Integral thought

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This article is about integral thought in philosophy and psychology. It is unrelated to the concept of an integral in calculus.

Integral thought is comprised of those philosophies and teachings that seek a comprehensive understanding of humans and the universe by combining scientific and spiritual insights. According to the Integral Transformative Practice website, integral means "dealing with the body, mind, heart, and soul."

Integral thought is seen by proponents as going beyond rationalism and materialism. It attempts to introduce a more universal and holistic perspective or approach. Proponents view rationalism as subordinating, ignoring, and/or denying spirituality. Ken Wilber, one of the most prominent contemporary integral thinkers, begins by acknowledging and validating mystical experience, rather than denying its reality. As these experiences have occurred to humans in all cultures in all eras, integral theorists accept them as valuable and not pathological. Integral thinkers like Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin, Wilber and others argue that both science and mysticism (or spirituality) are necessary for complete understanding of humans and the universe.

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Problem of definition

Integral thought is a new and developing movement. Consequently, no list of integral thinkers or artists will be uncontroversial.

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Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo was a visionary yogi rather than a systematiser, and although he referred to "integral" only in the context of spiritual transformation, his writings influenced others who used the term "integral" in more philosophical or psychological contexts.

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Origin of the term "Integral"

The word "integral" was originally used by the Hindu writer and guru Sri Aurobindo to describe the yoga he taught. Sri Aurobindo's integral yoga involves transformation of the entire being, rather than a single faculty such as the intellect or the emotions or the body. Sri Aurobindo's major works include: The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, and Savitri. Important concepts in Sri Aurobindo's thought include: Evolution, Involution, the physical plane, the vital plane, the mental plane, the psychic plane, Integral yoga, the Triple transformation, and the Supramental principle. His co-worker The Mother founded Auroville, an international community dedicated to human unity, and based on their teachings.

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Integral thought - the Aurobindonian heritage

The following authors (listed in chronological order) trace their intellectual heritage back to, or have in some measure been influenced by, Aurobindo.

  • Indra Sen (1903-1994), a disciple of Sri Aurobindo who, although little-known in the West, was the first to articulate integral psychology and integral philosophy, in the 1940s.
  • Jean Gebser (1905-1973), Swiss phenomenologist, was the author of The Ever-present Origin, which conceived of the history of consciousness as a series of mutations. Gebser saw in the momentous events of the 1930s and '40s a new mutation in consciousness which he identified as the transition to the integral stage.
  • Ram Shankar Misra (dates?) was a scholar of of Indian religious and philosophical thought and author of The Integral Advaitism of Sri Aurobindo (publ. 1957), a philosophical commentary om Aurobindo's work.
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Ken Wilber

The American philosopher and Buddhist Ken Wilber popularised Integral thought or integral thinking in the current sense, to develop an all-encompassing, evolutionary, theory that incorporates and honours all perspectives, while at the same time presenting a larger picture. Wilber built upon the ideas of previous integral thinkers like Sri Aurobindo and Jean Gebser in developing his own highly complex integral theory.

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Integral thought - the Wilberian tradition

The following authors (listed in chronological order) are or have in the past been influenced by Wilber, but not by Aurobindo (except secondarily through Wilber's presentation of him).

  • Allan Combs is the author of The Radiance of Being: Understanding the Grand Integral Vision, Living the Integral Life. He has worked with Ken Wilber recently to create a theory which they call the "Wilber-Combs Lattice".
  • Frank Visser is a Dutch author and Theosophist who has incorporated Wilberian, Perennialist, and Theosophical concepts in an alternative to Wilber's Neo-perennialism. He is webmaster of Integral World, a website that hosts a large number of articles about Wilber and Integral Theory.
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Integral artists

Integral art can be defined as art that reaches across multiple quadrants and levels, or simply as art that was created by someone who thinks or acts in an integral way. All of these artists either are or have in the past been influenced by Wilber.

  • Alex Grey (b. 1953) is a psychedelic visual artist whose works have been admired by Wilber and others.
  • Stuart Davis (b. 1971) is an eclectic musician whose works include the concept album Bright Apocalypse. Mystical and integral themes feature large in his lyrics.
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Integral thought - Sri Aurobindo and Ken Wilber

The following authors (listed in chronological order) have been influenced by or created a synthesis of the teachings of both Aurobindo and Wilber (and usually also other thinkers as well):

  • Georg Feuerstein (b. 1947) is the author of Wholeness or Transcendence: Ancient Lessons for the Emerging Global Civilization, Structures of Consciousness: The Genius of Jean Gebser, An Introduction and Critique, co-author of In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, and founder of the Yoga Research and Education Center and Traditional Yoga Studies.
  • M. Alan Kazlev (b. 1958) has created an integral philosophy based on the writings of Aurobindo, the Mother, Ken Wilber, and Michel Bauwens.
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Other thinkers

Many writers and artists who did not use the word "integral" to refer to their theories nonetheless are considered by theorists to act, think or theorize in an integral way. These include contemporary thinkers like Jurgen Habermas and Rupert Sheldrake, and historical figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Gandhi.

The following writers contributed essential ideas to integral thought:

  • Arthur M. Young (1905-1995), inventor and author of The Reflexive Universe
  • Edward Haskell (1906-1986), educator and author of Full Circle: The Moral Force of Unified Science
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See also

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Quotations

  • "An integral method and an integral result. First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sayujyamukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the salokyalmukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sadharmyamukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe."
Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, pp.47-48
  • "The word integral means comprehensive, inclusive, nonmarginalizing, embracing. Integral approaches to any field attempt to be exactly that—to include as many perspectives, styles, and methodologies as possible within a coherent view of the topic. In a certain sense, integral approaches are "meta-paradigms," or ways to draw together an already existing number of separate paradigms into an interrelated network of approaches that are mutually enriching." —Ken Wilber, "Foreword", in Frank Visser, Ken Wilber: Thought As Passion
  • This means that the chief activity of integral cognition is not looking at all of the available theories—whether premodern, modern, or postmodern—and then asking, "Which one of those is the most accurate or acceptable?," but rather consists in asking, "How can all of those be right?" The fact is, all of the various theories, practices, and established paradigms—in the sciences, arts, and humanities—are already being practiced: they are already arising in a Kosmos that clearly allows them to arise, and the question is not, which of those is the correct one, but what is the structure of the Kosmos such that it allows all of those to arise in the first place? What is the architecture of a universe that includes so many wonderful rooms? — Ken Wilber, "The Ways We Are in This Together: Intersubjectivity and Interobjectivity in the Holonic Kosmos" Excerpt C of draft of forthcoming book, Kosmic Karma and Creativity
  • "The remarkable modern capacity for differentiation and discernment that has been so painstakingly forged must be preserved, but our challenge now is to develop and subsume that discipline in a more encompassing, more magnanimous intellectual and spiritual engagement with the mystery of the universe. Such an engagement can happen only if we open ourselves to a range of epistemologies that together provide a more multidimensionally perceptive scope of knowledge. To encounter the depths and rich complexity of the cosmos, we require ways of knowing that fully integrate the imagination, the aesthetic sensibility, moral and spiritual intuition, revelatory experience, symbolic perception, somatic and sensuous modes of understanding, empathic knowing. Above all, we must awaken to and overcome the great hidden anthropocentric projection that has virtually defined the modern mind: the pervasive projection of soullessness onto the cosmos by the modern self’s own will to power." Richard Tarnas, "Cosmos and Psyche", pg.41
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External links

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