Ken Wilber's Integral Psychology discussion Part 1

In 2019 I've made it a goal to try and read more again. While my success hasn't been altogether consistent I have certainly read some interesting books this year. Most recently I've been working my way through Ken Wilber's Integral Psychology and it's given me some real food for thought that I'll be discussing in this post. For those unfamiliar with Wilber, he's a writer in Integral Theory and Transpersonal Psychology. What this means is that Wilber aims to take what he deems valid from every framework of thought imaginable from Developmental Psychology to Mahayana Buddhism and combine them into an overarching, integral understanding. Anyone interested in an introduction to Wilber should probably read his 1996 work A Brief History of Everything as I did before moving onto the work in discussion here. I should make it clear that this post is in no way intended to be a review but a surface summary of what I've taken from the book and perhaps something that might be of interest to anyone totally new to Wilber. I'll also be dividing my summary into three posts, in accordance with the three parts of the book.

In Integral Psychology Wilber makes use of countless sources from both East and West with the aim of drawing out a complete model of human consciousness and it's development within both the individual and on a collective level. Early on Wilber contends that - with the exception of the modern West - the most important thinkers of every civilization (he gives the examples of Plotinus and Sri Aurobindo here) have recognized a Great Nest of Being that incorporates different levels of consciousness in a very similar way generally categorized as Matter (physics), Life (biology), Mind (psychology), Soul (theology), Spirit (mysticism) and Spirit in a Non-Dual form. Wilber makes it clear that while these categories can be simplified or broken down further, he considers the version presented to be the result of strong cross-cultural agreement over thousands of years. It should be noted that while Wilber uses the word "levels' in reference to the qualitative distinctness of the Great Nest he also uses the word "structure" to emphasize the different levels as holistic patterns and describes them as "waves" to avoid the misunderstanding that the degrees of the Great Nest are rigidly seperate from one another.

Wilber then proceeds to use the Great Nest to demonstrate his concept of holarchy. Wilber defines each level as a holon, something that is a whole within itself but also part of a greater whole. An atom is whole in itself but also a part of a molecule, a molecule is whole in itself but also part of a cell which is part of an organism and upwards. Each level transcends yet includes the previous level and and this results in Spirit, the highest level of Wilber's Great Nest, being both transcendent and immanent. None of this of course, would be acceptable to anyone who subscribes to the Scientific Materialist paradigm. If you are looking for a book that raises evidence against that worldview in the form of NDE or ESP research for example then this is the wrong one as Wilber simply states the existence of transpersonal states of being matter of factly and doesn't attempt to provide proof. I don't say this as a criticism, rather that it seems likely that Wilber intended the book for people who already believed in or were at least very open to these ideas.

Wilber asserts that through this model of consciousness flow developmental lines of which there are around two dozen. These include moral, cognitive, creative and spiritual lines (meditative stages and religious faith are both listed as examples of this). One thing I found really interesting here is that while all developmental lines always pass through the same waves of the Great Nest, they do not do so at the same rate and progress at different rates for every individual. Hence it's possible to have for somone to be at a highly spiritually developed whilst being at a much lower level of moral development. Maybe this explains why a lot of spiritual guru types turn out to be sex abusers or financial exploiters of their followers. Then again, a lot of them were probably just charlatans to begin with.

Next, Wilber discusses the self that moves along these developmental lines and he divides this into two, the first being an experienced "I" which he calls the proximate self and the second being the "me" part of the self which he calls the distal self with the two of them forming the overall self. Wilber's notion of the self is developmental as it proceeds through the Great Nest. What is considered the subject "I" of one phase in an individual's  psychological development becomes an "object" in the next phase with Wilber stating that according to the mystics of every spiritual tradition that this process with the realization of the subject's oneness with pure consciousness. It is the proximate self, according to Wilber, that undergoes consciousness evolution and that navigates through the waves of the Great Nest of Being.

This discussion of the self allows Wilber to break down this model of consciousness development into smaller fragments and this includes a considerable discussion and comparison of the works and theories of various developmental psychologists such as Robert Kegan, Jane Loevinger, Clare Graves and Don Beck (whose Spiral Dynamics are discussed more in the next chapter). I don't claim to really know anything about developmental psychology so I can't say if the ideas of all the theorists mentioned (and there are a lot of them) line up with Wilber's views as well as he seems to think or if their theories enjoy the prominence in developmental psychology that he asserts they do.

In the last section of part one, Wilber outlines the first and second tier of Spiral Dynamics, a system that allows him to colour categorize different perspectives that he describes as not only phases that a self passes through but as permanent capacities and coping strategies that can be activated whenever a situation that requires them presents itself.

First Tier:

Beige. Archaic-Instinctual: Wilber describes this as a basic level of survival where food, water and sex take priority with the distinct self barely being awakened.

Purple: Magical-Animistic. Described as having animistic thinking with good and bad spirits and with kinship and lineage used for political links. Atomistic rather than holistic.

Red: Power Gods. This phase is considered to be the first emergence of a self distinct from the tribe.  Wilber describes this phase as powerful, egocentric and heroic. The basis of feudal empires and domination without remorse.

Blue: Conformist Rule. This level is defined by conformist rule based on an absolutist and unquestioned code of conduct and is the typical basis of ancient neighbours.

Orange: Scientific Achievement. A level at which an individual escapes the herd mentality and seeks truth through experimentation and rationalistic, mechanistic explanations of reality. Achievement orientated and focused on economic gain and manipulation of earth's resources.

Green: The Sensitive Self. A level at which the human spirit seeks to free itself from greed and one that values the earth. Multicultural, relativistic and egalitarian. Subjective and nonlinear thinking.

2nd Tier:

Yellow: Integrative. Wilber describes this level as recogizing life as a kaleidoscope of holarchies, systems and forms. Egalitarianism is recognized but so are natural degrees of excellence. Knowledge and competency are valued above rank, power or status.

Turquoise: Holistic. At the turquoise level a universal holistic syste emerges where holons unite feelings with knowledge and all levels of the Great Nest of Being are interwoven into one conscious system.

Perhaps because we don't have any living examples of second tier societies, I find myself feeling uncertain about what they might look like in practice. I've also never read Beck and Cowan's work so I don't know if Wilber's version of spiral dynamics presented here is identical or not.

At the end of this chapter (also the end of part one of the book), Wilber asserts that if an integral psychology is ever to exist in practice that the rupture between premodernity and modernity must be resolved and western scientific materialism will have to give way. In part two I'll attempt to summarize what Wilbur has to say about the transition from premodernity to modernity and what he believes needs to be integrated from both in order to create an integral psychology.