An Introduction to the Study of Integral Philosophy by Ken Wilber. Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, Ken Wilber. Integral Psychology (Psychological Encyclopedia) Ken Wilber Integral Psychology

My purpose is twofold: first, to offer an introduction to the study of Ken Wilber's integral philosophy within a formally voiced and subsequently published text; and, secondly, not to get lost in dry scientific formulations, but to convey a certain living presence, which characterizes the most important feature of integral philosophy, striving to transcend limited discourses and practices in order to come to a greater integrity of consciousness and being - in science, culture and society, self-expression and art.

Ken Wilber is an American thinker born in 1949, author of more than two dozen books written in the genre of serious theoretical research(evolution of humanity and the cosmos, spirituality and religion, developmental psychology, consciousness studies, transpersonal psychology and sociology, philosophy of science, epistemology and transdisciplinarity, etc.), as well as popular introductions - accessible excursions into their own rich heritage. All of his books, the first of which, The Spectrum of Consciousness, was written in 1973 at the age of 23-24, are still actively sold. Wilber's writings have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, making him one of the most translated American authors, if not the most translated, writing books on academic topics.

Wilber's legacy is enormous, over the past forty years his work has undergone a consistent evolution four to five times, with each stage characterized by a radical revision and expansion of the previous paradigm. This was done under the influence of the resulting qualitative criticism and his own extensive cross- and meta-paradigmatic study of "anomalies" (in the sense of the terminology proposed by the famous philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn, whose concepts Wilber refers to very often). Today there are eight volumes of the collected works of Wilber, as well as a number of books not yet included in new volumes (which will undoubtedly be published later). In addition, articles and books are published annually, one way or another considering his legacy in such disciplines as philosophy, psychology, spirituality, art (painting, cinema and theater), etc. Every two to three years, an international conference on integral theory is held. , which brings together researchers and practitioners from all over the world.

Getting Started philosophical heritage Wilber, it is necessary, if possible, to be prepared for the fact that your own understanding of his works will also undergo changes (in the direction of increasing complexity of the resulting view and worldview). In this sense, it has been repeatedly noted that Wilber's writings propose a "psychoactive" (that is, actively transforming consciousness) mental frame of reference. It gradually unmasks the mind that clings to smaller and narrower practices and perspectives, opening up to it the horizons of ever greater wholeness. Experience shows that, if not prepared and open enough, such exposure can cause an extremely aggressive reaction, often expressed in the form of toxic criticism and ill-founded attacks. ad hominem- Attacks on the personality of the author (mirrored by the latter in those parts of his works that they are assigned to various criticisms), as well as attacks on researchers of integral theory and practice.

Of course, the critics themselves, such an impression, are confident in their rightness and the righteousness of their irritation and have their own view of Wilber's work, but two important points must be noted here. Firstly, in many cases, critics - especially self-published ones on the Internet - do not demonstrate in practice any adequate command of the material under consideration (the corpus of Wilber's works and the variety of concepts and perspectives affected by it), which does not prevent them from trying to deconstruct what Wilber created with a cavalry swoop ( created as a result of three - four decades of painstaking intellectual work, filled with tens of thousands of hours of not only intellectual reading, but also meditative and contemplative practice). They are trying to do this without offering something in return for something equivalent in scope, quality and significance in terms of the goals set by the integral project. Other critics have spent literally years trying to prove that Wilber's writings ridiculous and unworthy(performing the type of communicative action that the German thinker Jurgen Habermas, the largest and most influential German thinker, called "performative contradiction": they pay too much attention to what is "not worthy of attention" and "fundamentally wrong"). This is one of the evidence of insufficient self-reflection and self-criticism on the part of the critics themselves.

Secondly, in my opinion, it is much more interesting and practical to use such a rich heritage not to prove one’s own rightness to oneself (such a common form of satisfying one’s ego), but to revise and transform one’s own consciousness and its attitudes through respectful subtle hermeneutic empathy into a holistic a system of synthetic thought proposed by such an undeniably powerful intellectual as Wilber. For me personally, the gradual acquaintance with the writings of Wilber served as a good litmus test for my own ego: at what points do I demonstrate stubborn disagreement and am not ready to even consider even hypothetical the possibility that this or that view proposed by Wilber, sometimes contrary to my personal "common sense", may have (and it usually has) a serious basis.

As you probably already understand, the integral philosophy of Ken Wilber, like any other outstanding thinker, cannot be conveyed in its entirety in the format of one speech. Moreover, there are entire educational courses devoted to gradually deeper and deeper immersion in his philosophy. I consider the stereotypical approach to presenting Wilber's integral philosophy by listing the components of his integral model unsatisfactory, since it often lacks some kind of living spark, instead of which there is only an abstract "talking" about "metakartas" - "that incredible transformative potential eludes such talking, which is contained in the metaframe of coordinates developed by Wilber and developed by the newly emerging constellation of integral researchers.

This metasystem coordinates various theories and practice, but integral paradigm is defined by Wilber not as theorizing (even if with the prefix "meta": metatheorizing), but as a set of practitioner on the involvement of mental, spiritual, social and objective reality. Anything less than the practical use of these dimensions is not integral.

The integral paradigm is defined by Wilber not as theorizing, but as a set of practices.

In fact, despite the importance of popularizing complex ideas for society, in my opinion, in the case of Wilber (as well as many other prominent thinkers), such popularization can sometimes deprive the listener or reader of something very valuable - namely: a sense of urgent need to personally get acquainted with his brilliant and original thought, which does not just touch upon dry and abstract theoretical issues, issues of categorization and classification of reality and various disciplines. No, Wilber's integral vision is forged in a painful crucible of searching for answers to the ultimate questions of being, the being of each of us, they affect not just the sphere of pure reason, but the spheres of practical reason and the ability to judge - the space of our life world as such; in terms of their scale and existential significance, the issues he touches on and the proposed solutions are comparable to the issues and decisions over which the existentialists and spiritual thinkers of the present and past struggled.

I have deliberately avoided, up to now, any specific immersion in one or another of the main concepts expounded by Wilber (and any of them can be discussed for hours), trying to offer a tangential metaperspective on the entire "container" of his system as a whole. My experience shows that it is much better and more interesting to reveal some fundamental aspects of the integral approach in a lively dialogue (for example, through questions and answers and mutual resonance). In general, the criticism of exceptional monologue and the call for active dialogue are sewn into the fabric of integral philosophy. In this sense, she criticizes excessive enthusiasm for abstract theorizing, which is often characterized by dissociation from the body, spirit and socio-cultural realities.

However, before we move on to a more dialogic question and answer mode, I will still respect the proposed genre and format of an academic speech and use it in an attempt to intrigue you. Intriguing, perhaps enough, for some of you to be filled with due respect, respect enough to temporarily (and sometimes for quite a long time) step aside from your prejudices and presets and immerse yourself in the study of the incredibly intense and living legacy of Ken Wilber. The ability to decenter in this way from one's personal attitudes is a sign of the maturity of the postconventional personality (and the exercise of decentration leads to the growth and strengthening of this maturity).

I have a glimmer of hope that, perhaps, after this speech in the study of Wilber's works, you will not draw too hasty and sudden conclusions (and this is one of the most important aspects of the methodology of studying his works). For me and for many readers, there is a certain erotic force in Wilber's writings - what Wilber called the Greek term "Eros". According to Wilber, Eros, as a spontaneous desire for transcendence and newness, permeates the entire Cosmos. Cosmos with a capital  -  is a Pythagorean term that Wilber borrows to mean unity everything in general, the whole totality of the world, the universe. We are talking not just about the physical and dead universe of entropy, but about the living universe of spontaneous self-organization of “order out of chaos”, which unfolds over billions of years through huge tectonic layers of ever-increasing complexity of matter-consciousness. By the power of its self-organization, the Cosmos unfolded from the pregnancy of quarks and atoms to the irritability of cells and sensory systems of organisms, reaching in its development (which is the entanglement of previous levels of complexity of self-organization of spirit and matter) to a feeling and thinking person who has learned to direct his awareness not just to the sensorimotor world of objects , but into itself, thereby, as a result of meditative contemplation, having found in the heart of its inner experience the Spirit itself - an omnipresent and enduring presence, an indescribable and unsolved mystery of being, eluding any formalization, for it is that which formalizes, as well as contemplates . How can one not recall the words of Vasily Vasilyevich Nalimov: "The world is a Mystery - we can only deepen it."

It is with the Spirit that Wilber's story begins and that it ends with the Spirit. The rehabilitation of the spiritual and transpersonal dimensions as an empirically established space of potentials for human development in an age of frustrated cynicism is the focus of all, without exception, of Wilber's work. We are talking about the universal legitimization of the diversity of transpersonal discourses and practices that have emerged with cross-cultural persistence in the disciplines of religions, mysticism and esotericism throughout the history of mankind,  - legitimization in the face of modern and postmodern personality, science and culture. As well as the legitimization of modernity and postmodernity (the diversity of modern and postmodern trends) in the face of pre-modern religions and spiritualities.

The rehabilitation of spiritual and transpersonal dimensions as an empirically established space of human development potentials in an age of frustrated cynicism is the focus of all, without exception, Wilber's works.

Wilber argues that we are on the verge of a transition from a world of contradictory opposites, manifested in the irreconcilable confrontation of disciplines, spheres of values, perspectives, to a world of integration, gradually finding a place and context for all current worldviews, approaches and practices for engaging reality - - from religion to science, technology, culture and art. This transition will be long and painful, however, judging by the data of studies of the psychology of adult development, for the first time in the history of mankind, a significant part of the planet's population (about 5%) is approaching what can be called the integral stages of the development of consciousness (the stages at which there is a refusal from seeing everything through the prism of fragmentation, dualistic games and confrontations, instead of which the contours of the integral vision of the colossal integrity and continuity of all processes occurring in the Cosmos - Cosmos human and universal are gradually outlined).

Wilber's creativity and research thought developed through a succession of stages, during which he, at times radically, revised the main provisions of his theoretical frame of reference and significantly expanded it. Wilber himself and the researchers of his work distinguish four to five general stages, conditionally called "Wilber-1", "Wilber-2", "Wilber-3", "Wilber-4" and "Wilber-5".

"Wilber-1" (1973–1979)- the so-called "romantic phase" of Wilber. The presence of a spectrum of consciousness is postulated, including the level of the mask, ego, the whole organism, transpersonal levels and unity consciousness. The underlying rationale is that different psychological and esoteric schools and methods do not necessarily contradict each other, but rather simply aim at different levels of the spectrum of consciousness ( psychological counseling works with mask/shadow level integration; psychoanalysis integrates the ego; bioenergetic, humanistic and existential psychology directed at the level of the whole organism; transpersonal psychology works with transpersonal or transpersonal ranges of the spectrum; Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, esoteric branches of Christianity, Islam and Judaism are engaged in the development of the consciousness of non-dual unity). The Romantic phase is called because Wilber at this stage adhered to the views of retro-romanticism - the idea that the consciousness of unity was initially available to a person (and also to humanity), but later on for some reason he loses it when more imperfect and limited levels accrete to it. that distort its true nature. In the process of psycho-spiritual development, it was necessary to gradually remove these extra levels (through disidentification from them) in order to return to the original non-dual state of unity consciousness.

"Wilber-2" (1980–1982)- “development for good” phase. In the process of further research, Wilber came across a huge amount of data that contradicted his original romantic position. First of all, we are talking about the information accumulated by various areas of developmental psychology and anthropology. Rejecting the idea that a person, they say, was originally once in a state of unity, and then was “expelled from paradise” and now he needs to “return to good” and “ paradise lost”(typical motifs of retroromanticism), Wilber proposed a model of progressive human development from prepersonal to personal and transpersonal levels of consciousness (from prepersonal to personal and transpersonal). In his opinion, such a model much more accurately and correctly reflected what is really happening and very complex processes human growth and development, numerous information about which has been accumulated in the relevant disciplines of human knowledge. The main idea of ​​this phase can be expressed in the maxim proposed by Jack Engler, an American transpersonal psychologist and researcher of the stages of contemplative development within the Theravada tradition: "Before being a nobody, you need to become someone." A full-fledged transpersonal and transrational development, or spiritual transcendence, occurs after the formation, differentiation and integration of a healthy person who owns rational methods of cognition.

"Wilber-3" (1983–1987)- a transitional phase in which Wilber develops his concept of personality development and expands it to include the theory of multiple intelligences, or multiple lines of development. The main idea is that the personality, or selfhood, of a person develops not linearly ascending a single "ladder of development", but unfolding through numerous lines of development, or intellects (one can distinguish lines of development of cognitive intelligence, lines of development of the self, emotional intelligence , lines of moral development, interpersonal intelligence, spiritual intelligence, etc.). Each line or “stream” of development unfolds in stages relatively independently of the others. For example, a person may be well developed in terms of cognitive intelligence (cognitive line), but poorly developed in the emotional sphere.

"Wilber-4" (1995–2001)- the stage of integral philosophy itself, at which the characteristic formulation of the AQAL model [“aqual”] is introduced. AQAL stands for "all quadrants, all levels" - "all quadrants, all levels" - or, more fully, "all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all types, all states" - "all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all types, all states. Wilber set himself the goal of offering a world philosophy that would bring together various disciplines. human activity in a consistent synthesis. AQAL could otherwise be called biopsychosocial cultural approach which requires taking into account the dynamics of the development of stages and states not only in the psychological dimension, but also in the external objective organism, in intersubjective culture and interobjective social systems. His idea was to create a comprehensive frame of reference, which, in his opinion, allows you to come to a more integral and non-reductionist integration of science, spirituality, art, culture and society.

Wilber 5 (2001–present)- the current phase, which critics conditionally call the phase of "integral post-metaphysics" and "integral methodological pluralism." According to Wilber himself, it is still premature to talk about the differentiation of a separate stage of "Wilber-5", because all the basic prerequisites for post-metaphysics and integral pluralism are found in works that conditionally correspond to the "Wilber-4" period. However, it is still clear that in his works there is a complication of the narrative and an appeal to a higher level of cognitive complexity. Even more emphasis is placed on the tetraconstruction of reality (that is, the joint evolution of all four quadrants, or dimensions of our being), the inseparability of epistemology and ontology, the rethinking of metaphysics through the prism of post-metaphysics, which is expressed, in particular, in the criticism of the “myth of the given” (expressed, in including, and in the form of a reflection paradigm, according to which a person in his cognition reflects reality as it is, while now it is known that any act of cognition is also an act of using and co-constructing this reality).

It makes sense to touch upon the issues of integral post-metaphysics and integral methodological pluralism on the example of the question of the relationship between science and religion. In 2006, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science was published by Oxford University Press, which included the chapter "Towards a Comprehensive Integration of Science and Religion: A Post-Metaphysical Approach" by Sean Esbjorn-Hargens co-authored with Ken Wilber. This text can serve as reference material for those wishing to become more deeply familiar with the issue.

This chapter begins with the authors declaring their conviction that an integral approach can help deal with the various definitions and understandings of "science" and "religion" and recognize the importance and partial truth of the statements made by each party in this important area of ​​​​human activity and knowledge. Next, the authors offer an introduction to the most well-known today integral approach - the integral theory, or integral model proposed by Wilber. The integral model is considered from the point of view of its postdisciplinarity that it can be successfully used in the context disciplinary approaches (as an example, the authors talk about the integration of various schools of psychology into a single integrated psychology), multidisciplinarity(for example, research environmental issues from the perspective of multiple disciplines), interdisciplinarity(for example, the application of political science methods in psychological research) and transdisciplinarity(for example, ensuring the interaction of multiple disciplines and their methodologies through a neutral frame of reference).

This post-metaphysical approach is important for many reasons. First of all, any system (scientific or religious) that is not consistent with modern Kantian and post-modern Heideggerian thought is unable to retain any intellectual respectability (regardless of whether you agree with these lines of thought or not, one way or another they need to be dealt with). This means that any attempt to integrate science and religion must be, in a sense, post-metaphysical. Secondly, just as Einsteinian physics, when applied to objects moving below the speed of light, collapses into Newtonian physics, so integral post-metaphysics is able to include all pre-modern, modern and post-modern religious and scientific approaches and systems without postulate preexisting ontological structures. (p. 527–528)

The authors emphasize that the integral theory is based on the post-Kantian post-metaphysical position, that any levels of reality identified in philosophical or religious metaphysical constructions (for example, the concept of levels of being in “eternal philosophy”) should today be considered as something inseparable from the one who perceives, reveals and co-constructs them. consciousness, and not something that exists in itself as a certain given, which the researcher simply discovers. And, as a result, consciousness itself is studied not by metaphysical speculative reasoning, but by an empirical and phenomenological method, as a result of which a number of limitations of metaphysics (related to speculative constructions, which in many cases do not indicate the methodology for obtaining and verifying data) are overcome.

From the point of view of the integral approach, no method can reveal the whole of reality in its entirety, but each of the methods can provide some kind of partial truth.

Integral methodological pluralism is a collection of practices and prescriptions (injunctions), based on the idea that "everyone has his own partial truth." Each practice, or prescription, can be related to both the scientific side of research and the religious side, revealing its own unique aspect of reality. The authors emphasize that, from the point of view of the integral approach, no method can reveal the whole of reality in its entirety, but each of the methods can provide some partial truth and some useful perspective or way of viewing.

Integral theory and IMT rely on three principles to uncover and include particular truths from all perspectives: non-exclusion[English] non-exclusion] (recognition of statements about the truth of certain phenomena that have passed the test of reliability within their own paradigms in the relevant disciplines); principle wrapping[English] enfoldment] (some sets of practices are more inclusive, holistic, holistic and comprehensive than others); and principle engagement[English] actment] (different types of research reveal their own unique types of phenomena, and what is revealed will largely depend on the individual psychological constitution, social status and epistemological guidelines of the study).

The systematic application of the integral approach, as the authors emphasize, allows one to gain a panoramic vision, covering the knowledge of the past and present of mankind, a variety of disciplines (from physics, chemistry and hermeneutics to meditation and esotericism, neurobiology, phenomenology, psychology, systems theory, etc.). Within the framework of the IMP, eight zones, or eight "methodological families" with which you can explore any phenomenon, including religious experience:

• phenomenology(study of direct inner experience);
• structuralism(the study of formal, or systematized, patterns of direct inner experience);
• autopoiesis theory(research of the processes of behavioral self-regulation);
• empiricism(study of objectively observable behavioral manifestations);
• theory of social autopoiesis(study of the dynamics of self-regulation of social systems);
• systems theory(study of the processes of functional adaptation of parts of a social system to an observable whole);
• hermeneutics(study of intersubjective fields of meanings and understanding from within culture) and
• ethnomethodology(study of formal patterns of mutual understanding from outside the culture).

The main statement is that any person at any moment of time is immersed in all these dimensions (the existence and material of which is revealed by the appropriate methods of research). The cumulative application of eight types of methodologies in research is called "integral methodological pluralism".

Science and religion can and should be considered as "two sides of the same coin" that can be integrated using an integral approach.

Further in the article, the authors describe their ideas about what the integral approach can give for the emergence of "integral science" and "integral religion", and then for their synthesis. According to the authors, a comprehensive Scientific research religion within an integral approach will necessarily include, at a minimum, the integration of the psychology of religion, the phenomenology of religion, neurotheology, cognitive-scientific approaches to religion, the hermeneutics of religion, the anthropology of religion, social autopoiesis, and the sociology of religion. In conclusion, they emphasize that science and religion can and should be seen as "two sides of the same coin" that can be integrated using an integral approach.

Literature

Esbjörn-Hargens S., Wilber K. Towards a comprehensive integration of science and religion: A post-metaphysical approach // The Oxford handbook of science and religion. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 523–546.

Bibliography of Ken Wilber's writings

Wilber-1 ("Romantic period") - 1973 - 1979

The Spectrum of Consciousness. - Quest Books, 1977.

No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth. - Shambhala, 1979. In Russian: Wilbur K. No Limits: Eastern and Western Pathways for Personal Growth. - M.: AST, 2004. (There is an alternative translation available on the Internet, entitled "Boundless".)

Wilber-2 (“Development for Good”; pre-/over- fallacy) - 1980 - 1982

The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development. - The Theosophical Publishing House, 1980. In Russian: Wilbur K. The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development. - M.: AST, 2004.

Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution. -Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1981.

The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes: Exploring the Leading Edge of Science (ed. Ken Wilber). - Shambhala, 1982.

Wilber-3 (Many lines of development) - 1983 – 1987

A Sociable God: A Brief Introduction to a Transcendental Sociology. - Shambhala, 1983.

Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm. - Doubleday Books, 1984. In Russian: Wilbur K. Eyes of knowledge: flesh, mind, contemplation. - M.: RIPOL-Classic, 2016.)

Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (ed. Ken Wilber). - Shambhala, 1984.

Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development (ed. Ken Wilber, Daniel Brown, Jack Engler). - Shambhala, 1986.

Spiritual Choices: The Problem of Recognizing Authentic Paths to inner Transformation (ed. Ken Wilber, Dick Anthony, Bruce Ecker). - Paragon House Publishers, 1987.

Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life of Treya Killam Wilber. - Shambhala, 1991. - In Russian: Wilbur K. Grace and Fortitude: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death Story of Treya Killam Wilber. - M.: open world, 2008. (Reprint  - M.: Postum, 2013.)

Wilber-4 ("all quadrants and levels") - 1995 - 2001

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. - Shambhala 1995.

A Brief History of Everything. - Shambhala, 1996. - In Russian: Wilber K. Short story Total. - M.: Postum, 2015.

The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad. - Shambhala, 1997. In Russian: Wilbur K. The Eye of the Spirit: An Integral Vision for a Slightly Crazed World. - M.: AST, 2002.

The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader. - Shambhala, 1998.

The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion. - Random House, 1998

One Taste: The Journals of Ken Wilber. - Shambhala, 1999. In Russian: Wilbur K. One Taste: The Diaries of Ken Wilber. - M.: AST, 2004.

Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. - Shambhala, 2000. In Russian: Wilbur K. Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. - M.: Publishing house of K. Kravchuk, 2004.

A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality. - Shambhala, 2000. In Russian: Wilbur K. The Theory of Everything: An Integral Approach to Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality. - M.: Postum, 2013.

Wilber-5 (integral post-metaphysics, integral methodological pluralism) - 2001 - n. in.

Boomeritis: A Novel That Will Set You Free. - Shambhala, 2002. In Russian: Wilbur K. Boomerit: A book that will set you free. - Electronic edition. - M.: Orientaliya, Aipraktik, November 2013.

Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World. - Shambhala, 2006. - In Russian: Wilbur K. Integral Spirituality: The New Role of Religion in the Modern and Post-Modern World. - Electronic edition. - M.: Orientaliya, Aipraktik, November 2013.

The Integral Vision: A Very Short Introduction to the Revolutionary Integral Approach to Life, God, the Universe, and Everything. - Shambhala, 2007. - In Russian: Wilbur K. Integral Vision: A brief introduction to a revolutionary integral approach to life, God, the universe and everything else. - M.: Open World, 2009. (The Ipraktik project plans to republish in the form of an e-book.)

Since 2014, the release of new long-awaited works of Ken Wilber in English is planned, including the second volume of the trilogy "Cosmos" (the first volume was the book "Sex, ecology, spirituality") and the work "The Fourth Turning" ("The Fourth Turning"). The book "Integral meditation" (Russian translation is being prepared) has also been published.

BIOGRAPHY:

Kenneth Earl Wilber II (eng. KennethEarlWilberII) (born January 31, 1949, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA) is an American philosopher and writer who developed the theoretical and practical provisions of the integral approach, the purpose of which is the synthetic integration of discoveries made in such various spheres of human activity, such as psychology, sociology, philosophy, mysticism and religious studies, postmodern movements, empirical sciences, systems theory, as well as in other areas.

In his works, Ken Wilber consistently integrates various points of view on the Universe into a single system. The concept of "Cosmos" (Kosmos) Wilber unites all manifestations of being, including various areas of consciousness. This term is used to separate the non-dual universe (which, according to his point of view, includes both noetic and physical aspects) from the purely physicalistic model of the universe considered by traditional ("narrow") sciences.

Wilber is often associated with the transpersonal movement, from which he distanced himself considerably in his later years. In 1998, he founded the Integral Institute - a research center for the study of scientific and social issues within the framework of an integral and non-reductionist approach. He developed approaches to integral psychology and integral politics. Ken Wilber is sometimes referred to as the "Einstein of the human mind".

Ken Wilber as founder of integral theory
Solving the mind-body problem

An excerpt from Ken Wilber's "Integral Psychology"

The first major problem that a truly integral (all-level, all-quadrant) approach helps solve is what Schopenhauer called the "world knot," namely, the mind-body problem.

So let's start with a bold assumption: the mind-body problem is, to a large extent, the product of flatland. Not at all the differentiation of mind and body, which is at least as old as civilization itself and never bothered anyone before, but it is precisely the dissociation of mind and body that is the characteristic vice of modern and postmodern consciousness, accompanying the collapse of the Cosmos into flatland. For in flatland we find ourselves in a truly insoluble dilemma of the relationship between mind and body: the mind (consciousness, feeling, thought, awareness) - in short, the areas of the Left Side - has absolutely no place in the world, described only by the concepts of the Right Side (material body and brain ): the mind becomes a "ghost in the machine". Then we are faced with two apparently absolute, but contradictory truths: the truth of direct experience, which unmistakably testifies that consciousness exists, and the truth of science, just as unmistakably shows that the world consists only of combinations of fundamental building blocks (quarks, atoms, strings etc.), which do not possess any consciousness, and no permutation of these thoughtless elements can lead to reason.

Unlike the writers who popularize this topic, serious philosophers who address the mind-body problem are more than ever convinced of its insolubility. There is simply no generally accepted way to untie this world knot. Over the past few decades, much of the influential work has, in fact, been devoted to the absolutely insurmountable difficulties that the proposed solutions face. Case Campbell summed up the shaky and unreliable consensus this way: “I suspect that we will never know how this trick (mind-body interconnection) works. This part of the Mind-Body problem seems intractable. This aspect of human existence seems destined to remain forever beyond our understanding.”2

However, many solutions have been proposed, the most influential being the dualist (interactionism) and the physicalist (scientific materialism). The dualistic position enjoyed the greatest influence at the beginning modern era(from Descartes to Leibniz), but since then the physicalist point of view has constantly strengthened its position and currently occupies a dominant position.3

The physicalist (or materialistic) approach claims that there is only the physical universe, which is best described by physics and others. natural Sciences, and in this universe we do not find consciousness, mind, experience or awareness anywhere, and therefore these "inner aspects" are simply an illusion (or, at best, by-products that do not have true reality). Some variants of the physicalist approach allow the emergence of complex systems more high level(such as the brain, neocortex, autopoietic neural systems, etc.). However, they point out that these higher-level systems are still objective realities, with nothing that could be called consciousness, mind or experience, since experience is characterized by "qualia" (Latin), or qualities - such as pain or pleasure, and these qualities are not properties of objective systems. Therefore, objective systems can in no way generate these "mental" properties, and therefore these properties are simply illusory by-products of complex systems that have no causal reality of their own.

(In my terminology, this argument sounds like this: all objective systems are described in the language of "it", while experience, consciousness, and "qualia" are described in the language of "I", and therefore, if you think that the world that science describes - this is the "really real" world - and after all, there are many good reasons to believe that science gives us the best hope of finding the truth - then you will naturally assume that "qualia", experience and consciousness are not "really real - that they are illusions or by-products or secondary characteristics of the real world that science discovers.)

Although the various variations of physicalism are much more widespread than any other views, this is due not so much to the merits of physicalism itself, but to the fact that its alternatives look much worse. Even the materialists themselves admit that their position faces many problems: here are the statements of some of them. Galen Strausson: “As a convinced materialist, I ... believe that the phenomena of experience take place in the brain ... [But] if we consider the brain from the point of view modern physics and neurophysiology, we must admit that we do not know how experience ... is carried out or even could be carried out in the brain. John Searle: “Criticism of materialistic theory usually takes on a more or less technical form, but in reality, behind these technical objections lies a much deeper objection ... This theory has bracketed ... some essential features of the mind - such as consciousness or “ qualia”, or semantic content...” Jaegwon Kim, who developed the “complement” theory, which is a very sophisticated version of emergent physicalism, concludes that this approach “probably leads to a dead end.” Thomas Nagel concludes that: "Physicalism is a position which we are unable to understand, because at present we have not the faintest idea how it could be true." Colin McGinn simply states that we will never be able to resolve the question of how consciousness arises in the brain. And these are the conclusions of the physicalists themselves!

So the dualists point out these insoluble difficulties of physicalism and say to the materialists: “We know that consciousness exists in some form, because it is one of the basic intuitive knowledge given to man, and therefore, in order to refute it, some very strong arguments. We experience consciousness directly. However, we do not directly experience quarks or atoms (or the fundamental elements physical world). Therefore, we do not need to go your way, that is, start with quarks and then conclude that consciousness does not exist. You should start with consciousness and explain how you come to the ridiculous conclusion that it does not exist.

Dualists believe that there are at least two realities in the world: consciousness and matter. Neither of them can be reduced to the other; instead, they "interact" (hence another name for this position, "interactionism"). Here, however, dualists are faced with an age-old dilemma: how can two fundamentally different things affect each other? Everyone knows that ghosts go through walls, they don't push walls, so how can a ghostly consciousness have any real effect on a material body? The very desire to show that mind cannot be reduced to matter deprives dualists of the opportunity to show how consciousness can affect matter at all. And therefore it will be very difficult for a dualist to explain how, for example, I can move my arm at all.

(Idealists dealt with this by saying that both mind and body are forms of Spirit, and therefore are not alien or ontologically different entities, but simply two different aspects of the same thing. This is an acceptable solution for those who recognize the existence of Spirit. , which most modern and post-modern philosophers do not, which is why this option is not subject to extensive discussion. We will return to this point shortly).

Again, the dualists themselves point to the intractable difficulties of their position (which they hold, in large part because the physicalist alternative is even worse). Jeffrey Madell observes that "interactionist dualism seems to be essentially the only plausible scheme in which a place can be found for the facts of our experience" (because - we might say - interactionism at least recognizes the undeniable reality of both realms - "I" and "it"). However, "the nature of the causal relationship between the mental and the physical ... is highly mysterious" (how does a ghost manage to move walls?). Sir Karl Popper states the central problem of dualism as follows: "We want to understand how non-physical things, such as goals, intentions, plans, decisions, theories, experiences and values, can play a role in bringing about physical changes in the physical world." And here is the conclusion offered by dualistic interactionism: this understanding, says Popper, "is unlikely to ever be reached."
What do we mean by "mind" and "body"?

In my opinion, part of this difficulty stems from the fact that both mainstream positions have adopted the theoretical terms of flatland and are trying to juggling these terms to arrive at a solution that turns out to be less than satisfactory - which is recognized by almost all parties. If we instead take an “all-level, all-quadrant” approach, we immediately notice that both “mind” and “body” have two completely different meanings, so there are actually four in one problem. This is very easy to understand using Fig. 12.

To begin with, "body" can mean the biological organism as a whole, including the brain (neocortex, limbic system, brainstem, etc.) - in other words, "body" can mean the entire Upper-Right quadrant, which I will call "organism". I will also refer to the organism as the "Body" (with a capital "T"), as shown in Fig. 12. Thus, the brain is in the Body, which is the accepted scientific view (and an accurate description of the Upper-Right quadrant).

Rice. 12. Meanings of "Mind" and "Body".

However, "body" can have another meaning, which for the average person means the subjective feelings, emotions and sensations of the directly experienced body. When a typical person says "My mind is fighting my body," he means that his will is fighting some bodily desire or urge (for example, for sex or food). In other words, in this common sense, "body" means the lower levels of the inner sphere of man. On fig. 12 this "body" (with a small "t") is shown in the Upper-Left Quadrant and signifies the feelings and emotions of the sensed body (as opposed to the Body, which signifies the entire objective organism).

Moving from body to mind, most scientists simply equate "mind" with "brain" and prefer to talk only about brain states, neurotransmitters, cognitive research, and so on. I will use the term "brain" in this sense, which refers to the upper levels of the Upper-Right quadrant (eg, neocortex), as shown in Fig. 12.

On the other hand, when average person says "My mind is fighting my body", he doesn't mean that his new cortex is fighting his limbic system. By "mind" he means the upper levels of his inner sphere, that is, the upper levels of the Upper-Left quadrant - in other words, his rational will struggles with his feelings or desires (the formal-operational struggles with the vital and sensorimotor dimensions). The mind is described in phenomenological reports in the first person and in the language of "I", while the brain is described in objective reports in terms of the third person and in the language of "it". All this is shown in Fig. 12.

(There is another common sense of mind/body: "mind" can mean the inner dimension in general - or the Left Side - and "body" can mean the outer dimensions in general - or the Right Side.)
hard problem

This is the world knot, or flatland's inner paradox: the body is in the mind, but the brain is in the Body.

Both of these statements are true, but in flatland they seem to contradict each other, and these contradictions make up a large part of the world knot.

The sensed body is in the mind, as shown in fig. 1, 3 and 8. That is, the formal-operational transcends and includes the concrete-operational, which in turn transcends and includes the vital feelings and sensorimotor awareness: the mind transcends and includes the body (this is why the mind can causally affect the body, and therefore the formal-operational can control the concrete-operational, which can control the sensorimotor, and so on, which is known to any researcher of developmental psychology). This "transcendental" part of the mind (e.g., my mind can raise my hand) is recognized by all physicalists (and then they try to declare secondary from the standpoint of flatland) and by all dualists who try to include it in their theories (but do this by postulating dualism, but still agreeing with flatland dissociation, see below).

When the Cosmos collapses into a plane (naturalism, physicalism, scientific materialism), the internal realities of the sphere of "I" are still felt and constitute indisputable intuitive knowledge (the mind can control the body, free will, consciousness, unity of experience really exist to a certain extent), but these realities collide with a world that is considered absolutely real, in which only the realities of "it" described by science exist. And in this world, the brain is just a part of the Body, a part of the natural biological organism and so consciousness must somehow be a function of the brain. But, as scientific authorities tell us, there is absolutely nothing in the brain that even vaguely corresponds to qualia or experience, or realities of mind and consciousness. Therefore, we must either reduce consciousness to the brain (and thereby deny the existence of consciousness as a full reality), or recognize the real existence of dualism, as a result of which we cannot even explain how I can raise my hand (or how one reality affects another).

I believe both of these solutions fit the flatland paradigm. I'll leave the technical details for a note. More generally, one can simply note the following:

Materialism reduces the mind to the brain, and since the brain is undoubtedly part of the organism, there is no dualism here: the mind/body problem is solved! And this is true - the brain is part of the organism, part of the physical world, and there can be no dualism in the resulting purely physical universe; nor can there be any values, consciousness, depth or divinity. This reductionism is the "solution" that physicalists are trying to impose on reality - a solution that is still very influential in much of cognitive research, neuroscience, systems theory, and so on: let's reduce the Left to the Right and declare that we have solved the problem.

However, the reason why most people, and even most scientists, are uncomfortable with this "solution" - and why the problem remains a problem - is that despite materialism's claim that there is no dualism whatsoever, most people believe on the contrary, because they feel the difference between mind and body (between thoughts and sensations) - they feel it every time they consciously decide to make any movement, they feel it in every act of will - and they also feel the difference between mind and Body ( or between the subject here and the objective world there). And people are absolutely right on both counts. Let's consider them in order:

There is a difference between the mind (formal-operational) and the sensed body (vital and sensorimotor) and this can be experienced in the inner realm, or in the Left Side areas. This is not dualism, but rather a manifestation of the principle of "transcend and include", and any reasonable adult feels this transcending, for example, in that the mind is usually able to control the body and its desires. All this is phenomenologically true for the Left Side areas. But none of these internal stages of qualitative development (from body to mind, to soul and to spirit) are revealed when "body" means the Right Hand Organism, and "mind" means the Right Hand Brain - all these qualitative distinctions are completely lost in material monism, which does not solve the problem, but simply annuls it.

On the other hand, dualists accept the reality of both consciousness and matter, but generally despair of finding any way to relate them to each other. "Mind" in the general sense of "inner spheres" and "Body" in the general sense of "outer spheres" are separated by an impenetrable abyss - the dualism of subject and object. And at the level of formal-operational thinking (or reason in general), at which this discussion usually takes place, dualists are right: internal and external is a very real dualism, and it can almost always be shown that any attempts to deny this dualism are superficial - they represent just semantic tricks that say subject and object are one, but in fact the self still looks from within to the world outside, which seems to it as separate as ever.

It is here that suprarational stages of development can bring a powerful fresh impetus to this discussion. Thus, for example, in the self-disclosure called satori, it becomes clear that subject and object are two sides of the same thing, that inside and outside are two aspects of the One Taste. According to the unanimous opinion of those who have come into contact with this wave of development, there is no problem in how to relate them. The problem, rather, is that this genuine non-dual solution cannot be fully understood on a rational level. Essentially, a simple rational statement about the non-duality of subject and object leads to all sorts of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Besides, if this non-duality could be fully understood from a rational point of view, then the great philosophers, materialists and dualists, would have been able to do it a long time ago, and the mind-body problem would not have been such a problem.

No, the reason both parties to this debate generally agree that the mind-body problem is unsolvable is not that they are not smart enough to solve it. The reason is that it is resolved only at postrational stages of development, which most rational researchers perceive with suspicion, ignore or even deny. But in principle, this problem is no different from this one: a rationalist will claim that there is a proof of the Pythagorean theorem. A person who is at the prerational stage of development will not agree with this proof, or even be able to understand it. Nevertheless, the rationalist is quite right, which is quite obvious to almost any person who develops to a rational level and studies geometry.

The same is true of the non-dual solution of the mind-body problem. Those who have reached the non-dual stages of the unfolding of consciousness almost unanimously admit that consciousness and matter, internal and external, self and world have One Taste. Subject and object are both different realities and aspects of the same thing: true unity-in-diversity. But this unity-in-diversity cannot be expressed in rational language in a way that is understandable even to those who have never had a supra-rational experience. Therefore, the "proof" of the existence of this non-dual solution can only be found in the further development of the consciousness of those who want to know the solution. Although this solution (“you must develop your own consciousness if you want to know all its dimensions”) is unsatisfactory for a rationalist (whether he be a physicalist or a dualist), nevertheless, according to a truly integral paradigm, this is the only acceptable form of solution. When we hear Campbell say that the mind-body solution is "forever beyond our comprehension," we can tweak it slightly to say that it is not beyond human comprehension, but simply beyond the rational stages of comprehension. This decision is post-rational, and it is completely available to all who wish to move in this direction.
Two phases of untying the knot

We can present some of the dilemmas described above as shown in Fig. 13, which is a map of flatland. If you compare this map with the one shown in Fig. 8, you will see that all internal areas (body, consciousness, soul and spirit) are reduced to their external (physical) correlates, which are considered the only real ones. As a result, the mind (or consciousness in general) is suspended in the air. And that is precisely the problem.

More precisely, the insurmountable problem (world knot) has always been how to relate this mind both to the body (or lower inner levels of feelings and desires) and to the Body (or objective organism, brain and material environment). As we have seen, physicalists reduce the mind to the brain or the Body, and therefore are unable to explain the mind's own reality, while dualists leave the mind in limbo, cut off from its roots (in the body) and from outside world(Bodies) - because of which an unacceptable dualism arises.

Rice. 13. Flatland.

Within the framework of the flatland paradigm depicted in Fig. 13, this problem is really unsolvable. As I have already suggested, the solution requires an "all-level, all-quadrant" approach that places the mind in its own body and links the mind directly to its own Body. And, ultimately, this is achieved through the disclosure of post-rational, non-dual stages of development of consciousness.

This means that the decision is partly due to the existence of higher stages of development. But how can we begin to untie the world knot if we ourselves have not yet reached these higher stages and cannot count on the fact that others have succeeded? I believe that we can at least start by recognizing and including in our model the realities of all four quadrants. That is, if we ourselves cannot yet be “all-level” in the development of our own consciousness (from matter to body, mind, soul and spirit), let's at least try to be “all-sector” (which, at least, means the inclusion of the Big Three in our attempts to explain consciousness).

Thus, I propose two separate phases for untying the world knot of the mind-body problem. The first is a shift from reductionist explanations to quadrant-wide explanations. This recognition of the four quadrants (or simply the Big Three) allows us to equally include in our model phenomenal accounts from the first person (“I”), intersubjective premises from the second person (“we”), and physical systems from the third person point of view (“ it") - which, collectively, we will refer to as "1-2-3 Consciousness Studies".

Then the second phase will be the transition from an “all-sector” to an “all-level, all-sector” approach. In this order, we will consider these two steps.
Step one: all sectors

It is not enough to speak of the co-evolution of an organism and its environment; it is not enough to talk about the joint evolution of consciousness and culture. This is a "tetra-evolution" in which they all develop together.

That is, the objective organism (Upper-Right quadrant), with its DNA, neural pathways, brain systems, and behavior patterns, interacts with the objective environment, ecosystems, and social realities (Lower-Right quadrant), and they all do co-evolve. In the same way, individual consciousness (Upper-Left quadrant), with its intentionality, structures and states, manifests itself in intersubjective culture (Lower-Left quadrant) and interacts with it, in turn, helping to create it, and therefore they also evolve together. . But just as importantly, subjective intentionality and objective behavior interact with each other (for example, through will and reaction), and cultural worldview systems interact with social structures, just as individual consciousness interacts with behavior. In other words, all four sectors - organism, habitat, consciousness and culture - are causes and effects of each other: they "tetra-evolve".

(It doesn't matter "how" this happens; this "how", in my opinion, is more fully revealed only on postrational, non-dual waves of development; at this stage, it is only necessary to recognize that this interaction seems to be phenomenologically certain. Regardless of whether you think it is theoretically possible, your mind interacts with the physical organism, and your organism interacts with the environment: they are all “tetra-interacting”).

As we have already seen, the subjective characteristics of consciousness (waves, flows, states) are closely interrelated with the objective aspects of the organism (especially the brain, neurophysiology and various organ systems), with the background cultural contexts that make the very generation of meaning and understanding possible, and with the social institutions on which this culture relies. As I suggested in my book A Brief History of Everything, even a single thought is inextricably linked to all four quadrants—intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social—and is difficult to understand without mentioning them all.

Accordingly, in writings such as The Integral Theory of Consciousness, I have emphasized the need for an approach to consciousness that differentiates-and-integrates all four quadrants (or simply the Big Three "I", "we" and "it"; or first-person, second-person, and third-person descriptions: 1-2-3 studies of consciousness).

At first, this seems like an overwhelming task, but in fact, for the first time in history, we are at a stage where we have enough pieces of this puzzle to at least begin to put them together. Judge for yourself: in the Upper-Left sector, subjective consciousness, we have a lot of materials and evidence, including all the eternal philosophy (three millennia of careful collection of data on the inner areas), as well as a significant amount contemporary research developmental psychology. Much of this evidence has been summarized in tables, which can provide strong evidence that although we still have millions of details to refine, the rough outlines of the spectrum of consciousness are already clearly emerging. The general analogies seen in many of these tables are particularly suggestive and suggest that we are at least on the right track.

The same can be said with a fair degree of confidence in relation to the Lower-Left sector (intersubjective worldviews) and the Lower-Right sector (material and technical base). Nearly a hundred years of postmodernism have made clear the importance of pluralistic cultural worldviews and contexts (even rationally oriented theorists like Habermas recognize that any utterance is always partly determined by culture); moreover, scholars generally agree that cultural worldviews evolve from archaic to magical, mythical, mental, and global (although there is moderate disagreement about the values ​​corresponding to these systems). Similarly, in the Lower-Right sector, very few scholars dispute the evolutionary sequence of stages in the development of socially productive forces: gathering and hunting, gardening, agriculture, industry, the information society. While there are still many details to be clarified in both these sectors - cultural and social - their general outlines are better understood today than at any time in history.

Research in the Upper-Right quadrant - particularly in brain physiology and the cognitive sciences - is still in its infancy, and more fundamental discoveries in these areas will have to wait for a fully integral view to develop (this is one of the reasons I wrote about less in this sector than in others: cognitive science and neuroscience, despite the optimistic claims of their proponents, are not yet out of their naive age). However, our knowledge of this sector is growing rapidly, as is usually the case with children, and on this moment we have sufficient information to at least be able to relate neurophysiology to other dimensions of being, even though its contours are yet to be elucidated.

Thus, it is clearly time to start shaping a sector-wide approach, or, simply, an approach that treats phenomenal first-person accounts, intersubjective structures, second-person perspective, and scientific objective systems, third-person perspective, with equal respect: 1 -2-3 studies of consciousness.

There are many indications that this first phase has already begun. The Journal of Consciousness Research regularly publishes articles advocating such balanced approaches, and several books have recently made compelling arguments for their relevance. An excellent example is the book Inside View, edited by Francisco Varela and Jonathan Shire. They advocate a predominantly neurophenomenological view, according to which first-person experiences and systems reflecting third-person perspectives create mutually limiting conditions, often mediated by second-person positions. “It would be fruitless to remain isolated with first-person descriptions. We need to reconcile and limit them by forming appropriate links with research from a third party perspective. (And this often implies an intermediate mediation, a second-person position). The overall result should be a transition to a unified or global view of the mind, where neither experience (from the first person point of view, V-L) nor external mechanisms (from the point of view of the third person, T-P) have a decisive voice. Therefore, a global (integral) perspective requires a clear establishment of mutual restrictions, mutual influence and definition. This is in line with my notion that all quadrants are mutually defining (and "tetra-interacting").

Another excellent collection that emphasizes the integral approach is Max Velmans's anthology Studies in Phenomenal Consciousness. The anthology included articles by Alwyn Scott, Greg Simpson, Howard Shevrin, Richard Stevens, Jane Henry, Charles Tart, Francisco Varela, Wilber and Walsh, and Velmans. Transpersonal Methods of Research in the Social Sciences by William Broad and Rosemary Anderson is an excellent collection of resources for what the authors call "integral research."
Step two: all levels

I believe that we need to continue to flesh out this all-sector approach and then move on to the second phase, which will be all-level.

Many of the all-quadrant approaches fully acknowledge the existence of transpersonal areas of consciousness. Thus, for example, Robert Foreman points out that at least three transpersonal states need to be recognized: the pure consciousness event (or formless cessation), the dual mystical consciousness (or permanent causal/witnessing awareness), and the nondual state (or permanent nondual insight). In addition, many quadrant approaches (including the models of John Shire and Ron Jevning, Francisco Varela, James Austin, Robert Foreman, Broad and Anderson, and many others) openly borrow much of their methodology from meditative and contemplative practices.

At the same time, it must be admitted that most of these writers do not fully understand the gradual concepts of the development of consciousness - for example, the work of Baldwin, Habermas, Loevinger, Graves, Kohlberg, Wade, Cook-Greuther, Beck, Keegen and others - despite the fact that there is strong evidence for their validity. It is not enough simply to note that the realities reflected in the first-person accounts and the mechanisms described from the perspective of the third-person influence and determine each other, and that in both cases this is mediated by the intermediate positions of the second-person. It is also important to understand that first person consciousness develops through many well-studied stages. Moreover, the consciousness of the second person position develops, and this development has also been studied in detail. Finally, the capacity for consciousness from the point of view of a third person develops (for example, cognitive abilities according to Piaget), which is also studied in an exhaustive way. Perhaps because many quadrant theorists come from a phenomenology that itself has difficulty identifying stages, they tend to ignore the waves of consciousness unfolding in all four quadrants. Be that as it may, a truly integral approach, in my opinion, will evolve from just all-sector to all-sector, all-level. Or 1-2-3 for all levels.

Obviously, there is still a lot to be done. However, an impressive amount of evidence - pre-modern, modern and post-modern - strongly argues in favor of an all-level, all-sectoral approach. The vast majority of this evidence indicates that today we are on the cusp of—if not creating a fully integral view of consciousness, then at least the ability to settle for nothing less in the future.

« Psychological Encyclopedia of Corsini"("Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology") - An authoritative work published by the University of Pennsylvania, which has become a classic encyclopedia of psychology. The encyclopedia is named after Raymond Corsini (1914–2008), a student of Carl Rogers and an influential American psychologist of the 20th and 21st centuries. (By the way, the 2nd abbreviated edition of this work was translated into Russian under the title “Psychological Encyclopedia edited by R. Corsini and A. Auerbach”, 2006.) The following encyclopedic article “Integral Psychology” was published in the 4th edition of the complete “Psychological Encyclopedia of Corsini” (2010), which was not published in Russian.

INTEGRAL PSYCHOLOGY

Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, Ken Wilber

Esbjörn-Hargens, S., & Wilber, K. (2010). “Integral Psychology” in I. B. Weiner & W. E. Craighead (Eds.) Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology. 4th edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. pp. 830-833.

The term "integral psychology" was first used in the 1940s by Indra Sen, a student of the Indian philosopher-sage Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), to describe the synthesis of yoga (karma, jnana and bhakti yoga) proposed by Aurobindo. Four decades later, in 1986, Sen published a book in India entitled Integral Psychology: Sri Aurobindo's Psychological System. In parallel with this, another student of Aurobindo, Haridas Chaudhuri, who worked relatively independently of Sen, proposed a further development of the psychology of integral yoga, based on the evolutionary philosophy of his teacher. His approach to integral psychology was described in The Evolution of Integral Consciousness (1977). More recently, Brant Cortright wrote a book titled Integral Psychology: Yoga, Development and Opening of the Heart (2007), which explores psychotherapy in the context of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga tradition.

The psychology of Aurobindo Integral Yoga essentially consists of three systems: (1) surface/outer/frontal consciousness (usually the gross state), including the physical, vital and mental levels of consciousness; (2) the deeper soul system or soul that is "behind" the frontal at each of its levels (inner physical, inner vital, inner mental and deepest soul; usually a subtle state); and (3) vertical ascending/descending systems extending from levels above the mind (elevated mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind, supermind; includes causality and non-dual) to levels below the mind (subconscious and unconscious). They all lie down in Sat-Chit-Ananda, or pure non-dual Spirit.

In addition to the Aurobindo yoga psychology trajectory articulated by Sen, Chaudhury, and Cortright (among others), another kind of integral psychology has been proposed by integral theorist Ken Wilber. Wilber's approach to psychology revised and extended the findings of the Aurobindian school of thought. There is a lot of overlap between the integral psychologies of Aurobindo and Wilber (see Vrinte, 2002). From the early years of his writing career, which began in 1973 (five years before the publication of Chaudhuri's The Evolution of Integral Consciousness), Wilber drew on the concepts of Sri Aurobindo. While Wilber's unique approach to psychology has some roots in Sri Aurobindo's evolutionary synthesis of spiritual practice, its offshoots cover new integral realms.

Wilber's integral psychology was most influenced by a number of eminent psychologists such as James Mark Baldwin, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Norman O. Brown, Abraham Maslow, and Jane Loevinger (as well as many philosophers, theorists, and researchers from dozens of disciplines). In fact, Wilber names the American philosopher and psychologist James Mark Baldwin (1861–1934), not Aurobindo, as the first integral psychologist.

In addition to relying on the most important discoveries made by individual researchers in various fields, integral psychology is a true integration of the main schools of psychology: psychoanalytic, humanistic, transpersonal, cognitive, developmental, neuropsychological, cultural, evolutionary, etc. As a result of the synthesis of various psychological Traditions of Integral Psychology emphasize such concepts as nested hierarchies of multiple intelligences or abilities that arise in the development of dysfunction, a range of defense mechanisms, and combinations of treatments. Wilber's view of the integral approach to psychology, matured, is presented in his book Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy (1999). In this text, Wilber presents his AQAL model (discussed below) and uses a cross-paradigmatic approach to describe the essential characteristics of integral psychology. This text is well known for the summary tables at the end of the book that collate and compare more than 100 schools of developmental psychology—western and eastern, ancient and modern. Based on this mapping, Wilber created a model of the full spectrum of human psychology, using all systems to fill in the gaps that exist in each of the schools taken separately.

AQAL model

One of the essential features of Wilber's integral psychology is its applicability to a variety of disciplines. In contrast, Aurobindo's approach is largely limited to yoga and depth psychology studies and does not correlate with actual psychological relationships between the intentional, behavioral, social, and cultural dimensions (i.e., the four quadrants of the AQAL model). Currently, professionals from over 50 disciplines rely on the AQAL model of Integral Psychology to develop their comprehensive solutions to the complex problems they face. Integral psychology principles find application in areas such as research environment, community development, urban planning, medicine, arts, business, leadership, international relationships, nursing, education, law, feminist theories, coaching, psychiatry, criminology, futurology, healthcare management, religious studies, writing, political analysis, transdisciplinary studies, gender studies, psychotherapy and sustainable development. (See articles in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice for examples and examples of the use of the integral approach.)

From the breadth of the range of applications of integral psychology, we can conclude that it is useful for almost any integral activity. After all, if you don't have a comprehensive view of human psychology, it's hard to get an integral approach to any area where humans are involved. Thus, Integral Psychology serves as a cornerstone for many Integral ventures. At the center of Wilber's approach to integral psychology is integral theory, which he developed over forty years, publishing more than 20 books (see Visser, 2003; Wilber 1999–2000).

There are five elements in integral theory: sectors, levels, lines, states, and types. These five components, referred to for brevity by the English acronym “AQAL” (abbreviated as “all sectors, all levels” - “all quadrants, all levels”; it reads “aqua”), are irreducible perspectives (viewing angles) that are observed at all scales and contexts of human life. By incorporating these basic elements, the integral psychologist is able to take into account the basic dimensions of any phenomenon. No ontological or epistemological primacy is attributed to any of these dimensions, since each aspect is seen as co-emerging with all the others in the seamless fabric of the reality of every moment of time.

« Sectors” (also translated into Russian as “quadrants”) are four basic irreducible dimensions-perspectives on reality (Wilber, 1995). Every moment there is always an individual and a collective aspect, and within each of them there are also inner and outer aspects. These four dimensions - internal and external of individuals and collectives - are also described as dimensions of (1) intention ("I": individual internal, subjective), (2) culture ("We": collective internal, intersubjective), (3) behavior (“it”: individual external, objective) and (4) societies (“they”: collective external, interobjective).

The remaining four elements of the AQAL model emerge as deeper categories within these four dimensions. " Levels" is one way to describe the phenomenon of complexity (complexity) or depth in each sector. For example, in the individual external sector of behavior, we observe the degree of physical complication (complexity) of any individual organism. The dog is physically more complex than the amoeba, and therefore it is located at a higher level. " lines" is a term for the fact of the existence of various abilities that develop by level. For example, in the individual domestic sector there are abilities, or lines, which are characterized by a process of development; these include cognitive, emotional, interpersonal and moral abilities. A graphic description of the development of an individual is called a "psychogram". " states"- temporary manifestations of any aspect of reality. For example, stormy weather is a condition that occurs in the collective outer quadrant of systems, while euphoria is a condition that occurs in the individual inner quadrant. " Types» are a variety of styles that occur in different dimensions. One or another type of religious worldview, for example, Protestantism, in the collective internal sector of culture, or the somatic type of endomorph in the individual external sector, can serve as an example.

As a consequence of the application of the AQAL model, integral psychology is characterized by at least six main components of human psychology, which should be included in any comprehensive theory: four quadrants - behavior, intention, culture and social systems; levels of development, or structures-stages of growth of consciousness; psychological lines of development; ordinary and altered states of consciousness (for example, states-stages of gross, subtle, causal and non-dual); personality and gender types; as well as the self, or "I"-system (it is also the system of the self).

"I"-system

The "I"-system, or self-system, has four components: the proximal or immediate "I" (the observing "I"), the distal or distant "I" (the observed "mine" or something that can be characterized as " me"); the antecedent, or pre-existing, “I” (“I-I”, transcendental witness), as well as the total “I” - the totality of all the listed “I”. The immediate "I" is the navigator of development, during which the "I" of one stage becomes the "me" of the next stage. In other words, our sense of self is in a continuous process of identification with new structure-stages, which consists in their transcendence and subsequent integration within a higher level of psychological organization.

Being the main navigator in the space of psychological development, the self is the locus of such important mental functions, as identification (identification; what is called "I"), will (or choices, the freedom of which is limited by the framework and bonds of its current level of development), protection (are built hierarchically in the process of development), metabolism (turns states into stable characteristics), and - most important of all - integration (the self is responsible for balancing and integrating all the elements present). As the locus of integration, the self is responsible for balancing and integrating all quadrants, levels, lines, states and types in the individual. The "I"-system, or self-system, can be understood through the metaphor of "ladder, climbing it and opening the view", where "ladder" refers to the basic structures of consciousness, "climbing" is the immediate "I", and "view" is the perspective that opens up to this "I" when it climbs a certain rung of the ladder. One of the most important contributions of integral psychology is its indication that the self at any level of development (i.e. structure-stages) can have access (temporary or stable) to any state (states-stages) (Wilber, 2006).

A defining characteristic of Integral Psychology is its use of Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP) to build, coordinate, and evaluate relevant perspectives (Wilber, 2006). The IMP has three principles: all-inclusive (need to impartially involve multiple perspectives and methods), envelopment (need to prioritize the importance of discoveries generated from these perspectives), and engagement (need to recognize that phenomena are revealed to subjects through the activity they perform to know them). As a result of adherence to these principles, integral psychology is considered post-metaphysical (i.e., it avoids postulating a priori structures by emphasizing the perspectival nature of the reality involved). In other words, a certain phenomenon (phenomenon) can manifest itself - and, in this sense, be - only within the framework of a certain perspective or world space, consistent with the properties of this phenomenon.

In general, integral psychology uses an inclusive, meta-perspective, and post-disciplinary frame of reference to describe psychological phenomena, heal trauma, and resolve sociocultural problems. It is comprehensive in the following sense: it both relies on a theoretical model and itself provides one for revealing the relationship between a great many different psychological methods, including those involved in natural and social sciences as well as in the arts and the humanities. The diversity and breadth of psychology is amazing: there are currently more than 150 different schools of psychology, more than 70 various methods psychotherapy and more than 40 specializations. Anything that is not represented by an approach that takes into account the strengths and weaknesses of each of these disciplines cannot be called a truly integral psychology. It is inherently metaperspective because it facilitates the integration, coordination, and cross-fertilization of knowledge generated by at least four major perspectives (i.e. quadrants) and eight fundamental methodological families (i.e., phenomenology, hermeneutics, empiricism, and systems theory). Integral psychology is postdisciplinary due to its applicability within specific disciplines, in the interaction between them and in their general synthesis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chaudhuri, H. (1977). The evolution of integral consciousness. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books.
Cortright, B. (2007). Integral psychology: Yoga, growth, and opening the heart
Sen, I. (1986). Integral psychology: The psychological system of Sri Aurobindo. Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.
Visser, F. (2003). Ken Wilber. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Vrinte, J. (2002). The perennial quest for a psychology with a soul: An inquiry into the relevance of Sri Aurobindo’s metaphysical yoga psychology in the context often Wilber’s integral psychology. Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass.
Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution. Boston: Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (1999). Integral psychology: Consciousness, spirit, psychology, therapy. Boston: Shambhala. In Russian: Ken Wilber, "Integral Psychology".
Wilber, K. (1999-2000). The collected works of Ken Wilber(Vols. 1-8). Boston: Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (2006). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world. Boston: Shambhala

Integral psychology. (2007). . AQAL: Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 2 (3).
Integral theory in counseling. (2007). . Counseling and Values, 51 (3).
Wilber, K. (2000). Waves, streams, states and self. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7 (11–12), 145–176. In Russian: Ken Wilber, "Waves, flows, states and the self".

Sean Esbjorn-Hargens
John F. Kennedy University, Pleasant Hill, CA

Ken Wilber,
Integral Institute, Boulder, CO

Ken Wilber

Integral psychology. Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy

Note to the reader: BRIGHT LOOK

The word "psychology" means the study of the psyche, and the word "psyche" means the mind or soul. In the explanatory dictionary Microsoft Thesaurus we find such definitions of “psyche”: “self: atman, soul, spirit; subjectivity: higher self, spiritual self, spirit. This again reminds us that the roots of psychology lie in the depths of the soul and spirit of man.

The word "psyche" and its equivalents have an ancient origin - they appeared at least several millennia before our era and at that time almost always meant an animating force or spirit in a body or material shell. Around the sixteenth century in Germany, the word psyche was associated with the word logos(word or study), resulting in the term psychology- the study of the soul or spirit of man. There is still debate about who first used the term psychology; some say Melanchton, others Freigius, others Goclenius of Marburg. However, by 1730 the word was already being used in a more modern sense by Wolff in Germany, Hartly in England, Bonnet in France - but even then the term psychology, as defined in the journal New Princeton Review 1888, still meant "the study of the psyche or soul".

Somehow I began to collect materials on the history of psychology and philosophy, intending to write a study on this topic. I decided to do this because when I looked at most of the textbooks on the history of psychology that were available, I was struck by a strange and curious fact - they all told the history of psychology - and the psyche - as if it suddenly arose from nothing around 1879 in the laboratory of the University of Leipzig, which was directed by Wilhelm Wundt, who was indeed the founder of a certain type of psychology associated with introspective analysis and structuralism. But did the psyche itself begin to exist only in 1879?

Some textbooks have gone a little further into the history of psychology, to the forerunners of Wundt's scientific psychology, including Sir Francis Galton, Hermann von Helmholtz, and especially the influential figure Gustav Fechner. As one textbook reverently narrates: “On the morning of October 22, 1850, this important date in the history of psychology - Fechner realized that the law of the relationship between mind and body can be expressed as a quantitative relationship between sensory perception and material stimulus. Soon this formulation became known as Fechner's law: S = K log I (the intensity of sensory perception is proportional to the logarithm of the material stimulus). Another text explained the importance of this discovery: “Early in the nineteenth century, Immanuel Kant predicted that psychology could never become a science because it was impossible to measure psychological processes experimentally. Thanks to Fechner's work, scientists were able to measure the mind for the first time; by the middle of the nineteenth century scientific methods already applied to the study of mental phenomena. Wilhelm Wundt took these original creative achievements and organized them into a single system that became the basis of psychology.

Virtually all textbooks agreed that Gustav Fechner was one of the founding fathers of modern psychology and lauded the man who figured out a way to apply quantitative measurement to the mind, thus finally making psychology "scientific". Even Wilhelm Wundt insisted: “It will never be forgotten that it was Fechner who first introduced into psychology scientific methods, precise principles of measurement and observation for the study of mental phenomena, thereby opening up prospects for psychological science in the strict sense of the word. The main advantage of Fechner's method is that it does not depend at all on the change of philosophical systems. Modern psychology has acquired a truly scientific character and can remain aloof from all metaphysical disputes. 1 So, I thought, then Dr. Fechner had saved psychology from the pollution of "soul" or "spirit" and successfully reduced the mind to measurable empirical things, opening the era of truly scientific psychology.

That's all I knew about Gustav Fechner until a few years later, rummaging through a store full of delightfully old philosophical books, I found, to my great surprise, a book with a striking title - "Life after death" - written in 1835 by none other than Gustav Fechner. It began with breathtaking lines: “Man lives on earth not once, but three times: the first stage of his life is uninterrupted sleep; the second is the alternation of sleep and wakefulness; and the third is eternal wakefulness.

And then followed a treatise on eternal vigilance. “At the first stage of his life, man is in darkness and alone; on the second, he lives together with his fellow human beings and, at the same time, separate from them, in the light reflected from the surface of things; in the third stage, his life intertwined with... the universal spirit... is the highest life.

At the first stage, it develops from its embryo body, forming bodies for the second stage; at the second stage, it develops from its embryo mind, producing organs for the third stage; in the third stage develops divine a germ hidden in every human mind.

The act of passing from the first stage to the second we call Birth; the transition from the second stage to the third we call Death. Our path from the second stage to the third is no darker than our path from the first stage to the second, one path leads us to the perception of the external world; the other leads to the perception of the inner world.

From the body to the mind and to the spirit - these are the three stages of the growth of consciousness; and only when a man dies to a separate self does he awaken to the universality of the universal Spirit. This was the real philosophy of life, mind, soul and consciousness that Fechner professed; and why the textbooks didn't bother to tell us about this? That's when I decided to write a history of psychology, simply because "someone should tell about it."

(To tell that the concept of the unconscious was made famous by von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious, which was published in 1869 - thirty years before Freud - and was so successful that it was reprinted eight times within ten years. That Hartmann expressed the philosophy of Schopenhauer, which, as Schopenhauer himself unequivocally stated, had its origins mainly in Eastern mysticism, especially Buddhism and the Upanishads, According to this philosophy, hidden under the surface of individual consciousness is a cosmic consciousness, which in most people is "unconscious ", but can be awakened and fully realized, and this transformation of the unconscious into the conscious was considered the greatest blessing for man. To tell that Freud directly borrowed the concept of "It" ( id) from the book by Georg Groddeck (Groddeck) The Book of the It("The Book of It"), which was based on the existence of the cosmic Tao, or natural universal spirit. About that ... however, this is too long a story, but everything in it persistently reminds us that the roots of modern psychology lie in spiritual traditions, precisely because the psyche itself is inseparable from spiritual sources. In the most hidden depths of the psyche, we find not instincts, but Spirit - and the study of psychology should ideally be a study of all this, from body to mind to soul, from the subconscious to self-consciousness and superconsciousness, from sleep to half-wakefulness and to full wakefulness.)

a common person/ 2.03.2011 A wall means a wall. Nothing penetrates a person, he is not sensitive to what is around him, he is like a stone, almost like a stone. He doesn't allow life to come in and flow through him, that's what that means.

Irina Kusa/ 2.03.2011 Dear Ordinary Person!
I didn't understand your last sentence. How is it - like a wall?

a common person/ 1.03.2011 Iryna - when a person wakes up, he always becomes in tune with what is around him, but when he sleeps, he is like a wall, everything bounces off.

Iryna/ 16.02.2011 Dear Ordinary Person! Your comments are in line with my thoughts. Yesterday I just thought that I should ask about this, and today I receive an answer. Thank you.

a common person/ 15.02.2011 to Iryna.
If you want to read the truth, it is better to read the books of people who have experienced the truth.
Although it can not be expressed in words, but at least something. For example:
Osho
Ramana Maharshi

a common person/ 13.02.2011 Iryna - because philosophers should not describe the truth. Wilber did not experience what he described. It's just academicism, it's the same as art critics discuss Van Gogh's work, it would be much better for me to talk about this with Van Gogh himself.

Iryna/ 11.12.2010 I agree with the common man.
The tragedy is that I bought the book "Project Atman", I can't throw my hand away.
The disappointment is complete.

a common person/ 12/10/2010 The fact of the matter is that this is just another stupid meaningless philosophy, again they made complexity out of simplicity, the Atman Project, how beautiful it sounds, but in fact, all this is complete bullshit, there is no Atman, period.
You have been deceived by atman no.

Osho/ 2.12.2010 I read it a long time ago, weakly, but the best that is now in psychology. Osho was already dead when transpersonal psychology arose, but he was appreciated)

trim/ 29.09.2010 Amazing books. These books personally help me to put a lot of things together!

Romka/ 09/29/2010 I agree with Punta... As an Orthodox person, I immediately noticed this... In general, what am I doing on this site??? %)

Punta/ 24.09.2010 Has anyone thought that this Wilber is crawling after the establishment. He seriously called Bush... a compassionate man (in "Integral Politics") No, I'm really interested. "People like Al Gore, Bill Clinton..." - his words, he actually admires them. All this integral mura is a thinly disguised new globalist philosophy (and maybe even religion), and it is very massively propagated and imposed. There is no liberation in Wilber's philosophy, he is not a liberator. Ny can only be somewhere in places, if he wrote less about politics in which he doesn’t understand a damn thing. It has already been said here that this is a dogma. I absolutely agree... A very subtle and cunning dogma. As they all call it, if I'm not mistaken, "guiding generalizations"!!! All the time someone is trying to direct us somewhere.

Love/ 12.07.2010 Just not enough words!!! I want to instantly read all the books, but it doesn't work... I've been looking for "Mercy and Courage" on the Internet for a long time, but I can't find it. I tried to download from booksmed, but the file is corrupted. Does anyone know where else you can find it?

Svetlana/ 05/27/2010 I am writing my doctoral dissertation, trying to apply an integral approach to education and training. Very interesting results related to the enrichment of the theory and practice of pedagogy. I would like to find like-minded people in this area to conduct a parallel experiment in various universities.