This short summary is an introduction to Integral Theory according to Ken Wilber.
This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction (content has been paraphrased and organized in my own way). Short summaries and quotes aren’t substitutes for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Ken Wilber’s books (Amazon).
I’ve personally read six of Wilber’s books so far, which have been used to synthesize the summary below:
- “Finding Radical Wholeness” (Book Summary)
- “The Integral Vision” (Book Summary)
- “Integral Psychology” (Book Summary)
- “Integral Spirituality” (Book Summary)
- “A Theory of Everything” (Book Summary)
- “A Brief History of Everything” (Book Summary) + 20 Tenets of Integral Theory
Introduction to Integral Theory (Ken Wilber Summary)
Definitions:
- Defining ‘integral’: The word means to integrate, to bring together, to join, to link, to embrace. Not in the sense of uniformity, but in the sense of unity-in-diversity, shared commonalities along with our wonderful differences.
- Defining ‘integrative’: The integration of all that is given to humanity—attempting to include as many important truths from as many disciplines as possible (from the East as well as the West, from premodern and modern and postmodern, from the hard sciences of physics to the tender sciences of spirituality).
What if:
- What if we took literally everything that all the various cultures have to tell us about human potential and put it all on the table—about spiritual growth, psychological growth, social growth?
- What if we attempted to find the critically essential keys to human growth—based on the sum total of human knowledge now open to us?
- What if we attempted to use all of the world’s great traditions to create a composite/comprehensive map—an all-inclusive or integral map that included the best elements from all of them?
Integral Theory:
- World philosophy: Integral Theory might be the first truly comprehensive world philosophy. I sought a world philosophy—or an integral philosophy—that would weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world’s great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details—that is finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos, a plausible Theory of Everything.
- Theory of everything: If we assume that all the world’s cultures have important but partial truths, then how would all of those truths fit together into a richly woven tapestry, a unity-in-diversity, a multicolored yet single rainbow? 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. Most importantly, there is indeed a place for everything in your life. Everything has meaning, because everything fits. Meaning returns to one’s life. This is perhaps the single most important and quickly noticeable item about the Integral Approach: everything fits, and thus meaning returns.
- Integral approach/practice: Involves the cultivation and exercise of body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature (the I, we, and it domains).
Integral Theory attempts to:
- Attempts to be comprehensive, balanced, inclusive (invites us to be a little more whole, a little less fragmented, in our work, our lives, our destiny).
- Attempts to honor and include as much research as possible from the largest number of disciplines in a coherent fashion (equally includes disciplines from physics to spirituality, biology to aesthetics, sociology to contemplative prayer).
- Attempts to make room in the Kosmos for all of the dimensions, levels, domains, waves, memes, modes, individuals, cultures, and so on ad infinitum.
- Attempts to include matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit as they appear in self, culture, and nature.
Continue to the next posts in the introductory series:
Or, explore the book summaries:
