1
“Integral Spirituality”
By Rev. Ann Schranz, Interim Minister
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Santa Cruz County
November 12, 2006
According to Ken Wilber, “A recent poll conducted by UCLA showed
that, in America, 79% of college juniors say spirituality is important or
very important in their lives, and 3 out of 4 of them pray (!). Yet they
cannot discuss their faith with their professors, who . . . ridicule it; yet
they are no longer really comfortable with the mythic and ethnocentric
version of their . . . beliefs and the fundamentalist version of religion
held by many of their friends. A typical Christian student, for example,
is embarrassed to talk about his religion with his professors, and even
more embarrassed by his Christian friends . . . (This is the same problem
faced by the terrorists: [their] beliefs find no room in the . . . world.)”
Ken Wilber continues, “In the development of their spiritual intelligence,
[the college students] are frozen at [a particular stage of
development] . . . and have no avenues where they can explore . . .
higher levels in the development of spiritual intelligence . . . They are in
effect infantilized in their approach to Spirit. Their other option is to
renounce their faith and move into . . . higher [overall] levels of
development devoid of spiritual orientation. Since both of those choices
2
are horrid, most college students, as the study showed, simply pray in
the closet. Terrorists make another choice.”1
With these stark words, Ken Wilber emphasizes the urgency of making
available and better known the higher levels of development of spiritual
intelligence. Spiritual intelligence is one of a dozen or so major lines of
development within each person. I have been following his work for a
dozen years. He has been writing about religion and spirituality for 30
years. Ken Wilber was educated as a scientist, and he did graduate work
in the biochemistry and biophysics of the visual process. As near as I
can tell, his specialty was cow eyes: “The photoisomerization of
rhodopsin isolated from bovine rod outer segments.”2
Ken Wilber is now connected with hundreds of teachers through the
Integral Institute and the Integral Spiritual Center, and they, in turn, are
connected with thousands of people around the world who are interested
in integral spirituality. The framework is called “integral” because it
encompasses all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, and all types.
Who knew that work with cow eyes would help someone see quadrants,
levels, lines, states, and types – and how they fit together? The
framework is known by the acronym AQAL, pronounced AH-qwul, for
All Quadrants, All Levels. The AQAL framework holds that there are
1
Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World, Ken Wilber,
Integral Books, Boston, 2006, p. 182.
3
four basic facets to everything: interior and exterior, individual and
group. It’s actually more complicated than that, but this is not a
workshop or a lecture, so I won’t go into further detail in the sermon.
You may wish to check out Ken Wilber’s new book, Integral
Spirituality.
I like his work because it gives me a headache and because it makes me
cry! Perhaps I should explain. His modestly titled book A Brief History
of Everything is the single most influential book that I have read. It gave
me a headache because I was not familiar with the disciplines and
people that he critiqued and put into context. It was frustrating to feel so
ignorant yet to intuit so strongly that he was onto something, putting into
words what I already knew, only saying it better and having supporting
evidence.
That early headache and the ones to follow were worth it because Ken
Wilber dares to talk about patterns that connect. In this day and age,
patterns are suspect. Hasn’t modernism trashed everything premodern,
especially religion, and hasn’t postmodernism trashed modernism?
Aren’t we just eking out a squashed existence from here in our lonely
so-called “social” locations, unable to understand the experience of
another? Aren’t all grand stories wishful thinking? Ken Wilber says
2
Ibid., p. 236.
4
many grand stories are wishful thinking, especially ones that ask people
to accept religious truth on faith. Many patterns are bogus. Some are
not. Ken Wilber’s work helps us tell the difference and helps us
understand how patterns relate to each other. Patterns matter because
they alert us to overdeveloped and underdeveloped parts of life.
I’ve talked about my headaches. Now, what about the tears? When I
was undecided about whether to apply to seminary, a passage from his
book One Taste moved me to tears of recognition and commitment. I
slid off the fence of indecision on those hot, salty tears. We rarely forget
a moment of truth. This morning, I will mention the bare bones of the
Wilber framework, and I will speculate on the relevance of integral
spirituality to Unitarian Universalism.
How do we talk about matters of ultimate concern without sounding and
feeling like children? (Children are wonderful, but most of us in this
room are not children.) If you are feeling spiritually claustrophobic, it’s
not just you. The walls have been closing in for about 300 years. The
Enlightenment of Western Europe brought tremendous advances in the
overall quality of life for many people. Unitarians and Universalists are,
if nothing else, children of the Enlightenment. Unitarians and
Universalists over centuries have relied heavily upon personal
5
experience and the power of reason in developing what we today might
call “spiritual intelligence.”
According to Ken Wilber, spiritual intelligence is one of a dozen or
more “lines” of development within each person. Examples of other
lines include the cognitive line, the moral line, the emotional line, and
the aesthetic line. While each of us has a “center of gravity” in terms of
our overall level of development, the existence of separate lines has
major implications. We develop at different rates along each line. For
example, our moral and/or emotional development can lag behind the
development of our spiritual intelligence. Or the reverse may be true:
Our spiritual intelligence may lag behind our moral and/or emotional
development. To be clear, agnosticism and atheism can be individually
healthy and culturally valuable stages in the development of spiritual
intelligence.
In writing about lines of development, Ken Wilber uses the analogy of a
dozen paths up a mountain. “The different paths (representing
developmental lines) all have very different views from the mountain,
and these simply cannot be equated (the view up the north path and the
south path are quite different), but there is a real sense in saying that
both of the paths are now at 5000 feet, or the south-view path and the
east-view path are now at 7000 feet, and so on. The altitude markers
6
themselves (3000 feet, 8000 feet, etc.) are without content – they are
“empty,” just like consciousness per se – but each of the paths can be
measured in terms of its altitude up the mountain . . . Consciousness is
not anything itself, just the degree of openness or emptiness, the clearing
in which the phenomena of the various lines appear.”3
What does this mountain with its dozen or so paths have to do with U.S.
college students praying in the closet and with terrorist acts? As the
Enlightenment unfolded, a fallacy occurred in terms of spiritual
intelligence regarding level and line. A level/line fallacy is the
confusing of a level in a line with the entire developmental line itself.
“The Western intellectual tradition, beginning around the Enlightenment,
actively repressed any higher levels of its own spiritual intelligence . . .
The entire “Death of God” movement meant the death of the mythic
God, a mythic conception for which rational modernity could find little
evidence,” writes Wilber. “Instead of mythic science and [mythic]
religion, there was now only rational science and mythic religion. The
former was rational, modern, and all good; the latter was prerational,
premodern, and all bad, or at least all ridiculous.”4 Modernity placed a
pressure cooker lid on religion, inhibiting further development of
spiritual intelligence.
3
4
Ibid., p. 65.
Ibid., p. 183.
7
Traditional seminaries contribute to the problem. Ken Wilber writes,
“In today’s world, you do not begin, say, medical school by first
studying how to apply leeches to your patients, and then how to do
phrenology, and then moving to antibiotics and modern techniques of
microsurgery. But in divinity school, you do. You start by seriously
learning how to apply magic and mythic versions of your religion – to
grown men and women! – and then, if you are in anything resembling a
progressive school, you will move to deeper and higher meanings“5
Fortunately, Unitarian Universalist ministers are educated at progressive
seminaries! You will not find Unitarian Universalist ministers trying to
apply magic and mythic versions of religion. You will find agnostic and
atheist and theist and humanist and mystic ministers. You will find
ministers who pray, sometimes in public and sometimes in the closet.
You will find ministers who relate to God with devotion, with humor,
with anger, with familiarity, with longing.
As you move deeper into the settled minister search process, do not read
too much into your new minister’s theology or philosophy, and do not
read too little into it. Respect your new minister’s stance, and require
respect of your stance from the minister. You might practice opening
more cultural “space” in the congregation for discussing matters of
ultimate concern in different ways, using a wider variety of words and
5
Ibid., p. 193.
8
rituals. In short, do not let the spiritual intelligence Level/Line Fallacy
to come between you and your next minister.
It is estimated that 50% to 70% of the world’s population is at
ethnocentric or lower levels of development. Who owns the ideas and
beliefs that are subscribed to by this majority? Basically, the world’s
great religions.6 The world’s great religions can interpret the myths of
their respective traditions in more liberal ways, thereby serving as a
“conveyor belt” for humanity to use Wilber’s words. Our living
tradition most definitely has a role to play in the religious conveyor belt
of humanity. However, while Unitarian Universalism is great, it is not
yet one of the world’s great religions. Consequently, its role is not to
help humanity develop from premodern into modern spiritual
intelligence. Our living tradition cannot be appreciated by the 50% to
70% of humanity at the ethnocentric stage or lower, so how can we
participate in religion as the conveyor belt of humanity? We can
potentially help the 30% to 50% of humanity already at the modern
stage. Unitarian Universalism is one of a small handful of religious
traditions which do not slam the door in the face of secular people.
Unitarian Universalism honors and nurtures their hopes and dreams, too.
Unitarian Universalism offers riches to people all along the spiritual
intelligence path up the mountain, including secular parts of the path. In
6
Ibid., p. 180.
9
our worthwhile desire to nurture “spirituality,” we must not ignore those
for whom “spirituality” has little appeal.
Sometimes Unitarian Universalism seems like a border collie, nipping at
the heals of organized religion, constantly urging the conventionally
religious to become more liberal, to move farther toward the religious
left. Any good border collie moves in more than one direction! If we
are beneficially a left wing of organized religion, would we not also be
beneficial as the right wing of a disorganized secular world? If the
answer is yes, and I believe it is, our methods of outreach and our
message itself must speak in a secular vocabulary as well as in a
religious vocabulary. An invitation to a “UU Revival,” for example,
may be inviting to some but not to all, given the word’s usual meaning
and context. Instead, it seems to me, Unitarian Universalism’s place in
the religious conveyor belt of humanity could emphasize secular images,
metaphors, concerns, and technologies to help people make meaning,
offer hope, and bring greater justice into the world. Any good border
collie moves in more than one direction.
I conclude by noting that when we trip, we usually trip on what we do
not see. As we move through life, looking for love and meaning in all
the right or wrong places, earning a living, parenting (or not), juggling
multiple roles, reeling from loneliness and reeling from joy, coping with
10
disappointment, illness, death – that which we do not see usually trips us
up. I don’t mean to make this sound like a riddle, but . . . we cannot see
what we do not see. That’s why maps, models, or frameworks are so
helpful. We minimize the chances of hurting ourselves and others by
referring to good maps, models, and frameworks. Ken Wilber’s “All
Quadrants, All Levels” framework helps us avoid tripping. What does it
mean to meet people where they are – inside and outside the
congregation, in the workplace, the home, in the political process? It
means we have to leave our favorite places, our favorite lenses, at least
temporarily, in order to express compassion and wisdom.
It is a fallacy to equate a mythic type of God with all of God. This
Level/Line Fallacy endangers our world. Speaking bluntly, there are
different levels of God. Unitarian Universalists, as children of the
Enlightenment, have a responsibility to release some steam under the
pressure cooker lid that modernity has placed upon the development of
spiritual intelligence. That tight lid endangers our world. College
students need to know that they do not have to pray in the closet.
Terrorists need to know that there is room in the world for healthy
expression of their religious beliefs and no room for destructive
expression of their religious beliefs. May it be so!