Ken Wilber - The Integral Vision: A Very Short Introduction

How can I navigate the 21st Century?

How can we make sense of our own life and awareness?

What if I had a comprehensive map of myself and the brave new world I find myself in?

During the last 30 years, we have witnessed a historical first: all of the worlds cultures are now available to us. In the past, if you were born, say, a Chinese, you likely spent your entire life in one culture, often in one province, sometimes in one house, living and loving and dying on one small plot of land. But today, not only are people geographically mobile, but we can study, and have studied, virtually every known culture on the planet. In the global village, all cultures are exposed to each other.

Knowledge itself is now global. This means that, also for the first time, the sum total of human knowledge is available to usthe knowledge, experience, wisdom, and reflection of all major human civilizationspremodern, modern, and postmodernare open to study by anyone.

What if we took literally everything that all the various cultures have to tell us about human potentialabout spiritual growth, psychological growth, social growthand put it all on the table? What if we attempted to find the critically essential keys to human growth, based on the sum total of human knowledge now open to us? What if we attempted, based on extensive cross-cultural study, to use all of the worlds great traditions to create a composite map, a comprehensive map, an all-inclusive or integral map that included the best elements from all of them?

Sound complicated, complex, daunting? In a sense, it is. But in another sense, the results turn out to be surprisingly simple and elegant. Over the last several decades, there has indeed been an extensive search for a comprehensive map of human potentials. This map uses all the known systems and models of human growthfrom the ancient shamans and sages to todays breakthroughs in cognitive scienceand distills their major components into 5 simple factors, factors that are the essential elements or keys to unlocking and facilitating human evolution.

Welcome to the Integral Approach.

An Integral or Comprehensive Map

What are these 5 elements? We call them quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types. As you will see, all of these elements are, right now, available in your own awareness. These 5 elements are not merely theoretical concepts; they are aspects of your own experience, contours of your own consciousness, as you can easily verify for yourself as we proceed.

What is the point of using this Integral Map? First, whether you are working in business, medicine, psychotherapy, law, ecology, or simply everyday living and learning, the Integral Map helps make sure that you are touching all the bases. If you are trying to fly over the Rocky Mountains, the more accurate a map you have, the less likely you will crash. An Integral Approach ensures that you are utilizing the full range of resources for any situation, with the greater likelihood of success.

Second, if you learn to spot these 5 elements in your own awarenessand because they are there in any eventthen you can more easily appreciate them, exercise them, use themand thereby vastly accelerate your own growth and development to higher, wider, deeper ways of being, not to mention greater excellence and achievement in work and professional life. A simple familiarity with the 5 elements in the Integral Model will help you orient yourself more easily and fully in this exciting journey of discovery and awakening.

In short, the Integral Approach helps you see both yourself and the world around you in more comprehensive and effective ways. But one thing is important to realize from the start. The Integral Map is just a map. It is not the territory. We certainly dont want to confuse the map with the territorybut neither do we want to be working with an inaccurate or faulty map. Do you want to fly over the Rockies with a bad map? The Integral Map is just a map, but it is the most complete and accurate map we have at this time.

What Is an IOS?

IOS simply means Integral Operating System. In an information network, an operating system is the infrastructure that allows various software programs to operate. We use Integral Operating System or IOS as another phrase for the Integral Map. The point is simply that, if you are running any software in your lifesuch as your business, work, play, or relationshipsyou want the best operating system you can find, and IOS fits that bill. In touching all the bases, it allows the most effective programs to be used. This is just another way of talking about the comprehensive and inclusive nature of the Integral Model.

We will also be exploring what is perhaps the most important use of the Integral Map or Operating System. Because an IOS can be used to help index any activityfrom art to dance to business to psychology to politics to ecology to spiritualityit allows each of those domains to talk to the others. Using IOS, business has the terminology with which to communicate fully with ecology, which can communicate with art, which can communicate with law, which can communicate with poetry and education and medicine and spirituality. In the history of humankind, this has never really happened before.

By using the Integral Approachby using an Integral Map or Integral Operating Systemwe are able to facilitate and dramatically accelerate cross-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary knowledge, thus creating the worlds first truly integral learning community: Integral University. And when it comes to religion and spirituality, using the Integral Approach has allowed the creation of Integral Spiritual Center, where some of the worlds leading spiritual teachers from all major religions have come together not only to listen to each other but to teach the teachers, resulting in one of the most extraordinary learning events imaginable. We will return to this important gathering, and ways you can join in this community if you wish.