AN INTEGRAL THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Ken Wilber

Introduction

There has recently been something of an explosion of interest in the
development of a `science of consciousness', and yet there are at present
approximately a dozen major but conflicting schools of consciousness theory
and research. My own approach to consciousness studies is based on the
assumption that each of these schools has something irreplaceably important
to offer, and thus what is required is a general model sophisticated enough
to incorporate the essentials of each of them. These schools include the
following:

1. Cognitive science tends to view consciousness as anchored
in functional schemas of the brain/mind, either in a simple representational
fashion (such as Jackendoff's `computational mind') or in the more complex
emergent/connectionist models, which view consciousness as an emergent
of hierarchically integrated networks. The emergent/connectionist is perhaps
the dominant model of cognitive science at this point, and is nicely summarized
in Alwyn Scott's Stairway to the Mind (1995), the `stairway' being
the hierarchy of emergents summating in consciousness.

2. Introspectionism maintains that consciousness is best understood
in terms of intentionality, anchored in first-person accounts -- the inspection
and interpretation of immediate awareness and lived experience -- and not
in third-person or objectivist accounts, no matter how `scientific' they
might appear. Without denying their significant differences, this broad
category includes everything from philosophical intentionality to introspective
psychology, existentialism and phenomenology.

3. Neuropsychology views consciousness as anchored in neural
systems, neurotransmitters, and organic brain mechanisms. Unlike cognitive
science, which is often based on computer science and is consequently vague
about how consciousness is actually related to organic brain structures,
neuropsychology is a more biologically based approach. Anchored in neuroscience
more than computer science, it views consciousness as intrinsically residing
in organic neural systems of sufficient complexity.

4. Individual psychotherapy uses introspective and interpretive
psychology to treat distressing symptoms and emotional problems; it thus
tends to view consciousness as primarily anchored in an individual organism's
adaptive capacities. Most major schools of psychotherapy embody a theory
of consciousness precisely because they must account for a human being's
need to create meaning and signification, the disruption of which results
in painful symptoms of mental and emotional distress. In its more avant-garde
forms, such as the Jungian, this approach postulates collective structures
of intentionality (and thus consciousness), the fragmentation of which
contributes to psychopathology.

5. Social psychology views consciousness as embedded in networks
of cultural meaning, or, alternatively, as being largely a byproduct of
the social system itself. This includes approaches as varied as ecological,
Marxist, constructivist, and cultural hermeneutics, all of which maintain
that the nexus of consciousness is not located merely or even principally
in the individual.

6. Clinical psychiatry focuses on the relation of psychopathology,
behavioural patterns, and psychopharmacology. For the last half century,
psychiatry was largely anchored in a Freudian metapsychology, but the field
increasingly tends to view consciousness in strictly neurophysiological
and biological terms, verging on a clinical identity theory: consciousness
is the neuronal system, so that a presenting problem in the former is actually
an imbalance in the latter, correctable with medication.

7. Developmental psychology views consciousness not as a single
entity but as a developmentally unfolding process with a substantially
different architecture at each of its stages of growth, and thus an understanding
of consciousness demands an investigation of the architecture at each of
its levels of unfolding. In its more avant-garde forms, this approach includes
higher stages of exceptional development and wellbeing, and the study of
gifted, extraordinary, and supranormal capacities, viewed as higher developmental
potentials latent in all humans. This includes higher stages of cognitive,
affective, somatic, moral, and spiritual development.

8. Psychosomatic medicine views consciousness as strongly and
intrinsically inter-active with organic bodily processes, evidenced in
such fields as psychoneuro- immunology and biofeedback. In its more avant-garde
forms, this approach includes consciousness and miraculous healing, the
effects of prayer on remarkable recoveries, light/sound and healing, spontaneous
remission, and so on. It also includes any of the approaches that investigate
the effects of intentionality on healing, from art therapy to visualization
to psychotherapy and meditation.

9. Nonordinary states of consciousness, from dreams to psychedelics,
constitute a field of study that, its advocates believe, is crucial to
a grasp of consciousness in general. Although some of the effects of psychedelics
-- to take a controversial example -- are undoubtedly due to `toxic side-effects',
the consensus of opinion in this area of research is that they also act
as a `nonspecific amplifier of experience', and thus they can be instrumental
in disclosing and amplifying aspects of consciousness that might otherwise
go unstudied.

10. Eastern and contemplative traditions maintain that ordinary
consciousness is but a narrow and restricted version of deeper or higher
modes of awareness, and that specific injunctions (yoga, meditation) are
necessary to evoke these higher and excep- tional potentials. Moreover,
they all maintain that the essentials of consciousness itself can only
be grasped in these higher, postformal, and nondual states of consciousness.

11. What might be called the quantum consciousness approaches
view consciousness as being intrinsically capable of interacting with,
and altering, the physical world, generally through quantum interactions,
both in the human body at the intracellular level (e.g. microtubules),
and in the material world at large (psi). This approach also includes the
many and various attempts to plug consciousness into the physical world
according to various avant-garde physical theories (bootstrapping, hyperspace,
strings).

12. Subtle energies research has postulated that there exist
subtler types of bio- energies beyond the four recognized forces of physics
(strong and weak nuclear, electromagnetic, gravitational), and that these
subtler energies play an intrinsic role in consciousness and its activity.
Known in the traditions by such terms as prana, ki, and chi

-- and said to be responsible for the effectiveness of acupuncture, to
give only one example -- these energies are often held to be the `missing
link' between intentional mind and physical body. For the Great Chain theorists,
both East and West, this bioenergy acts as a two-way conveyor belt, transferring
the impact of matter to the mind and imposing the intentionality of the
mind on matter.

My own approach to consciousness involves a model that explicitly draws
on the strengths of each of those approaches, and attempts to incorporate
and integrate their essential features. But in order to understand this
model, a little background information is required. What follows is a very
brief summary of an approach developed at length in a dozen books, including
Transformations of Consciousness (Wilber et al., 1986), A
Brief History of Everything (1996d) and The Eye of Spirit (1997),
which the interested reader can consult for detailed arguments and extensive
references. But I believe the following summary is more than adequate for
our present purposes.

The Four Corners of the Kosmos

Figure 1 (below) is a schematic summary of what I call `the four quadrants'
of existence: intentional, behavioural, cultural and social. These four
quadrants are a summary of a data search across various developmental and
evolutionary fields. I examined over two hundred developmental sequences
recognized by various branches of human knowledge -- ranging from stellar
physics to molecular biology, from anthropology to linguistics, from developmental
psychology to ethical orientations, from cultural hermeneutics to contemplative
endeavours -- taken from both Eastern and Western disciplines, and including
premodern, modern, and postmodern sources (Wilber 1995b, 1996d). I noticed
that these various developmental sequences all fell into one of four major
classes -- the four quadrants -- and further, that within those four quadrants
there was substantial agreement as to the various stages or levels in each.
Figure 1 is a simple summary of this data search; it thus represents an
a posteriori conclusion, not a priori assumption.

Figure 1: The Four Quadrants

Of course people can differ about the details of such a diagram, and
Figure 1 is not intended to be cast in stone. It is presented here as a
reasonable summary that helps carry the present discussion. Likewise, each
of the quadrants might more accurately be constructed as a branching tree,
and not a simple straight line, indicating the rich variation within each
grade and clade (each level and type). Each quadrant includes both hierarchies
(or clear gradations) and heterarchies (or pluralistic and equivalent unfoldings
within a given grade). Figure 1, again, is nothing but a simple schematic
summary to help further the discussion.

The Upper Right quadrant is perhaps the most familiar. It is the standard
hierarchy presented by modern evolutionary science: atoms to molecules
to cells to organisms, each of which `transcends but includes' its predecessor
in an irreversible fashion: cells contain molecules, but not vice versa;
molecules contain atoms, but not vice versa, and so on -- the `not vice
versa' constitutes the irreversible hierarchy of time's evolutionary arrow.
(SF1, SF2, and SF3 refer to higher structure-functions of the human brain,
which I will explain in a moment.)

Each of these individual units, in other words, is what Koestler called
a `holon', a whole that is simultaneously part of some other
whole (a whole atom is part of a whole molecule, a whole molecule is part
of a whole cell, etc.). The Upper Right quadrant is simply a summary of
the scientific research on the evolution of individual holons.

But individual holons always exist in communities of similar holons.
In fact, the very existence of individual holons in many ways depends upon
communities of other holons that, if nothing else, provide the background
fields in which individual holons can exist. Erich Jantsch, in his pioneering
book The Self-Organizing Universe (1980), pointed out that every
`micro' event (individual holon) exists embedded in a corresponding `macro'
event (a community or collective of similarly structured holons). These
communities, collectives, or societies are summarized in the Lower Right
quadrant, and they, too, simply represent the results of generally uncontested
scientific research.

Thus, for example, Jantsch points out that when atoms were the most
complex individual holons in existence, galaxies were the most complex
collective structures; with molecules, planets; with prokaryotes, the Gaia
system; with limbic systems, groups and families; and so forth.[1]
Jantsch made the fascinating observation that while individual holons generally
get bigger (because they transcend and include their predecessors:
molecules are bigger than the atoms they contain), the collective usually
gets smaller (planets are smaller than galaxies; families are smaller
than planets, etc.) -- the reason being that as an individual holon gets
more complex (possesses more depth), the number of holons that can reach
that depth become less and less, and thus the collective becomes smaller
and smaller (e.g. there will always be fewer molecules than atoms, and
thus the collective of molecules -- planets -- will always be smaller than
the collective of atoms -- galaxies). This entire trend I have summarized
as: evolution produces greater depth, less span (Wilber, 1995b).

Those are the two `Right Hand' quadrants. What both of those quadrants
have in common is that they represent holons that all possess simple
location -- they can all be seen with the senses or their extensions;
they are all empirical phenomena; they exist in the sensorimotor worldspace.
They are, in other words, objective and inter-objective realities; they
are what individual and communal holons look like from the outside, in
an exterior and objectifying fashion.

But various types of evidence suggest that every exterior has
an interior. If we likewise do a data search among the evolutionary trends
of interior apprehension, we also find a largely uncontested hierarchy
of emergent properties, which I have simply summarized in the Upper Left
quadrant: prehension to irritability to sensation to perception to impulse
to image to symbol to concept to rule (concrete operations or `conop')
to formal operations (`formop') and synthesizing reason (`vision-logic';
these correspond with structure-functions in the brain that I have simply
labeled SF1, SF2, and SF3 in the Upper Right). The existence of most of
those emergent properties are, as I said, largely uncontested by specialists
in the field, and the holons I have listed in the Upper Left represent
a simple summary of some of the major evolutionary capacities of interior
apprehension. (There is still some heated discussion over the nature of
`emergence', but the existence and evolutionary order of most of the various
capacities themselves, from sensation to perception to image and concept,
are generally uncontested.)

There is, however, rather endless debate about just how `far down' you
can push prehension (or any form of rudimentary consciousness). Whitehead
pushes it all the way down, to the atoms of existence (actual occasions),
while most scientists find this a bit much. My own sense is that, since
holons are `bottomless', how much `consciousness' each of them possesses
is an entirely relative affair. I don't think we need to draw a bold line
in the existential sand and say, on this side of the line, consciousness;
on that side, utter darkness. Indeed, the whole point of the hierarchy
of evolutionary emergents of apprehension is that consciousness is almost
infinitely graded, with each emergent holon possessing a little more depth
and thus a bit more apprehension. However much `consciousness' or `awareness'
or `sensitivity' or `responsiveness' a tree might have, a cow has more;
an ape has more than that, and so on. How far down you actually push some
form of prehension is up to you (and won't substantially alter my main
points). As for myself, I always found Teilhard de Chardin's (1964) conclusion
to be the most sensible: `Refracted rearwards along the course of evolution,
consciousness displays itself qualitatively as a spectrum of shifting shades
whose lower terms are lost in the night.'

That is the Upper Left quadrant, and it represents the interior of individual
holons; but, as always, every individual holon exists in a community (i.e.
every agency is actually agency-in-communion). If we look at the collective
forms of individual consciousness, we find various worldspaces or worldviews
or communally-shared sensitivity (from flocks of geese to human zeitgeist).
These various cultural or communal interiors are summarized in the Lower
Left quadrant.

Again, how far down you push a cultural background (or collective prehension)
depends upon how far down you are willing to push individual prehension.
I believe it shades all the way down, simply because exteriors don't make
sense without interiors, and agency is always agency-in-communion. Nonetheless,
my main points concern human consciousness, and we can all probably agree
that humans possess not only a subjective space (the Upper Left) but also
certain intersubjective spaces (the Lower Left). Those who have
carefully investigated the historical evolution of cultural worldviews
include researchers from Jean Gebser to Michel Foucault to J<129>rgen
Habermas; I have outlined this research in the book Up from Eden
(1996b) and summarized it in the Lower Left quadrant in Figure 1. `Uroboros'
means reptilian (or brain-stem based); `typhonic' means emotional-sexual
(limbic-system based); archaic, magic, mythic and rational are fairly self-explanatory
(they are four of the most significant of the human cultural worldviews
to evolve thus far); and `centauric' means a bodymind integration and cognitive
synthesizing activity (which some researchers, including Gebser and Habermas,
see starting to emerge at this time).

Thus, the upper half of Figure 1 refers to individual holons, the lower
half, to their collective forms. The right half refers to the exterior
or objective aspects of holons, and the left half, to their interior or
subjective forms. This gives us a grid of exterior-individual (or behavioural),
interior-individual (or intentional), exterior- collective (or social),
and interior-collective (or cultural) -- a grid of subjective, objective,
intersubjective, and interobjective realities. Exactly what these various
grids mean will continue to unfold with the discussion.

As I said, the holons in each of those four quadrants were not postulated
in any sort of a priori or `metaphysical' fashion; they were rather
suggested by an a posteriori data search across several hundred
disciplines. I noticed that the developmental or dimensional analyses they
described all fell into one of these four broad types of sequences, which,
it soon became obvious, simply referred to the interior and the
exterior of the singular and the collective. This
makes a certain amount of intuitive sense; after all, some of the simplest
distinctions we can make are between singular and plural, inside and outside,
and it seems that evolution makes those distinctions as well, because it
appears that development occurs in all four of those dimensions, and the
four quadrants are a simple and very general summary of those evolutionary
developments. The holons listed in each of the quadrants represent a great
deal of empirical and phenomenological evidence, and, within the various
disciplines addressing them, their existence is largely undisputed by serious
scholars.

Unfortunately, as we will see, because many researchers specialize in
one quadrant only, they tend to ignore or even deny the existence of the
other quadrants. Materialist or Right-Hand theorists, for example, tend
to deny substantial existence to interior, Left-Hand, and conscious intentionality.
We will see many examples of this type of quadrant partiality, a reductionism
that we will henceforth thoroughly bracket. When I say that the holons
presented in each quadrant are largely uncontested, I mean specifically
by those who actually study that quadrant in its own terms.

Although the existence of each of the quadrants themselves is largely
uncontested by experts in the various fields, once we put these four quadrants
together, a sur- prising set of further conclusions rather startlingly
announce themselves, and these conclusions are crucial, I believe, to grasping
the overall nature of consciousness.

The Contours of Consciousness

Begin with the fact that each of the quadrants is described in a different
type of language. The Upper Left is described in `I' language; the Lower
Left is described in `we' language; and the two Right Hand quadrants, since
they are both objective, are described in `it' language. These are essentially
Sir Karl Popper's `three worlds' (subjective, cultural, and objective);
Plato's the Good (as the ground of morals, the `we' of the Lower Left),
the True (objective truth or it-propositions, the Right Hand), and the
Beautiful (the aesthetic beauty in the I of each beholder, the Upper Left);
Habermas' three validity claims (subjective truthfulness of I, cultural
justness of we, and objective truth of its). Historically of great importance,
these are also the three major domains of Kant's three critiques: science
or its (Critique of Pure Reason), morals or we (Critique of Practical
Reason), and art and self-expression of the I (Critique of Judgment).

Equally important, each of the quadrants has a different `type of truth'
or validity claim -- different types of knowledge with different
types of evidence and validation procedures. Thus, propositions in the
Upper Right are said to be true if they match a specific fact or objective
state of affairs: a statement is true if the map matches the territory
-- so-called objective truth (representational truth and the correspondence
theory of truth).

In the Upper Left quadrant, on the other hand, a statement is valid
not if it represents an objective state of affairs but if it authentically
expresses a subjective reality. The validity criterion here is not just
truth but truthfulness or sincerity -- not `Does the map
match the territory?' but `Can the mapmaker be trusted?' I must trust you
to report your interior status truthfully, because there is no other way
for me to get to know your interior, and thus no other way for me to investigate
your subjective consciousness. [2]

In the Lower Right quadrant of interobjective realities, the validity
claim is concerned with how individual holons fit together into interlocking
systems; truth in this quadrant concerns the elucidating of the networks
of mutually reciprocal systems within systems of complex interaction. The
validity claim, in other words, is grounded in interobjective fit, or simply
functional fit. In the Lower Left quadrant, on the other hand, we
are concerned not simply with how objects fit together in physical space,
but how subjects fit together in cultural space. The validity claim here
concerns the way that my subjective consciousness fits with your subjective
consciousness, and how we together decide upon those cultural practices
that allow us to inhabit the same cultural space. The validity claim, in
other words, concerns the appropriateness or justness of
our statements and actions (ethics in the broadest sense). Not just, Is
it true?, but is it good, right, appropriate, just? And if you and I are
to inhabit the same cultural space, we must implicitly or explicitly ask
and to some degree answer those intersubjective questions. We must find
ways, not simply to access objective truth or subjective truthfulness,
but to reach mutual understanding in a shared intersubjective space.
Not that we have to agree with each other, but that we can recognize
each other, the opposite of which is, quite simply, war. I have summarized
these validity claims (and their different languages) in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Validity Claims

If we now look carefully at each of these four validity claims or `types
of truth' and attempt to discern what all of them have in common -- that
is, what all authentic knowledge claims have in common -- I believe we
find the following (Wilber, 1996c; 1997):

Each valid mode of knowing consists of an injunction, an apprehension,
and a confirmation. The injunction is always of the form, `If you
want to know this, do this.' This injunction, exemplar, or paradigm is,
as Kuhn pointed out, an actual practice, not a mere concept. If
you want to know if it is raining outside, go to the window and look. If
you want to know if a cell has a nucleus, then learn to take histological
sections, learn how to stain cells, put them under a microscope, and look.
If you want to know the meaning of Hamlet, learn to read English,
get the play, read it, and see for yourself.

In other words, the injunction or exemplar brings forth a particular
data domain -- a particular experience, apprehension, or evidence (the
second strand of all valid knowledge). This apprehension, data, or evidence
is then tested in the circle of those who have completed the first two
strands; bad data or bad evidence is rebuffed, and this potential falsifiability

is the crucial third component of all genuine validity claims; it most
certainly is not restricted to empirical or sensory claims alone:
there is sensory experience, mental experience, and spiritual experience,
and any specific claim in each of those domains can potentially be falsified
by further data in those domains. For example, the meaning of Hamlet
is not about the joys of war: that is a bad interpretation and can be falsified
by virtually any community of adequate interpreters.

Thus, each holon seems to have at least four facets (intentional, behavioural,
cultural, and social), each of which is accessed by a different type of
truth or validity claim (objective truth, subjective truthfulness, intersubjective
justness, and inter- objective functional fit). And all of those four validity
claims follow the three strands of valid knowledge acquisition: injunction,
apprehension, confirmation/rejection (or exemplar, evidence, falsifiability).

Most fascinating of all, perhaps, is that each quadrant has correlates
in all the others. That is, since every holon apparently has these four
facets (intentional, behavioural, cultural, and social), each of these
facets has a very specific correlation with all the others. These can readily
be seen in Figure 1. For example, wherever we find a holon with a limbic
system, we find that it has an interior capacity for impulse/ emotion,
it lives in the collective of a group, herd, or family, and it shares an
emotional-sexual worldview. Apparently each quadrant causes, and is caused
by, the others, in a circular and nonreducible fashion, which is precisely
why all four types of truth (and all four validity claims) are necessary
to access the various dimensions of any holon.

Notice that accessing the Left Hand quadrants all depend upon interpretation

to some extent, whereas the Right Hand quadrants are all, more or less,
empirical events. Objective exteriors can be seen, but all
depth requires interpretation. My dog can see these physical words
written on this page, because the signifiers exist in the sensorimotor
worldspace; but you and I are trying to understand the signified meanings,
which are not merely empirical and cannot be seen solely with the eye of
flesh, but rather are partly intentional and thus can be seen only with
the mind's interior apprehension: you must interpret the meaning
of this sentence. What does he mean by that? You can see my behaviour
for yourself (with the monological gaze); but you can access my intentionality
only by talking to me, and this dialogical exchange requires constant interpretation
guided by mutual understanding in the hermeneutic circle.

Thus, it appears that the two Right Hand validity claims (objective
truth and functional fit) are grounded in empirical observation

(and some sort of correspondence theory of truth); whereas the two Left
Hand validity claims (subjective truthfulness and intersubjective meaning)
require extensive interpretation or hermeneutics (and some sort
of coherence theory of truth). And perhaps we can begin to see why the
human knowledge quest has almost always divided into these two broad camps,
empirical vs. hermeneutic, positivistic vs. interpretive, scientific vs.
intuitive, analytic vs. transcendental, Anglo-Saxon and Continental, Right
Hand and Left Hand, the correct point being that both are indispensable,
and that we should not attempt to go one-handed into that dark strange
world known as ourselves.

The Further Reaches of Human Nature

We need one last piece of background information. Figure 1 summarizes
the four main strands of evolutionary unfolding to date. But who is to
say this extraordinary unfolding has to stop with the formal or rational
stage? Why not higher stages? Who can believably say that this amazing
current of evolution simply came to a crashing halt once it produced you
and me?

Several of the theories of consciousness that I summarized in the Introduction
are predicated on the fact that consciousness evolution seems to show evidence
of higher or postformal (or `post-postconventional') stages of growth.
There appear to be, in other words, several higher stages in the Upper
Left quadrant.

The school of transpersonal psychology, in particular, has begun to
investigate these higher stages. Substantial crosscultural evidence already
suggests that there are at least four broad stages of postformal consciousness
development -- that is, development that goes beyond but includes the
formal operational level: the psychic, the subtle, the causal, and the
nondual. (Since each quadrant has correlates in the others, we also see
different brain states associated with these postformal states, as well
as different microcommunities or `sanghas', the details of which are outside
the scope of the present paper. See Wilber [1995b; 1997] for further discussion.)

The precise definitions of those four postformal stages need not concern
us; interested readers can consult the appropriate authorities (e.g. Walsh
and Vaughan, 1993). The point is simply that there now exists a substantial
amount of rather compelling evidence that interior consciousness can continue
the evolutionary process of transcend and include, so that even rationality
itself is transcended (but included!) in postformal stages of awareness,
stages that increasingly take on characteristics that might best be described
as spiritual or mystical. But this is a `mysticism' thoroughly grounded
in genuine experience and verifiable by all those who have successfully
followed the requisite set of conscious experiments, injunctions, and exemplars.

In Zen, for example, we have the injunction known as shikan-taza
(or sitting meditation). The mastery of this exemplar or paradigm opens
one to various kensho or satori experiences (direct apprehensions
of the spiritual data brought forth by the injunction), experiences which
are then thoroughly tested by the community of those who have completed
the first two strands. Bad, partial, or inaccurate apprehensions are thoroughly
rebuffed and rejected by the community of the adequate (falsi- fiability).
Zen, in other words, aggressively follows the three strands of all valid
knowledge acquisition, which is probably why it has gained such a solid
and `no-nonsense' reputation in spiritual studies. [3]

From these types of experimental, phenomenological, Left-Hand paths
of knowledge acquisition, transpersonal researchers have concluded, as
I said, that there exist at least four higher stages of postformal development
available to men and women as structural potentials of their own bodymind.
If, with reference to the Upper Left quadrant, we add these four higher
and postformal stages to the standard stages given in Figure 1, we arrive
at the Great Chain of Being, precisely as traditionally outlined
by philosopher-sages from Plotinus to Aurobindo to Asanga to Chih-I to
Lady Tsogyal. Figure 3 is a short summary of the Great Chain as given by
perhaps its two most gifted exponents, Plotinus and Sri Aurobindo, showing
the stunning similarity of the Great Chain wherever it appeared, East or
West, North or South (a truly `multicultural' map if ever there was one).

Figure 3. The Great Chain of Being and Consciousness

Again, the exact details need not detain us; interested readers can
consult other works for a finer discussion (Smith, 1976; Lovejoy, 1964;
Wilber et al., 1986). The point is simply that the interior dimensions
of the human being seem to be composed of a spectrum of consciousness,
running from sensation to perception to impulse to image to symbol to concept
to rule to formal to vision-logic to psychic to subtle to causal to nondual
states. In simplified form, this spectrum appears to range from subconscious
to self-conscious to superconscious; from prepersonal to personal to transpersonal;
from instinctual to mental to spiritual; from preformal to formal to postformal;
from instinct to ego to God.

Now that is simply another way to say that each of the quadrants
consists of several different levels or dimensions, as can be readily
seen in Figure 1. Moreover, these levels or dimensions have, for the most
part, evolved or unfolded over time, linked by an evolutionary logic apparently
pandemic in its operation (Dennett, 1995; Habermas, 1979; Wilber, 1995b).

Thus, you can perhaps start to see why I maintain that an `all-quadrant,
all-level' approach is the minimum degree of sophistication that we need
into order to secure anything resembling a genuinely integral theory of
consciousness. And remember, all of this is suggested, not by metaphysical
foundations and speculations, but by a rigorous data search on evidence
already available and already largely uncontested.

That being so, let us continue drawing conclusions from this `all-quadrant,
all-level' data base.

Consciousness Distributed

If we now return to the dozen theories of consciousness that I outlined
in the Introduction, we can perhaps start to see why all of them have proven
to be so durable: they are each accessing one or more of the forty plus
quadrant-levels of existence, and thus each is telling us something very
important (but partial) about consciousness. This is why I strongly maintain
that all of those approaches are equally important for an integral view
of consciousness. An `all-level, all-quadrant' approach finds important
truths in each of them, and in very specific ways, which I will explain
in detail in a moment.

But it is not simply that we have a given phenomenon called `consciousness'
and that these various approaches are each giving us a different view of
the beast. Rather, it appears that consciousness actually exists distributed
across all four quadrants with all of their various levels and dimensions.
There is no one quadrant (and certainly no one level) to which we can point
and say, There is consciousness. Consciousness is in no way localized in
that fashion.

Thus, the first step toward a genuine theory of consciousness is the
realization that consciousness is not located in the organism. Rather,
consciousness is a four-quadrant affair, and it exists, if it exists at
all, distributed across all four quadrants, anchored equally in each. Neither
consciousness, personality, individual agency, nor psychopathology can
be located simply or solely in the individual organism. The subjective
domain (Upper Left) is always already embedded in intersubjective (Lower
Left), objective (Upper Right), and interobjective (Lower Right) realities,
all of which are partly constitutive of subjective agency and its pathologies.

It is true that the Upper Left quadrant is the locus of consciousness
as it appears in an individual, but that's the point: as it appears in
an individual. Yet consciousness on the whole is anchored in, and distributed
across, all of the quadrants -- intentional, behavioural, cultural, and
social. If you `erase' any quadrant, they all disappear, because each is
intrinsically necessary for the existence of the others.

Thus, it is quite true that consciousness is anchored in the physical
brain (as maintained by theories 1, 3, 6, 8). But consciousness is also
and equally anchored in interior intentionality (as maintained by theories
2, 4, 7, 10, 11), an intentionality that cannot be explained in
physicalist or empiricist terms nor disclosed by their methods or their
validity claims.

By the same token, neither can consciousness be finally located in the
individual (whether of the Upper Left or Upper Right or both together),
because consciousness is also fully anchored in cultural meaning (the intersubjective
chains of cultural signifieds), without which there is simply no individuated
consciousness at all. Without this background of cultural practices and
meanings (Lower Left), my individual intentions do not and cannot even
develop, as the occasional cases of `wolf boy' demonstrate. In precisely
the same way that there is no private language, there is no individual
consciousness. You cannot generate meaning in a vacuum, nor can you generate
it with a physical brain alone, but only in an intersubjective circle of
mutual recognition. Physical brains raised in the wild (`wolf boy') generate
neither personal autonomy nor linguistic competence, from which it plainly
follows, the physical brain per se is not the autonomous seat of
consciousness.

Likewise, consciousness is also embedded in, and distributed across,
the material social systems in which it finds itself. Not just chains of
cultural signifieds, but chains of social signifiers, determine the specific
contours of any particular manifestation of consciousness, and without
the material conditions of the social system, both individuated consciousness
and personal integrity fail to emerge.

In short, consciousness is not located merely in the physical brain,
nor in the physical organism, nor in the ecological system, nor in the
cultural context, nor does it emerge from any of those domains. Rather,
it is anchored in, and distributed across, all of those domains with all
of their available levels. The Upper Left quadrant is simply the functional
locus of a distributed phenomenon.

In particular, consciousness cannot be pinned down with `simple location'
(which means, any type of location in the sensorimotor worldspace, whether
that location actually be simple or dispersed or systems-oriented). Consciousness
is distributed, not just in spaces of extension (Right Hand), but also
in spaces of intention (Left Hand), and attempts to reduce one to the other
have consistently and spectacularly failed. Consciousness is not located

inside the brain, nor outside the brain either, because both of these are
physical boundaries with simple location, and yet a good part of consciousness
exists not merely in physical space but in emotional spaces, mental spaces,
and spiritual spaces, none of which have simple location, and yet all of
which are as real (or more real) than simple physical space (they are Left
Hand, not Right Hand, occasions).

The Right Hand reductionists (subtle reductionists) attempt to reduce
intentional spaces to extensional spaces and then `locate' consciousness
in a hierarchical network of physically extended emergents (atoms
to molecules to cells to nervous system to brain), and that will never,
never work. It gives us, more or less, only half the story (the Right Hand
half).

David Chalmers (1995) recently caused a sensation by having his essay
`The Puzzle of Conscious Experience' published by Scientific American,
bastion of physicalist science. Chalmers' stunning conclusion was that
subjective consciousness continues to defy all objectivist explanations.
`Toward this end, I propose that conscious experience be considered a fundamental
feature, irreducible to anything more basic. The idea may seem strange
at first, but consistency seems to demand it' (p. 83). It never ceases
to amaze how Anglo-Saxon philosophers greet the reinvention of the wheel
with such fuss.

But Chalmers makes a series of excellent points. The first is the irreducibility
of consciousness, which has to be `added' to the physical world in order
to give a complete account of the universe. `Thus, a complete theory will
have two components: physical laws, telling us about the behavior of physical
systems from the infinitesimal to the cosmological, and what we might call
psychophysical laws, telling us how some of those systems are associated
with conscious experience. These two components will constitute a true
theory of everything' (p. 83).

This simple attempt to reintroduce both Left and Right Hand domains
to the Kosmos has been considered quite bold, a testament to the power
of reductionism against which so obvious a statement seems radical. Chalmers
moves toward a formulation: `Perhaps information has two basic aspects:
a physical one and an experiential one. . . . Wherever we find conscious
experience, it exists as one aspect of an information state, the other
aspect of which is embedded in a physical process in the brain' (p. 85).
That is, each state has an interior/intentional and exterior/physical aspect.
My view, of course, is that all holons have not just those two, but rather
four, fundamental and irreducible aspects, so that every `information state'
actually and simultaneously has an intentional, behavioural, cultural,
and social aspect; and moreover, each of those aspects has at least ten
basic levels -- much closer to a theory of everything, if such even makes
any sense.

Chalmers goes on to point out that all of the physicalist and reductionist
approaches to consciousness (including Daniel Dennett's and Francis Crick's)
only solve what Chalmers calls `the easy problems' (such as objective integration
in brain processes) leaving the central mystery of consciousness untouched.
He is quite right, of course. The funny thing is, all of the physicalist
scientists who are sitting there and reading Chalmers' essay are already
fully in touch with the mystery: they are already directly in touch with
their lived experience, immediate awareness, and basic consciousness. But
instead of directly investigating that stream (with, say, vipassana
meditation [Varela et al., 1993]), they sit there, reading Chalmers'
essay, and attempt to understand their own consciousness by objectifying
it in terms of digital bits in neuronal networks, or connectionist pathways
hierarchically summating in the joy of seeing a sunrise -- and when none
of those really seem to explain anything, they scratch their heads and
wonder why the mystery of consciousness just refuses to be solved.

Chalmers says that `the hard problem' is `the question of how physical
processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience' -- that is,
how physical and mental interact. This is still the Cartesian question,
and it is no closer to being solved today than it was in Descartes' time
-- precisely because the brain (and every Right Hand event) has simple
location, whereas intentionality (and every Left Hand event) does not.

For example, in the simple hierarchy: physical matter, sensation, perception,
impulse, image, symbol, concept . . ., there is an explanatory gap
between matter and sensation that has not yet been satisfactorily bridged
-- not by neuroscience, nor cognitive science, nor neuropsychology, nor
phenomenology, nor systems theory. As David Joravsky (1982) put it in his
review of Richard Gregory's Mind in Science (1982), `Seeing is broken
down into component processes: light, which is physical; excitation
in the neural network of eye and brain, which is also physical; sensation,
which is subjective and resists analysis in strictly physical terms; and
perception, which involves cognitive inference from sensation and
is thus even less susceptible to strictly physical analysis.' Gregory himself
poses the question, `How is sensation related to neural activity?' and
then summarizes the precise state-of-the-art knowledge in this area: `Unfortunately,
we do not know.' The reason, he says, is that there is `an irreducible
gap between physics and sensation which physiology cannot bridge' -- what
he calls `an impassible gulf between our two realms.' Between, that is,
the Left and Right halves of the Kosmos.

But, of course, it is not actually an impassable gulf: you see the physical
world right now, so the gulf is bridged. The question is, how? And the
answer, as I suggested in Eye to Eye, only discloses itself to postformal
awareness. The `impassable gulf' is simply another name for the subject/object
dualism, which is the hallmark, not of Descartes' error, but of all manifestation,
which Descartes simply happened to spot with unusual clarity. It is still
with us, this gap, and it remains the mystery hidden in the heart of samsara,
a mystery that absolutely refuses to yield its secrets to anything less
than postformal and nondual consciousness development (I will return to
this in a moment).

In the meantime, one thing seems certain: the attempt to solve this
dilemma by any sort of reductionism -- attempting to reduce Left
to Right or Right to Left, or any quadrant to any other, or any level to
any other -- is doomed to failure, simply because the four quadrants are
apparently very real aspects of the human holon, aspects that aggressively
resist being erased or reduced. Such reductionisms, to borrow Joravsky's
phrase, `create mysteries or nonsense, or both together'.

And that is precisely why I believe that an `all-quadrant, all-level'
approach to consciousness is very likely the only viable approach to a
genuinely integral theory of consciousness. We can now look briefly at
what might be involved in the methodology of such an approach.

Methodology of an Integral Approach

The methodology of an integral study of consciousness would apparently
need to include two broad wings: the first is the simultaneous tracking
of the various levels and lines in each of the quadrants, and then noting
their correlations, each to all the others, and in no way trying to reduce
any to the others.

The second is the interior transformation of the researchers themselves.
This is the real reason, I suspect, that the Left Hand dimensions of immediate
consciousness have been so intensely ignored and aggressively devalued
by most `scientific' researchers. Any Right Hand path of knowledge can
be engaged without a demand for interior transformation (or change
in level of consciousness); one merely learns a new translation
(within the same level of consciousness). More specifically, most researchers
have already, in the process of growing up, transformed to rationality
(formop or vision-logic), and no higher transformations are required for
empiric- analytic or systems theory investigations.

But the Left Hand paths, at the point that they begin to go postformal,
demand a transformation of consciousness in the researchers themselves.
You can master 100 per cent of quantum physics without transforming consciousness;
but you cannot in any fashion master Zen without doing so. You do not have
to transform to understand Dennett's Consciousness Explained; you
merely translate. But you must transform to actually understand Plotinus'

Enneads. You are already adequate to Dennett, because you both have
already transformed to rationality, and thus the referents of Dennett's
sentences can be easily seen by you (whether or not you agree, you can
at least see what he is referring to, because his referents exist in the
rational worldspace, plain as day). But if you have not transformed to
(or at least strongly glimpsed) the causal and nondual realms (transpersonal
and postformal), you will not be able to see the referents of most of Plotinus'
sentences. They will make no sense to you. You will think Plotinus is `seeing
things' -- and he is, and so could you and I, if we both transform to those
postformal worldspaces, whereupon the referents of Plotinus' sentences,
referents that exist in the causal and nondual worldspaces, become plain
as day. And that transformation is an absolutely unavoidable part of the
paradigm (the injunction) of an integral approach to consciousness.

So those two wings -- the nonreductionistic `simultracking' of all quadrants
and the transformation of researchers themselves -- are both necessary
for an integral approach to consciousness, in my opinion. Thus, I do not
mean for an integral theory of consciousness to be an eclecticism of the
dozen major approaches I summarized above, but rather a tightly integrated
approach that follows intrinsically from the holonic nature of the Kosmos.
The methodology of an integral approach to consciousness is obviously complex,
but it follows some of the simple guidelines we have already outlined:
three strands, four validity claims, ten or more levels of each. To briefly
review:

I'll quickly run through the major schools of consciousness studies
outlined in the Introduction and indicate exactly what is involved in each
case.

An All-Quadrant, All-Level Approach

The emergent/connectionist cognitive science models (such as
Alwyn Scott's Stairway to the Mind) apply the three strands of knowledge
acquisition to the Upper Right quadrant, the objective aspects of individual
holons. Statements are thus guided by the validity claim of propositional
truth tied to empirically observable events, which means that in this approach
the three strands will acknowledge only those holons that register in the
sensorimotor worldspace (i.e. holons with simple location, empirically
observable by the senses or their extensions). Nonetheless, all holons
without exception are holarchic, or composed of hierarchical holons within
holons indefinitely, and so this emergent/connectionist approach will apply
the three strands to objective, exterior, hierarchical systems as they
appear in the individual, objective organism (the Upper Right quadrant).

All of this is fine, right up to the point where these approaches overstep
their epistemic warrant and try to account for the other quadrants solely
in terms of their own. In the case of the emergent/connectionist theories,
this means that they will present a valid Upper Right hierarchy (atoms
to molecules to cells to neural pathways to reptilian stem to limbic system
to neocortex), but then consciousness is somehow supposed to miraculously
jump out at the top level (the Left Hand dimensions are often treated as
a monolithic and monological single entity, and then this `consciousness'
is simply added on top of the Right Hand hierarchy, instead of seeing that
there are levels of consciousness which exist as the interior or Left Hand
dimension of every step in the Right Hand hierarchy).

Thus, Scott presents a standard Upper Right hierarchy, which he gives
as atoms, molecules, biochemical structures, nerve impulses, neurons, assemblies
of neurons, brain. Then, and only then, out pops `consciousness and culture,'
his two highest levels. But, of course, consciousness and culture are not
levels in the Upper Right quadrant, but important quadrants themselves,
each of which has a correlative hierarchy of its own developmental unfolding
(and each of which is intimately interwoven with the Upper Right, but can
in no way be reduced to or solely explained by the Upper Right).

So in an integral theory of consciousness, we would certainly include
the Upper Right hierarchy and those aspects of the emergent/connectionist
models that legitimately reflect that territory; but where those theories
overstep their epistemic warrant (and are thus reduced to reductionism),
we should perhaps move on.

The various schools of introspectionism take as their basic referent
the interior intentionality of consciousness, the immediate lived experience
and lifeworld of the individual (the Upper Left quadrant). This means that,
in these approaches, the three strands of valid knowledge will be applied
to the data of immediate consciousness, under the auspices of the validity
claim of truthfulness (because interior reporting requires sincere reports:
there is no other way to get at the interiors). Introspectionism is intimately
related to interpretation (hermeneutics), because most of the contents
of consciousness are referential and intentional, and thus their meaning
requires and demands interpretation: What is the meaning of this sentence?
of last night's dream? of War and Peace?

As we have seen, all valid interpretation follows the three strands
(injunction, apprehension, confirmation). In this case, the three strands
are being applied to symbolic/referential occasions and not merely to sensorimotor
occasions (which would yield only empiric-analytic knowledge). As everybody
knows, this interpretive and dialogical knowledge is trickier, more delicate,
and more subtle than the head-banging obviousness of the monological gaze,
but that doesn't mean it is less important (in fact, it means it is more
significant).

The introspective/interpretative approaches thus give us the interior
contours of individual consciousness: the three strands legitimately
applied to the interior of individual holons under the auspices of truthfulness.
This exploration and elucidation of the Upper Left quadrant is an important
facet of an integral approach to consciousness, and it is perhaps best
exemplified in the first-person, phenomenological, and interpretive accounts
of consciousness that can be found from depth psychology to phenomenology
to meditation and contemplation, all of which, at their most authentic,
are guided by injunction, apprehension, and confirmation, thus legitimately
grounding their knowledge claims in reproducible evidence.

Developmental psychology goes one step further and inspects the
actual stages of the unfolding of this individual consciousness. Since
it usually aspires to a more scientific status, developmental psychology
often combines an examination of the interior or Left Hand reports of experience
(the semantics of consciousness, guided by interpretative truthfulness
and intersubjective understanding) with a Right Hand or objective analysis
of the structures of consciousness (the syntax of consciousness,
guided by propositional truth and functional fit). This developmental
structuralism traces most of its lineage to the Piagetian revolution;
it is an indispensable tool in the elucidation of consciousness and a crucial
aspect of any integral approach. (It is rare, however, that any of these
approaches clearly combine, via pragmatics, both the semantics and the
syntax of the stages of consciousness development, which is an integration
I am especially attempting to include.)

Eastern and nonordinary state models point out that there are
more things in the Upper Left quadrant than are dreamt of in our philosophy,
not to mention our conventional psychologies. The three strands of all
valid knowledge are here applied to states that are largely nonverbal,
postformal, and post-postconventional. In Zen, as we saw, we have a primary
injunction or paradigm (zazen, sitting meditation), which yields
direct experiential data (kensho, satori), which are then
thrown against the community of those who have completed the first two
strands and tested for validity. Bad data are soundly rejected, and all
of this is open to ongoing review and revision in light of subsequent experience
and further communally generated data.

Those approaches are quite right: no theory of consciousness can hope
to be complete that ignores the data from the higher or postformal dimensions
of consciousness itself, and this exploration of the further reaches of
the Upper Left quadrant is surely a central aspect of an integral theory
of consciousness. Moreover, this demands that, at some point, the researchers
themselves must transform their own consciousness in order to be adequate
to the evidence. This is not a loss of objectivity but rather the prerequisite
for data accumulation, just as we do not say that learning to use a microscope
is the loss of one's objectivity -- it is simply the learning of the injunctive
strand, which is actually the precondition of a truly objective (or nonbiased)
understanding of any data. In this case, the data is postformal, and so
therefore is the injunction.

Advocates of subtle energies (prana, bioenergy) bring
an important piece of the puzzle to this investigation, but they often
seem to believe that these subtle energies are the central or even sole
aspect of consciousness, whereas they are merely one of the lower dimensions
in the overall spectrum itself. For the Great Chain theorists, East and
West, prana is simply the link between the material body and the
mental domain, and in a sense I believe that is true enough. But the whole
point of a four-quadrant analysis is that what the great wisdom traditions
tended to represent as disembodied, transcendental, and nonmaterial modes
actually have correlates in the material domain (every Left Hand occasion
has a Right Hand correlate), and thus it is much more accurate to speak
of the physical bodymind, the emotional bodymind, the mental bodymind,
and so on. This simultaneously allows transcendental occasions and firmly
grounds them. And in this conception, prana is simply the emotional
bodymind in general, with correlates in all four quadrants (subjective:
protoemotions; objective: limbic system; intersubjective: magical; interobjective:
tribal). What is not helpful, however, is to claim that these energies
alone hold the key to consciousness. Likewise with the psi approaches,
which are clearly some of the more controversial aspects of consciousness
studies (telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, clairvoyance). I believe
that the existence of some types of psychic phenomena is quite likely,
and various meta-analyses of legitimate psychic research have concluded
that something real is afoot. I have discussed this in the book Eye
to Eye and won't repeat my observations here. I would simply like to
emphasize that, once it is realized that the sensorimotor worldspace is
merely one of at least ten worldspaces, we are released from the insanity
of trying to account for all phenomena on the basis of empirical occasions
alone. At the same time, precisely because the sensorimotor worldspace
is the anchor of the worldview of scientific materialism, as soon as some
sort of proof of non-sensorimotor occasions (such as psi) is found, it
can be excitedly blown all out of proportion. Psi events indeed cannot
be unequivocally located in the sensorimotor worldspace, but then neither
can logic, mathematics, poetry, history, meaning, value, or morals, and
so what? None of the intentional and Left Hand dimensions of consciousness
follow the physical rules of simple location, and we don't need psi events
to tell us that. Thus, an integral theory of consciousness would take seriously
at least the possibility of psi phenomena, without blowing their
possible existence all out of proportion; they are, at best, a very small
slice of a very big pie.