Introducing Ken Wilber

Summary of Wilber’s Integrative Concepts

Ken Wilber’s integrative concepts are summarized here and are developed and explained through the rest of the book.

•      Wilber has examined hundreds of different worldviews—how the world looks from different perspectives. He argues that these different worldviews all have something to teach us. He has worked to tease apart these conflicting points of view in order to incorporate the parts that are “on target” and discard parts that are off the mark.
•       Wilber says, “Everybody is right”—but only partly right. When we were in school, we knew that a person had to be quite smart to score 100 % on a true-false test. Wilber points out a person would also have to be quite smart to score zero on a true-false test. Wilber says, “Nobody is smart enough to be 100 % wrong.” So, Wilber builds his world philosophy from the “accurate parts” of many diverse worldviews. Chapter 22 includes discussion of this concept in terms of developmental levels.
•      Wilber has surveyed the history of human development from two interacting points of view: First, he considers the psychological and spiritual development of each individual person in the course of their lifetime. Second, he considers the evolution of human societies from prehistory to the present. Wilber points out that the developmental stages of societies as a whole are similar to the sequence of developmental stages for each individual. Of course, any one individual may follow this developmental sequence to a stage that is either less developed or more developed than the average of their society. And each of us navigates through the basic structures of consciousness in our own unique way—the process is fluid and highly individual. This evidence is presented in Part II.
•      Wilber views psychology and spirituality as being on the same spectrum—the spectrum of consciousness. He follows psychological development—both exterior and interior—from infancy to adulthood, including adult growth stages that may, or may not, be achieved by a particular person. Wilber then goes on to complete the spectrum by describing the spiritual experiences and levels that are available as “structural potentials” for all people. He points out that the spectrum of psychological stages and the spectrum of spiritual stages shade into one another like the hues of a rainbow. This is the subject of Parts II and III.
•      Ken Wilber brought forth his original concept of the “Four Quadrants” to account for the realities of interior and exterior, individual and collective. This revolutionary concept includes everything in our understanding, and reveals that all one-quadrant approaches are only partial truths. The details are presented in Chapters 2 and 4.
•      The concept of quadrants is intrinsically related to the concept of holons. The Kosmos is structured as hierarchies of development. For example, the human body is composed of organs and tissues, which are composed of cells, which are composed of molecules, which are composed of atoms. The elements of these hierarchies are a whole at one level, and are a part of the next higher level. Thus, each element is a whole/part. The whole/parts are called holons. This is a very profound and far-reaching concept that is developed in Chapter 3.
•      The All Quadrants, All Levels (AQAL) concept is a three-dimensional grid for organizing and understanding all types of knowledge. When a body of knowledge is placed in this unifying framework, the result is integral knowledge. Some examples are: integral psychology, integral politics, integral feminism, integral medicine, integral law, integral business, integral education, integral yoga, and integral spirituality. Integral applications are discussed in Part IV.

     It is my expectation that readers will finish this book with knowledge of the Wilber-4, or AQAL, model and a foundation for reading Wilber’s original works.