Dialogue IX

What will the next levels of human development look like? In their ninth dialogue, guru and pandit take a closer look at the leading edge, asking what an “integral” worldview really means and exploring still higher potentials for the evolution of consciousness.

ANDREW COHEN: Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the word “integral” and wondering what it really means to have an integral perspective. This is obviously what your own work is all about, and it's a concept that more and more people are becoming familiar with these days. The words “integral” and “second tier” are being used as catchphrases to point to the next stage of development for many of us in this postmodern culture. So I thought it would be good to speak specifically about what integral, or second tier, really means, especially in relationship to the spiritual dimension of life.

My own understanding of integral is that, to put it simply, it points to a more integrated and comprehensive perspective not only on our own experience but on the very structure of the cosmos. But what I want to talk to you about is an important distinction I've become aware of between the direct, intuitive recognition of an integrated cosmos and a similar understanding that is more intellectually based.

KEN WILBER: Yes, I understand the distinction. Your talk and your walk.

COHEN: Right. We could call it the difference between looking at the cosmos from the inside out and from the outside in. In this distinction I'm making, we could say that the inside-out perception would be one that was based on a spiritual realization, while the outside-in perception wouldn't necessarily have any spiritual dimension to it. One reason I'm interested in this is because I have noticed that a lot of people who have a good cognitive grasp of what an integral, or second tier, perspective is seem to lose that perspective when it comes to their own spiritual life. Their spiritual paths often don't echo or relate directly to the higher, impersonal, evolutionary perspective that second tier cognitive capacities can reveal. A lot of the spirituality can be extremely personally focused and even “new-age.” In short, one finds individuals with very big views who still have narrow spiritual orientations.

WILBER: (Laughs) Well, somebody's confused!

COHEN: I find it hard to understand how someone can cognitively grasp a second tier, or integral, perspective but embrace a spiritual path that has literally nothing to do with it. So it would be good to go into this question together: What is second tier spirituality? I feel, and I'm sure you would agree, that ultimately as we evolve, especially if we evolve integrally, our spiritual view would be seamlessly interrelated with our worldview, with our moral, ethical, and philosophical perspective.

An Integral Map

WILBER: You've raised a very interesting point. A lot of people are using developmental models like Spiral Dynamics, based on Clare Graves' work, or Robert Kegan's system or Jane Loevinger's system, and there's some confusion about what's called second tier or integral. However we want to define it, it generally refers to the highest levels that any Western model looks at. In Spiral Dynamics, the two highest stages that they recognize are called “yellow” and “turquoise,” and those together are referred to as second tier. In Jane Loevinger's scale those are roughly equivalent to the levels that she calls “autonomous” and “integrated.” And in Robert Kegan's five orders of consciousness, second tier would be roughly equivalent to his fifth order.

So these are the highest levels in all the Western models, and therefore many people think that if they are doing spiritual work, they must be second tier. But actually, if you look at the descriptions in any of these models, second tier isn't really spiritual. Take, for example, the yellow and turquoise levels in Spiral Dynamics—neither of them is what we would really recognize as nondual or mystical or transpersonal or transrational. What they call yellow is actually entirely secular, and its descriptions of the world are very systemic—everything is interrelated—but it's just an ecological worldview without any unmanifest or unborn or even spiritual kind of dimension. At turquoise, people say things like, “The earth is a single organism with one consciousness.” Now this starts to sound spiritual, and in a certain way I suppose it is, but it's not a direct experience. It's still just an idea.

The point is that there are higher stages than that, if you actually look at the traditions and at cutting-edge research. But higher stages are extremely rare, so they just don't tend to show up in the research most psychologists are doing. It's not necessarily a fault of the Western models that I just mentioned, because they basically reported what they found. It's just the rarity of people at these stages.

If you take Sri Aurobindo's consciousness stages as a point of comparison—he has about ten or eleven—what he calls “higher mind” would be equivalent to what Spiral Dynamics would call second tier, or yellow and turquoise. But above higher mind there is illumined mind, then intuitive mind, then overmind, then supermind, and then satchitananda, the ever-present oneness. There are at least four or five stages up there that are higher than second tier. So second tier is sometimes referred to as “integral” only because it's more integral than first tier. But these higher stages will be even more integral, all the way to satchitananda, which is like superintegral, including everything.

COHEN: Yes, absolute integration.

WILBER: Exactly. We could use the term “third tier” for whatever stages are higher than second tier—illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind, and supermind, for example, as actual, permanent developmental stages. But the thing about second tier is that it's a great base camp for all higher development. If you don't have a really good foundation there, when you get to these higher stages, they won't stick very well.

COHEN: Yes, and what I'm saying is that a lot of people who do seem to have a well-established systems, or integrated, worldview—

WILBER: Well, cognitively.

COHEN: Yes—which is, relatively speaking, quite a big deal—

WILBER:—don't have their personal or transpersonal act together. Well, that gets us to a second point, which is that the cognitive line of development—which is usually necessary but not sufficient for other development—can run quite ahead of the individual's center of gravity. So there are a lot of people talking integral because that's just what's out there. And everybody wants to be integral. But if somebody is integral cognitively, they can still have a center of gravity, frankly, that's several stages lower. It happens quite often. And it's a little disorienting because they talk one thing and walk another.

COHEN: Yes. It's a strange mix and it certainly is disorienting, because for most of us, our deepest emotionally based convictions tend to be our spiritual convictions. So when one cognitively has a second tier understanding but one is emotionally identified with the sentimental and even superstitious spiritual beliefs of a lower level—

WILBER:—it's a problem.

COHEN: There's this dissonance—because there's a profound contradiction between a second tier perspective and the emotionally based spiritual convictions of a lower stage.

WILBER: That's a real concern. And nobody has stated that caution more strongly than I have in my own works. I tell people that if you understand my books, you're at least up to second tier, cognitively. But that doesn't guarantee anything, because again, you can simply think that way but your center of gravity could be lower.

So my work is just a map. And, of course, you don't want to confuse the map with the territory. But maps are extraordinarily helpful. After all, do you really want to go into Antarctica or Africa without a map? But I'm concerned about people merely taking this map and by learning it thinking that somehow they have awakened to the territory. The map is self-critical though, in that it says, “Here's a presentation that's roughly, to use Aurobindo's terms, higher mind to illumined mind. But above that, you have really got to push into intuitive mind, overmind, supermind, satchitananda. And it's going to take your own realization and your own work and your own practice, and I recommend spiritual teachers for this because you're going to delude yourself all the way up. You've got to have somebody basically boxing your ears, so get ready for that—it's a lot of fun.”

COHEN: You can say that again!

WILBER: Like I said, second tier is really just a base camp. If you actually get oriented, get a good grounding there, then you can start unfolding it from within and actually make it a first-person realization and not a third-person map. So “integral” for most people right now means intellectually pushing into second tier. But that's just a good start. There's so much more work to do. The percentage of people stably at second tier is one half percent of the U.S. population! So it's really going uphill. I mean, the center of gravity in this culture is still very much what we would call first tier. So what we're trying to do is really orient people to second tier and then push them into third tier. What happens in what we're calling second tier is that people become self-aware of integral. Evolution becomes aware of itself. And it's a huge leap. That's why so many psychologists refer to the “leap” or “jump” from first tier to second tier. So we call second tier integral because it self-consciously becomes integral.

COHEN: Yes. When it becomes self-consciously integral, that's when it's from the inside out, right? That's the beginning.

WILBER: That's when it begins. So we have two things going on here. You can talk second tier, but your walk—your center of gravity—can still be first tier. That's extremely common now. But when you get your walk and your talk at second tier, there's still third tier waiting. And really, you have to keep going on into third tier. And then integral will flow out of yourself and into the world; it will start embracing everything, and not just as an altered state but as a permanent trait.

COHEN: Yes. And when the integral perspective meets a third tier, or enlightened, state of consciousness, our understanding of what that state is and what it means will actually begin to change. The traditional definitions will be replaced by new ones that are more integrated, that are endeavoring to embrace all of manifestation. This is what really sets my heart on fire—when our understanding and expression of enlightenment itself begins to evolve in real time, right before our very eyes.

WILBER: I think that's exactly what begins to happen.

New Territory

COHEN: You know, ever since I started teaching almost twenty years ago, I have been consumed by this question: What does an uncompromised and uninhibited expression of enlightened consciousness look like in a postmodern twenty-first-century context? Or to use the terms of our discussion today, what would a second or even third tier perspective really mean—in real life, for you and for me? Not just in terms of some idealized state, but in terms of our actual level of development as fully human beings. Usually, when people experience higher states of consciousness, they effortlessly and ecstatically relate to a higher, or what I would call enlightened, perspective. But unfortunately, it rarely informs the way they relate to their experience, or the experience of others, the rest of the time. What I'm interested in, of course, is the rest of the time. Because what happens when people are just experiencing higher states doesn't necessarily mean that much, or it is significant only to the degree that one is able to sustain the enlightened perspective throughout all changing states.

That perspective, of course, reveals to us a completely different way of seeing and understanding and, ultimately, even feeling. When an individual actually does evolve, miraculously they begin to feel from a higher or more impersonal dimension of themselves. They find it more and more difficult to relate emotionally from a merely personal place. But that's a big leap for most of us.

WILBER: You know, when Aurobindo talks about intuitive mind and overmind and supermind, it's very telling that he uses the word mind. Because you can also say that there are intuitive emotions, and over-emotions, and super-emotions. The same with motivation—there's intuitive motivation and over-motivation and super-motivation. So there are all those other lines of development that go up the hill with the mind line, or cognitive line. But we still find that the cognitive line is usually necessary for these other lines to stick. If you don't have intuitive mind awakened, and overmind awakened, and supermind awakened, the emotions won't stick up there—they'll come and go. And the higher motivations won't stick—they'll come and go.

COHEN: That's very true. That's why now, in my own work, I always put the greatest emphasis on the need to cultivate a very big perspective, and why I agree with you that we need a clear map of the territory that we are aspiring to leap into. Without that map or context, it's very difficult to make sense out of our own experience, especially as we begin to enter into higher states of consciousness. The experiences themselves, while soothing for the soul and liberating for the spirit, simply do not clarify the overarching developmental context in which they are occurring. That's one of the reasons that it's so common for people to continue to get lost again and again in the ego's limited perspective, even though they may have transcended it—seen and felt and known beyond it—many, many times. So to me, the ultimate purpose of a map is that it can help us to continuously orient ourselves to a higher, more enlightened context throughout all changing states.

WILBER: What happens in my work and what happens in yours is a little bit different, I think. I'm primarily trying to orient people to second tier as an integral base camp. You're trying to push them into third tier. So, what happens with me is that, as we were saying, a lot of people come who are talking second tier, but really have a first tier center of gravity. You're dealing with people who often have third tier experiences or realizations, but how to actually live it, in a way that includes first and second tier, is the rub.

COHEN: It's a big rub.

WILBER: People have experiences, but how they handle them, that's what you have to deal with. That's when people fall apart.

COHEN: Yes, because not everybody has what it takes to live up to what they have realized.

WILBER: And that's what you have to deal with as a guru. You're standing up as a guru, which takes courage; it takes a certain awareness; it takes a certain openness. Students regularly get offended and you have to deal with that. So that's a very difficult issue.

COHEN: Especially in this culture. So the big challenge is really being willing to make the effort necessary to stretch ourselves in order to learn what the higher-state experiences we have actually mean. Because often on an experiential level, we can go a lot further than we may yet be able to understand and interpret appropriately. As we've spoken about in the past, to make this leap to a higher-level interpretation is a very big thing. That's new territory.

WILBER: It's new territory, and it's a constant uphill battle, as you know.

COHEN: It is an uphill battle. But there's a point where one's center of gravity shifts in a fundamental way. We could say this shift would be the beginning of a genuine transformation or leap to a higher stage of development. The way I would describe it would be a shift in the balance of power within the individual from the ego to what I call the authentic self. When the balance of power shifts not less than fifty-one percent to the authentic self, a fundamental corner has been turned. Now the individual is able to wholeheartedly direct their energy to the evolution of consciousness because the resistance, the fundamental resistance, has been overpowered by the ecstatic compulsion to evolve that is the nature of the authentic self.

WILBER: I agree with that. I think percentage is the way to look at it. I really don't think it's problematic to say that I can have three or five or twenty percent old, conditioned stuff and I can have five or ten or twenty—or fifty-one—percent radically new stuff going on. They're not mutually exclusive. And I think that's what makes it so interesting for pioneers—they're poking their way into things that have never been seen before and shaking the old stuff off at the same time.

COHEN: Absolutely. There's no other way to do it. But when the balance shifts fifty-one percent to the authentic self, the individual is not a seeker anymore. Now they have become, to that degree, one with God or the evolutionary principle and that's what is driving them—even if they still have forty-nine percent to go.

WILBER: Yes. When fifty-one percent of them gets over the hill, in a sense it's downhill from there, but there are still a lot of bumps going downhill.

COHEN: Another way to describe it is like there's a tractor beam that is literally pulling one forward.

WILBER: Yes, that's a better way to look at it. But that path hasn't been grooved yet. We've talked about that part before in terms of the model that I'm developing on postmetaphysics, and I think we're in agreement on this. Some of these higher stages, even though the great sages have pioneered them, haven't really been laid down as Kosmic memories, or Kosmic grooves, the way first tier or even beginning second tier has. For example, most of the early stages of development have been around for thousands of years. And billions of human beings have gone through them so that now they are automatically part of development. They're as rutted as the Grand Canyon, which may go down a mile. But new stages—as stages, not as temporary ecstatic states—might be a yard or two deep, that's all that's been cut yet. And so, boy, it's hard to make things stick in that.

COHEN: Precisely.

WILBER: And anybody who's pushing into those stages is basically going out next to the Grand Canyon, taking a stick, and starting to dig another groove. But it's still a tractor beam of Spirit. It's still Eros. It's still the leading edge of spirit's own unfolding. And once fifty-one percent of you gets behind it, then you really do feel God is moving in you, and evolution is speaking through you, and Spirit is unfolding through you, consciously.

COHEN: That's what evolutionary enlightenment is all about.

WILBER: Working with all this is such a strange experience—I go back and forth. I get excited on the one hand because so much stuff is happening and it really is leading edge and it's wonderful. But then on the other hand, I look at what a tiny percentage of the population has actually reached these levels and it always sort of brings me back to earth.

COHEN: I know. Often I remind myself of that. Because sometimes I'm so wrapped up in what I'm trying to do and think it's so important—and I do believe that it is—but at the same time, in the big picture, it can suddenly seem so insignificant.

WILBER: And then on the other hand, you can get excited by remembering that Paul Tillich said that what we call the Renaissance was participated in by only about a thousand people.

COHEN: I've heard that. That's so exciting! Because a snowball can start rolling.

WILBER: Yes, when somebody pushes through. That's what they were doing in the Renaissance—pushing into the first modern values. They were really pioneering that stage of development and that spearheaded the creation of that Kosmic groove for the rest of us.

COHEN: Intuitively, it always feels that if a small but not insignificant number of people become stabilized in a new and higher perspective, something could explode.

WILBER: Absolutely. And for me that's a very galvanizing ethical realization.

COHEN: Ethical in what sense?

WILBER: Well, in the sense that every act you make on the leading edge becomes a groove that subsequent human beings will follow. Therefore, you want to do your best with every single breath you take.

COHEN: Amen!

WILBER: That's what we could call the evolutionary ethical imperative. You know, Immanuel Kant was famous for his “categorical imperative”—he said something was autonomous and ethical if the rule that governed your behavior was universal. So he said, “Act as if everything you do might actually become a universal rule.” Well, this is even a little bit stronger. If this is true, what you're doing is actually becoming a universal groove. Therefore, please act as if everything you do is creating that groove; please be the most ethical, the most responsible, the most authentic you can be with every breath you take, because you are cutting a path into tomorrow that others will follow.

COHEN: And if you cross that fifty-one percent threshold, that fact is something that you will intuitively be aware of.

WILBER: And that realization is ethically bracing.

COHEN: Yes. If we stick with it, our very motive eventually evolves. When we begin on the path, it's all about ourselves. But once we cross that threshold, it becomes more and more obvious that it never could have been. Our motive for transformation changes spontaneously and dramatically as we come to recognize that our own development has always only been for the sake of the evolution of consciousness itself. And it's not a romantic ideal. That's just all there is. That's where I believe a new moral context is going to come from.

WILBER: I do too. It starts at second tier, and it becomes a living reality at third tier. And it really is that realization that your every move, your every breath, your every thought is literally becoming a Kosmic habit or memory that humanity will follow. And you can do it wrong. I mean, history is full of examples of when a particular stage started out healthy and then got very unhealthy. That's why it's so bracing, because you can do it wrong as well.

COHEN: Absolutely. That's why it's so important that we do it right. Because the future really is depending on each and every one of us. When we realize this, the dawning recognition that “it really is up to me” becomes overwhelming. I call that the spiritual conscience, or higher conscience, which is the door to the future.