In the advancement of his framework, Wilber introduced the AQAL (All Quadrants All Levels) model in 1995,[3] which further expanded the theory through a four-quadrant grid (interior-exterior and individual-collective).
This grid integrates theories and ideas detailing the individual's psychological and spiritual development, collective shifts in consciousness, and levels or holons in neurological functioning and societal organization.
Integral theory aims to be a universal metatheory in which all academic disciplines, forms of knowledge, and experiences cohesively align.
They also find rough correlations with the concepts of the great chain of being and Aurobindo's elaboration of the five sheaths or koshas in Hindu thought.
[11] Wilber's ideas have grown more and more inclusive over the years, incorporating theories of ontology, epistemology, and methodology,[12] creating a framework which he calls AQAL, which is shorthand for "All Quadrants All Levels All Lines All States All Types."
This model can then be used to contextualize and comprehend differing views on individual development, collective evolution of consciousness, and levels or holons of neurological functioning and societal organization more clearly, ultimately integrating them into a single metatheory in which all academic disciplines and every form of knowledge and experience are argued to fit together.
As described by Sri Aurobindo and his co-worker The Mother (1878–1973), this spiritual teaching involves an integral divine transformation of the entire being, rather than the liberation of only a single faculty such as the intellect or the emotions or the body.
[20] Beck and Christopher Cowan had published their application and extension of Graves's work in 1996 in Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change.
Let's expose enough people to the duplicity and artificiality and self-serving nature of their own belief systems around political correctness to finally get the word out that there's something beyond that.
[citation needed] In his 2006 book Integral Spirituality, Wilber created the AQAL "altitudes" through which different lines of development move.
[21] In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995), Wilber introduced his AQAL (All Quadrants All Levels All Lines All States All Types) metatheory, a framework which consists of five fundamental concepts, sometimes called the five elements.
[30] According to Wilber, the AQAL model is one of the most comprehensive approaches to reality, a metatheory in which all academic disciplines and every form of knowledge and experience fit together coherently.
"Lines" are specific domains of development - akin to the concept of multiple intelligences - which may progress unevenly in a given person or a given group.
This can be referred to as nondual awareness or "the simple feeling of being," which is equated with a range of "ultimates" that are recorded and sought in a variety of Eastern and Western esoteric spiritual traditions.
This nondual awareness transcends and includes the phenomenal world, which is understood to be only an emanation or manifestation of a transcendental reality.
Thus, Wilber promotes a type of panentheism, which signifies that God (or spirit) is both present as the manifest universe but also transcends it.
[note 6] In his book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Wilber outlines twenty fundamental properties, called "tenets", that characterize all holons.
[web 1] According to Zimmerman in 2005, integral theory is irrelevant in, and widely ignored at mainstream academic institutions, as well as sharply contested by critics.
[web 1] In 2006 Wilber created a great deal of controversy when he argued in a derisive tone that many of the critiques he received were simply ad hominem and also failed to understand his model.
[60] Psychologist Jorge Ferrer, in his 2001 publication Revisioning Transpersonal Theory, included a criticism of the AQAL model as overly hierarchical and culturally biased, arguing for a more pluralistic understanding of the world's spiritual traditions.
According to Gregg Lahood and Edward Dale it was representative for the changes in transpersonal psychology, after the initial east-west synthesis and Wilber's neo-Perennial hierarchical models.
[web 5] A major, specific criticism of Visser's is that Wilber misunderstands Darwinian evolutionary theory, and erroneously posits a role for "spirit" in the evolution of both subjective and objective realities.
[67] According to David C. Lane, writing in 2017, Wilber's integral theory is a religious myth build on "a deeply held theological doctrine that evolution is driven by a divine purpose.
"[web 6] Wilber's work began to draw attention from people interested in 'integral thinking' following the completion of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality in 1995.
Steve McIntosh (2007) pointed to Henri Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin as pre-figuring Wilber as integral thinkers.
(2007) listed as contemporary Integralists Don Edward Beck, Allan Combs, Robert Godwin, Sally Goerner, George Leonard, Michael Murphy, William Irwin Thompson, and Wilber.
[note 10] The Missing Myth (2013) by Gilles Herrada utilized an Integral framework to examine the topic of same-sex love and relationships from a biological, social, and symbolic/mythic perspective.
Reinventing Organizations (2014) by Frederick Laloux examines the topic of organizational developmental from an Integral and Spiral Dynamics perspective,[75][independent source needed] with a foreword by Wilber.
[84][independent source needed] Esbjörn-Hargens later expanded his interest in new approaches to meta-theorizing into engagements with French complexity theorist Edgar Morin as well as philosophy-of-science writer Roy Bhaskar.
The details of the meetings and its participants are recounted in a joint publication Metatheory for the Twenty-First Century (2015),[85] which "examines the points of connection and divergence between critical realism and integral theory.