A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
RIGHT AFTER I FINISHED WRITING The Marriage of Sense and Soul, I decided to keep a personal journal for one year. The primary reason for doing so is that most academic writing avoids any sort of personal disclosure or subjective statements, which are taken to be evidence of “biases” or “nonobjective reporting.” There is some merit to that requirement, but not always, especially if the area under investigation is the subjective domain anyway. So I decided, for one year, to keep a journal that chronicled my day-to-day activities, including spiritual practice.
What I most wanted to convey in One Taste was some notion of an integral life, a life that finds room for body, mind, soul, and spirit as they all unfold in self, culture, and nature. In other words, it attempts to be as “all-quadrant, all-level” as one can be at any given stage. Not that I have achieved an integral life—I have never claimed that—but simply that it is an ideal worthy of aspiration. One Taste also gives the specific details of my version of an integral transformative practice (which I will summarize in a moment).
Most of our spirituality books are treatises on the spiritual life divorced from real life. When we read a book called How to Know God or Finding Your Sacred Self, we do not expect to see chapters on making money, having sex, drinking wine, and vacationing in Hawaii. It is therefore profoundly jarring to see genuinely spiritual accounts right in the middle of a trip to South Beach—which is exactly why I did it. Conservative fundamentalists—who believe in prescriptive morality—were alarmed that this looked suspiciously like sin; while liberals—who do not believe in interior causation, or even in interiors—were alarmed that I was devoting any attention, contemplative or otherwise, to subjective realities instead of working tirelessly for exterior economic redistribution. That both conservatives and liberals were alarmed by the book does not guarantee the book’s integral truth, but it is a prerequisite.
Again, not that I have mastered this integral endeavor, but simply that I wanted a journal that did not compartmentalize—that did not set spirituality against life, but instead set spirituality in the very midst of daily work, play, parties, illness, vacations, sex, money, and family—and that invited readers to be more friendly toward an integral approach in their own lives.
Of course, there are times when it is perfectly appropriate to temporarily compartmentalize in order to focus on a specific type of development—whether that be learning to cook, going on a nature hike, or taking up a contemplative practice at a meditation retreat. For spiritual development, I have always been a strong advocate of meditation, in any of its numerous forms. Thus, the second major point I wanted to get across in One Taste is the importance of meditation or contemplation as part of an integral practice.
Fortunately, by far the most common feedback I received about One Taste was: “I started to meditate,” or “After reading the book I went on an intensive meditation retreat,” or “I vowed to strengthen my meditation practice.” That is the single effect I hoped the book would have. Truly, adopting a new holistic philosophy, believing in Gaia, or even thinking in integral terms—however important those might be, they are the least important when it comes to spiritual transformation. Finding out who believes in all those things: There is the doorway to God.
The basic idea of integral transformative practice (ITP) is simple: the more aspects of our being that we simultaneously exercise, the more likely that transformation will occur. In other words, ITP attempts to be as “all-level, all-quadrant” as possible. The more you do so, the more likely you will transform to the next higher wave. If you are at blue, this will help you transform to orange. If you are at green, this will help you move into second tier. If you are already at second tier, this will help you move into the transpersonal, spiritual waves—not merely as an altered state, but as a permanent trait.
“All-level” refers to the waves of existence, from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit; “all-quadrant” refers to the I, we, and it dimensions (or self, culture, and nature; art, morals, and science; first-person, second-person, and third-person). Thus, an “all-level, all-quadrant” practice means exercising physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual waves in self, culture, and nature.
Start with self: the waves of existence (from physical to emotional to mental to spiritual) as they appear in oneself can be exercised by a spectrum of practices: physical exercise (weightlifting, diet, jogging, yoga), emotional exercises (qi gong, counseling, psychotherapy), mental exercises (affirmation, visualization), and spiritual exercises (meditation, contemplative prayer).
But these waves of existence need to be exercised—not just in self (boomeritis!)—but in culture and nature as well. Exercising the waves in culture might mean getting involved in community service, working with the hospice movement, participating in local government, working with inner-city rehabilitation, providing services for homeless people. It can also mean using relationships in general (marriage, friendship, parenting) to further your own growth and the growth of others. Mutually respectful dialogue is indeed the time-honored method of linking self and other in a dance of understanding, a dance which is deeply conducive to integral embrace.
Exercising the waves of existence in nature means that nature is viewed, not as an inert and instrumental backdrop to our actions, but as participating in our own evolution. Getting actively involved in respect for nature, in any number of ways (recycling, environmental protection, nature celebration) not only honors nature, it promotes our own capacity to care.
In short, integral transformative practice attempts to exercise all of the basic waves of human beings—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual—in self, culture, and nature. One is thus as “all-level, all-quadrant” as one can be at whatever one’s actual wave of development, and this is the most powerful way to trigger transformation to the next wave—not to mention simply becoming as healthy as one can be at one’s present wave, whatever it might be (no small accomplishment!).
Of course, if an individual is at, say, the blue wave, one cannot permanently access higher waves, including the transpersonal waves (as only one reason: the blue, ethnocentric, conventional wave is not yet at a postconventional or worldcentric stance, and thus it cannot see that Spirit shines equally in all sentient beings, and hence it cannot master global compassion, which locks it out of genuine spiritual awareness). These individuals can, however, have an altered state or a temporary peak experience of these transpersonal realms, as we saw.
What those peak experiences can do—and what meditation can do—is to help people disidentify with whatever stage they are at, and thus move to the next stage. And, in fact, we have considerable evidence that meditation does exactly that. It has been shown, for example, that meditation increases the percentage of the population who are at second tier from less than 2 percent to an astonishing 38 percent (see The Eye of Spirit, chap. 10). Thus, meditation is an important part of a truly integral practice.
Michael Murphy and George Leonard pioneered the first practical ITP in their book, The Life We Are Given. I have continued to work closely with Mike and George in elucidating the theoretical underpinnings of such a practice. There are now approximately forty ITP groups around the country (if you are interested in starting or joining such, you can contact Murphy and Leonard at www.itplife.com). The Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention (of the Stanford University School of Medicine) is monitoring several groups of individuals engaged in this practice, which has already had some rather extraordinary effects, testament to what an integral transformative practice can facilitate. There are many other, similar types of all-quadrant, all-level approaches being developed around the country, and I expect to see an explosion of interest in these types of more comprehensive programs, simply because they are more effective in initiating transformation.
My recommendation for those who want to take up an integral transformative practice is therefore to read One Taste and The Life We Are Given; those books have all the necessary details to get started on your own ITP. I also recommend reading Robert Kegan’s In Over Our Heads (a superb discussion of psychological transformation); Tony Schwartz, What Really Matters—Searching for Wisdom in America (an overview of many growth technologies that can be included in an integral practice); and Roger Walsh’s Essential Spirituality, which I believe is the single best book on the great wisdom traditions, stressing that, at their core, they are spiritual and contemplative sciences (good science, not narrow science). For those who would like an overview of the integral approach, I recommend both Integral Psychology and A Brief History of Everything.
As I have continued, in several books, to elucidate suggestions for a more integral approach to various fields, I have gotten two major reactions to this work. The first, and fortunately largest, has been enthusiastic. The second has been negative and angry. A part of this anger is simply that some people resent a more integral approach; they feel that I am trying to force these ideas on them, that the holistic overview I have suggested somehow robs them of their freedom, that these ideas are a conceptual straitjacket against which they must fight.
But the real intent of my writing is not to say, you must think in this way. The real intent is to enrich: here are some of the many important facets of this extraordinary Kosmos; have you thought about including them in your own worldview? My work is an attempt to make room in the Kosmos for all of the dimensions, levels, domains, waves, memes, modes, individuals, cultures, and so on ad infinitum.
In this Theory of Everything, I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody—including me—has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace, a genuine T.O.E.
In the end we will find, I believe, the inherent joy in existence itself, a joy that stems from the great perfection of this and every moment, a wondrous whole in itself, a part of the whole of the next, a sliding series of wholes and parts that cascade to infinity and back, never lacking and never wanting because always fulfilled in the brilliance that is now. The integral vision, having served its purpose, is finally outshined by the radiance of a Spirit that is much too obvious to see and much too close to reach, and the integral search finally succeeds by letting go of the search itself, there to dissolve in a radical Freedom and consummate Fullness that was always already the case, so that one abandons a theory of everything in order simply to be Everything, one with the All in this endless awareness that holds the Kosmos kindly in its hand. And then the true Mystery yields itself, the face of Spirit secretly smiles, the Sun rises in your very own heart and the Earth becomes your very own body, galaxies rush through your veins while the stars light up the neurons of your night, and never again will you search for a mere theory of that which is actually your own Original Face.