Science, through quantum physics, has shown us that the universe is essentially a continuous field, with everything an interconnected part of an all-encompassing whole. Spiritual teachers and mystics have, of course, long spoken about the fundamental unity of all existence. Even on a common sense level, it seems self-evident that the universe somehow holds together, and that everything that exists is an intrinsic part of this functioning whole. An integral approach to reality reflects this fundamentally unified character of the universe by describing multiple dimensions of reality within a coherent meta-framework. Two well-known examples of integral approaches are given below.

Ken Wilber's AQAL Model

Ken Wilber's four quadrant (or AQAL, standing for "all quadrants, all levels") model is a helpful illustration of an integral framework.

IntegralDiagram-Wilber

According to Wilber's model, everything has an interior perspective (an inside) and an exterior perspective (an outside), an individual perspective and a collective perspective. To achieve a comprehensive understanding of anything, Wilber claims, one must consider all four fundamental dimensions of that thing. Here's an example (from the wikipedia entry for AQAL) of how this works. Consider four schools of social science. Freudian psychoanalysis, which interprets people's interior experiences, is an account of the interior individual (or upper left) quadrant. B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, which examines the behavior of organisms, is an exterior individual (upper right) perspective. Gadamer's philosophical hermaneutics, which interprets the collective consciousness of a society, is an interior-collective (lower left) account. Marxist economic theory considers the external behavior of a society, and is thus an exterior-collective (lower right) perspective. When these approaches are thus understood as offering complementary perspectives on different dimensions of reality, the question becomes not so much "which of these perspectives is a more accurate description of reality?" but rather "what is the unique contribution of each of these perspectives to a more holistic understanding of reality?"

There are further complexities to Wilber's four quadrant model, such as multiple lines of development (e.g., cognitive, moral, spiritual, etc.) and multiple levels or stages of development (e.g., prepersonal -> personal -> transpersonal) within each quadrant (hence the "AQAL" model). For our purposes it's enough to understand just the basic version.

We have found the four quadrant model to be helpful, when looking at any field, to illuminate where certain dimensions of that field may be being underemphasized or overlooked. Since our culture has a habit of hyper-specialization, it's common for experts to know everything about a narrow area, but not necessarily to understand how different approaches can mesh together to form an integrated perspective of the whole field. Also, because our cultural worldview is still dominated by certain materialistic assumptions of mainstream science, many disciplines tend to pay little or no attention to the interior dimension of the phenomenon they are dealing with. For example, many traditional approaches to community development have tended to focus on external solutions... "If we just provide more houses, jobs, parks, school teachers, drug education programs, etc, we'll solve the community's problems." As we will see, however, these approaches, while crucial, need to be complemented by others that address the qualitative, interior dimensions of community life, such as the quality of community dialogue, or the interior moral or spiritual development of individual community members.

Eddy's Eco-AQAL Model

Brian Eddy (2003) has developed an ecological AQAL model as a theoretical basis for the study of "integral geography." His model provides a framework to see communities as situated in three broad, interdependent spheres of existence: the cosmosphere (the non-living universe, e.g., air, water, rocks, weather, etc), the biosphere (the living environment, such as birds, animals, insects, and plants), and the anthroposphere (the human experience) (see the simple map below). Eddy argues that there are multiple, massive feedback loops between human society and the other spheres, and that complex human social behaviors are created by, and in turn co-create life conditions of all the spheres. His model reminds us that our human communities are embedded in a larger Earth Community, and that the health of the whole system depends on a balance being maintained between all elements. How many frogs are there in our creeks? How healthy are our redwoods? What do we know about our air and water quality?

Eddy's Eco-AQAL Model