FAQs About Integral Spirituality and Integral Worldview

Frequently Asked Questions

Below are some FAQs (frequently asked questions) about
integral spirituality and the integral worldview:

What is the integral vision?
What, then, is integral spirituality?
How do I recognize integralism?
How do I know if I'm an integralist?
What is integral culture?

PYTHAGORAS (Illustration by Thomas Stanley, 1655-1662, hand-colored by Jim Harter) From Art and Symbols of the Occult: Images of Power and Wisdom, by James Wasserman.

What is the integral vision?

Here are some characteristics of the integral vision as we see it:

INTEGRAL DEPTH-PERCEPTION: The integral visionary sees with head and heart, deeply feels interiors while calmly observing exteriors.

HARMONIZATION OF OPPOSITES: Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is the harmonization of cosmic extremes, the unification of contrasts. The integral spirit seeks the attunement of opposites in a beautiful higher unity.

LINKING OF "HEAVEN AND EARTH": The integral approach is neither this-worldly (secular) nor other-worldly (spiritualistic). It preserves both by blending them in a higher synthesis. Heaven can descend to earth; earth ascends to heaven. Time is fulfilled in eternity; eternity is present in time.

TRANSCENDENT IMMANENCE: Integralism celebrates the ultimate paradox: the doctrine of God-within. The Spirit that indwells the mind is the same Deity "in heaven" that infinitely transcends all beings. One is never reduced to the other yet both are preserved.

INTEGRATION OF SELF AND SOCIAL: At bottom, everything personal is really social; at the "top", everything in the collective is really about the welfare of persons. Integrations of self and society include family, community, country, planet, and universe. Cosmic citizenship is its fulfillment.

"HIEROS GAMOS": Integralism honors gender differences and regards them as a cosmic reality; the genders are complementary, and even deity has male and female attributes.

HUMOR: Finally, humor is integral to integral spirituality, since neophyte integralists can get much too serious about it -- which is certainly neither integral nor spiritual. Humor is the opposite of and the antidote to ego. Humor and ego feed off of each other until enlightenment dawns.

For more about the integral vision (especially with regard to the author Ken Wilber), see also "The Coming of the Kosmos", the inaugural essay of our journal, The Integral Edge.

What, then, is integral spirituality?

As we understand it, integral spirituality is a way of living in accord with integral vision. It's a way of thinking that harmonizes reason, wisdom and insight -- a mode of living that honors truth, beauty and goodness.

Put another way, we can say that integralists unite a scientific attitude, philosophic thinking, and spiritual experience into a blended vision -- an integral vision of living and loving. Integral spirituality is the beating heart of the emerging integral culture.

How do I recognize integralism?

Integralism -- or what Ken Wilber calls kosmology -- can be applied to different fields of thought and culture. When it is, we believe it has these characteristics:

In religion, the integral approach is founded on personal religious experience, yet favors an interfaith stance; it tolerates all varieties of authentic spirituality.

As science, it actively dialogues with religion; it looks to organicism in biology, chaology in physics, and the "new universe story" in cosmology.

In theology, God is seen as immanent and transcendent; deity is envisioned with male and female attributes.

In philosophy, it seeks unity in diversity, the synthesis of the one and the many, the wise integration of religion and science.

As an art movement, it is cosmological, integrating beauty with truth and goodness.

Politically, it espouses world peace through enforceable global law, and works for ecological sustainability.

In psychology, it integrates the concepts of the soul and indwelling spirit.

In ethics, it interprets and applies the Golden Rule.

Sociologically, this movement is sometimes called transmodernism, that is, the next social movement beyond modernism and post-modernism.

How do I know if I'm an integralist?

Integralists integrate apparent opposites in their thinking and mode of living. For example, you're an integralist if you're just as interested in learning about the evolution of galaxies as you are in meditating on the divine beauty of a sunset. Or, if you're just as likely to read Stephen Hawking as the Upanishads. You seek alternate health solutions such as acupuncture or Reiki healing, but you have the utmost respect for scientific medical breakthroughs. You prefer a philosophic discussion with a friend to an hour of watching sitcoms. You're just as likely to surf the "angel net" as surf the Internet. . . . Integralists tend to think they are odd people, and many feel socially isolated, says sociologist Paul Ray. But Ray's extensive research shows they are a large minority of the American population! (See What is integral culture?)

What is Integral Culture*?

The rise of integral culture is much more than prophecy. The culture of integralism emerged out of the social movements of the 1960s, and is one of only three competing worldviews in the U.S. -- alongside secular modernism and "heartland" traditionalism -- according to renowned sociologist and market researcher Paul Ray. The integral culture is really a "spiritualization of modernism," he writes, a creative synthesis of elements of scientific materialism and Christian traditionalism.

Ray's organization, American LIVES, Inc. has conducted dozens of surveys of lifestyle and values and directed hundreds of focus groups over the past ten years with all segments of the U.S. population. His findings show conclusively, in our view, that the segment of Americans belonging to integral culture (as he defines it) comprises fully one-fourth of the adult population -- to most everyone's surprise.

Regarding the current shift to integral culture, Ray writes:

Modernism has failed, and prescient thinkers have seen it coming for some time.... Consequently, as a growing common effort, and on behalf of the larger culture, leading edge thinkers in the West are generating a large variety of potential successor ideas, imagery and rationales to replace the "modernism" we have known for the last several centuries.

Numerous contemporary writers also return to those same basic themes without necessarily being conscious of their predecessors. This is not just a matter of independent reinvention, but rather is an example of the ongoing effects of what [European philosopher] Jean Gebser called "the ever-present origin" of the persistent stream of the perennial philosophy. For it is a spiritualization of modernity that most enlivens and fertilizes a postmodern synthesis, rather than a sterile postmodernism.

In effect, many of these writers draw from the same well of inspiration, hinting, intimating, and even predicting the "fall of modernism" and the rise of a new culture. But the change to Integral Culture (if or when it happens) will not mean a complete and radical rupture with previous social modalities. The cultures of large civilizations don't disappear, they change to new forms.

Clearly, modernist institutions -- currently embodied in our Western network of cities, jobs, workplaces, markets, businesses, universities and governments -- will not simply disappear overnight in a massive systems collapse. Rather, in the transmodern world they will change to forms our parents wouldn't have recognized.

While we may grieve for the loss of the familiar, we may also thrill to the new: the prospect of an Integral Culture.

*See "The Rise of Integral Culture", by Paul Ray (Noetic Sciences Review: Spring 1996). For reprints call Institute for Noetic Sciences at (415) 331-5650.