Ken Wilber's Four Quadrants

[The following article was originally published in The New Vibration.]


Integral Theory
[A very brief introduction to the work of Ken Wilber]

Integral theory may be the most important philosophical and spiritual development of the 20th century. Yet few people know anything about it or its primary creator, Ken Wilber. What he has done, almost single-handedly, is to provide a comprehensive map of human experience. Tracing human evolution from its beginning and following it into the future that awaits us, Wilber convincingly demonstrates that humanity and the world are much more than the random combination of subatomic particles. The world -- the Kosmos -- that Wilber reveals is alive, imbued with Spirit. Wilber uses the old Greek term Kosmos, created by the Pythagoreans, because of its ability to incorporate all of the known Universe, from electrons to Spirit. In every moment, Spirit is becoming conscious of itself and its own evolution. According to Wilber, evolution should be thought of as Spirit-in-action.

Through his own practice, discussed in his book One Taste, Wilber has seen aspects of the future that awaits us. He walks the talk of Spirit and has been practicing daily meditation in a variety of forms since his early twenties. Wilber's studies of the psychological, intellectual, and spiritual masters provide a framework for the whole of human evolution. After decades of study and research -- which produced such books as The Spectrum of Consciousness, The Atman Project, and Up From Eden -- he was able to put all the pieces together into a map of the Kosmos. Sex, Ecology, Spirituality is a highly detailed explanation of that map (A Brief History of Everything is the "Cliff Notes" version).

The Four Quadrants

As Wilber studied all the various systems devised to explain the world -- philosophic, scientific, psychological, cultural, social, biological, and so forth -- he noticed a pattern. All of the systems fit into one of four categories. First, they could be divided into either theories about the individual or theories about the collective. From there, Wilber then divided the theories into either explanations of the interior world, such as psychology and anthropology, or theories of the exterior world, such as biology and sociology.

The problem with these designations, however, was that nearly every theory or system fit into more than one category. The result was a four-quadrant map of all the theories. The top half of the grid is the individual, the bottom half is the collective, the right side is the exterior, and the left side is the interior. At this point, everything began to fit.

The upper left quadrant was the realm of I (interior-individual), the lower left was the realm of We (interior-collective), the upper right was the realm of the physical individual It (exterior-individual), and the lower right was the realm of the social Its (exterior-collective).

Exterior-Individual

This is the quadrant of Nature, including everything external that we experience on an individual scale. Although Wilber's map is specifically designed to explain human experience, it also incorporates the rest of the known world. For example, this quadrant is generally discussed in terms of human biology, but the lowest level in the quadrant is that of atoms. From there, each level offers greater complexity than the previous one, until at the top we have the complex neocortex, followed by evolutionary levels as yet unknown.

Wilber refers to each level as a "holon," a term created by Arthur Koestler to refer to an entity that is both a whole and a part. Essentially, each level in the map is in itself a whole entity, but the next level transcends and includes the previous level. That previous level, while still a whole in its own right, then also becomes a part of the next higher whole. Everything is, in one way or another, a holon: "There are only whole/parts in all directions, all the way up, all the way down." (Wilber, BHE, 20) It's easy to see that complex organisms are holonic, but even at the subatomic level, larger particles disappear into smaller and smaller parts, and finally, into "an infinity of probability waves" (Wilber).

Interior-Individual

Again, the focus of this quadrant is on the human, but it also incorporates the rest of the animal kingdom. This is the quadrant of consciousness, psychology, and spiritual disciplines. At the most basic level, single-cell organisms are able to sense their environment and respond accordingly. From this lowest level, the holonic complexity increases through simple creatures and insects; to fish, reptiles, and birds; then mammals; and finally, human beings. The map, as Wilber presents it, discusses developmental stages up to 13 (vision-logic), but human development has been mapped far beyond that point. In several other books, including Integral Psychology and One Taste, Wilber discusses the higher stages of development, which have so far been the domain of mystics, yogis, and other practitioners of the meditative sciences.

Although science, as we normally think of it, is best suited to the exterior side of the map, the scientific method is perfectly suited to this interior-individual system as well. All of the world's major spiritual traditions have, at their core, a method by which to experience the divine, the non-dual, the Kosmic Spirit. These methods can be subjected to rigorous experiential examination, just like anything else. A person studies the method, employs it, compares the results to those of others who have tried that method, and then draws conclusions as to its efficacy. In The Marriage of Sense and Soul, Wilber offers this scientific method in action. Such an approach allows spiritual practice to be subjected to the same rigorous evaluations as might any theory of subatomic particles.

Interior-Collective

This quadrant of the map deals with the interior life of groups of people. This quadrant is the realm of religion, morality, customs, mores, laws, and a variety of other cultural codes that both determine and reflect how we view ourselves. Just as an individual moves through developmental stages, cultures also have developmental stages. Wilber’s handbook for cultural development is Up from Eden, the most detailed explanation available of a transpersonal view of evolution.

A more recent attempt to elucidate this quadrant has been offered by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan, building on the work of Clare Graves. Their book, Spiral Dynamics, offers an explanation of cultural evolution, both in the individual and in society as a whole. It attempts to explain how values and meaning evolve in the various stages of this development, and how those values shape the individual and the culture.

Exterior-Collective

While each of the other quadrants begins at the smallest, simplest level and increases in complexity from there, this quadrant begins at the level of galaxies. From this vast perspective, the ladder of development moves down to the planets, then to Earth, then to the earliest human social structures. At this point the quadrant begins to look like the others, with ever-increasing complexity in human social structures.

This represents the evolution of Spirit from diffuse to more focused. As human social evolution continues, Spirit will become an increasingly important part of the social fabric.

Spirit is evolving through each of the four quadrants, all at the same time. Furthermore, the movement of Spirit up the evolutionary ladder in each quadrant works synergistically to move all the quadrants forward. As individuals, we mirror that process. However, it isn't usually a smooth, even progression. There can be quantum leaps, steps backward, or stagnation. All of Wilber’s theories of functionality are more than can be handled here, but suffice it to say that direct linear progression is uncommon for any person, culture, or society.

Conclusion

Wilber often shorthands the whole map as the I, the We, and the It, dealing with the right side as one concept for simplicity in discussion. This shorthand allows him to talk about Plato's the Good (We quadrant), the True (It quadrants), and the Beautiful (the aesthetic dimension only available to the I quadrant). He also uses the designations Art (the interior-individual), Morals (the interior-collective), and Science (the exterior-individual and exterior-collective).

This map of the Kosmos is important because it creates a scientific and visual rendering of concepts that previously could only be discussed with abstraction. It also allows us to see where science should be the primary method of inquiry (the exterior), and where it should never be given any power (the interior). It offers us a construct to see how development in one area of our lives might be mirrored in other quadrant aspects.

Integral Theory is a powerful, developed tool for understanding the human being as an integrated part of the Kosmos. Wilber's map allows us to see our place within the whole evolution of the Kosmos, while simultaneously being able to assess our development as individuals, allowing a person from any spiritual tradition to understand his/her place within the whole.

To see Wilber's map, click here.