What they say. . .

The term “integral” is becoming more and more ubiquitous these days, but its origins go back to the early twentieth century. During that time, three different individuals began using the term in relation to the nature and direction of human evolution: Indian sage Sri Aurobindo, German philosopher Jean Gebser, and Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin. “Integral” was intended to represent a unifying perspective that would incorporate various partial views of reality into a holistic conception of human knowledge. In this respect, the Integralists’ goal is not so much a new theory of evolution but a larger perspective that can effectively integrate disparate existing theories, both spiritual and scientific, into a coherent picture of the entire evolutionary process. More than synthesizers, they offer a sort of radically inclusive meta-theory, one that sees truth everywhere—from the gene-centered focus of the Neo-Darwinists to the mathematical insights of the Complexity Theorists to the creativity of the Process Philosophers—but attempts to provide a larger context that allows us to see the relationships between these many evolutionary perspectives.

Some Integralists follow the lead of Gebser and focus their work more explicitly on the evolution of culture, while others lean more toward the work of Aurobindo who integrated the concept of individual enlightenment into his evolutionary schema. Some have followed Ken Wilber’s lead in trying to integrate both psychological stages of development and mystical states of consciousness into their theoretical frameworks with the idea, as Allan Combs explains it, that “individual development anticipates the evolutionary future of the entire human species.”

What it means. . .

Contemporary Integralists owe a great debt to the towering work of Ken Wilber, who has almost single-handedly revived the term integral and has helped make evolution a fundamental context for the way in which we think not just about physics and biology but about all of human life and culture.

Like the Conscious Evolutionists and the Process Philosophers, the Integralists are reaching for a higher synthesis and a deeper integration between science and spirit. In this relatively new field, there is a great deal of overlap with other evolutionary currents of thought, and what exactly “integral” even means is a matter of debate. But there is a great need in the contemporary evolution dialogue for higher perspectives that can sift through the competing cacophony of voices and theories, highlighting the knowledge that is enhancing our understanding of evolution and bringing context and clarity to the discussion. The Integralists show enormous potential for playing that role—diffusing some of the heat from today’s culture wars while providing a good deal more light.

“Evolution goes beyond what went before, but because it must embrace what went before, then its very nature is to transcend and include, and thus it has an inherent directionality, a secret impulse, toward increasing depth, increasing intrinsic value, increasing consciousness.”

Ken Wilber