ANDREW COHEN: Generally speaking, in the postmodern spiritual marketplace, defining spiritual attainment has become, it seems, almost entirely a subjective matter. In the great traditions, there have always been important milestones to indicate levels of spiritual development. But these days, our spiritual goals are rarely described in terms that are clear and concrete. In the work I’m doing, I’m trying to shift the focus of the spiritual aspirant away from what I feel has become an excessive preoccupation with internal feelings and states, sorely lacking any higher trajectory or serious developmental context. I’m trying to reorient people toward the necessity for objective change and dynamic development that can be seen—and even, dare I say, measured—in action.

That’s why, over the past few years, I’ve become so interested in developmental models such as Spiral Dynamics and, of course, your own work. Spiral Dynamics speaks about individual and cultural development progressing through color-coded stages or levels that are divided into two tiers. We’ve spoken at length about the enormous significance of the leap from first to second tier—which is usually about the shift from the green pluralism that defined the social and cultural revolutions of the sixties to the emerging integral perspective, which you’ve been championing.

We’ve also touched upon the idea of a third tier—a barely emerging set of higher stages or structures in consciousness that could define future potentials in culture. That’s what I’d like to speak about in more depth today. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what third tier could actually mean, because it seems to me that this is where enlightenment, which in the East is traditionally seen as the highest spiritual attainment, comes together with the understanding of evolution to form a new and higher worldview. I think it’s really important that we strive for a clear understanding of what this newly emerging level means in order to help us define the goal of higher development for our own time, based on the shared experiences and observations of those of us who are experimenting with these higher potentials. Not only will this provide us with an orienting vision as we move forward, but most importantly, it will inform and empower our capacity to consciously evolve.

KEN WILBER: Right. I agree with all of the above. It’s so crucial. But one of the problems with a topic like this is that, unfortunately, it can’t be explained in sentences that fit on a bumper sticker.

When we speak about tiers, what we’re looking at is indeed this growth through our own structures, which are stable patterns of unfolding. It’s too bad “structures” sounds so stodgy and stiff. It really just means holistic patterns of growth, and we do have to become aware of those and then, therefore, we are responsible for them. And one of the most important things that any developmentalist is looking at is that there is this extraordinary leap from what psychologist Abraham Maslow would call deficiency needs to self-actualization needs or between what Clare Graves, who founded Spiral Dynamics, refers to as first tier and second tier. And that growth is a very important growth, because second tier is the first set of major stages of development that has the understanding that its values are not the only values in the world—that is its fundamental definition. First tier includes five or six major stages of development, and all of those are defined by the fact that they think their values are the only correct values in the world. And so much strife and conflict on this planet come from the fact that ninety-five percent of people are at one of these first-tier stages. Remember, a tier is just a conventional grouping of stages. The things that are real are the stages themselves. And psychologists generally group stages together if they think they have similarities. Sometimes, if they find that there’s a huge difference between one stage and another, they’ll use that as the dividing line between two tiers. What we call first tier actually has three very important groupings within it: egocentric, ethnocentric, and worldcentric. So the lowest stages, up through what we would call red,* are egocentric, which means they can only take a first-person perspective. And then the stages up through amber are ethnocentric, which means they can take a second-person perspective. And then orange and green are worldcentric, which means they can take a third- and fourth-person perspective.**

But then there’s that leap into integral, which would be teal. That’s the first real leap, so much so that the first three groupings are just labeled first tier. The leap to second tier is going to remake the planet as we know it. In cultures like Western Europe, Canada, and America, about fifty percent are at the worldcentric or orange level; about twenty percent are at the pluralistic or green level. But then there’s this huge drop in numbers to second tier, which is only two to three percent of the population. So as the green or pluralistic stage moves into the integral stage, we expect that two or three percent to jump to about ten percent within a decade.

Another of the important issues here is that, as always, we have to talk about the difference between states of consciousness, which are waking, dreaming, deep sleep, witnessing, nondual, etc., and structural or stage development, which is dealt with in models like Spiral Dynamics. The fact of the matter is that we now have enough evidence to compellingly suggest that these two types of development are relatively independent.

We can measure these things. And so, as we’ve often said in our dialogues, a higher state, such as Big Mind or the ever-present timeless ground of awareness right now, is available to people at virtually any stage or structure of development through practices such as meditation.

But there are higher structure-stages that are now unfolding, and those will not necessarily be found through meditative training. As a matter of fact, you can’t even see those stages in meditation. So a lot of meditation teachers get very upset and say, “If you actually do this meditative training, it covers everything.” But it doesn’t. It covers states of consciousness beautifully. But in terms of structures, it doesn’t cover anything. You can go through state training, but that doesn’t deal with what we could call vertical development through stages. And we now know enough to know that we have to grow in both of those dimensions. Meditation teachers generally don’t take the structural dimension into account, and that’s what’s getting a whole lot of people in trouble. On the other hand, a lot of people don’t even undertake state training, so they just go through structural development, through the stages that are measured with Spiral Dynamics, for example. But there’s nothing in Spiral Dynamics that has anything to do with states of consciousness.

In terms of vertical growth or structural development, the leading edge of the evolutionary impulse right now is moving people into second and third tier. Of course, what you’re talking about is not just moving people into third tier, but moving people with enlightened awareness into these structures. So you’re talking about state and stage, or structure. That’s part of what your message is and the message of anybody who’s working with a more integral approach to spirituality.

Cohen: That’s right.

Wilber: I see some of what you’re doing as a combination of helping people get into a particular state, meaning the recognition of the ever-present, timeless ground, and then also working to help them push forward with their authentic self into these literally higher structures that are being formed. Is that accurate?

Cohen: Absolutely correct.

Wilber: And that is the single most important thing that I can think of right now: that both of these dimensions need to be taken into account—and very few people are doing it. People are doing a fine job with state training. But because you cannot see these vertical structures when you introspect or meditate, you miss them.

Cohen: Yes, and also, as we’ve spoken about many times, the stage or structure that you have reached will have its own interpretation of whatever particular state you may be experiencing. How we interpret our experience of states is going to determine what meaning we give them, and the meaning we give them is going to determine what our ultimate relationship to life is. The way I see it, anything less than a third-tier perspective will not be broad or deep enough to ensure that we consistently interpret our state experiences in a way that is free from the relentless spiritual narcissism of the postmodern ego.

Wilber: That’s true. As we have talked about in the past, these state experiences are interpreted according to whatever structure or vertical stage you’re at, and certainly not often enough according to third-tier values.

Cohen: So, in relation to this whole notion of third tier, I’d like to try to describe some of the qualities of what I understand third tier to be about, based on my own experience and inquiry.

An individual who reached third tier would be someone who had a fairly good grasp and awareness of the individual and collective developmental structures that make up the self. Because he or she had developed through second tier, there would be a deep sense of how the fact that humanity has evolved through these structures over a very long period of time has made it possible for us to begin to interpret our experience in such extraordinary ways. I’m talking about an understanding that is more than just cognitive—there is almost a precognitive knowing of the fact that a conditioned self is an evolving self.

Such an individual would also have experienced a deep awakening to the primordial empty ground of all being. He or she would be conscious of an ultimate context that transcended time and form and therefore would have a deep intuitive knowing of freedom from form, from creation, from manifestation—a knowing that I am already free from this process. That is what, in a very fundamental way, liberates the self-sense from being trapped in the life process. But what distinguishes third tier, as I understand it, is that the individual has simultaneously awakened to the evolutionary impulse or authentic self, to Eros, and therefore has discovered an ecstatic and passionate sense of care for the future of that process.

This is how I would define a Kosmocentric orientation: when the individual realizes that as the authentic self, he or she is not separate from the energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process. In this orientation, the recognition that there is only One means I am and always have been that One, and therefore the responsibility to create the future is on my shoulders alone. When we embrace this Kosmocentric orientation, we realize that I’m not here merely to live my own life. I’m not even really here for my own personal liberation. I’m here to create the future. Indeed, I find my own liberation as an incarnate sentient being through giving myself to that unimaginable task.

One of the signs that such an individual had really reached this point in their own development would be that their relationship to their own inner personal experience, and the actions they would be taking in life—the way they would be choosing to live their life and what their life would be devoted to—would undeniably express the fact that there had been a profound transformation at the core of their being. Now their personal responses to life would begin to reflect the awakening of a higher moral, ethical, philosophical, and spiritual orientation over anything that was personal or cultural or even ethnically driven. This higher and deeper perspective would begin to inform, pre-thought, the way the liberated self or personality would be responding to inner and outer life. In other words, such an individual would really be a very different kind of human being because their self would be expressing the liberated, committed passion of the evolutionary impulse.

Wilber: Okay. Well, I think that’s great. In general, I think it’s right on the money. Let me say a few almost simplistic things to kind of orient it, and then we can just talk about it free form. What we’re really talking about, most fundamentally, is that because evolution has become aware of itself, because we actually understand growth and development now, we can see that we do have to awaken our own fundamental potentials, and part of that means awakening capacities to push into potentials that have not yet been created.

Incidentally, Clare Graves and Spiral Dynamics don’t talk about third tier like this.

Cohen: They don’t really talk about third tier at all, do they?

Wilber: No, the highest stage they mention is coral. But I think they would see coral as still part of second tier. Clare Graves believed that there would be six stages laid down in second tier, as there are in first tier, but I just don’t think it works like that—I don’t think it’s nearly as neat. What is starting to be seen in empirical research, for example in the work of Susanne Cook-Greuter, at the level that I call indigo and what Spiral Dynamics calls coral, is the emerging sense of a transpersonal witness as the individual identity, a sense of I AM-ness. And there is a realization that the world truly is a co-construction, not in the postmodern sense but in the sense of recognizing that the individual’s power of intentionality is part of that which co-creates the universe.

So the easiest way to talk about third tier is to say that it’s transpersonal. People don’t just think that the planet is a single organism with one consciousness; they start to say, “I am that.” At second tier, that’s still a conceptual identity. They think of themselves as part of all sentient beings and not just part of all humans, but it’s still not a felt identity; it’s a thought identity. Even if second tier has a cognitive understanding of a Kosmocentric perspective, and can indeed embody it to some degree, the actual sense of identity in second tier is still personal. Another way to put it is that second tier, turquoise, is the highest of the personal levels. And then, once you step into third tier, kaboom—you’re stepping into the transpersonal. And at that level, as you said, there is an assumed responsibility for this evolutionary impulse. It’s as if people live Eros.

Cohen: Exactly.

Wilber: It becomes the core of their being. It’s why they get up. When people get into second tier or higher, they feel already full, and they act out of superabundance. So there’s a sense of overflowing to it, in addition to a necessity to create out of an almost ethical or moral view. And then I think the description you gave is one very good version of some of the stuff that goes on there. And of course, a lot of what goes on there is still being laid down.

Cohen: Right. Of course.

Wilber: Another definition of third tier is that it’s the level at which you start to permanently realize the major states of consciousness, and it just so happens that the three major stages in third tier are ones that, of necessity, objectify the subtle, then causal, then nondual states. Second-tier stages are about the highest stage structures you can get to without necessarily having some sort of state realization. And you see this a lot—people who are at an integral stage of development but don’t have a state awakening. And so one of the things that becomes really important is that in order to move into third tier and true transpersonal structures, you have to have some sort of state training and state realization to allow wakefulness, which starts out confined to the waking state, to be able to move into subtle states of consciousness and not lose track of its own I AM-ness, or its own ground. Sometimes that actually includes lucid dreaming, or it may not. But it always includes being able to objectify the subtle, to transcend and include it, to make that subject and object.

Cohen: Right.

Wilber: And then also to move into causal where there’s just a permanent, ever-present witnessing. And so we have to make careful distinctions here, because you can have people who are just at green who have done a lot of state training and have a certain Big Mind awakening whereas you can have people at turquoise who don’t. But when you get into third tier, it comes with the territory. I use Aurobindo’s term “Supermind” to describe the highest structure in third tier, the end limit of vertical growth. And the end limit of horizontal or state growth I call Big Mind. Supermind includes Big Mind, but Big Mind does not include Supermind. That’s an important point. So third tier is where you really do have to start consciously making the ground of all being part of your being.

Cohen: One of the ways that I look for the evidence for what you were just describing is that the individual would begin to respond in a way that showed that their egoic or narcissistic conditioned responses were being contained within this higher perspective to such a degree that they are obviously a transformed man or woman. To put it in the simplest terms, it would mean that they had authentically transcended our highly developed postmodern narcissistic ego to a profound degree. They are not necessarily a perfectly liberated self, and I don’t even know if such a thing actually exists. But they have crossed what I call the fifty-one-percent threshold, which means that the evolutionary impulse—the authentic self and its Kosmocentric orientation—has become the dominant part of the self, which makes all the difference.

Wilber: I think that’s a good definition of what happens when you shift from turquoise into indigo, when you shift from second to third tier. That fifty-one percent just comes with the territory. And if it’s forty-nine percent, you’re still turquoise, even though there may be other things happening that are important as well.

Cohen: Sure. Now the reason, as I was saying, I think this really is the kind of attainment that is essential right now is that, at least in terms of my own understanding, when one begins to reach this third-tier level of development, the urge to create the future supersedes or becomes a stronger impulse than merely the impulse to liberate the self or to transcend the world. At that point, we realize that we need to work with other individuals in order to create this future because we can’t do it alone. And it’s hard to work together with others, especially when we’re getting into the kind of delicate and subtle territory that’s necessary in order to take these next steps together. It becomes apparent that the only way human beings will actually be able to work together to authentically create a future that expresses a truly Kosmocentric perspective is if the individuals have actually reached this third-tier level of development themselves. Because what happens when we reach this level is that our capacity to create becomes truly chaordic—which means we are willing to live in a context of chaos that, unless there was a little bit of enlightenment, would be personally unbearable. And we can do so without losing our center of gravity so that new and higher expressions of order can arise out of the chaos—again and again and again.

Wilber: Indeed.

Cohen: That would really seem to be the task at hand for the collective of individuals at the leading edge who have realized that the only reason they are here is to create the future. Actually, it would be essential that they reach nothing less than this third-tier level of development to be able to work together and create a context that could be an expression of what Ken Wilber would call superintegral.

Wilber: Amen, brother!

Cohen: Because otherwise we’d be able to talk about it, we’d be able to be inspired by the idea, but we wouldn’t actually be able to pull it off. And as far as I understand it, the task at hand for those of us at the leading edge is to actually be able to pull this off together. I personally think that the only way anyone will believe you or believe me or believe us is by seeing objective evidence that this is really happening, that this is working. That’s going to be the ultimate proof.

Wilber: Indeed. And we need to provide leadership in these ways of togetherness that are going to work. Because pluralistic togetherness just doesn’t work; it’s a mess for our day and age. We need higher types of leadership on this type of togetherness. In terms of being responsible for our own growth and development, the first important thing is to realize that there is a second tier, an integral stage of growth, and that’s really where, in a sense, the largest leading edge is. But then the leading edge of the leading edge is third tier, where we are actually starting to embody that potential in ways that consciousness necessarily awakens.

We have to remember that what’s really important on a large scale right now is for people to get into second tier. The green level of development, which includes the fifty-five million Americans often called cultural creatives, is the leading edge for the mainstream, and about a third of them are ready to transform to second tier. That in itself is going to be staggeringly huge. But it’s the pioneers who help define what second tier is. And that’s third tier.