Integral Consciousness and Academia

Presentation at the 6th Spanish Integral Conference

Barcelona, October 2008

Paul Marshall

(Paul2marshall@hotmail.com)

Introduction

At present, the integral movement is very much outside mainstream culture and

mainstream academia. This is perhaps to be expected as it is still relatively

young. Although Wilber’s Integral Model has been developing for over thirty

years now, its first mature version, with the presentation of the AQAL map, only

emerged in 1995 with the publication of SES. Even more recently, it has

expanded to its next, more expansive and developed post-metaphysical stage

and outline of an integral methodological pluralism.

Nevertheless, over the last two years there are encouraging signs that the

integral movement is moving into a new, more diverse, expansive and

legitimising phase. Such an expansion of the integral movement, both informally

within the general culture and more formally within academia, is important for

several reasons, I believe. First, it offers individuals a comprehensive map with

which to understand self, others and world, as well as offering an integral

practice to enable greater embodiment of integral consciousness, greater

freedom and fullness.

Second, it offers society and humanity as a whole a sophisticated framework

with which to understand and help solve the complex problems that have

emerged together with the ever-increasing globalisation and

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interconnectedness of our world. It is a truly global model that includes, for

example, all the different worldviews that are held by different individuals and

communities, brings together insights and knowledge from all the different

cultures and eras, and makes room for every methodology used to disclose

reality. This global vision has emerged just as the world is moving into a new

global, planetary era and offers a new way in which to address the new

problems that the new era brings forth.

A new phase for the integral movement and integral consciousness

There are several ways in which integral consciousness has been gaining

ground and credibility in the last couple of years. First, there are the recent

changes at integral institute which, after several phases, some seemingly quite

difficult, appears to be coalescing into a more robust organisation. Wilber now

dedicates most of his time to writing again, remaining just a consultant at I-I

rather than its active President, and the new management has just launched

Integral Life, which acts as a kind of virtual community with emphasis on the

promotion of both theory and practice.

Second, in addition to Ken Wilber’s books, there is a growing number of writings

by professionals and academics who are fleshing out more detailed analyses in

their particular fields (e.g. the very recent Integral Life Practice book, André

Marquis’ and Elliot Ingersoll’s work on Integral psychotherapy and Sean

Hargens and Michael Zimmerman’ Integral Ecology, in press) as well as by

those who are constructively critical of Wilber’s model (e.g. Steve McIntosh’s

Integral Consciousness (2007) – which I will discuss in a bit more detail later).

Third, by people who are actively applying them in real world settings like Gail

Hochachka’s work on international development, Laura Divine and Joanne Hunt

in Integral Coaching, and, in human organisations, Brian Robertson’s

Holacracy, Torbert’s Action Inquiry and many different leadership model.

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And finally, in physical and online salons throughout the world; in national

organisations like the Spanish Integral Association and transnational ones like

Integral Europe that is creating a focal point from which to advertise integral

events and connect people; in Integral Centres like the Boulder Centre for

Integral Living and another in Santa Monica; and in conferences such as this

one and the ground-breaking Integral Theory Conference held in August of this

year in San Francisco. That conference is part of a general move to legitimate

integral theory within academia, which will be the main focus of the rest of this

presentation.

All of these developments are still in their initial phases but bode well for the

integral consciousness and suggest a new phase in its overall development. I

will concentrate here on the developments within academia.

Integral Consciousness in Academia

First, I will briefly discuss the importance of establishing integral consciousness

and integral theory within academia and how the atmosphere in academia is

now more conducive to its integration. Then I will outline some of the obstacles

to integration and acceptance, followed by a look at what progress has been

made already. Finally, I’ll give a brief explanation of the new method of integral

research and consider a few further developments related to integral theory and

academia.

An idea will not be taken seriously on a wide a scale in today’s world without

practical applications that are shown to be effective and abundant evidence to

support it. Universities play a vital role in providing such evidence and critically

examining and challenging new ideas. Moreover, of great importance is what

Ken Wilber said yesterday in response to one of the questions during the

teleconference: that the only system capable of promoting an integral

consciousness on a large scale is the education system. To a large extent it

was the education system that moved ‘green’ consciousness, in the West, from

2% thirty years ago to 25% today. And it will be able to do so with integral

consciousness only if integral theory first becomes integrated in academia.

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Like every other organisation, academia is embedded in the dominant culture

which operates within the confines of specific worldviews and these dominant

worldviews - at present modern and post-modern worldviews - very often

determine what questions are asked, what research is funded and what

evidence is taken seriously. For something like the integral worldview, or at

least significant aspects of it, to become accepted, the time has to be right. If

the behaviourism and logical empiricism of the 1950’s, for example, dominated

in academia, then there would have very little likelihood of acceptance.

But there are many signs that the time is now more propitious. The modernist

worldview and its purely quantitative, third person, right hand quadrants

approach to methodology, has taken a battering from postmodernism over the

last thirty years or so, which has introduced a more interior, left-hand quadrant

qualitative approach to methodology. However, thirty years has been enough to

show its limitations (e.g. its absolute relativism) and the natural dialectic has

moved from a paradigm clash between these two antagonistic, either/or

perspectives and methodologies to the solid emergence, in literally the last

three or four years, of a both/and, mixed methods methodology based on an

underlying philosophy of pragmatism. This approach eschews dogmatism and

selects those methods, whether qualitative or quantitative, that best serve to

answer the specific research question. Mixed methods and pragmatism have

much in common with an integral approach and integral research, which

emerged just two years ago. Integral research is an extension of mixed

methods approach, which is explicitly grounded in integral theory and integral

methodological pluralism.

As a result of these paradigm changes, some research areas that were

previously out of bounds are now experiencing an upsurge of research and

have even become trendy. These all involve interiority and subjective

experience – the legacy of advocates of the qualitative approach - and include,

for example, spirituality (e.g. spiritual emotions like awe, elevation and gratitude;

states like flow); the nature of consciousness (which has become a major hot

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topic) and meditation (where numerous and rigorous studies have made it

virtually mainstream).

There remain some very controversial notions like developmental stages that

are not generally permitted outside developmental psychology – and has been

challenged within developmental psychology for the last couple of decades of

postmodernism - but even there some progress has been made recently.

In addition to these paradigm changes within academia, the rapidly increasing

complexity of life is screaming out for a new, more global and integrative

approach, and integral theory fits that bill nicely.

Integral in Alternative and Mainstream Universities

There are currently two ways in which integral is being introduced into

universities. One is through alternative universities like the CIIS, JFK, Naropa

and Fielding Institute – all in the USA. Here there are programmes which

include integral theory and practice or which have programmes devoted

exclusively to integral theory (e.g. JFK and Fielding). The other is through

individuals introducing integral components within their research theses and

dissertations at mainstream universities. In the US there have been 55 integral-

inspired dissertations and theses between 1987 and 2007. I have no figures for

the UK or Spain or the rest of Europe but there are no doubt a fair number.

All this is important, I believe, since it is likely that the more aspects of integral

worldview and theory become mainstream, the more impact it will have on the

general culture – especially through its eventual integration in the education

system.

Obstacles to legitimising integral theory in academia

Arguably the biggest obstacle to legitimising integral in academia is the

equation integral = Ken Wilber. At the ITC in August, one of the panels

discussed that very topic. Many of us attracted to the integral worldview have

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felt that the integral movement has been a little too dependent on the figure of

Ken Wilber with very little critical debate within the movement and within I-I.

There has been critical discussion in Frank Visser’s site, Integral World, but this

has not always been constructive, by either side. Critical debate is one of the

essential requirements of academic discourse and the birth of integral theory

outside of the academic community, along with Wilber’s semi-academic, semi-

popular style, often without sufficient evidence, has meant a lack of such

debate. The ITC is an important move in the right direction, as are the other

moves to legitimise integral theory in academia that will be discussed below.

Forman and Hargens (2008), the organisers of the ITC, believe that Wilber

needs to be decoupled from Integral Theory and state that that was one of the

major aims of the conference. The only previous big US conference, held in

1997, was specifically about Ken Wilber’s work whereas this 1st biennial

conference was about integral theory. It included many important constructive

critics of Wilber’s work: Bill Torbert (who calls Wilber’s quadrants the ‘Flat Four’

and his territories the ‘Deep Four’), Sean Kelly, Steve McIntosh, Bonnita Roy

and Mark Edwards.

I think that such a decoupling or loosening is important, for several reasons.

While it is doubtful that such a radically different worldview and philosophy

could have been created within academia, and a creative maverick like Wilber

was probably inevitable to produce his huge synthesis and model, in order to

enter academia there are certain basic norms and requirements. First of all,

mavericks and, especially, those perceived as gurus, are not looked upon kindly

in academia. Second, a movement with one undisputed figurehead is not likely

to get a hearing. Third, abundant evidence is needed and Wilber often does not

provide enough by academic standards. Finally, there are certain norms that

need to be followed. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (1999), the author of flow,

discusses what is necessary for a new creative idea to become accepted in

academia. Important among these are access to a knowledge domain,

willingness to perform by the rules and the ability to convince the ‘gatekeepers’

of the field of the virtue the idea. Sean Esbjörn Hargens’ efforts, discussed

below, have already made several important steps forward in this direction.

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What is needed, says Hargens (2008), is to find a way to “honour our great

debt” to Wilber and at the same time “transcend and include him”, “situate him

in such a way that actually facilitates his own vision”.

Loosening the Equation Integral = Ken Wilber (1)

This can be done primarily through a loosening of the exclusive association on

integral with Ken Wilber, and one way to do so is to place Wilber within a larger

context. This has been done by one of the ITC presenters and constructive

critics, Steve McIntosh, in his recent book Integral Consciousness and the

Future of Evolution (2007). He discusses the ‘founders of integral philosophy’,

outlining an intellectual and developmental history of the integral worldview,

seeing Wilber’s model as the latest expression of this new worldview. I think this

is a very useful way of viewing integral consciousness as it shows how integral

consciousness has emerged gradually, through many different avenues.

Michael Murphy (1998) also outlines a very similar integral history, also placing

Wilber as its latest proponent. He calls this new ‘integral’ worldview

‘evolutionary panentheism’. Panentheism (not to be confused with pantheism,

which sees God as immanent or synonymous with Nature /the Universe) sees

the divine as both immanent and transcendent to the universe. This new

worldview essentially means says Murphy, quoting Lovejoy (1936), the

“‘temporalisation of the Great Chain of Being’ by which the manifest world with

all its hierarchies was conceived ‘not as the inventory but the program of

nature’” (Murphy 1998, p. 56 – embedded quotes are of Arthur Lovejoy).

Wilber’s integral vision follows this worldview, but placed within a

postmetaphysical framework.

Both Murphy and McIntosh point to the same philosophical pioneers of integral,

each offering their unique contributions: Hegel (who observed that

consciousness develops through stages and explicated the dialectic process

whereby conflicts are negated and preserved - Wilber’s transcend and include);

Bergson (who described evolution as a creative process and gave the first

spiritual interpretation of the findings of evolutionary science); Alfred North

Whitehead (who claimed that all outsides have an inside and that both evolve

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together, as well as seeing evolution as being guided by ‘gentle persuasion

through love’); Teilhard de Chardin (who saw complexity and consciousness

as emerging simultaneously as exterior and interior expressions of evolution as

well as developing the notion of spheres or evolutionary thresholds –

physiosphere, biosphere and noosphere); Sri Aurobindo (who was the first

great realised contemplative to synthesise the findings of modern evolutionary

science with the timeless revelation of enlightenment as well as giving a

phenomenology of higher structures of consciousness); and Jean Gebser (who

outlined a series of hierarchically organised worldviews from the stone age to

the emerging integral worldview).

[Note: McIntosh also includes the developmental psychologist Clare Graves

(due not so much to the data he collected, which was limited, but to his

interpretation of the data, especially his grasp of the systemic, dialectical nature

of development) and also Jürgen Habermas and James Mark Baldwin. Wilber

also explicitly discusses some integral pioneers in Psicología Integral (1999),

highlighting these last two. Wilber considers Baldwin the foremost modern

integral pioneer, the great founder of developmental psychology who saw

consciousness as evolving through universal, cross-cultural stages and outlined

developmental stages in all quadrants and almost all-levels! Habermas, while

outlining only three stages, has done so in all quadrants – his objective,

subjective and intersubjective ‘worlds’].

This broad history of integral pioneers in philosophy – who in essence address

the unity of evolution and spirituality and evolution’s directionality – also

connects to a larger, contemporary network of individuals and communities that

embrace some form of evolutionary spirituality. These include people like, to

name just a few, Andrew Cohen and WIE magazine (now called Enlighten Next)

and Michael Dowd (2007). Closely related as well are agnostic evolutionaries

and those who give a less explicitly spiritual interpretation to evolution, like for

example Robert Wright (Non-Zero, 2000) and John Stewart (Evolution’s Arrow,

2000, Evolutionary Manifesto, 2008). They all emphasise that the universe has

a direction and purpose and stress the importance of humanity’s role as co-

creators in the process of evolution. Although they are not within academia,

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they represent a growing community that will help to spread elements of a more

positive and integral worldview.

So Wilber’s model can be seen as the latest expression of integral

consciousness. Nevertheless, his expression is clearly the most complete, most

comprehensive and most coherent to date, one which not only brings together

all of these previous, pioneering insights but also an enormous amount of other

premodern, modern and postmodern knowledge and findings. He has managed

to do this through his own unique map that acts as a fully blown world

philosophy. Furthermore, he has recently extended that map to embrace all

existing methodologies, an IMP which would seem a promising wedge into

academia.

Loosening the Equation Integral = Ken Wilber (2)

Alongside this broader configuration of pre- or non-AQAL visions, a second,

more specific way to loosen this equation, is to ‘democratise’ AQAL integral

theory and create a ‘lineage’ of scholar practitioners. This is what Sean Hardens

(2008a, 2008b), especially, is concentrating on. If the integral movement is

going to become a social movement, it is not possible for just one person to

create it – a combination of a broader movement within general culture,

together with a specific body of knowledge and group of scholar-practitioners

within academia is necessary. The concrete moves that have been made in the

last three or four years, in the United States, to legitimise integral within

academia, to create, in other words, a solid lower right quadrant within the

academic world, will now be discussed.

The building of a lower right quadrant in academia

Sean Hardens (2008b) sees four main pillars that are needed for the

construction of a solid foundation for AQAL to gain acceptance and

respectability within academia – and a great deal of progress has been made

already on all four.

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The first is the publication of an academic, peer-reviewed journal. The Journal

of Integral Theory and Practice, originally called AQAL journal, was first

published in 2006. The main editor is Osborn Hardens and it is linked to the

Integral Institute. This is complemented by another academic, peer-reviewed

journal, Integral Review, which is online and biannual and began in 2005.

Second, the creation of accredited academic programmes. At present there

are three centres offering such programmes. At the John F. Kennedy University

there is now both an accredited one-year post-graduate certificate (2006) in

Integral Theory and a Masters (2007). The former doubles as the first year of

the latter. There is also a certificate in Integral Studies and a Masters in

Organization Management and Development with a concentration in Integral

studies offered at the Fielding Graduate University. Finally, this year there will

be an integral track within the Phd in Transformative Studies at the California

Institute of Integral Studies, requiring students to use integral theory to guide

their thesis research.

Third is the holding of regular academic conferences. As already mentioned,

the first Integral Theory academic conference was held this August and

concentrated on Integral Theory rather than Ken Wilber and had some 500

attendees and 120 presenters. This conference will now be held biannually.

Finally, the promotion of an integral approach to research. Just a few months

ago the integral research center was launched by the ubiquitous Sean

Hargens in conjunction with the Integral Institute. Its aim is to support scholar-

practitioners throughout the world in using Integral Methodological Pluralism

and a new multi-method approach to research. As mentioned, this approach

expands the mixed-methods approach, an increasingly popular method that

combines quantitative and qualitative research.

As we can see, the last two years has seen a huge move forward in legitimising

integral theory in academia and can be seen as a new phase in the

development of the integral movement. The essential lower right foundations

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are now in place and it is hoped that these foundations will facilitate the growth

of concrete contributions to integral theory that adhere to formal academic

discourse.

Integral multi-method research

The integral take on mixed methods research is particularly interesting.

Although there has been an increasing number of theses and dissertations

based on Wilber’s work – 55 between 1987 and 2008 – most have used Integral

theory as an interpretative framework, e.g. via the quadrants, to understand

data and positions (Esbjörn Hargens, 2008b). With an integral research

methodology based on integral methodological pluralism scholars now have a

means to produce integral research on any topic they choose.

Thanks, again, to Esbjörn-Hargens (2006), IMP has been developed into a

concrete research method, and the Integral Research Center acts as a support

and resource centre for integral scholar-practitioners. Hargens teaches a

specific course in integral research in several programmes. Essentially, integral

research uses IMP to develop a research method which normally includes two,

or at a very minimum one, methodology from each of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person

methods (and up to 8 or more). This represents the latest expansion of

methodology that has moved from either quantitative (basically right-hand

quadrants) or qualitative (basically left-hand quadrants) approaches to, in the

last decade or so, mixed methods research that combines both. Integral

research effectively becomes a new approach to mixed methods and combines

IMP with Torbert’s Developmental Action Inquiry. Torbert’s DAI is a fully integral

yet non-AQAL vision which emphasises praxis to Wilber’s AQAL emphasis on

theory, and thus make for a very fruitful combination.

The figure below shows the eight primordial perspectives and methodologies of

integral methodological pluralism. These eight perspectives and methodologies

are the internal and external views of the four quadrants.

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(From Wilber, 2006. © Integral Institute)

As an example of integral research (Hargens, 2006), the researcher would first

go through a 1st person self-assessment of their strengths and weaknesses as a

researcher, including a basic assessment of their integral psychograph via

several key lines, their capacity for different states of consciousness and their

personality type. For the 2nd person, researchers study how to conduct

interviews and code transcripts and then perform an interview, which they code.

They also use ethnomethodology techniques to ‘participate’ with their topic.

Finally, for the 3rd person part, researchers create an empirical survey through a

questionnaire that they distribute and then analyze quantitatively. They also

look up systems analyses related to their topic. Thus 6 of the 8 methodologies

of IMP are used.

This is an exciting new development and one that is likely to make inroads in

academia and attract researchers who wish to use a more integral perspective,

And since it is an expanded version of an already accepted and ever more

popular research method, the chances of success are greater.

Other obstacles and developments

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Perhaps the greatest block for integral to gain respectability and acceptance in

academia is the question of stages. This is anathema to postmodern

consciousness, especially, but also to modernism – i.e. the two worldviews that

dominate academia. Outside developmental psychology the notion is very

controversial, and even within developmental psychology there is still a very

large camp that rejects the empirical evidence of stages. Constructivist

developmental psychology (with the hierarchical stage conceptions of Piaget

and Kohlberg at the forefront) had a lot of influence until about 1980, but this

influence then declined as it failed to account for the increasing evidence of

variability within domains and individuals.

But the tide may be changing again as extreme postmodernism loses strength

and new theories, specifically Kurt Fischer’s dynamic skill theory and

organismic-contextualist model (2006), are beginning to gain influence.

Similarly, new metric’s have emerged, like Commons’ Hierarchical Complexity

Scoring System and Theo Dawson’s Lectical Assessment System (2005), which

act as general rulers that measures aspects of development across domains

(developmental lines). Stein and Heikkinen (2008) have recently claimed that

Dawson’s LAS, which measures conceptual reasoning across domains and

which is used in the Integral Theory Master’s course and by Integral Institute,

taps into aspects of the Wilber’s altitude marker (or basic structures). This is a

potentially very interesting development since it is a general, content free metric

that measures the performance on a task, not the individual.

Furthermore, in political science, for example, Ronald Inglehart (e.g. 2005) has

accumulated a huge body of evidence that clearly demonstrates three stages of

values and worldviews and their correlates with socio-economic and political

development (i.e. lower left and right quadrants). For some reason Wilber fails

to mention Inglehart’s impressive work.

With respect to the status of states of consciousness in academia, a lot of work

still needs to be done, but the interest in and research on meditation, especially

its neurophysical and psychological effects, is huge compared to just 5 or ten

years ago, and serious studies like those by Richard Davidson and Alan

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Wallace – both connected with the Mind and Life Institute where the Dalai Lama

and Buddhists work together with top scientists (see e.g. Begley, 2007) – are

very promising and have increased respectability of such work.

Similarly, there is now enormous interest in studying consciousness, which has

brought challenges to the current paradigm of mind/consciousness being a

mere by-product or epiphenomenon of the brain.

Conclusion

So there are encouraging signs that academia is now more open to important

elements of integral consciousness like spirituality, states of consciousness and

stages of consciousness. Furthermore, a significant shift in the last two or three

years to create the foundations of a lower-right quadrant for integral theory

within academia represents a new, important phase in the integral movement,

marking a move towards a democratisation of integral theory. Combined with a

broadening of integral consciousness to include past pioneers and present

proponents of a general non-AQAL evolutionary spirituality, the incorporation of

Torbert’s all-quadrant, all-level yet non-AQAL vision, and the placing of integral

research within the tradition of American pragmatism, the exclusive association

of integral with Ken Wilber is loosened. In this way we can both honour his huge

contribution while at the same time expanding and facilitating his vision. Let’s

hope that this expansion gains greater strength also in Europe and facilitates a

gradual acceptance of integral consciousness within both academia and the

wider culture.

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REFERENCES

Begley, S. (2007). Train your mind, change your brain. New York: Ballantine Books.

Csikszentmihalyi, M (2006). A systems perspective on creativity. In Jane Henry, (Ed.),

Creative Management and Development, p-3-18. London: Sage

Dawson-Tunik, T. L., Commons, M., Wilson, M., & Fischer, K. (2005). The shape of

development. The European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2, 163-196.

Downloaded from: http://www.devtestservice.com/index-4.html

Dowd, M. (2007). Thank God for evolution! Council Oak Books.

Esbjörn-Hargens, S (2006). Integral Research: A multi-method approach to

investigating phenomena. Constructivism in the human sciences, vol. 11 (1), pp. 79-

107.

Esbjörn-Hargens, S (2008a). WIE interview: Taking the pulse of the integral movement.

Download from: http://www.wie.org/unbound/media.asp?id=227

Esbjörn-Hargens, S (2008b). Editorial introduction, Journal of Integral Theory and

Practice, vol 3, Nº 1, pp. v-xxii. Download from:

http://www.integralresearchcenter.org/journal.html

Fischer, K., W., & Bidell, T. R. (2006). Dynamic development of action, thought, and

emotion. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Theoretical models of human

development. Handbook of child psychology (6th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 313-399). New York:

Wiley. Downloaded from:

http://gseweb.harvard.edu/~ddl/publication.htm

Forman, M. and Esbjörn-Hargens, S. (2008). The academic emergence of integral

theory: Reflections on and clarifications of the first biennial integral theory conference.

Download from: http://www.integralworld.net/forman-hargens.html

Inglehart, R. (2005). Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The human

development sequence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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McIntosh, S. (2007). Integral Consciousness and the future of evolution. USA: Paragon

House.

Murphy, M. (1998). On evolution and transformative practice: In appreciation of Ken

Wilber. In Rothberg, D and Kelly, S (Eds.): Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with

leading transpersonal thinkers. Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books.

Stein, Z., & Heikkinen, K. (2008). On operationalizing aspects of altitude: An

introduction the Lectical Assessment System for integral researchers. Journal of

Integral Theory and Practice 3(1), 105-138. Downloaded from:

http://www.devtestservice.com/index-4.html

Stewart, J. (2000). Evolution’s arrow. Australia: Chapman Press. Downloadable free

from: http://users.tpg.com.au/users/jes999/EvArrow.htm

Stewart, J. (2008). Evolutionary manifesto. Downloadable from:

http://www.evolutionarymanifesto.com/

Wilber, K. (2006). Integral Spirituality. London: Integral Books.

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En el marco de las VI JORNADAS INTEGRALES para la difusión de la Visión Integral de Ken Wilber y otros.

Barcelona, octubre de 2008.

Organizadas por

www.asociacionintegral.esinfo@asociacionintegral.es

Patrocinadas por

http://www.fundacionananta.org

http://www.olacoach.com

http://www.olacoach.com

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