-, noo- and theosphere respectively, as illustrated in the following diagram:

The mind-space of consciousness is what Wilber's integral map relates to; the mind-space of consciousness is not the same as consciousness, which isn't a sphere, but, according to Wilber's definition “the emptiness, the openness, the clearing in which the physio-, bio-, noo- and theosphere arise. The physiosphere represent the universe we are living in, while the biosphere stands for our embodied life. In contrast, the noosphere signifies the world of our thoughts, ideas and language, whereas the theosphere stands for the realm of the numinous from where our in-sights, in essence, are derived. The numinous is both immanent and transcendent, which means it both arises within the emptiness of consciousness and resides outside of it. While empty in nature, the numinous reveals itself to us in all aspects of life; the numinous is what our in-sights into creation consist of. The numinous doesn't reveal itself to us directly, because the numinous is unborn, uncreated and unconditioned and, as such, cannot be apprehended by our created, conditioned and compounded existence. We can awaken to the numinous, but we can neither point to nor speak to it, because the numinous is neither a thought, a feeling nor a picture; the numinous isn't something that we can imagine. The numinous is representative or synonymous with our intrinsic wakefulness of consciousness, which we know of due to our in-sights into our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual life.

Becoming aware of the interplay between the different sphere in our life is what “integral” is about. “Integral” is neither a belief-system, a revelation from on high, nor a teaching that is derived from the realization of our true nature. “Integral” is to the mind-space of consciousness what spirituality is to the mind-space of the theosphere; natural science, such as physics, astronomy and chemistry is to the physiosphere; biological science, such as biology, medicine and geology is to the biosphere and humanistic science, such as anthropology, psychology and economy is to the noosphere. The focus of “integral” is cultivating awareness of the interplay of the mind-space that equally defines and expresses the different spheres our human life consists. “Integral” is a trans-cultural, trans-social, trans-disciplinary and trans-personal endeavor, which has as its central focus the cultivation of awareness. Awareness is the gateless gate that leads to the numinous, which is the foundation of self-awareness and this is the foundation of compassion. Compassion, like all qualities of life, such as wisdom, harmony or beauty, is not something that we can cultivate or design, because compassion always and already is; compassion isn't man-made and all our striving to develop it ultimately leads to suffering.

Compassion is derived from in-sight and in-sight is derived from becoming aware of “what is.” In-sight isn't the result of thinking, which is the product of reasoning. Reasoning is how we cultivate intellect, which is the foundation of knowledge, while in-sight is derived from re-cognition, which is the foundation of wisdom. Learning about life is different than gaining in-sight into it; knowing about our human existence is different than being aware or mindful of it. In-sight isn't the result of memorizing knowledge, which causes us to become fossilized and rigid. Memorizing knowledge is not what learning is about; memorizing knowledge leads to a dull and pre-occupied mind; a mind that is blind, deaf and numb. Memorizing knowledge is what we do in order to cope with “what is.” Memorizing knowledge is how we delude ourselves into thinking that we know what life is all about, which is how we prevent ourselves from awakening to “what is.” Learning and knowledge go hand-in-hand with in-sight and re-cognition, which are derived from inquiry, mindfulness and contemplation. Learning and knowledge are a process-in-the-making and the same applies to our in-sights and re-cognitions, which is why the maps we design to chart the territory of our mind change and evolve, according to the development of our species. Judging our maps as mere mental constructs is similar to divorcing our self-identity from the person we consider ourselves to be; similar to separating our individual being from the collective, life from death or the created from the uncreated. The life we are living and our apprehension thereof co-arise; believing that our experience of life is more important than how we think about it causes us to run into difficulties with ourselves, because our experience of life is as clear or confused as our apprehension thereof. Body-mind can't be divorced from each other and the same applies to our constructs, philosophies and theories that point to and reveal our in-sights of the mind. Becoming aware of how our constructs, philosophies and theories inform and define us is different than thinking that we are not identified with them due to our ability to talk about them.

Questioning the Obvious

Questioning the obvious is how the hidden makes itself seen; how belief leads to in-sight, knowledge to wisdom and assumption to re-cognition. Questioning the obvious tends to be the last thing we do. For example, we may pretend to know what spurs our human development when, in fact, we don't really know what causes us to evolve. Is it suffering that makes us grow or is it our innate hopes, dreams and aspirations that propel us to move forward and ascend to new heights? Is development an intrinsic aspect to life and, to that end, happens on its own accord; or, put differently, are we bound to evolve by simply being alive? And do we actually develop or merely write a different story, according to the circumstances that define our contemporary existence?

Development takes place in relationship, without which we couldn't talk about it, because it is only in the context of relating where we can speak of evolution. Development doesn't occur in isolation; evolution, in other words, isn't self-based, but an expression of the interdependent arising of creation that, like life, is self-less in nature. Life, human life, encompasses all aspects of being, which means that life, human life, cannot be reduced to merely the physical, biological, mental or the spiritual. Attempting to reduce life to a single denominator leads us to believe, as Antonio Damasio writes in The Feeling of What Happens, that “consciousness is an entirely private, first-person phenomenon which occurs as part of the private, first-person process we call mind” (p. 12). While we may arrive at such a conclusion within the context of neuroscience, which operates within the biosphere, we cannot simply reduce life to one aspect of creation and then expect to understand it in its entirety. Defining consciousness as a wholly private, first-person phenomena is similar to determining where you and I begin and end when relating to each other. Relating is neither about you nor me; relating happens where you and I meet, be it in body, mind and/or spirit. Relating is inter-dependent, inter-subjective and inter-objective and the same applies to consciousness, which cannot be reduced to a single denominator. Consciousness is the pattern that connects, to use a term coined by Gregory Bateson; consciousness is the emptiness in which phenomena arise; consciousness is the matrix of creation, as re-cognized by the in-sights of the mind and expressed through language. Life, human life, is tetra-emerging and co-creative; we are not simply a passive element or holon of existence, but rather steer our own course and becoming-in-the-making, according to the awareness of being we have evolved to as humans. This doesn't imply that we design our own existence, nor that our life is pre-destined; both of which are extreme perspectives that aren't conducive to our well-being, but instead speak to our unquestioned assumptions, beliefs and opinions.

That said, what do we reference when we talk about the center of gravity, as done in integral theory? Do we speak about the stage or level of development our self-system has evolved to? If so, then what does our self-system encompass or relate to; in other words, what does our self-system resemble? When speaking of ourselves we equally talk about our body, mind, spirit and our re-cognition thereof in both theory and practice. Body, mind, spirit and our re-cognition thereof tetra-emerge together and while our physical body ceases to exist at the time of our biological death, we don't simply dissolve into nothingness. Just like matter doesn't dissolve into nothing when its compounded, conditioned and created existence disintegrates—to which Einstein's theorem of relativity speaks. We don't simply return to the uncreated, unconditioned and uncompounded once our heart stops beating. At the root of our self-awareness lies the ego, which is the incarnate aspect of the numinous in form. Referred to as bodicitta in Buddhism and fitra in Sufism, the ego is the spark of our intrinsic wakefulness of consciousness; without the ego, we wouldn't re-cognize ourselves in a mirror. The ego isn't formless, but has a body of sorts, which doesn't cease to exist at the time of our death. The immanent aspect of the numinous is what our ultimate being or ontological reality consists of. Our physical body relates to the gross aspect of existence, our mind to the subtle; our spirit to the causal; and our re-cognition of these different aspects of life to the non-dual awareness of our human being.

The self-system, in other words, signifies the entirety of our person that encompasses all aspects of life; if it were otherwise, then we couldn't consider ourselves to be a whole/part or holon of creation. Life, human life, can be distinguished into essentially four different dimensions of being: our phenomenological experience, or “I”; our cognitive apprehension thereof, or “me”; our dialogical reality, or “we” and the context we share together and inhabit as humans, or “it” (for a more in-depth elaboration on this subject, see Putting “Integral” into Language—Or the Mind-Space of Consciousness). The self-system, in that respect, represents the overarching principle that unifies these different aspects of life to a coherent whole; or, said differently, the self-system signifies that which enables us to relate to the entirety of life as an integral part thereof. This doesn't imply, however, that our self-system encompasses our interpersonal reality or the context we share together as humans. When speaking of the self-system, we talk about us as a person and not our interdependent and tetra-emergent existence, as illustrated below:

The self-system both signifies our personhood and is a conceptual reality. In either case though, the self-system isn't a thing we can point to, nor has it an ontological reality, such as the ego. The self-system is temporary; it arises with our birth and expires when we depart from here. The self-system is to us, as a person, what the ego is to our true nature; the ego is ontological, while our self-system is psychological, which means that the ego transcends death, whereas our self-system ceases to exist with our last breath. We experience the self-system through our sense of wholeness, which includes the re-cognition of our own partiality. Our self-system informs us of where our personhood begins and ends and without this sense we couldn't orient ourselves in space, nor would we be able to walk on our own two feet. Instead, we would be disoriented, similar to a person under the influence. Our self-system defines us an individual. Our self-system both identifies us and informs us who we are as a person in this time-space continuum we have been born into or have emerged as a human being.

When we speak of our self-system, we talk about an overarching principle, which isn't the case when we refer to our center of gravity, which is our self-system's captain. Our center of gravity, in other words, steers our life's course, while our self-system unifies our personhood to an integrated whole. Confusing our self-system with our center of gravity is like relating our true nature to our personhood, or Marx's manifesto to the political system that reined the Soviet Union, or Wilber's integral philosophy with the Integral Institute. The self-system isn't our center of gravity, just like an apple isn't an orange even though both are fruits.

Center of Gravity

Subscribing blindly to ideas, constructs and philosophies neither causes us to evolve, nor does it enable us to gain in-sight into our human nature, which is facilitated through inquiry, dialogue, mindfulness and contemplation. Inquiring into our concepts is fundamental to incorporating them as a reality of our own. Discussing food is not the same as eating it, just like tasting it doesn't mean that we have digested it. We don't absorb food by studying or looking at it and the same applies to the beliefs and constructs by which we define ourselves. The center of gravity in integral theory signifies the level of consciousness one operates from, which may explain why the center of gravity was referred to above as the captain of the self-system. The center of gravity pertains to our conscience, which Bert Hellinger defines in Love's Hidden Symmetry, as “a perceptual organ for systemic balance that helps us to know whether or not we're in harmony with our reference system” (p. 207). Conscience can be distinguished intro three kinds: our personal conscience, systemic conscience, and the conscience of the greater whole. Our personal conscience relates to our individual self; the systemic conscience relates to our social organism, while the conscience of the greater whole pertains to our humanity-in-the-making. Our personal conscience is to our individual being what the ego is to our true nature and our self-system to us as a person. Our personal conscience steers our life's course whether or not we are aware of it. Conscience is the organ that governs our relationships, be it those that constitute our individual person, our social organism or that of our humanity-in-the-making. Conscience is the mother of language, which speaks to our in-sights of the mind—the perceptual organ of consciousness.

“We know our conscience,” as Hellinger writes in his aforementioned book, “as a horse knows the riders who rides it and as a helmsman knows the stars by which he set his course. But many riders ride the horse—and many helmsmen steer the ship, each guided by a different star. The question becomes: Who shall command the riders and which course shall the captain choose?” (p. 4). Inquiry into our conscience is essential to even vaguely assess the developmental stage our center of gravity operates from, which we can't simply determine by evaluating a few lines of our self-system. This would be similar to evaluating a person's character by taking their pulse, looking at their tongue, measuring their nerve reflexes, or seeing how high they can jump. Our conscience governs all aspects of our being: our phenomenological experience or “I”; our cognitive apprehension or “me”; our dialogical reality or “we” and our awareness of “what is” or “it.” Our conscience, which speaks to our center of gravity, is greater than the parts it consists of, just like a melody is not this note or that note—nor is it the sum of a sequence of notes.  Instead, melody is what moves between the notes and the same applies to our center of gravity, to which our personal conscience speaks. Our personal conscience, in other words, is to our center of gravity what the systemic conscience is to us as a collective, and the conscience of the greater whole, or the soul, is to us as humanity. Conscience is our life's melody and to hear it, we, in effect, must become still within ourselves. If we become deaf to the melody of our conscience that directs our life's course, we turn self-destructive, because we are not designed to live a life without meaning, purpose and direction. To cite Huston Smith's Why Religion Matters: “A generation ago, psychologist William Sheldon of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons wrote that ' continued observations in clinical practice lead almost inevitably to the conclusion that deeper and more fundamental than sexuality, deeper than the craving for social power, deeper even than the desire for possessions, there is a still more generalized and universal craving in the human makeup. It is the craving for knowledge of the right direction—for orientation'”(p. 26).

Conscience contrasts and, to that end, draws a boundary without judging what lies to either side of it; conscience is not to be confused with morality that relates to a developmental line of the self-system, which is not the case for conscience. Conscience and morality are both qualitatively and conceptually different from each other. Morality judges, while conscience distinguishes. We judge ourselves and others according to our moral development. We don't simply dispense with judgments at advanced levels of human development, unless we want to safeguard our innocence by jettison morality from our playing field, which we do when we fail to acknowledge that morality is, indeed, judgmental. Attempting to refrain from judging is similar to claiming that we don't really talk when we are talking, or that we have nothing to teach, while teaching. Becoming aware of our own dividedness, or the judgments we make in good conscience, is as challenging as re-cognizing our own projections; something the Nobel Laureate, John Nash had to learn in order to reclaim his sanity, as cinematographically depicted in A Beautiful Mind. Judging is neither wrong nor right; judging is an intrinsic quality of the mind. Denial thereof results in chaos or anarchy. Without judgments we are reined by the law of the jungle, where the strongest and most cunning rule. Dispensing with judgment has us believe that we are better than the fallen angel, known as Lucifer or Iblis, who, as the story goes, was expelled from heaven for resenting to bow down to God's creation—Adam. Ever since, Iblis has been faced with the choice to either selflessly lead us astray, as God ordered him to do, in which case we condemn him, or else he can refrain from doing so, in which case God condemns him. In other words, whatever decision Iblis makes, he is called the devil. So, what would we do if we were to find ourselves in the devil's shoes? And whom do we serve by throwing stones at him? Do we really acknowledge “what is” by shunning Iblis from it? Do we acknowledge our humanity-in-the-making when pretending that Luzifer doesn't actually exist?

Conscience doesn't judge, it simply contrasts. Our (personal) conscience doesn't tell us what is right or wrong, but instead informs us whether we, be it as an individual or group of people, are in sync with our reference system; namely our center of gravity or the philosophy, mission or ideology that defines our group of people as a social holon. A random group of people don't make a social holon, but constitute a random group of people holon. The level of development to which our center of gravity, or the groups we belong to have evolved, is informed according to our personal or systemic. Judging ourselves better than others is the root of evil or, to again cite Hellinger; “All deeds of great evil are done by people who think that they're better than the others in some way—and because those who judge them also think that they themselves are better, they, too, are in danger of doing evil” (p. 214). Judging a person to be evil causes us to feel morally superior to them; this is how all of us perpetuate evil in whatever name, be it called God; national security; building a fence around other people for our own protection; the advancement of our humanity; enlightenment or world peace.

Altitude Marker

Wilber's altitude marker doesn't really signify anything other than “that it agrees with developmentalist's that, indeed, the levels in a particular line cannot be used to refer to the levels in other lines,” as Wilber notes in his aforementioned book, where he goes on to say that “using 'altitude' as a general marker of development allows us to refer to general similarities across the various lines, yet altitude as 'meters' or 'inches' or 'yards' itself has no content; it is empty.” Indeed, any measurement, in and of itself, doesn't measure anything; a meter isn't a thing and the same goes for inches or yards. However, if we say that a person is one meter tall and we ask for what this tallness stands, we will respond by saying that it signifies the physical length of a person's body; we wouldn't say that is simply represent a measurement, because a measurement, as such, doesn't measure anything. So, to state that Wilber's altitude marker merely refers to general similarities across the various lines of development doesn't address what it measures and to say that it doesn't measure anything would be nonsensical. Using a measuring system without specifying what it is quantifying is like measuring the depth of a ghost or the feet of a person who lost his or her legs.

This is not to disvalue Wilber's altitude markers; on the contrary, it is to propose what they actually measure, which is the level of conscience a person's center of gravity has evolved to, as graphically depicted in the diagram below. Conscience can't be reduced to any line of the self-system, nor to a single quadrant or sphere, into which we can distinguish our human existence. Conscience is the overarching or underlying principle that informs us as to whether or not we are in harmony with our reference system—our self as an individual or our humanity-in-the-making as a people. Our self isn't some static entity, but a phenomenon that grows and evolves with our development; in other words, our self is always changing; always adapting to the life-circumstances we are faced with. Our self is like a stream or a river that forms in the mountains and which is released when it meets the ocean. A river does not just flow, but changes the surface of the earth. A river's goal is pre-destined, which is to unite with the sea. Knowing about a river's goal doesn't mean that we know its path or which way it ought to pursue in order to meet the sea; a river's course isn't pre-destined, it is made in the process of its flow. This doesn't imply that a river flows randomly; its objective is to merge with the sea and, accordingly, we can determine that a river runs in the wrong direction if it were to flow up rather than down a hill. Our personal, systemic and the conscience of the greater whole work in the same way, in that they continuously discern what keeps us in balance with our life's objective, which is different for different people. For some of us, it is to follow a spiritual revelation to the letter, while for others it is to make a lot of money, irrespective of the means how we accomplish that. Having an entrepreneurial spirit or subscribing to the worldview Wall Street propagates doesn't mean that we have evolved to orange in Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics model. Similarly, following a spiritual revelation to the letter doesn't mean that we are stuck at blue. Operating at the individualist action-logic in Susan Cook-Greuter's self-development model doesn't say anything about our in-sight into and awareness of our life's purpose or objective, which is not to be confused with Beck's worldviews, because our life's purpose or objective is an individual affair; it isn't something that we can subscribe to, as in the case of worldviews.

Becoming aware of and gaining in-sight into our life's purpose or objective is facilitated through inquiry. We don't become aware of our life's direction by simply following it, or by believing in whatever kind of theory, philosophy or religion we happen to resonate with for unquestioned or self-defined reasons. Inquiring into our life's purpose is different than contemplating our true nature; inquiring into our life's objective is to bring our thoughts in order by becoming aware of how they inform and define us. Inquiry is not about thinking, analyzing, believing or doing; inquiry focuses on how we think, not what we think or why we think this or that. Knowing the worldview we hold, the action-logic we operate at, or the level of consciousness we make meaning from is one thing; becoming aware of how that knowledge informs and defines us is another—and is what distinguishes a knowledgeable person from an insightful one. Becoming aware of how our mental constructs we believe in and subscribe to inform and define us is how we learn to re-cognize the usefulness of them, since there is nothing gained from propagating our construct over another. The world would not be a better place if everybody were to think integrally; to believe so is similar to thinking that the world would be a better place if everybody were to believe in the primacy of the Bible, the Qu'ran, science, reason or art. Blindly adding another construct, philosophy or theory to our knowledge will not lead to world peace, enlightenment, nor to a life that is informed by in-sight, wisdom and compassion. Becoming knowledgeable is easy, especially in our information age, yet inquiring into our knowledge is hard, because it questions our self-identity and the myths of the given, by which we are had. Believing in our constructs is easy, because without them we would feel anxious, for we wouldn't know who we are; hence, we grasp after them like a drowning person reaches for a life line.

Referring to Wilber's altitude marker without awareness or in-sight into what it relates to, signifies or measures, indicates how identified we are with our constructs, by which we are had. Knowing what Wilber's altitude marker relates to or what it measures doesn't mean that we can assess from which level of conscience we operate, be it as an individual, society or humanity; just like knowing about a river's goal doesn't indicate that we can predict its course or the challenges it will face in the process of its flow.

Becoming aware of our conscience, or our sense of balance that informs us as to whether or not we're in harmony with our reference system, necessitates some life experience. It may be interesting to note here that even Wilber didn't gain in-sight into the four quadrants, which represent the cornerstones of his integral philosophy, until he was around age forty; forty presently signifies the half-way point of our earthly life. Each of our life's decades is governed by its own telos or purpose, as outlined, for instance, by Erik Erikson's research. As a baby and child, our life's telos or purpose is informed by trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame and doubt. As a teenager, our life's telos is informed by initiative versus guilt and anxiety on the one hand and by industry versus inferiority on the other. As a young adult, our life's telos is informed by establishing our identity and cultivating intimacy; lack thereof results in role confusion and isolation. In our thirties, we assess our life's purpose according to our generativity and integrity, or our worldly success and contribution in relation to our self-defined vision and mission, respectively. The second-half of our life, which begins after or at age forty, is characterized or contextualized by the incorporation of all our previous life-stages, since most of us don't simply pass through them without encountering any challenges and, to that end, haven't mastered or completed them like we do high school and college.

The second-half of our life is characterized by gaining in-sight into our conscience that directs our individual, social and human existence. Failure to do so has us die empty-handed, devoid of compassion, self-awareness and wisdom. While the purpose for our being here can be argued, it is difficult to deny that we are meaning-making and purpose-driven creatures. We are not here to take, but to serve each other; we are not here to judge, but to let our intrinsic wakefulness of consciousness become self-aware of its own creation. Our scientific discoveries and technological inventions have enabled us to live in this world more comfortably; however, if our life is merely informed by how comfortably we live on this planet, we are bound to destroy our own habitat, because comfort becomes meaningless without a purpose it can serve. Comfort is only one-half of happiness; the other is called in-sight, which is derived from the cultivation of awareness and the re-cognition of “what is.” Comfort without in-sight turns self-destructive; comfort without in-sight generates anguish, fear, discomfort. Comfort without in-sight is like a roof without walls; a car without gasoline or a life without purpose, meaning and love.

Cultivating awareness not only leads to in-sight, but also brings us in touch with compassion, which is to the mind what making love is to the body. Compassion enables us to understand that Lucifer or Iblis is neither out to undermine our endeavors, nor does s/he take issue with our self-identity, even though s/he may question both. Luzifer is informed and guided by the same conscience that informs and guides us as a people. For God to exist, the devil is needed, and the same applies to the uncreated, unborn and unconditioned, of which we couldn't become aware and awaken to without our created, compounded and conditioned existence. Without critics in our midst, without those who challenge our constructs, beliefs and ideologies, our life would be as dry as a dessert. Harmony isn't a place where the sun continuously shines; harmony involves thunder, lightening, rainstorm, summer, winter, spring and autumn. As Hellinger so poignantly puts it: “Most people's beliefs about good and evil are determined solely by the norms of the group to which they belong, and it's very difficult for anyone to go beyond that limitation. Going beyond the limitation of one group's morality requires identification with a larger systemic order. That's truly moral movement, and you need to be willing and able to endure the feeling of guilt and alienation that comes when you violate what your friends and family hold to be good” (p. 212).

Conflict is a normal aspect of life; it is how we grow. Conflict causes unrest and unrest prompts us to examine and question our life. Conflict is unavoidable, unless we go comatose. Conflict is how we become differentiated; conflict is the father of evolution. Conflict and harmony go hand-in-hand; take one away and the other is gone, as well. Most of us are afraid of conflict, which is how we cultivate an artificial life. Instead of owning our conflicts, we tend to project them onto others, who either purposefully or by sheer happenstance step on our toes and, to that end, cause us unrest. Rather than exposing our vulnerability by disclosing how we have been hurt, we more often than not choose to excommunicate those who happen to cause conflicts. This is how we become fossilized and rigid in ourselves; this is how we loose the flexibility we once enjoyed as children.

Lucifer is an intrinsic aspect of the interdependent arising of creation and, as such, cannot be simply denied. Lucifer, bluntly put, represents the element, principle or quality that doesn't quite fit neatly anywhere, as, for instance, the square root of negative one in mathematics. Lucifer represents the left-over element when everything else is squared away; Lucifer is the principle that tempts us to evolve and grow beyond ourselves by questioning the myths of the given and, to that end, causing unrest. Lucifer is the quality that has us doubt and makes us inquire, which eventually causes us to understand that, to again cite Hellinger, “Whoever reaches toward innocence with respect to one need simultaneously reaches toward guilt with respect to another; whoever rents out a room in the house of innocence soon discovers that he or she has sublet to guilt as well. No matter how we struggle to follow our conscience, we always feel both guilt and innocence—innocence with respect to one need and guilt with respect to another. The dream of innocence without guilt is an illusion” (p. 7).

Integral in Question

Buddha needed to disseminate his realization of the cause of suffering, as much as anyone else who has gained in-sight into our human life is driven to share their re-cognition. Because what is great about us is that we are not an end in ourselves, but a process-in-the making or, to cite German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, “we are something transitional; we are not only a rope, but also a bridge. We are a bridge and not an end; and being a rope, as it were, being a bridge, as it were, being not an end, we must live for something other than ourselves.” And this something other is our conscience. Gaining in-sight into and becoming aware of our conscience is as challenging as cultivating an integrally-informed awareness of “what is,” which is neither a construct, an idea or some otherworldly reality, but the very life we live. While the question has yet to be answered whether “integral” signifies indeed the next or forthcoming emergence of human consciousness, “integral” is always and already a four-quadrant or four spherical affair that cannot be reduced to a tripartite structure, as, for instance, Steve McIntosh does in his book, Integral Consciousness. Reducing “integral” to Plato's primary distinctions of the good, the true and the beautiful isn't what “integral” represents. The four primary or interdependent spheres that always and already tetra-emerge are the subjective, objective, inter-subjective and inter-objective aspects, into which our compounded, conditioned and created existence can be distinguished. Any integrally-informed design, of whatever kind, has to account for and take those different spheres into consideration, be it in regard to self, culture or world. Applying “integral' in practice necessitates that we understand it from the inside-out, because otherwise we are bound to promote a construct that, in essence, is divorced from ourselves.

“Integral” signifies a fundamental shift of human consciousness, similar to the axial age, during which, as Karl Jaspers argues, “the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently… And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today.” “Integral” doesn't represent a departure from humanity's spiritual foundations, but rather an incorporation of them in our worldly affairs. “Integral” is neither a belief-system of its own, nor a theory of everything; “integral” is a map of the mind-space of consciousness that enables us to put our different spheres of life into perspective for the benefit of all of us. Proposing a tripartite structure for an integral world federal constitution, as McIntosh does in his above mentioned book, comes at the price of excluding one of our life's sphere. “Integral” is always and already a four-dimensional affair. What McIntosh's proposal is lacking is a fourth body, in addition to his legislative, judicial and executive powers, and this body is an independent ethics committee. Ethics isn't about what is fair and just; ethics isn't about what we can and cannot do; ethics is about integrity. Ethics is what “integral” in practice ultimately stands for. Our judicial system doesn't inquire into what is ethical, but rather stipulates what is legal. Similarly, heads of state don't address the ethical dimensions of life, but rather execute their own self-defined agenda, for which people voted them into power. Likewise, the tasks of legislatures pertain to the organization of our social organism, or how we interact and function as a community of people and not to what is or isn't ethical. A social organism doesn't have a nexus agency or self, which doesn't mean, however, that it lacks an overarching or underlying principle that unifies the different aspects thereof to an integrated or an integral whole. This unifying principle is the systemic conscience that regulates the different dimensions of a social organism in the same way as our personal conscience governs our different aspects of self—our phenomenological experience or “I”; our cognitive apprehension thereof or “me”; our dialogical reality or “we” and the context we share together and inhabit as humans or “it.”

A social organism isn't a construct or a phenomenon we can reduce to two-dimensions; in other words, believing that a social organism can be reduced to “we” and “it,” or to its inter-subjective relationships and the inter-objective action-logic it is governed by, is to render it devoid of its participating members and the purpose or telos that brings them together. There is a purpose or telos to our human existence, to which we speak whenever we express ourselves through language. Similarly, each social organism is defined by a purpose. The purpose of a family is to raise children; the purpose of an academic institution is to educate; the purpose of a company is to sell its goods or services. How we raise our children, educate and socialize them into our consumer-driven life not only depends on our stage of development, but also on our socio-economic circumstances and our inter-personal relationships. Rendering our humanity or social organisms devoid of a purpose is similar to stating that a river flows randomly and, to that end, can run up or down a mountain, because, in essence, a river's goal isn't to meet the ocean, but to simply kill its time. A social organism has no nexus agency or self, as such, but that doesn't indicate that a social organism lacks subjectivity and objectivity; that a social organism, in other words, is devoid of the theosphere and the biosphere, as illustrated in the graphic below:

Ethics isn't about what we believe in, value or know; ethics isn't about science, religion, philosophy or art; ethics, fundamentally speaking, is what we are aware of in body, mind and spirit, in self, culture and the universe we live in. Promoting “integral” as a construct of its own, is to just add another bubble to our soap-opera in order to cope with our humanity-in-the-making that is deeply troubled and in utter anguish. Understanding “integral” from the inside-out necessitates that we have evolved to the construct-aware action-logic in regard to Cook-Greuter's self-development line; understanding “integral” from the inside-out doesn't mean that we must re-cognize our original face in the mirror, about which Wilber likes to write. Understanding the integral mind-map of consciousness from the inside-out requires the cultivation of awareness, which is facilitated through inquiry into how our thoughts, feelings and pictures inform and define us. Inquiry is inter-actional; inquiry is not to be confused with meditation that focuses on witnessing our thoughts, feelings and pictures. Re-cognizing these differences is what in-sight is about.

Proposing a structure for an integral world federal constitution without including an independent body of ethics is similar to reducing “integral” to the true, the good and the beautiful, which are horizontal or translative aspects of the subjective, objective, inter-subjective and inter-objective spheres of the integral mind-space of consciousness. The beautiful, good and true correlate with our first, second and third person perspective of “what is;” they are not representative of the four fundamental spheres into which our life can be distinguished—the physiosphere, biosphere, noosphere and theosphere. Failing to inquire into how integral theory informs and defines us has us believe that we are integrally-informed when, in fact, we are informed by a construct, to which we subscribe to the extent it serves us and affirms our self-identity. But, why bother to inquire—or does it matter? In-sight, after all, appears to be rather point-less in the world we live. In-sight is not the basis of a good argument, because in-sight, like ethics, doesn't prove anything. In-sight merely speaks to what we can't see, fail to take into consideration and that which lies beyond our own awareness of “what is.”

In-sight isn't a construct; it isn't empty or something that we can propagate; in-sight doesn't solve anything, because in-sight isn't decisive, legislative, judicial or executive. In-sight is the perceptual organ of consciousness; in-sight is what mind consists of and to which our language speaks. In-sight isn't something from which we can separate ourselves and while not useless, in-sight is indeed point-less. In-sight isn't derived from the dialectical relationship with “what is,” in-sight isn't a thought product and all our thinking about it won't lead to it. In-sight arises on its own accord when we allow to let be “what is.” In-sight is derived from our intrinsic wakefulness of consciousness that always and already is.