Mike Ginn - Carmel, California

Mike Ginn's Question to Ken Wilber

I am a first year doctoral student (still feeling my way around!) in a program that encourages phenomenological dissertations. I am currently studying epistemology, the differences between ontological and epistemological approaches to research, and trying to understand the different flavors of “phenomenology” that various faculty practice and teach. I am still somewhat bewildered by it all, and so this reading of and discussion about chapter one (such as that related to figure 1.3 on page 52) is really great and very timely.

A year from now I may have some expertise to contribute in these areas, but for now I’ll simply present two of the approaches to phenomenology that are being “offered.” 

For what it is worth, this is me trying to make sense of a) how a few of the eight major methodologies are (or can be) related in the context of their teaching and practice in a university, b) how a researcher (for example, me!) might expand into the promise of Integral Methodological Pluralism from more partial epistemological habits, and c) the possible impact to phenomenological research given the relatedness of perspectives and perception as discussed in this chapter (and here as well).

Here are two statements, each about an approach to

phenomenology:

1) Phenomenography is the study of the variation in the ways people perceive, understand, and make meaning. It attempts to discover the elements that contribute to these variations, and to uncover patterns and relationships among these elements.

2) This seminar on interpretive phenomenology will introduce the domains of phenomenology and hermeneutics through experientially grounded activities that display the foundations and orientation of interpretive ways of knowing. I’ll offer my own experience of doing this type of research while a member of an orchestra – I became interested in my experience of playing with them and as we developed a we-relationship among us. I’ll also describe how the concept of a “lifeworld” provided a framework for me to explicate symphonic life in a richer and more meaningful way.

The questions I have now (appreciating that it will be helpful to have more to go on than the above statements): Are these approaches two flavors of phenomenology, or are they structuralist and hermeneutic approaches that have chosen to study human experience? Or are they paired methodologies, a structuralist-phenomenology and a hermeneutic-phenomenology?

What does one bring to the other, if anything? How does one get from either (or both) to perspectives, to Integral Perspectivism?

Second...

I don't have the quote at hand (I am traveling)...

Paul Ricour provided a correction to Husseurl's phenomenology (he was placing to much emphasis on zone 1, a quadrant absolutism -- zone absolutism, actually) saying that you couldn't really have a phenomenology without also having at the same time a hermeneutic.

This position didn't destroy phenomenology, only Husserl's indealistic conception of one. But even this correction allowed that phenomenology was in some way prior to meaning making. But what I see in IMP is that all eight zones are in a very real way all abstractions. Which brings us to a discussion of what is there before our (human?) abstracting begins, and what possibility is provided by a development of consciousness (starting to get into zone 2 here) that is enough to allow for seeing all eight zones as abstractions.

Tom Bougtsy - Wyoming

Speaking on States...

Part 1

Part 2

Tom's question copied from his email to ISC-

Ken, I have been contemplating that two major routes to Nondual awareness seem possible and appear helpful to differentiate in regards to states of consciousness.  For the sake of discussion, I label these the “masculine” and the “feminine” routes, as portrayed in the attached figure.
 
    The traditional, masculine route proceeds towards emptiness, but with great duress, since the journey seems counterintuitive to people attached to survival in the realm of form.  To let go of all form, upon which human life depends and proceed into emptiness, appears to invite death.  On the other hand, the feminine route that relies on unitive experiences that connect us in oneness with our self, others, the Earth, cosmos, and deity provides a route more natural with our everyday experience.  For instance, when we awaken to our oneness with the cosmos along the feminine route (e.g., Big Mind), our connection with all form makes the connection with emptiness seem less daunting. 
 
• Do you think that a feminine route, seeking oneness as its priority that then leads to emptiness, in contrast to the traditional more masculine route, seeking emptiness that then encompasses oneness with form, both exist as viable options on the journey to Nondual awareness?
• If so, in what ways do you think the two routes can complement and integrate productively, so the oneness and fullness of the feminine path and the emptiness and infinite freedom sought by the masculine path can facilitate spiritual awakenings?
• Do you think the feminine route, as a path that appears more natural to human functioning, may actually serve to accelerate our progress towards Nondual awareness?
• Do the major religious traditions, although founded and propagated largely by men, all offer spiritual practices that seek oneness and communion consistent with a more feminine path?
• In efforts to promote sustainability, do we now need to prioritize feminine practices, including spiritual practices that promote oneness and communion in order to balance the prevailing masculine agency and individualism that have strongly influenced religious traditions and cultural development for millennium?
• Could a spiritual map be developed that outlines and honors practices from different Spiritual traditions, including practices along both the masculine and feminine routes, so we can help people make more informed choices regarding their particular spiritual path, and at the same time, promote their growth in conscious development?
• Would it be possible for the Integral Spiritual Center to take the lead to develop such a comprehensive map to help accelerate humanity on the journey towards spiritual awakenings and towards a healthy, sustainable future? 
 
In addition, I want to thank you for offering this venue for reaching and inspiring so many pioneering people to explore your book and the cutting edge of consciousness, and in this process, initiate a forum to help people collaborate and hopefully work to create an evolvable future.

Martin Matustik - see below for links

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~matustik/

Conversation between Ken Wilber and Martin Matustik

Dear Ken Wilber,

Who I am:
I have been reading with great interest the advanced copy of your book, Integral Spirituality, I received from your publisher. This is my first reading of you work. My question is regarding the relationship between Stages and States of Consciousness and it arises out of my publication and pedagogical work in two areas: the theory of communicative action and stages of social evolution by Jurgen Habermas (critical theory) and the existential self-transformative phenomenology of Soeren Kierkegaard (philosophy of religion).

This is the two-fold background to my question:
First, Habermas's analysis of social evolution gets us to what you would call the amber level of modern/ and perhaps also higher post/modern consciousness, yet Habermas requires reduction of the rationality differential between sacred and secular, and so requires a translation of spiritual faith-based mode of human development into the validity and cultural value domains of modernity. In this translation, as you note well in your work, the religious value sphere drops out (as it does in Marx, Max Weber, Adorno, Horkheimer before Habermas). My former colleague at Purdue, Cal Schrag, articulated the need for the 4th value sphere, religious, in an essay he wrote first for my collection I co-edited with Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity. You are the second person who came up with the same idea in your discussion of stages. I think this is right.

Second, Kierkegaard's study of existential spheres admits that there is no existing religious culture in modernity--there are no Christians in Christendom, there are nationalist, herd-religious forms and Christians in despair. We are thus required to change the entirety of our sphere of existence. I argued in my book, Postnational Identity, that Kierkegaard's transformation of individuals is required by the type of social evolution posited by Habermas, otherwise it falls into anomie and meaninglessness and remains too weak to resist fundamentalist and nationalist modes of individual and group formation (consciousness falls back into tribal-ethnocentric stage as you would say).

Here is my question to you:
I agree that we cannot jump the stages of consciousness or as Habermas, pace Hegel and Marx, would say of social evolution. I also agree with you and against Habermas that the modern Enlightenment reduced all enlightenment to its stage of development, and so treats all religious states as ego- and ethno-centric, traditional, pre-critical, requiring falsely a full translation of the spiritual to the secular. And the fundamantalist forms of that archaic consciousness then clash with the modern view represented e.g., by Habermas. Iran's arrest of its philosopher Johanbegloo, who likes to quote Habermas among others, is the case in point.
 
But don't you need, besides the vertical axis of stages and the horizontal axis of states also the transversal, or genuinely vertical-inward axis of existential self-transformation? It is true that one cannot jump the stages, but in a non-evolutionary sense the spheres of existence, as shown by Kierkegaard, are available to everyone at every stage of consciousness, yet existence spheres are not exactly the same as states of consciousness. Kierkegaard criticizes Hegel for confusing transition with transformation, evolutionary developmental dialectic of both-and with existential transformative dialectic of either/or. Don't we need to posit in contrast to Hegel-Marx-Habermas-Piaget-Kohlberg-Gilligan, etc. and their evolutionary models, something akin to Kierkegaard's existential spheres of existence (esthetic, ethical, ethico-religious,=religiousness A, religious=religiousness B) as a motivational-inward prerequisite for the very possibility (condition of possibility) of evolutionary change? And since states are not the conditions of the emergence of stages, then we cannot speak of spheres of existence simply in terms of states either. In sum, don't you want to introduces a three-pronged axis: stages & states of consciousness and spheres of existence?

I would very much love to discuss this with you and others, whether in a call or otherwise.

Sincerely,

Martin Beck Matu¹tík
[Note from Nomali: Martin then sent this follow-up to be included.]

 I asked whether or not we need to think of a third axis: vertical developmental stages-structures (lines), horizontal stages-states of consciousness, and transversal existential-transformative stages on life's way or spheres of existence. I have since then come up with this proposal for the third axis, and it would be the one that pertains to chapter 6, the Shadow Self. The Wilber-Combs-Matustik Lattice 4.1 would then have the third depth psychology-existential transformative axis running perhaps diagonally from lower left to upper right.

It would have minimally the following spheres of existence: aesthetic relation to self, others, and world (1-2-3), ethical, ethico-religious (generic religiosity A in Kierkegaard), religious (religiousness B, with sin-consciousness). These spheres would provide another look at depth altitudes of the paths leading to the Mountain peak.
*The aesthetic has repressed consciousness of despair and suppressed self, there is no-self and yet this is not a Buddhist no-self.
*The Ethical has normative and even ethico-religious self-other-world relations, but no consciousness of God as a requirement of self-transformation, it suffers conscious despair and cultural neuroses.
*The religious A has guilt-consciousness of finitude, suffering time, suffering limit, it experiences aggravated forms of despair, such as weakness or not willing to be self, dissociative disorders studied in therapy, but has no consciousness of its despair existing before God.
*The religious B offers the greatest and most intense expansion of consciousness because it despairs before God and so its neurosis is recognized now as sin-consciousness (see Otto Rank, Ernest Becker and Kierkegaard). Forms of defiant despair, Promethean rebellion, radical evil, cruelty, demonic anger all arise here.

The healthy self capable of AQAL at any historical point in time as I-I, would be the one who knowing oneself as spirit relating to itself and willing to be self owning all parts of oneself in truth rests transparently in the power of  the One who posits it.

This is all a proposal, something that would need more discussion, including whether the diagonal axis is the best way to model the depth psychology-existential transformation of the self-other-world relations as articulated by Kierkegaard, Freud, and others. I have noticed that there are no charts, axes, diagrams in chapter 6, and this is what I had in mind in my original question. So, my question remains, this is an adumbration of what I had in mind. It can be shortened or presented in any fashion you would find helpful.

Janet O'Keefe - North Carolina

Stages of Consciousness

Listen to Janet O'Keefe and Ken Wilber.

Question from Janet.

Does the "will" have a function in helping an individual to consciously evolve to higher stages of consciousness?

I'm not talking about 'free will" per se or any type of willing that implies effort. 
By will I mean:

1.  William James' "will to believe"

2. The emotional / intellectual / visceral decision to do or commit to something: e.g., meditation, daily physical exercise 

3. The will that can arise with grace

If it has a function and role in spiritual practice, is there any way to activate it when one feels its distinct lack?

Cameron Freeman - Adelaide, South Australia

IS Chapter 2 on Stages

Listen to Part One and Part Two of Cameron Freeman and Ken Wilber.

Hi Ken,

I have just finished my doctoral thesis in philosophy – and much of my research/writing is based on your own extensive writings (Thanks!), which means I’ve wanted to ask you some pretty burning questions for some time now… As numerous discussions at ISC have confirmed - my basic intuition that the evolution of consciousness into second-tier (trans-rational stages) is best approached in a way that can “hold paradox” – and so most of my questions tend to focus how paradox resists the attempt to fix in place value-hierarchies founded upon binary oppositions such as: inside/outside, upright/degenerate, sacred/profane, higher/lower, etc.

So here's my questions:

1. How do these discoveries about “stages of development” make sense of the fact that many of our great religious teachers (Christ, Mother Theresa, St. Francis, the Old Testament prophets) have tended to serve the poor, stand up for the most vulnerable, and reach out to those excluded by the Powers that Be, while these same figures simultaneously challenge and provoke those who sit at the top of the socio-cultural hierarchy?? There seems to be a sacred subversion in the Judeo-Christian tradition (particularly with Jesus of Nazareth) that privileges those without privilege – particularly those at “lower” stages of development (sinners, outcasts, nobodies), while simultaneously marginalizing that which puts itself at the center – particularly those that proclaim themselves to be closer to God. This observation seems alarmingly “out of whack” with your own evolutionary snap shot of vertical growth into higher stages of development all the way to (ever-present) Godhead

2.        There is no doubt plenty of evidence to suggest that “stages of
development”
provide an accurate conceptual snap shot of something that’s actually happening in the real world – let’s say Kosmic habits laid down by previous evolution. So while we know THAT there are stages of development, I’m not convinced that developmental holarchies provide a “skillful means” for actually showing people HOW to evolve into higher stages… isn’t the really important question not merely demonstrating THAT there are higher stages but rather HOW we grow through the stages, how a person can move into the next stage of their development?

3.        In this regard, is there any reliable evidence on the “dynamics of
transformation” when it comes to the evolution of human consciousness, what call “the form of development” (Atman Project). In other words, are there any invariable patterns that connect across different stages and map out the actual process of transformation from one level to the next? If so, it seems we need not be too concerned with identifying where people are at in the spectrum of consciousness (i.e. ranking) but rather with how anybody at any stage can further their own development and move to the next stage of consciousness in their own particular case?

4.        While I think that your Pre-Trans fallacy has been enormously helpful
affirming the need for vertical growth and development, my question is: are there pre-rational states that can facilitate vertical growth into trans-rational stages of development? When I say pre-rational states, I basically mean connecting with our emotions: experiences such as grieving, expressing our sadness, befriending the shadow, increasing our capacity for being vulnerable, and even sexual yoga and the loss of the self engendered in Dionysian states of intoxication, etc…  As a Christian meditator, I awaken to the love of God in Christ (trans-rational) by confessing my habitual survival patterns and re-owning my unconscious pain (pre-rational)… For example, within our punishing behavior is the seed of its opposite – sadness; with an increasing capacity to be vulnerable (pre) we come into contact with our authentic power (trans), while within every defect (pre) is a treasure (trans), just as in actually feeling into our creaturely mortality we open ourselves to the inexhaustible energy of the Creator, and so on… In other words, are there are some pre-rational STATE experiences that are deeply spiritual or religious?
For it seems to me that the Pre-Trans distinction can be put to use to avoid the messiness of embodied existence and our unconscious pain (the pre-rational), by driving a dualistic wedge into the heart of Being…

5.        Does vertical growth happen in only one developmental line at a time?
Or do a whole collection of developmental lines move to their next stage as a person furthers their own vertical development?

6.        Given that various lines of development oscillate between various
polarities – one stage emphasizes autonomy, the next emphasizes communion, etc – is it fair to say that the human condition is constitutionally ‘dis-jointed’, that we will never really balance these contradictory tensions, never really be at one with the Non-dual Heart, wherein opposites coincide? Or do these opposing tensions begin to be integrated at second tier awareness so that one is simultaneously selfish and selfless, Apollonian and Dionysian, masculine and feminine, etc…

7.        Stages of development have been used historically in the service of
various forms of human power and prejudice: politics, race, religion, etc… How do we avoid the danger of psycho-spiritual inflation when making value judgments about “higher” and “lower”? In other words, how can we skillfully communicate stages of development to other people who cannot themselves see higher stages, without looking like a fascist imposing his/her view of the world on others?

8.        Given that stages of development can be sub-divided into levels and
lines, with over two dozen lines of development, it seems that a person can never actually be AT a certain stage – even a persons “center of gravity” will oscillate over 2-3 stages across numerous different lines of development in any given situation… Given this, how helpful is an integral psycho-graph when it comes to actually providing an accurate snapshot of where a person is at in their development? I mean, quite frankly, the first time I looked at your developmental holarchies in the UL I didn’t know whether I was a psychotic or a sage, and now I’m basically just concerned with becoming an integrated and free-function human being… rather than getting to a “higher level”

9.        Have you ever felt like you were climbing up, when in fact you were
falling down? Have you ever felt like you were falling down, when in fact you were climbing up?

Thanks Ken

Cameron Freeman,

Adelaide, South Australia

Yotam Schachter - Boulder, CO

IS Chapter 1 on IMP
Listen to Yotam Schachter and Ken Wilber.

Ken says “…while contemplative prayer or vipassana might free you from your ego, it will not free you from your culture, whose prejudices remain in the hidden intersubjective background never brought to consciousness and thus never transcended…” So two things come to mind. First of all, he says later that meditation helps you grow in values and cognitive lines, also (a full stage in two years, etc). Wouldn’t this process help you shed your cultural biases? And if not, what can free you from your intersubjective background? Thanks a lot!

Yotam Schachter

Jim Roi - New York

From: Jim Roi
Subject: Quaternities/Trinities

Hello,This is a question that has interested and a little disturbed me for a long time. Almost all the times when Ken starts out speaking of the four quadrants it very quickly gets reduced to the "Big Three".  My concern is that there is some sort of unnecessary distinction here.  I guess it goes against my sense of Occam’s razor.  I love the Big Three and think there is some sort of simplicity to be gained by staying within a Trinitarian schema.  I feel there is something missing in Ken's appreciation of the vedantic distinction of reality as being made up of the three Gunas--sattva, rajas and tamas. I've never heard or read him giving his take on this  mode of articulating spirit  which is at the heart of the Vedas, Vedantism, Yoga, Advaita Vedanta etc. and should be fully developed and integrated with the Big three.  I'm also not aware of any place where Ken really pays attention to the notion of samskaras which again should be updated and integrated into postmodern, post structuralist philosophy, psychology and spirituality. Did he do this somewhere and I just missed it?  Beyond that I just want to say thank you to Ken and everybody for all the amazing work you are doing.

Peace and Love
Jim

John Baker - New York

IS Chapter 1 on IMP

Listen to John Baker and Ken Wilber.

Dear Ken, Much love & deep prayers for your speedy recovery.  Much appreciation for the track you and I-I are laying for Integral Consciousness. Integral saved my life. 
I am a deep student of your work.  I have read & listened to just about everything you have written & spoke, including most everything you have recommended, have been intensely involved in Integral Practice since '02 ( I was born in the Wilber-5 context reading first Boomeritis, Eye of the Spirit, One Taste then the Online stuff prior to reading SES) , and have studied & been on retreats with some of Integral Spiritual Center teachers including Roger Walsh,  Lama Surya Das, Andrew Cohen(why isn't he part of it ---> I keep meaning to ask him) & Terry Patten.  I consider Saniel Bonder & Linda-Groves Bonder to be my primary teachers. 

I am fascinated by an Integral Calculus of Primordial Perspectives as my major in college was Physics. I have a few questions in relation to Integral Mathematics.
1.  Mostly I want to know how you would characterize a 4th, 5th, and so on person perspective using 3p language.  How far does that rabbit hole go?
2.  You mention using 3, 4, or 5 terms to annotate perspectives and then reducing those to three.  What are the reasons for using more terms or less and could you elaborate on this?
3. Can you explain how the quadrants are not the perspectives but generate the perspectives?

I really hope you are well enough to come to New York next week but, please don't kill yourself.  I am deeply grateful for you presence here and wish that you stay to guide us for another 50 years or more.  Hopefully Kurzweils predictions can bare some fruit & they will download your consciousness into A.I. lol I plan on heading to Boulder after becoming a teacher in the Waking Down work and building a solid financial base.

Aloha,

John Baker

 http://www.integralevolution.blogspot.com

Tom D'Alessio - Wisconsin

Call on IMP.

Listen to Tom D'Alessio and Ken Wilber.

From: Thomas D'Alessio
To: isquestion@integralspiritualcenter.org

1.
P34: UR is "outside/individual" yet the comment "In the Upper Right, felt energy phenomenologically expands from gross to subtle to causal."

Phenomenology means:
        What presents itself in conscious experience   (Hegel)

        Approach that takes the intuitive experience of phenomena as starting point   (Husserl)

         Apprehension of the Being behind all beings   (Heidegger)

By none of those definitions does phenomenology belong in UR, it is not "outside/individual." I question "phenomenologically expands" as well as "gross" "subtle" and "causal" in UR (diagram p34)/EXTERIOR/individual. Does "subtle" or "causal" describe the "outside of an individual?" I am wondering if their use here is not only very confusing but critically misleading? I am even wondering if "subtle" and "causal" belong in UR? Is "the openness in which all things arise" really exterior/individual and therefore measurable? Huh?

2.
P37: "If any of these states become permanent acquisitions, they become stages, not states." I'm not aware of anywhere else Ken equates stages as "permanent states." This is an argument for being permanently on LSD or SRI's or at least a good sturdy chianti. He's been very careful to distinguish states from stages, even using entirely different language to describe them. States: waking, dreaming, deep formless sleep; gross, subtle, causal; meditative states, altered states, peak experiences. You can exteriorly see waking and instrumentally measure dreaming and deep sleep (but formless?). But how do we observe "causal" from the exterior? What outside observer can see/measure a peak experience another may be having? If I take p37 seriously and "stages" are "permanent states," then "causal" could become a permanent state? And if so what's the point of "now?"

I applaud Ken's work: it has become an integral part of my own new enterprise Bodymindspiritworks LLC (we help people get their lives back). The work I am doing now is a result of 20 years of experience and reading, including everything Ken has published (web and book, starting with "No Boundary"). Thanks for your pioneering and excellent work (Ken and all the people at I-I)!

Tom

Beth Richards - Alabama

Chapter 1 call on IMP

Listen to Beth Richard and Ken Wilber

Question from Beth Richards.

Re: "...holon's address = its altitude + perspective...all of this is important because it relates to being able to "prove" the existence of anything, whether a rock, a proposition, or God..." (p. 54)
 
Can this be related to the Pauli Exclusion Principle in quantum mechanics?  Can two events have the same address?
 
 
To put this in people or event terms each of us has a given set of properties or altitude (who we are) and our own spin or perspective therefore no two of us can occupy the same slot in life or the same holon address.  If we were all the same and had the same spin we would all pile up on the lowest energy level available and this would be a pretty dull life.
 
This is the basis for order in the universe, and a condition that life could not exist without.  There would be no periodic table.

The part that gets creepy in quantum physics is that this implies instant communication that most of us don't understand. When an electron walks into a bar it somehow knows without looking which bar stools it can occupy. When a second blindfolded electron walks into the bar it somehow knows all of the other occupants and where they are sitting. The second electron also knows where it should sit at the bar for best service.  Proof of the existence of a rock or God?

Edith Friesen - Winnipeg, Canada

Introduction: Integral Approach

Listen to Edith Friesen and Ken Wilber

Question from Edith Friesen.

Ken, you claim that the Integral Map or IOS gives different domains a common terminology which allows them to not only talk to each other but also to communicate fully.

As a writer with a background in communications studies, this question is very close to my heart. I am fed up with turf wars within and between domains; this is what drew/drove me to your work in the first place, nearly a decade ago. Now the possibility of intra and interdisciplinary communication seems more possible than ever.

But is it, really?

From my perspective and experience, when it comes to communicating fully, whether between individuals, domains, disciplines or religions, a common terminology and a neutral framework like IOS only gets us to the door. It doesn’t get us past our hidden assumptions, interpretive frameworks, paradigms, etc. It doesn’t touch the structure or content of our individual or collective interiors, at least not initially.

Q: Precisely how and to what extent does the Integral Map allow different domains to talk to each other? And, do various parties (individuals, domains or religions) need to be at integral before full communication can occur?

I am looking for hope, Ken, and fuller examples.

Love and Gratitude,
Edith

PS. I’m loving Integral Spirituality!

Ross Hostetter - Boulder, CO

Introduction to Integral Approach

Listen to Ross here.

From: JRoss Hostetter
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2024 1:18 PM
To: isquestion@integralspiritualcenter.org
Subject: IMP

Are there events, or markers, which show up in each of the four quadrants as signs of spiritual health and positive development which could help a practitioner affirm that they are on the right path?  Conversely, are there events or markers which show up in each of the four quadrants which are signs of ill health or pathological development?  If so what are they?   
 

Another way to ask this question: Are there predictable "fruits of the spirit" and "wages of sin" to guide and warn the integral spiritual practitioner in her advancement from stage to stage? 
 
As part of the above, what is your view of the markers of "second tier" spiritual development, as opposed to "first tier?

Thanks so much for the opportunity to submit questions.
 
Ross Hostetter

Richard Munn - London, England

Introduction: Integral Approach

Listen to Richard here.

From: Richard Munn [mailto:sargemunn@hotmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2024 6:58 AM
To: isquestion@integralspiritualcenter.org
Subject: questions for ken

HI!,

I have more than one question, I obviously don't expect more than one to be
answered!

1. The Integral Approach is a comprehensive map but is there a way to make
AQAL partial or to transcend and include AQAL?

2."The new human is Integral" I guess this refers to Integral being a stage
of development but can this be misused to claim that AQAL is Absolutely
Correct?

3. The Integral Psychograph seems a WONDERFUL way of knowing one's self
better, how can I creat my own psychograph?!

4.In watching Genpo's exposition of ranks none of them seem to fit my
understanding of the presentation of 'subtle' in the AQAL map (ie. Tantric
visualisations etc.). How does this fit with your state-stage conception?

5.How does an atom have 4 quadrants? (how can an atom have a 'culture'?)

Warmly

Richard Munn, 22, UK