And the four quadrants are just the beginning. Another core insight for which Wilber has become well known over the last decade is his recognition that there is an emerging consensus, coming from very different streams of thought, that human development, individually and to some extent culturally, goes through specific levels or stages of consciousness. For example, there are the cognitive stages of psychologist Jean Piaget, the moral stages of American academic Lawrence Kohlberg and women's studies pioneer Carol Gilligan, the cultural stages of philosopher Jean Gebser, the spiritual stages of Indian sage Sri Aurobindo, the color-coded stages of Spiral Dynamics coming from the work of psychologist Clare Graves as well as Don Beck and Christopher Cowan, and many more. Taken as a whole, they present a powerful message to the integral mind. Human consciousness develops, they suggest, and in very specific ways through very specific stages. And we can see these stages, or levels, of consciousness not only in the development of individual psychology, from infancy to adulthood, but in the development of human culture over millennia. We can even see these different developmental levels alive and active in the world today, for better and for worse, in the so-called clash of civilizations and in the ebb and flow of global politics. Wilber was one of the first to highlight just how remarkably similar some of these developmental systems are and to begin to incorporate that knowledge and apply it.

Wilber's model of these “stages of consciousness” points to an overall pattern in human development, a hidden method to the meanderings of the human condition and even a subtle trajectory to human evolution. Here again he presents a powerful but relatively simple framework, or map, of reality that does not reduce or deny the complexity of human nature but rather teases out larger patterns in that complexity. Of course, the test of any effective model is how well it equips you to make sense of the world. And this is where Wilber's integral philosophy shines. Once you start viewing reality as a four-quadrant affair and human life as an ever-unfolding developmental process passing through specific stages and spiraling up into greater and greater evolutionary heights of increasing complexity and consciousness, each new level transcending and including the levels that came before, you'll wonder how you ever conceived of life in any other way. These two conceptions—quadrants and levels—are just the most rudimentary building blocks of Wilber's long-developing integral model, or “all quadrants, all levels” (AQAL)** approach. They represent the basic structure of his “theory of everything” and the foundation of his “integral operating system,” as he now refers to his core philosophy. And together with new contributions to the integral model articulated in Integral Spirituality, they comprise the fifth major stage in the development of his work.

“In every work of genius,” wrote Emerson, “we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” Wilber's work is no exception. His theory has that unique trait of explaining the world in a way that seems completely novel yet somehow familiar at the same time. His analysis is so clear and obvious—after it is explained. He takes your own deepest perceptions and turns them into conceptions, fulfilling that characteristic trait of great theory, what media critic Thomas de Zengotita describes as the ability to reveal “what you already knew but didn't know you knew.” And now, returning again to the domain of life that originally inspired him to take up the sword of philosophy in the name of the good, the true, and the beautiful, he has focused his powerful integral lens on the vast and ancient landscape of religion and spirituality.

Living in a Post-metaphysical World

Integral Spirituality is a work that furthers many of Wilber's core ideas and expands his always-evolving integral framework to include more of . . . well, “everything.” But it is Wilber's diagnostic work on the problems besetting both religion and spirituality in our contemporary society that is the highlight of the book. He outlines the reasons why the meditative and contemplative disciplines have been dismissed by today's progressive thinkers and carefully outlines a path forward that integrates spiritual awakening into the leading currents of human thought. Unlike many contemporary philosophers, Wilber has always treated the great wisdom traditions as full participants in his “universal integralism.” But that creates a problem. And it's a problem he states at the beginning of chapter one. He writes:

We start with the simple observation that the “metaphysics”*** of the spiritual traditions have been thoroughly critiqued—“trashed” is probably the better word—by both modernist and postmodernist epistemologies [ways of knowing], and there has yet arisen nothing compelling to take their place.

It's true that religion is sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of modern culture. It doesn't get any respect. Indeed, it doesn't take a great historian to notice that ever since the Western Enlightenment, religion and spirituality in all their many forms have been at best tolerated and at worst dismissed by the most progressive currents of thought in Western culture. And the gap between the secular and the spiritual is not shrinking. Just look at the intelligent design/evolution debates, the last U.S. Presidential election, or even the continuing global saga of religious violence. All expose the long-standing tensions between religion and secular modernity, pressure points that are at play both nationally and globally. Wilber, however, bypasses the superficial layers of these culture wars and goes deeper, drilling down to the philosophical roots of the problem.

Like a good doctor, he first diagnoses his patient (religion and spirituality) and clearly elucidates the nature of the disease. Using his trademark integral model, he illustrates how the last several centuries of philosophical thought were devastating to all forms of spirituality. Indeed, he details how science and the philosophical traditions of the European Enlightenment fundamentally undermined the metaphysics, or belief structures, of the religious traditions to such a degree that they simply never recovered. Enlightenment thinkers questioned both the veracity of religious belief systems as well as the way in which they arrived at those beliefs, demanding evidence for religious claims about reality. Religion stumbled on all counts. It is, in fact, a well-documented story, one that has received much attention as of late in the many science and religion debates that dot the intellectual landscape. And it also explains why, in the last several decades, there has been a great attempt by spiritual thinkers to ground their ideas in science, thereby hoping that they would gain broader acceptance in the culture.

Wilber, however, bucks this conventional wisdom and places responsibility for spirituality's stunted standing in the contemporary West at a different doorstep. He feels that it was the insights of postmodernity, or postmodern philosophy, that killed the contemplative traditions in the eyes of serious thinkers, and he suggests that until that issue is addressed, no marriage of science and spirit, no synthesis of quantum mechanics and mysticism, no tao of physics, no dancing Wu Li masters, however profound or popular, is ever going to change things. This is because postmodernist thinkers pointed out a different problem. And it is a problem, Wilber gently explains, that many of today's most popular spiritual and religious thinkers are unknowingly perpetuating. He calls it the “myth of the given.”

The myth of the given goes by various names among various thinkers (the phrase itself comes from an essay by analytical philosopher Wilfrid Sellars; Jürgen Habermas, one of the most respected thinkers alive today, refers to it as the “philosophy of consciousness”). It essentially disputes a fundamental assumption of the meditative and contemplative traditions—that knowledge gained through introspection is trustworthy. Indeed, the myth of the given refers to the assumption that what is “given” to my consciousness is real, that I can perceive objective reality solely through my personal experience. Nonsense, claimed postmodern thinkers. If a Christian monk has a vision of Jesus, he may believe that he is seeing an objective spiritual reality. But he fails to recognize, these thinkers tell us, that his vision is inevitably being influenced by tremendous cultural and social conditioning that is all taking place prior to and outside of the monk's immediate awareness. Like Hindus witnessing a vision of Krishna, or Tibetans a powerful visitation from a bodhisattva, he is mistaking a cultural archetype for truth. Most of us fail to take into account, Wilber explains, how the ever-present collective, or intersubjective, context in which we live shapes our perceptions. Before one ever sits down on the meditation cushion, he writes, “vast networks of intersubjective systems . . . are governing one's awareness and consciousness.” We may think that we perceive reality as it is, but in fact, we are more like the main character in our own Truman Show, and we cannot see the subtler cultural forces that are invisibly shaping all of our perceptions—even our most cherished spiritual experiences.

Examine any religion, any ancient philosophical system, and even most contemporary spiritual teachings, Wilber suggests, and you'll find that they are shot through with the myth of the given—unknowingly and innocently perhaps, but that does not mitigate the indictment of postmodernity. “Between the critiques of modernity and postmodernity,” Wilber writes, “what was left of the Great Traditions could be put in a teaspoon.”

But Wilber is a compassionate doctor, and despite the seriousness of the disease, he does not pronounce it terminal. Instead, he presents a cure that he calls “integral post-metaphysics.” Integral post-metaphysics is multilayered and profound, and there is not enough space here to convey its full significance. But it is important to grasp the scope of Wilber's ambition and its implications for spiritual thought in the twenty-first century. He is trying to carve out a space within the most sophisticated intellectual currents of the day for the relevance—indeed, the desperate necessity—of a spirituality that has incorporated the last three centuries of philosophical insight. He does not suggest that we throw out all of history's extraordinary religious revelations and the metaphysical systems they inspired. He does not think we should pronounce as illusion all the knowledge contributed by our wisdom traditions just because the sages of yesteryear lacked the perspective of postmodernity. Rather, he feels that we must entirely reframe the way we think about those ancient systems, jettisoning their outdated metaphysics but preserving their extraordinary contributions. And we must do the same for contemporary teachings as well. It is a revolutionary prescription for spirituality in the new millennium, one that radically transcends and yet includes religion's staunchest critics, from Voltaire to Kant to Foucault. And Wilber encourages all contemporary spiritual thinkers to recognize what is at stake—evolution or irrelevance. “Spirituality,” he asserts, “to survive in the present and future world, is and must be post-metaphysical.”

The theme of integral post-metaphysics is the primary message of Integral Spirituality, but even as he is building the core argument of the book, Wilber also covers a wide swath of important territory, ranging over a number of topics. For example, the book includes a fascinating discussion of the differences between spiritual states of consciousness and psychological stages of development, and it features the Wilber-Combs Lattice, an innovative graphical representation of the subtle and complex relationship between these states and stages. Integral Spirituality also explores the dynamics of religious extremism and outlines the critical role religion can, and in fact must, play in defusing the battle raging globally between the values of modernity and the values of more traditional cultures—or, as Thomas Friedman puts it, between the Lexus and the olive tree. It examines the limitations of meditation and why the psychological shadow, or the disowned and disassociated parts of one's own psyche, can never be fully integrated through spiritual practice alone—a problem, Wilber says, American Buddhism has yet to fully grasp. And much more.

“Philosophy is . . . the front trench in the siege of truth,” the great historian Will Durant once wrote. “Science is the captured territory and behind it are those secure regions in which knowledge and art build our imperfect and marvelous world.” Durant's words still ring true, even though today we have often forgotten the symbiotic relationship between the leading edges of human thought and the future of human culture. Wilber's integral approach transmits a tremendous faith in that future and suggests that we can make sense, profound sense, out of our world. At the same time, it offers a sober, unvarnished analysis of the difficult problems we face as a species. One of those problems is humanity's complex and troublesome relationship to ultimacy. We live in an age in which religious fanatics on one side of the world want to blow up modern civilization in the name of God, while science and spirit advocates on the other side imagine that they have found God in quantum physics. The beauty of Wilber's Integral Spirituality is that it is comprehensive enough to explain both.