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Integral World: Exploring Theories of Everything
An independent forum for a critical discussion of the integral philosophy of Ken Wilber
(As of 2013) Elijah J. Petersen received his PhD in environmental engineering from the University of Michigan
(Ann Arbor, MI) in 2007 and then performed a postdoc in Finland under a Fulbright scholarship. He
currently works as a research scientist for the National Institute of Standards and Technology in
Washington, DC studying the potential environmental and human health effects of nanotechnology.
He has published research previously in the Journal of Integral Theory in Practice and presented a
poster at ITC 2008.
(As of 2013) Mark E. Jaruzel II is a PsyD candidate at the Michigan School of Professional Psychology expecting to graduate in April 2013 whose current research focuses on subtle energy in psychotherapy. He has studied integral philosophies for more than 15 years. He has a decade of clinical experience working with adult clients ranging in function from those with severe and persistent psychosis to those working to embody vibrant wellness. His other clinical and research interests include: dark night phenomena, spiritual emergency, nondual psychotherapy, non-symbolic consciousness, later-stage adult development, and adapting shamanic techniques for practical use in psychotherapy. Reposted with permission of the authors. Argumentum
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WHITE: Supermind |
"THIRD TIER" OR "SUPER-INTEGRAL" |
ULTRAVIOLET: Overmind | |
VIOLET: Meta-mind | |
INDIGO: Para-mind | |
TURQUOISE: Integral |
"SECOND TIER" OR "INTEGRAL" |
TEAL: Holistic |
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GREEN: Pluralistic |
"FIRST TIER" |
ORANGE: Rational |
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AMBER-ORANGE: Mythic-rational |
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AMBER: Mythic |
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RED: Magic-Mythic |
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MAGENTA: Magic |
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INFRARED/CRIMSON: Archaic |
Given the lack of data by any researcher to posit four distinct structure-stages for third tier, and the arbitrariness of reframing Aurobindo’s and Plotinus’s work as suggesting as much instead of possibly relating to state-stage development, we believe that Wilber postulating four third tier stages reflects Wilber stretching his map far beyond where any data are available. Third tier appears to us to be largely speculation despite Wilber’s strong word choices indicating high certainty in these constructs. Moreover, Wilber includes a distinct “Ego-Aware” stage in Table 2.4 of Integral Spirituality for the Loevinger/Cook-Greuter line, but evidence and information about a separate Ego-Aware stage was not described in any scholarly work by Cook-Greuter that we are aware of, and when this stage was mentioned, it was simply another name for the construct-aware stage (Cook-Greuter, 1999, 2001; Cook-Greuter and Soulen, 2007; Ingersoll and Cook- Greuter, 2007). This raises some questions: what is the threshold of evidence that Wilber requires for “data” to be included in his map? How carefully does he read the existing literature before doing theory? Lastly, to what extent is data stretched to validate other components of his particular enactment of AQAL?
This discussion is not intended to indicate that second tier is itself a really “real” thing, because it was formulated, somewhat arbitrarily, by Graves (1970) and subsequently appropriated and reified in the integral jargon. The proposition of a third tier requires a second tier, which we question as a potentially useful construct in the first place. One danger of the acceptance of second tier is that it implicitly privileges integral structures above and beyond just being one stage higher. Even if we accept that it is prudent and auspicious to cluster stages into tiers, developmental researchers have suggested a range of different tier configurations that are at considerable variance with a pre-integral, integral, post-integral framing that is implicit in Wilber’s three tier model (see for example Miller & Cook-Greuter, 1990). Furthermore, to our knowledge, the speculation that second tier is logarithmically more effective than first tier (Beck & Cowan, 2003) is entirely untested, and is likely not even testable.
Integral Life Practice

One of the hallmarks of integral life practice is the postulation that cross-training, specifically doing practices in body, mind, spirit, and shadow, unequivocally offers unique synergistic benefits to practitioners (Wilber, 2006; Wilber, Patton, Leonard, & Morelli, 2008). They state, “This transformational cross-training accelerates growth, increases the likelihood of healthy development, and vastly deepens one’s capacity for transformational living (Wilber, 2006, p. 202),” and “The 4 Core Modules simultaneously activate several powerful synergies, between body and mind, spirit and body, shadow (the unconscious) and spirit. Additional modules can further intensify these benefits (Wilber et al. 2008, p. 22-23).” While neither of us would discourage any person from initiating growth-oriented practices in any of these areas when appropriate, we are skeptical of the evidence that supports this claim. There are some readily apparent advantages to shadow work with some personal lines of development (i.e., emotional, interpersonal), but in what ways these different practices are synergistic has not been fully fleshed out to our knowledge. For example, does this mean that doing cognitive growth work in perspective taking would help improve weight lifting? At this point with the possibility of interesting but largely anecdotal evidence available and the possible truthfulness of a proposed synergistic effect, we believe this topic would be a ripe area for future research and data collection. However, we are agnostic about what the potential benefits would be and how the different core modules (and auxiliary models) would influence each other.
Along these lines Walsh asks in a recent article, “Which specific capacities and developmental lines are enhanced by which practices in which people under what conditions?” (Walsh, 2009). While Wilber seems to suggest is that ILP is likely to be universally beneficial, the scientific literature is more mixed. A number of recent studies have called into question even the fact that exercise itself is universally beneficial. Karavirta et al. (2010) found that some individuals do not respond favorably to weight training, some do not respond favorably to endurance exercises, and some do not respond favorably to either weight training or endurance exercises. Timmons (2010) found that exercise training outcomes were highly variable and unpredictable. Additionally, there is clinical literature that reports serious adverse events from meditation practice (Yorston, 2001). Anecdotal clinical lore also suggests that there are some individuals who are not yet ready to benefit from serious psychological/shadow work.
Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that ILP practice may not be the panacea that Wilber seems to imply. In fact, for a significant minority of individuals it may have little benefit and for a small minority of individuals it may even have an adverse effect. We have heard very little serious discussion of these issues within the integral community. Overall we take the above to be an accurate reflection of the currently available literature, and thus find the claims about the synergistic effects of ILP to be highly premature.
Structure-stage growth and meditation
One common claim in Wilber’s work is that meditation has been proven to foster structure stage growth. For example, “… considerable research has demonstrated that the more you experience meditative or contemplative states of consciousness, the faster you develop through the stages of consciousness. … For example, whereas around 2% of the adult population is at second tier, after four years of meditation, that 2% goes to 38% in the meditation group. This is truly staggering research (Wilber 2006, p. 196-197).” “On the basis of the research to date, I believe we already have enough data to answer: Meditation can profoundly accelerate the unfolding of a given line of development…(Wilber 2000, p. 639) (italics his).”
Conversely, this quote by Walsh and Shapiro is much more humble about this linkage. “Meditative disciplines claim to facilitate maturation to these kinds of (advanced) stages and beyond, and growing research offers initial support (Walsh & Shapiro, 2006).” Walsh more fully delineates what is not known about the relationship between meditation and structure-stage, “The first project is to identify precisely which qualities of heart and mind—or more technically, which specific capacities, states, and developmental lines—are enhanced by contemplative practices? Of course, this project will eventually turn out to be far more complex. Eventually the question will become: “Which specific capacities and developmental lines are enhanced by which practices in which people under what conditions?” (Walsh, 2009).
While we are uncertain where the quoted results by Wilber come from for the 2% to 38% change to second tier after four years of meditation, the one study that most closely matches Wilber’s description is described by Alexander and Langer (1990). It is important to point out that they give the timeframe as 11 years and that the original sample of mediators had 9% already scoring at Loevinger’s highest stages to begin with. This would seem to indicate that Wilber’s four year claim is unsupported, the percentage he gives is inaccurate, and that there are some very reasonable questions that could be raised about how representative or generalizable the study might be. We were surprised to find that many of these criticisms had already been raised by Andrews (2006) though we are unaware of any replies to his concerns.
We are also aware that a variation of the above research was published in a peer reviewed journal by Chandler, Alexander, and Heaton (2005). While the study reports significant differences between the group of meditators and the controls, it reports a mean move of about 0.7 stages in a decade. This is a far more modest claim, namely meditate regularly for a decade and move almost one structural stage. More specifically the average developmental stage of the individuals in the meditation group started at 6.1 (Conscientious or Orange altitude) and after a decade of regular meditation increased to 6.8 (still Conscientious or Orange altitude but getting close to Individualistic or Green altitude). This is strikingly different than the way in which meditation is portrayed by Wilber. Additionally, drilling down on the details, we note that the meditation group only had 34 participants that were included in the final data analysis at the end and all of them had been students at Maharishi University of Management. It may be that the university curriculum as a whole played the predominant role that caused the developmental change, or that the average person who is inclined to attend Maharishi University of Management is already very interested in personal growth and on a dedicated trajectory of trying to develop structurally anyway. Regardless, we are of the opinion that a single study of 34 people is a highly valuable starting point, but too small to serve as the final word on which to base giving personal and psychological growth advice to the public at large.
Wilber-Combs Matrix
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One new and intriguing hypothesis described in Integral Spirituality (Wilber, 2006) and Consciousness Explained Better (Combs, 2009) is the Wilber-Combs matrix (or the Combs-Wilber matrix). This constructpostulates the existence of distinct structure-stages and state-stages as opposed to Wilber’s earlier models wherein psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual followed centaur (or another “second tier” equivalent) (i.e., Wilber, 1999). Again, while we find this a very interesting hypothesis that in many ways passes truthfulness examinations (i.e., it seems intuitively accurate), the idea was never fully explored or tested. We have a number of questions about this arrangement. Is there evidence for people stabilized at all of the different state-stages at all of the structure stages (i.e., archaic/infrared and non-dual awake)? Are levels of state-stage familiarity needed for growth to various structure-stages? While there was some philosophical discussion of authoritarian Zen monks who have lots of behaviors reminiscent of amber but are non-dual awakened, there was little additional discussion, and no empirical evidence to our knowledge, of the Wilber-Combs matrix hypothesis that was given directly by Wilber (or Combs). Despite this, our impression is that the Wilber-Combs matrix was uncritically treated as being inherently true in many integral circles since its first mention. We are aware that there has subsequently been a test of this hypothesis that has shown initial support of its claims (Martin, 2010) and we applaud such cutting edge investigations of the claims of Wilberian integral theory, but we note that consensus in integral circles appeared to have been formed well before any initial evidence was in.
Suggestions for Improvement
Given what we believe are some consistent patterns of less than adequate scholarship by Wilber, which are at times repeated in the integral community at large, we would like to offer some suggestions which we believe will help improve the quality of scholarship in the integral community and facilitate greater acceptance of integral scholarship elsewhere in academia. For the most part, these less than adequate patterns are not meeting the criterion of integral scholarship by failing even to meet the standards at lower levels (predominately modernist demands for evidence).
One important adjustment we recommend is the much more judicious use of language to differentiate between hypotheses and other truth claims that are extensively validated in the literature. It is our impression that sometimes hypotheses (i.e., third tier) are carelessly lumped together with other findings that have a wealth of scholarly support (i.e., the first few stages of child development) with regards to the strength of the certainty used to describe such constructs. This encouragement of various levels of precision resembles different standards of evidence required for court cases in the United States (preponderance of evidence versus proof beyond a shadow of a doubt). By using more care with word choices, this will also alert other integral scholars to topic areas where additional research may help refine important components of the metatheory or encourage new applications of existing theory. For example, we believe, as described earlier, that the Wilber-Combs matrix is still a very tentative proposal, and we wholeheartedly encourage investigations such as the ongoing work by Terri O’Fallon and colleagues to flesh out alternative models to the relationships between structure-stages and state-stages (O’Fallon, 2010). This cycle between honesty and clarity about the areas of strong evidence versus tentative expectations and additional research to confirm (or refute) those less established pieces will help the theory to continue to grow toward more beauty, truth and goodness.
Along these lines, another one of the disappoints we have when reading Wilber’s work is the entire lack of discussions around what parts of the model may have weaknesses or pieces of reality that appear to contradict the current version of the model. Instead, readers only discover the limitations of previous versions of AQAL when the next version is ready which contains solutions to those limitations. We worry that this current style of process may subtly enact a version of AQAL within the integral community that either has a wait and see what Wilber says next bias or a subtle bias to not even explore alternate enactments that might better mesh with points of tension within Wilber’s most recent works. We think this runs the risk of integral scholasticism or argumentum ad Wilberiam. While there may be a strong motivation in a theory of everything to exclude parts that may not appear to work, as if they would undermine the whole endeavor, this does not strike us as very integral. We also believe that this construct (integral metatheory), like the manifest world and evolution itself, continues to grow and expand and refine in a recursive fashion, and that such discussions would bring more humility, vulnerability, and a sense of “being in progress” to the model that would make it more alive and active, instead of being the current, perfected (read ‘official’) version. We would prefer this grittier, rawer version, with some components too that currently appear well polished. We believe acknowledging the limitations of the current design would be more intellectually honest and transparent while also fostering a more rapid evolution of the integral endeavor by directing attention to the pieces of metatheory that are perceived to be the most in need of additional refinement (or dramatic alterations).
Two additional relatively straightforward suggested modifications to Wilber’s recent writing (i.e., Integral Spirituality and Integral Life Practice) are to more consistently support validity claims with references and to more thoroughly flesh out novel philosophical concepts or constructs in the model. Both of these books appeared to us as being more popularized forms, in contrast to the highly referenced and denser earlier books such as Atman Project (Wilber, 1999). While the avoidance of extensive citations does make these books more available to a broader audience, we unfortunately find that it will make them less likely to be accepted by the academic community because it does not follow the basic modernist rules of providing evidence/references, and thorough arguments for truth claims. We have found, as described above, that is was very difficult to understand the evidence for some of the claims made, which causes us to be more skeptical about all of the truth claims made. One more intriguing issue along these lines is how to handle making orienting generalizations for meta-theories in the midst of ongoing academic disagreements within a field. Given that some of these disagreements may stem from multiple developmental level conflicts, resolutions should not be expected and some perspectives will absolutely be more accurate than others. Making developmental distinctions about which pieces of arguments are true and which partial is part and parcel of integral scholarship. What we would like to recommend is transparency in this endeavor, which will likely include explicit developmental assessments of disagreements in the field, so that other integral researchers may more readily follow the process of how such judgments were made. This does not mean the “green” resolution of giving everyone a place at the discussion, nor does it mean excluding those voices that are inconvenient, but it does include transparent explanations of why certain perspectives were excluded as well as why some perspectives were given greater weight than others.
References
Alexander, C. N. and Langer, E. J., (Eds.) (1990). Higher Stages of Human Development. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Andrews, J. (2006, June 14). Ken Wilber on Meditation: A Baffling Babbling of Unending Nonsense (Ver. 2.0). Retrieved from www.strippingthegurus.com [reposted on: http://www.integralworld.net/andrews1.html]
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Cook-Greuter, S. R. (1999). Postautonous Ego Development: A Study of Its Nature and Measurement. (Doctoral dissertation). Harvard University.
Cook-Greuter, S. R. (2000). Mature Ego Development: A Gateway to Ego Transcendence? Journal of Adult Development, 7(4), 227-240.
Cook-Greuter, S. R. (2005). Ego development, nine levels of increasing embrace. Retrieved from http://www.cook-greuter.com/.
Cook-Greuter, S. R. and Soulen, J. (2007). The Developmental Perspective in Integral Counseling. Journal of Counseling and Values, 51(3), 180-192.
Chandler, H. M., Alexander, C. N. & Heaton. (2005). The Transcendental Meditation Program and Postconventional Self-Development: A 10-year Longitudinal Study. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 17, 93–121.
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Ingersoll, R. E. and Zeitler, D. M. (2010). Integral Psychotherapy: Inside Out/Outside In. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Karavirta, L., Häkkinen, K., Kauhanen, A., Arija-Blázquez, A., Sillanpää, E., Rinkinen, N., & Häkkinen A. (2010). Individual Responses to Combined Endurance and Strength Training In Older Adults. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 3(3), p. 484-490.
Martin, J. (2010). Ego Development Stage Does Not Predict Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience. (Doctoral dissertation). California Institute of Integral Studies.
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Timmons, J. A. (2010). Variability in training-induced skeletal muscle adaptation. Journal of Applied Physiology. 110(3), p. 846-853.
Walsh, R. (2009). The State of the Integral Enterprise Part II: Key Ideas for a World at Risk. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. 4(3), p. 13-22.
Walsh, R. & Shapiro, S. L. (2006). The Meeting of Meditative Disciplines and Western Psychology: A Mutually Enriching Dialogue. American Psychologist. 61(3), p. 227-239.
Wilber, K. (2006). Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World. Boston, MA: Integral Books.
Wilber, K. (2000). The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, Inc.
Wilber, K., Patten, T., Leonard, A., & Morelli, M. (2008). Integral Life Practice: A 21st - Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening. Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, Inc.
Yorston, G. E. (2001). Mania precipitated by meditation: a case report and literature review. Mental health, religion & culture, 4(2) p. 209-213.