Let’s discuss in regards to the Wilber-Combs lattice and the implications it has for our psychospiritual development.
Earlier than we get began, it’s price noting the that Wilber-Combs Lattice comes from Ken Wilber and Allan Combs’ bigger discovery of how human development works and the way conventional psychological development can match seamlessly with non secular development. The Lattice is beneficial, however provided that you perceive this bigger discovery.
Let’s start by discussing how Wilber and co got here up with the Wilber-Combs Lattice.
The Origins of The Lattice
The origin of the Wilber-Combs Lattice is the invention that non secular state growth (which we develop via contemplative practices like meditation) exists independently of psychological levels of growth.
Wilber and co went via arduous years of analysis earlier than lastly discovering this and creating the Wilber-Combs Lattice. In reality, in Integral Spirituality, Wilber calls this course of a “convoluted mess”.
Proper from the early days of his work, Wilber knew the levels of growth current in Western psychology have been essential for understanding human beings. He usually calls these primary ranges Archaic, Magic, Mythic, Rational, Postmodern, and Integral.
These ranges seem in many various guises in developmental fashions, no matter whether or not their focus is values, morals, religion, worldview, cognition or some other developmental line.
As an skilled meditator, he additionally recognised the levels of non secular development that dominate in Japanese non secular traditions, and which Daniel P Brown summarised in his 5 levels. Wilber calls these Gross, Delicate, Causal, Witness and Non-dual.
The issue is that these maps had by no means been blended collectively. Neither included the opposite in any significant or deliberate manner. Wilber noticed the significance of integrating the 2 and understanding how these development processes associated to at least one one other. However in trying to take action, Wilber ran right into a slew of issues.
To start with, he believed that the higher levels of psychological development corresponded to the decrease levels of non secular development.
So Wilber merely took the meditative levels, handled them as superior developmental levels, and stacked them on prime of the normal Western ones. This result in his first developmental fashions, as seen in works like The Spectrum of Consciousness.
Quickly he realised that this couldn’t be proper. This one-dimensional formulation implies that you must move via all of the developmental ranges to have non secular experiences, which didn’t appear believable.
How might that be true when a number of of the upper Western levels are very current emergents (to wit, Rational, Postmodern and Integral), whereas Japanese meditative traditions are 1000’s of years previous? Did achieved meditators from the previous actually all develop previous the event ranges that dominated of their time, usually Magic and Mythic?
And the way might we outline enlightenment such that it made sense throughout all human historical past? What even is enlightenment?
To complicate issues additional, Wilber noticed that a number of the Western fashions additionally included levels above Integral that appeared to imitate the main Japanese states of consciousness. How does that match with the confusion above?
This convoluted mess continued for years with out resolution, till Wilber realised that you simply needed to cease equating the 2 axes and that each axes should co-exist.
Each the Western structural-developmental fashions and the Japanese spiritual-meditative fashions now made sense as a part of one mannequin of human development, as separate but interdependent dimensions.
As soon as he realised this, all the pieces made sense. Human historical past, faith, spirituality, Western psychology and extra all now fitted collectively, and the explanatory mannequin for his or her interrelation was fairly easy.
Corroborating his work, Allan Combs stumbled on the identical thought only a few months later, and the 2 ultimately mixed their concepts to create the Wilber-Combs Lattice.
The Wilber-Combs Lattice
Thus, the Wilber-Combs Lattice is a two-dimensional mannequin that exhibits how Western developmental development corresponds to Japanese meditative-state development.
On the horizontal axis, we’ve got the main state-stages of consciousness: Gross, Delicate, Causal, (Witness) and Non-Twin. On the vertical axis, we’ve got the main structure-stages of developmental development: Archaic, Magic, Mythic, Rational, Postmodern, Integral, which seem in many various developmental strains.
The implications and functions of this mannequin are quite a few and profound.
The Implications of the Wilber-Combs Lattice
Keep in mind I stated that the Wilber-Combs Lattice is only a map of the basic discovery that non secular states and psychological states are two legitimate but separate dimensions of human development.
For one factor, the Lattice exhibits us why individuals experiencing the identical state of consciousness can interpret it in some ways. It’s as a result of all of us interpret that have in accordance with our degree of developmental development, our internal “gear”.
And when you have in mind cultural and societal components (the Decrease-left and Decrease-right quadrants), you realise that the identical state will be interpreted in basically infinite methods. No interpretation is essentially flawed or implies that we don’t expertise the state, however they will definitely be partial and unwholesome.
In The Faith of Tomorrow, Wilber offers the instance of varied individuals having a Delicate expertise of internal luminosity, all utilizing the framework of Christianity.
In every case, they’ve the identical first-person expertise, however their interpretation of it’s wildly totally different, and the expertise tends to verify and reinforce their interpretative framework.
Magic: Jesus Christ is a magician that works wonders on my behalf. Actually, he flies, walks on water and cures the sick along with his superhuman skills.
Mythic: the phrase of Christ is totally true and he’s my one true saviour.
Rational: Jesus is absolutely human, a clever instructor of a sensible philosophy for happiness and function.
Postmodern: Jesus is a instructor of non-sectarian, non-hierarchical love and togetherness, if imperfect.
Integral: Christ is a placeholder phrase for a non secular realisation that’s described and taught in a slew of traditions.
The Wilber-Combs lattice legitimises them as totally different interpretations of the identical expertise.
The Lattice additionally tells us what enlightenment is and the way it suits with different features of human development. We not maintain conventional enlightenment to be the one essential dimension, but we additionally give it prominence alongside the Western paradigm.
Within the meditative traditions, one is usually thought-about to be some extent of enlightened if they’ve glimpsed the Witness state. In Buddhism, such individuals are referred to as Stream-Enterers.
For the Western traditions, “enlightenment” is a query of values, morals, worldviews, behaviour, and so forth, and the entry necessities differ by degree.
From a broad perspective, all of us expertise numerous enlightenments as we traverse these phases, transcending and together with every. In a way, we really feel enlightened once we’re centred in each, as a result of we sometimes venerate our present stage. That is very true for 1st-tier levels, the 5 levels previous to Integral.
To Mythic individuals, solely fellow Mythic individuals are enlightened. To Rational individuals, solely Rationalists are enlightened. To the Postmodernists, solely Postmodern individuals are enlightened. However to Integralists, we’re all enlightened simply by advantage of being human, however are at totally different ranges: “a 9-year-old isn’t a faulty 12-year-old.”
It additionally explains why many non secular masters can appear each splendidly enlightened and but so poor of their values, worldviews, wishes, behaviour, and so forth. They might have taken up semi-permanent or everlasting residency in Witness or Non-dual, whereas their gear is essentially Mythic or beneath.
They’re enlightened within the Japanese meditative sense, however stay painfully underdeveloped within the Western sense, caught in junior ranges of viewing, valuing and understanding.
As a meditation instructor, this framework is crucial for me. I see myself and my college students as traversing the state-stages of meditative development, whereas our primary psychological gear varies significantly. I’m nonetheless attempting to determine tips on how to explicitly incorporate the Western levels into our apply.
That stated, I see the place all people is at and grant them the precise to be there, realising that meditative development remains to be attainable for them. I additionally don’t impose my values or beliefs on them as a result of I realise you’ll be able to’t power individuals to develop developmentally.
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