The Coming Interspiritual--Archive Edition

But there was nothing merely theoretical in Brother Wayne’s interest—he lived what he believed; he walked the talk he was learning and applying daily, and with heroic courage and dedication. The key to Brother Wayne’s success in introducing Interspirituality to the world lay in his bringing together deeply Realized beings from virtually every tradition, putting them together in one place, and allowing them to discover their truly fundamental and universal agreements. The key to Integral Theory was putting all the world’s Great Traditions on the table at once, and then creating a Composite Map that covered all the bases and dimensions in a human being, using each Tradition to fill in gaps left by the others. This Composite or World Map allowed each Tradition to see how they were all “true but partial” aspects of Humanity’s Great Spirituality, and thus gave them all a Grid they could easily hang their own Tradition’s spiritual Truths on, without denying or denigrating any others. Thus, embracing a truly Integral Interspirituality allowed each seeker to be a “dual citizen”— embracing both an Integral Map and their own Tradition’s version of that Map—thus being a member of all Traditions as well as one’s own.

The Integral Framework consists of 5 major elements (culled from a study of premodern, modern, and postmodern maps)—known as quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types.

Quadrants are the basic dimension/perspectives that all occasions possess—an interior and an exterior, and an individual and a collective (giving 4 major grids or “quadrants”—the inside and outside of the individual and the collective, represented by pronouns such as I, We, It, and Its, resp.). These 4 quadrants are often simplified to “the Big 3”—I, We, and It; or Beauty, Goodness, and Truth; or art, morals, and science; or Buddha, Sangha, and Dharma; or the Trinity. But by claiming that all occasions possess these 3 or 4 dimensions, Integral Theory claims that Spirit itself can be looked at in 1st-person terms (the innermost highest Spirit-Self or “I-I”); in 2nd-person terms (as a Great Thou, as in Buber’s I-Thou relation); and in 3rd-person terms (a Great Web of Life or Gaia). Neither of those is more real or more important—they are all dimensions of the same Spirit seen from different perspectives (or different quadrants).

“Levels” refers to “levels of consciousness” or “structures of consciousness,” such as Jean Geber’s archaic stage, magic stage, mythic stage, rational stage, pluralistic stage, and integral stage. Each of those levels (in their numerous versions) has a different view of God or Spirit (as shown by, e.g., James Fowler’s research). Understanding which structure-stage a person is at will help understand how and why that person understands Spirit as they do. Again, none of the stages are simply right or simply wrong. Each stage is adequate; each succeeding stage is more adequate.