Integral Christian
Integral Spirituality

What is "Spiritual"?

What does the word "spiritual" mean? There are four different ways this word is commonly used.
  • Sometimes it is used to describe a kind of behavior, or a person who behaves in "spiritual" ways (kind, loving, wise, compassionate, etc.)
  • Sometimes it is used to describe non-physical (subtle, causal, and nondual) realities, and direct experiences of these realities.

Spiritual Experiences

An understanding of states of consciousness helps us understand the many different types of spiritual experiences people have. Different spiritual experiences are typical of different states of consciousness. Below are some examples. For simplicity (and because the distinctions are so fine), experiences of causal and witnessing consciousness are combined.

Experiences in the Gross State of Consciousness:
Home of Nature Mysticism and Subtle Energies
  • Preliminary meditative states. One is learning to observe the mind's cognitive and perceptual abilities, and thus to transcend them. As the observing self begins to transcend the individual body/mind, higher dimensions of consciousness come into awareness.
  • Nature mysticism: when the separate self-sense temporarily dissolves and becomes identified with the entire gross (physical) realm of existence. One may experience temporary identification with aspects of nature, with the whole of nature, or with the World Soul.
  • Experiences of subtle energies.
  • The Path of "Yogis."
Experiences in the Subtle State of Consciousness:
Home of Deity Mysticism
  • Experiences of felt union or direct communion with God.
  • The Divine is experienced as being external to one's self, and may be personified in various deity forms (Christ, Buddha, Shiva, Allah, etc.).
  • Experiences of interior luminosities and sounds (visions of light and sound), and expansive states of love and compassion.
  • Authentic spiritual inspiration, symbolic visions, higher presences, guides, angelic forms, and other God archetypes. All of these are high archetypal forms of our own highest Being, although they initially appear as "other."
  • Symbolized by halos of light at the crown of the head.
  • The Mosaic Revelation on Mount Sinai – a numinous Other that is Light, Fire, Insight, and Sound.
  • Near death experiences.
  • The Path of "Saints."
Experiences in the Causal State of Consciousness:
Home of Formless Mysticism
  • The experience of knowing yourself as the Silent Witness that is prior to any manifestation, and exists outside the stream of time. It was never born, will never die, and never enters the temporal stream.
  • One's sense of self merges with the unmanifest source or ground of all of the lesser levels of consciousness – the Ground of All Being.
  • An utter release from the material world. Nirvana. The liberation and freedom of no longer being bound to or caught in the turmoil of any of the objects witnessed, including the egoic self.
  • The experience of being pure Consciousness without an object – pure Emptiness. This does not involve any particular experience, but rather the transcendence of the experiencer itself.
  • Formless mysticism. Experiencing yourself as an opening, a clearing, an emptiness or vast spaciousness and freedom in which all objects (the material world, individual beings, thoughts, feelings, etc.) come and go.
  • All God-archetypes experienced in the subtle realm condense and dissolve into one final-God. In the very same step, one's True Self is here shown to be that final-God, and consciousness itself thus transforms upwards into a higher-order identity with that Divine Radiance. For example, Christ's claim that "I and the Father are one."
  • The soul no longer contemplates Divinity, it become Divinity.
  • When it is experienced during the waking state, it is not experienced as a mere blank, but rather as an utter fullness of Being, so full that no manifestation can contain it.
  • The Path of "Sages."
Experiences in the Nondual State of Consciousness:
One Taste
  • As we rest in the Silent Witness, eventually the sense of being a Witness "in here" completely vanishes, and the Witness turns out to be everything that is witnessed. The pure Emptiness of the Witness turns out to be one with every form that is witnessed – the complete integration of manifest Form with unmanifest Formlessness.
  • As the center of the self was shown to be a Divine Archetype; and as the center of all Archetypes was shown to be one final-God; and as the center of that one final-God was shown to be Formlessness – so the center of Formlessness is now shown to be not other than the entire world of Form. There is no longer any division between subject and object. Consciousness and its objects are not-two.
  • Consciousness awakens to its prior and eternal abode as nondual Spirit, radiant and all-pervading, one and many, only and all. Consciousness becomes radically free of the separate sense of self, thus assuming an absolute identity with all manifestation – high or low, sacred or profane.
  • Nondual awareness is not an experience you have. Rather it is when you suddenly become all experience. It is not a state apart from other states; it is not an altered state; it is not a special state. It is rather the suchness of all states, that water that forms itself into each and every wave of experience.
  • You are not in the Kosmos, the Kosmos is in you. There is nothing outside of you to harm you, and nothing outside of you to seek for or grasp or desire.
  • "The very Divine sparkles in every sight and sound, and you are simply that. The sun shines not on you but within you, and galaxies are born and die, all within your heart. Time and space dance as shimmering images on the face of radiant Emptiness, and the entire universe loses its weight. You can swallow the Milky Way in a single gulp, and put Gaia in the palm of your hand and bless it, and it is all the most ordinary thing in the world, and so you think nothing of it." Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, page 142.
  • The Path of "Siddhas."
Click here to hear an audio clip from the Integral Spiritual Center of Ken Wilber talking about the paths of Yogis, Saints, Sages, and Siddhas.


The Wilber Combs Lattice

The upper left quadrant (the interior of the individual) has been studied in two different ways. It has been examined from the inside -- through our own direct interior subjective awareness. And it has been studied from the outside -- by observing individuals over time to map their interior stages of development.





If we put these two ways of studying the upper left quadrant together, it looks like this:



The stages of development discovered by observing individuals over time to map their stage growth go up the left hand column. The states of consciousness experienced in our own direct interior subjective awareness go across the top row.

Two important things this chart illustrates are:

The fact that we interpret our state experiences through our current stage of development, including any shadow dysfunctions, explains why we sometimes hear of great enlightened teachers who are abusive or act out sexually with their students, or steal money. Such teachers may have a genuine and profound realization of higher states of consciousness, but they are limited in their ability to live out this realization in the world in healthy ways because of their limited stage development and their shadow issues.

The last thing the Wilber Combs Lattice shows us is that at any stage of development we can take a "right-hand" turn so to speak, and undergo state training through a practice like meditation or centering prayer.

Click here to hear Ken Wilber talk about the Wilber Combs Lattice. To purchase the CD sets that are the source of the clips on this website (Kosmic Consciousness and The One Two Three of God) click here.


Structure Stages and State Stages

Stage growth happens on both axes of the Wilber Combs Lattice. The stages going up the left-hand side of the chart are structure stages -- stages of development in the structure of our consciousness. Archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, integral, and transpersonal stages of development are structure stages.

We can also undergo stage development along the horizontal axis -- through stages of development that enable us to access increasingly higher states of consciousness. These are called state stages. In the Christian contemplative tradition, Evelyn Underhill's stages of purification, illumination, dark night of the soul, and unification are state stages. In Buddhism, the Ten Oxherding Pictures are another example of state stages.


Two Centers of Gravity and the "Self"

Previously we learned about a culture's center of gravity in terms of stage development. We each have two individual centers of gravity -- one on the vertical axis of the Wilber Combs Lattice, and one on the horizontal axis. In other words, we each have a center of gravity in relation to structure stages, and a center of gravity in relation to state stages.

Our center of gravity on the vertical axis, in terms of structure stages, is our current general level of development -- archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, integral, etc. Our center of gravity on the horizontal axis is what we most strongly identify with as our "self" on that axis. Do we primarily experience our self as an individual bodymind (a gross self), or as an individual soul (a subtle self), or as the formless bliss of the Witness (no self), or as the nondual suchness of everything in existence? Each state stage we move through along the horizontal axis takes us closer to our True Self.

When we learned about stages of development, we learned that stage growth happens when the subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject at the next stage. This kind of stage growth happens as we move through structure stages, on the vertical axis of the Wilber Combs Lattice.

This process of making subject into object also takes place on the horizontal axis, which charts growth through state stages. On the horizontal axis we start out experiencing our subjective "self" as a gross physical bodymind. If our we progress to the point that our horizontal center of gravity becomes the subtle realm, then we primarily experience our subjective "self" as a soul. Our body and mind have become objects in our awareness, rather than what we fundamentally experience our "self" to be. This process of making subject into object continues across the horizontal axis, until we have dis-identified with all gross and subtle objects and have reached pure subjectivity, or pure consciousness without an object, and experience this as our True Self.

Click here to hear Ken Wilber talk about the self. To purchase the CD sets that are the source of the clips on this website (Kosmic Consciousness and The One Two Three of God) click here.


Two Functions of Religion

Religion can serve two functions. The first function is translative. This is when religion helps us to be more healthy at our current stage of development. This includes behaving in moral, ethical, and compassionate ways in the world, however that is defined at our present level of development.

The second function religion can serve is transformative. Religion is transformative when it helps us move up one or more stages. This is especially important for adults. Psychologists who study human development find that in childhood and youth we move fairly quickly through the stages of development up to young adulthood. But when we reach our mid-twenties development tends to stop, often for decades.

How can religion help us overcome this adult inertia and move up one or more stages? Remember that we move to a higher stage when the subject at one stage becomes the object of the subject at the next stage. This is true both on the vertical axis (for structure stages) and the horizontal axis (for state stages). This means religion is transformative when it helps us engage in practices that makes subject into object. Meditation, centering prayer, and journaling are examples of spiritual practices that accomplish this. One study of new adult meditators found that after a year of meditation practice, participants had moved up a level in their stage development. (See Alexander, Charles and Ellen Langer, ed. 1990, Higher Stages of Human Development. New York: Oxford University Press.


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