A New Role for Religions

	Book review on Integral Spirituality by Wilber, Ken (2006) Reviewed by David Lorimer, 2008 published in Network Review No 97
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Integral Spirituality is Ken Wilber's most complete and systematic statement of his model, with which many readers will be acquainted from his writings over the past 30 years. It is more than a book; it is a textbook requiring close and demanding study. At the same time, it can be read at a more summary level without completely absorbing the massive amount of detail. The introduction is an overview of the integral approach, and is followed by a chapter on what he calls, somewhat dauntingly, integral methodological pluralism. All of this is situated within his four quadrant approach involving states of consciousness, stages or levels and lines of development (e.g. from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric - I will come back to this) and types (boy-girl). The dimensions of experience are categorised in terms of I, we, it, or art, morals and science, or self, culture and nature corresponding again to beautiful, good and true.

There are so many possibilities to discuss in this book that this review will focus on only two of them: the principal functions - thought, feeling phenomenology and outer structuring of subjective experience, and the role of religions in helping their followers move through to more universal stages of development. Integral methodo­logical pluralism as defined involves eight fundamental and seemingly irreducible methodologies or perspectives for gaining reproducible knowledge. If I experience my own 'I' , from the inside as it felt experience, then this is phenomenology. If I approach the 'I' from outside as an objective observer, then this is structuralism, a connecting pattern.

It is important to note that all such perspectives are themselves embedded in bodies and cultures, as postmodernism insists. The great wisdom traditions have been assaulted by both modernism and post­modernism. Modernism demanded objective evidence, postmodernism asserts the social construction of reality, including science. The great wisdom traditions belong in their own realm, namely the interior of the individual with all its states and stages of consciousness (Upper Left). Their claims can only be undercut by reducing interior experience to one of the other methodologies. Wilber sums this up by saying that 'the double death suffered by the contemplative traditions in the last few centuries involved the taboo (or ignorance) of subjectivity or interiority that was displayed by late modernity, and the taboo (or ignorance) of inter­subjectivity displayed by the traditions themselves.'

Wilber's map thus reinstates the validity of spiritual experiences within a larger epistemological and methodological scheme. Another very useful distinction he makes is between inside and interior. The brain is inside the head, but consciousness is interior to the brain. What can be viewed by means of instruments can only be the neural correlates of consciousness, which does not entail that God can be reduced to a brain state. The correct procedure is what he calls simul-tracking, whereby the results are understood in terms of the appropriate quadrants, none of which can be reduced to the other. A further important danger is elaborated in 'the myth of the given' to which many other scientists succumb. This consists in the belief that reality is simply given to me, that the consciousness of an individual will deliver truth, that the mirror of nature is an adequate methodology, and signifies a failure to understand that truth is in part instructed by intersubjective cultural networks. Even a cursory reading of this book will serve as a cure to this ailment, which Wilber diagnoses in a number of prominent writers in a special appendix.

The second issue defines a new role for the major world religions. Wilber observes that the 50 and 70% of the world population is still at the ethnocentric or lower levels of development, in other words they have yet to reach worldcentric or postconventional levels. Most of these people are adherents of the world's great religions. In a foretaste of a forthcoming book, Wilber notes that terrorists have the same basic psychograph: 'amber' (conformist, traditional) beliefs driven by a 'red' sense of self which is egocentric and power-driven. The basic social problem is that the 'orange' of modern science makes no room for such beliefs. Worse still, modernity confuses the mythic (superstitious) level of spiritual intelligence with the whole of spiritual intelligence leading to the familiar stand-off between rational science and mythic religion. This position also entails committing the 'pre-trans fallacy' of supposing that one can equate the pre-rational with the trans-rational.

Within this larger scheme, it is possible to see that atheism and agnosticism are manifestations of orange rationality. Instead of spiritual intelligence being understood as that line of intelligence dealing with the ultimate concerns, there has been a tendency to claim either that science proves that there is no ultimate reality or that matter is effectively an absolute reality in terms of which everything else needs to be understood. What religions can begin to do is to provide outlets to develop higher stages and higher states, thus responding to the contemplative needs of our time as noted in my review of books on spirituality elsewhere in this issue. The trouble is that it is hard for religious leaders to be too explicit about these stages of development without implying that many of their colleagues are at lower levels. Within such a scheme, liberals are more sophisticated than conservatives; but that does not mean of course that they are better people. One can see exactly this problem in the key debates at the current Lambeth Conference. However, Wilber insists that only religions can help their followers make this leap towards worldcentric, postconventional versions of their own message.

It would be good to open a dialogue between religious leaders and integral theorists, but perhaps the first step is to get books like this one onto the syllabus of university philosophy and psychology departments. It is lamentable that undergraduates can emerge with a degree without ever having heard of an integral approach. They simply do not have an adequate understanding of the place of their discipline or methodology within the larger scheme of knowledge. In particular, their view of the upper left subjective quadrant will in all probability be conditioned by post-modern ideas about the cultural construction of knowledge or the naïve realism of scientific training. This book should be compulsory reading for university lecturers, preferably with an exam at the end to make sure they have understood to the main points. They may well disagree with many details in the argument, but will surely admit the necessity for some such overall organising schema for knowledge.

 

 

 

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