Sunday, April 24, 2005

Critical Review: The Great Adventure.

This will be published in "Futures" journal very shortly.

Review of The Great Adventure: Toward a Fully Human Theory of Evolution

Book: The Great Adventure: Toward a Fully Human Theory of Evolution
Author and contributors: David Loye (ed.); forward by Mihaly Ccikszentmihalyi; articles by David Loye, Ervin Laszlo, Stanley Salthe, Raymond Bradley, Riane Eisler, Sally Goerner, Ken Bausch, Alexander Christakis, Alfonso Montuori, Allan Combs, and Ruth Richards.
Publication details: State University of New York Press, 2004.
Pages: 346


I confess I came to this book not as an expert of evolutionary theory, but as a person with a deep passion for futures and the development of the human species. In particular, my personal research relates to educational futures and the futures of consciousness. Thus the critique that follows cannot stand as that of an “impartial” expert’s opinion, but merely as the considerations of a relative layman in the field of evolutionary theory. Considering my particular research foci, I found much in the volume to enthuse about.
The contributors to this volume are all members of the General Evolution Research Group. This was formed in 1986, and its purpose is “to bring together a small group of scholars from a variety of disciplines and nations to explore possibilities for the development of a general…evolution theory” (p.304). Ervin Laszlo is its primary founder and leader, with World Futures: the Journal of General Evolution being its mouthpiece.
Let me begin by stating that this is not only a well-written volume, but a necessary one. As Loye points out in the concluding chapter regarding the idea of “evolution,” the mindsets of most scientists (and indeed the layperson), have been seized so thoroughly by the concepts of natural selection and blind chance that anyone challenging this idea with suggestions of “normative or developmental goals and ideals as well as standards and benchmarks for what constitutes evolution” is confronted by the reaction that “this is not only heresy but naïve and stupid.” (p.281)
Yet most futurists are all too aware of the limitations of a purely biological and mathematical depiction of evolution. As Loye himself points out, conceptions of “ideal goals” are routine in futures (p.281). In futures there is generally an implicit representation of development and evolution which incorporates conceptions that exist above and beyond the merely physical and biological. And this is where this book is most valuable for futurists. Each of the contributors adds an extra dimension or two to the idea of evolution, until the total picture is one that is inclusive not only of the cosmic, chemical/Physical and biological dimensions that currently dominate the neo-Darwinian hegemony, but also includes developments in brain science and psychology, as well as cultural, social, economic, political, technological, educational, moral, spiritual, and consciousness evolution. To this is added the necessity for an action-oriented approach (p.277). The tools that are offered to move us forward are also somewhat heretical: including love (Eisler, Loye, Goerner, Bradley, Bausch and Christakis); partnership (Eisler, Goerner); communication and creativity (Goerner, Montuori, Combs and Richards); human agency (Bradley, Loye); creative action (Eisler, Goerner, Loye); and spiritual and consciousness evolution (Bausch and Christakis, Eisler, Goerner, Loye).
There is not room here to comment upon all 11 articles individually, but Loye’s “Darwin, Maslow, and the Fully Human Theory of Evolution” is worth mentioning, as it encapsulates much of the spirit of the book, and will be an eye-opening piece for those unfamiliar with Loye’s work. He argues that Darwin has been almost completely misrepresented by the neo-Darwinists. He points out that Darwin only wrote of “survival of the fittest” twice in The Decent of Man, whilste writing of love, moral development, and mind/consciousness hundreds of times in total. Yet the latter are totally ignored in mainstream evolutionary theory, a case of what Loye calls “the mind-binding and blinding power of paradigm.” (p.23) Loye goes on to argue that Darwin actually presaged the development of transpersonal, positive and humanistic psychology, and indeed the relevance of moral development and “a spirituality freed of deism and dogma” ( p.23).
This book is aptly named. It contains an exciting array of research at the frontier of evolutionary theory. It may annoy purists of mainstream evolutionary theory for the same reason it excites the more speculative and adventurous amongst us, especially at the times that it moves into the explorative domains of evolutionary theory. Bradley’s contribution stands out here, with his piece “Love, power, brain, mind, and agency.” His endogenous construction of human evolution, heavily influenced by Pribram’s holographic theory of perception, is predicated upon the rather prolix notion of a:

principle of organisation that governs any whole…(which) is non-local, distributed throughout the system and enfolded into its parts. It is this same notion of field, of a distributed order of socioaffective connection mediating the transformation of biological energy into psychosocial order that is the basis for …(my) account…(p.140).

Yet as Loye points out in the introduction, Bradley’s contribution is worth persisting with, despite its broad scope of theory and difficult language. Other contributions in the volume, it should be pointed out, are far more layman-friendly. The contributors generally manage to convey their understandings in easy-to-comprehend form, and considering the cross-disciplinary nature of the volume, this is a key component of its value to its potential audience.
As Loye argues, evolutionary theory “requires a massive updating, integrating and streamlining if it is to meet the needs of the twenty-first century, if not our survival itself over the long run.” (p.21) This is no small task, but Loye and his colleagues are doing an invaluable job of getting the ball rolling.

Academic Article: Michio Kaku's Visions

This was published in the Journal of Futures Studies in May 2003 (vol 7, no. 4)
It is also published in The CLA Reader (ed. Sohail Inayatullah)

Abstract:
Using Inayatullah’s Causal Layered Analysis, Marcus Anthony deconstructs Michio Kaku’s book of populist science, Visions. At first glance Kaku seems to paint a utopian view of the future based upon the three pillars of modern science: quantum physics, genetic technology, and the computer revolution. However, a deeper examination reveals that Kaku’s vision is vitally lacking in depth, and reflects modern scientific culture’s obsession with technology at the expense of humane and spiritual values.

Visions Without Depth: Michio Kaku’s Future

1. Introduction
Jeremy Rifkin argued some years ago that “scientism” had replaced a theological God with “God in a white coat,” namely the scientist. (Rifkin, 1985) Scientism effectively banishes all competing non-scientific epistemologies to the waste bin of History whilst elevating the scientific method and culture to the position of exalted and sole purveyor of truth. In his book Visions: How Science Will Revolutionise the 21st Century, Michio Kaku unwittingly shows us that scientism (1) is still alive and phenomenological. In his attempts to rely exclusively upon scientific culture and inquiry to depict the possible future, Kaku paints what initially seems a bright and glittering future for all of us. But a deeper reflection upon what this book offers reveals something rather less glamorous. That which is invisible to the eye is most essential, wrote Goethe, and much of what is both invisible and essential is left off the map in Kaku’s Visions. Most essentially deep social, ecological, moral and ontological issues are glossed over, or totally ignored. (1) What follows is a deconstruction of Kaku’s Visions using Inayatullah’s causal layered analysis (CLA). Kaku’s philosophy is further examined through a comparison with several other popular books of science and physics, and also with various macrohistorians.

The methodology
Causal layered analysis is a post-structuralist methodology developed by Sohail Inayatullah. Its purpose is to find the deeper meanings imbedded within texts through an exploration of four specific components and to acknowledge other ways of knowing. (Inayatullah 1998, p. 815) The first component examines the litany or the rational/scientific, factual and quantitative aspects of the text. The second is the social level. This uncovers the economic, cultural, political and historical components. The third aspect of CLA examines the discourse/worldview of the author. The final component is the mythical/metaphorical level. This attempts to uncover hidden and explicit mythologies, stories, narratives, symbols and metaphors within the text. (Inayatullah 1998, pp. 820-821)

Causal Layered Analysis is particularly useful as a way to conduct inquiries into the nature of past, present and future. It opens up the present and the past to create the possibility of alternative futures. (Inayatullah, 1998, p. 815) It is for this reason that it was chosen as an ideal tool to deconstruct Kaku’s vision of the future of humanity.

2. Deconstructed Visions

The litany:
Visions is by name a book of science, subtitled How Science Will Revolutionise the 21st Century. Kaku describes it as “a book about the limitless future of science and technology.” The book outlines the possible contributions of science to humanity in the next 100 years. In Visions Kaku focuses upon the computer revolution (including artificial intelligence, cyborg technology and the development of the internet); the bio-molecular revolution (including DNA technology, molecular medicine, and genetic engineering); and the quantum revolution (including quantum physics’ influence upon space travel, planetary civilization, and the mastery of space and time). Science and scientists constitute the subject and the voice. Over a ten-year period Kaku claims that he has interviewed over 150 scientists (Kaku, 1998, preface, p. 1X). His book is clearly referenced with over three hundred references, predominantly from scientific journals and books of a scientific nature.

The nature of consciousnesses
Kaku discusses pertinent matters related to the idea of consciousness and intelligence, artificial intelligence and cyborg technology. Kaku follows the accepted scientific conception that intelligence is localised and a product of brain physiology. He is confident that artificial intelligence will become a reality in the next century. This will occur with a synthesis of the two seemingly opposed schools of AI – the bottom-up and top-down approaches. The former attempts to construct intelligent robots by programming them, and giving them rules to follow that can be used to deal with the everyday problems associated with tasks in the physical world. The latter approach attempts to create self-learning machines, machines that can learn to solve problems themselves, by effective exploration of their own worlds and developing their own rules and experiential data.

Clearly, according to both these approaches, consciousness/intelligence is the product of mechanical and electrical processes. The components of “the machine” work together to produce an intelligent robot. It is in this sense a reductionist philosophy (the microscale is viewed as more essential than the macroscale). Elsewhere Kaku, whilst exploring the world of DNA mapping, tells us that unraveling the DNA sequences of human beings is equivalent to revealing “the secret of life.” This will give humans “God-like” powers to re-create themselves from the bottom up, and to “control our destinies.” This is also a reductionist approach to the concept of life. Life emerges from the synthesis of the interactions and mechanisations of DNA molecules.

Kaku sees the development of a theory of everything as a key to humans becoming masters of space and time and in understanding the universe. (Kaku, 1998 pp.338-339) He quotes Stephen Hawking’s famous words that the theory of everything will enable us to “read the mind of God”. (Kaku, 1998 p. 345) What is hindering humanity’s comprehension of the universe is the hitherto failure to elucidate the unified field theory. (Kaku, 1998 p. 346) Similarly Kaku believes that “the study of space-time may ultimately answer one of the most intriguing questions about the future: the final destiny of all intelligent life in the universe.” (Kaku, 1998, p.339)

For Kaku mathematical and logical intelligences are the key to understanding the deepest ontological questions. Yet according to thinkers and mystics such as Ken Wilber, P.R. Sarkar, David R. Hawkins, Roger Penrose, and many others, logical intelligence is inadequate for this task. The fragmented nature of rational intelligence cannot deliver the insights of an integrated intelligence (2). Typically these alternative thinkers suggest that integrated intelligence delivers a direct knowing through the collapse of the object/subject dichotomy. Observer and observed become one. Rational intelligence retains the object/subject separation and so cannot deliver any more than a superficial intellectual comprehension. If the mystical interpretation is correct, no mathematical model will ever be adequate to deliver the answers to the ultimate questions and to know “the mind of God.” Douglas Adams suggested this succinctly in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy where the giant computer Great Thought, after one million years contemplation concludes that “the answer to life, the universe and everything” is “42”. The absurdity of the answer suggests the limited nature of mathematical and logical intelligence to resolve deep ontological questions.

Kaku, Nature and Evolution
Kaku sees nature and evolution as blind forces that are now coming under the control of human consciousness:

…today we are on the cusp of an epoch-making transition, from being passive observers of Nature to being active choreographers of Nature. This is the central message of Visions. (Kaku, 1998p. 15)

It is significant that Kaku uses the term “visions” to name his book. Visions were usually the prerogative of mystics and sages, but in Kaku’s world, the scientist has become the sage and guru, claiming even the domain of the visionary. He writes about “playing God – designer children and clones.” (chapter 11) Further, he writes an entire chapter on our becoming “masters of space and time.” (chapter 16), and another describing the human race as “choreographers of matter, life and intelligence.” (chapter1). In chapter five he claims that the “Age of Mastery” will soon arrive. Truly the scientist has become “God in a white coat.”

The obvious difference between Kaku’s worldview and that of visionaries of by-gone eras is that revelation and spiritual guidance play no part in Kaku’s universe. All mystics believed in some kind of integrated or divine intelligence. Kaku maintains the standard localised scientific view of intelligence. It is entirely up to humans, alienated from any sense of integrated consciousness to resolve profound ontological queries, and to control, manipulate and design their own realities and their own worlds.

Kaku’s Universe.
Kaku is one of the original “string” theorists. He writes about a universe that contains certain elements that may transcend common sense notions of space and time. These include wormholes, black holes, Einstein-Rosen bridges, doorways to other universes and time machines. (Kaku, 1998 pp.342, 343)

General relativity is based on the idea that space is curved, and that the “forces” we see around us, like gravity, are actually an illusion created by the bending of space and time. (quoted in Kaku, 1998 p.340)

But Kaku makes no attempt to find a place for consciousness (including integrated consciousness) in this universe. It is by implication a dualistic universe, where mind and the universe at large are separate and alienated, with consciousness inconsequential. For Kaku the future frontiers of humanity lie completely within the physical and intellectual domains. It is the three revolutions - the computer, biomolecular and quantum mechanical - that will be “the first step toward making the universe truly our backyard.” (Kaku, 1998 p.355) In light of the developments and debates in quantum physics about the nature of consciousness (Goswami, 2001, Aldworth, 2001), Kaku’s vision of humanity’s future contains a significant absence.

The Social level
Kaku’s forays into the social level can at best be described as rather shallow, and less flatteringly as a seemingly naïve ignorance of the deeper social issues that may impinge upon humanity’s future. Briefly he looks at the possible social implications of the computer revolution continuing along its present course for the next century. He also examines briefly some of the moral aspects affecting genetic engineering, DNA manipulation, artificial intelligence etc. Other social/political factors covered are the population explosion and diminishing resources.

Planetary Society
Kaku sees a planetary culture emerging, and communication technology will be the key to this. (Kaku, 1998 p.337) He quotes Bill Gates as suggesting that the information highway will break down the boundaries that inhibit the formation of a world culture. Further totalitarian states will see their power eroded by the decentralization of information that the internet provides.

Kaku identifies the ruling political elites as a conservative force that will be an obstacle to planetary unification. Ironically he suggests that the interests of the expanding middle class will help counter this. He admits that the interests of the middle class are also selfish. “When people taste a bit of affluence, they want more,” he writes. It is with the increased means of communication – the internet, satellites, fax machines etc. that their power will emerge. (Kaku, 1998 pp.335-336) Another factor assisting unification is the emergence of English as the first truly global language, and business as the driving motive behind the desire to learn English. (Kaku, 1998p.336)

Thus Kaku’s vision of planetary unification is still one in which individuals and groups are selfish - “like all classes,” he writes. (Kaku, 1998 p.336) The point must be asked whether a truly integrated society can emerge while individuals are competing against each other for profit and power.

Language may well transform the globe as Kaku says. Yet the medium of language works purely at the logical/linguistic level. It cannot be a truly “integrated” (transpersonal) system. It relies upon localised media for transmission – voices, telephones, television, satellites etc. Taoist, Tantric, Zen and Buddhist philosophies repeatedly point to the limitations of language as a medium for accessing transcendent knowledge. Thus, if this is true, Kaku’s planetary society will still function at the same level of consciousness as the current world – limited by localised media with separate and individualized components of the system (people, races, nations etc) continuing to press for their separate and isolated agendas. The collapse of ego-centered consciousness (as Wilber, Maslow, Groff and others have stated) will occur only with the transcendence of ego-boundaries and ego-driven imperatives. Being comprehensively “wired” would seem an inadequate panacea for this problem.

Kaku’s Galactic Future
Kaku suggests that by 2050 the frontiers of civilization will have spread to other stars and planets, “creating a Garden of Eden in space.” (Kaku, 1998 p.308, 298) The key to this will lie in logistical concerns, such as finding cheap and reliable propulsion systems for interplanetary craft to fuel their massive energy requirements. (Kaku, 1998 p.304, pp.326-327). Kaku states that human civilisation will transcend its current “infancy” when sufficient “abundant wealth and energy resources are located”. Quantum theory will be vital here. (Kaku, 1998 p.326, 266) However Kaku does concede that the political, social and economic disputes that characterize national and international conflicts in the late 20th century may be problematical. (Kaku, 1998 p.311)

Types of civilisations
Kaku’s hierarchy of planetary civilisations reveals much about his worldview and the assumptions that underpin his visions and philosophies. He follows the model developed by Nikolai Kardachev, which uses energy consumption as the basic measure of civilisational development. There are four civilisational levels within this system, with each level having an energy output ten billion times greater than the previous level. Kaku expects that national and cultural differences will be reduced with each level, as abundant sources of energy and wealth are uncovered, and communication systems become instantaneous. Level three civilisations consume about 100 billion to a billion trillion times the energy output of a type 0 civilisation. By level three the evolution of civilisation will depend upon interstellar travel. Kaku subtitles this section “conquering the galaxy.” A goal would be to find suitable star systems to “colonize.” (Kaku,1998 pp.321-329)

Kaku factors in annual economic growth rate expectations to make his forecasts about the timing of the development of each level in the model. (Kaku, p.323) Kaku predicts an economic growth rate of five percent for the next 100 years, and “at that rate in a century the gross world product and energy consumption will grow by a factor of 130 times.” Kaku sees this as ideal for world stability, as separatism will be difficult when people are “well fed and content.” (Kaku, 1998 pp.329-330)

A Critique of Kaku’s Galactic Future
For Kaku consumption (including energy consumption), economic growth, the capacity for colonization, and the development of science and technology are the key indicators of humanity’s civilisational development. Yet these imperatives are largely modern, Western cultural values. Kaku defines humanity in terms of what it can achieve, and the ways in which it can manipulate the environment. Kaku’s future civilisations are totally lacking in reference to value, meaning, purpose and spirituality in general. There is no attempt to analyse the psycho/spiritual factors which may underpin modern humanity’s obsession with growth, control, manipulation of the environment and conquest. There are no inner worlds in Kaku’s planetary future. All aspects are externalised, and lack depth. It is ultimately a projection of the machine metaphor that dominates science (Capra 1979,1982, Rifkin 1985, Sheldrake 1981). Indeed Kaku refers to the ubiquitous computing dominated future as “electronic ecology.” (Kaku, 1998p.31) The alienation from nature, inner worlds, and spirituality seems complete.

Futurist Richard Slaughter has severely criticized western “instrumental rationality. This worldview sees knowledge, power and technique as the keys to the future.

Values and futures have less reality than ghosts; what matters are the practical arrangements for getting things done. Here we see the foundations of dystopia, the machine-led view of the future, which leads inexorably to a world unfit for life. (Slaughter, 2000, pp. 246-247).

Ultimately Kaku’s vision of the future is a socio-cultural projection, where humanity is driven by the need for economic growth and consumption. Kaku quotes Freeman Dyson:

A diversified system of solar-electric spacecraft would make the entire solar system about as accessible for commerce or for exploration as the surface of the earth was in the age of steamships.” (Kaku, 1998 p.306)

Kaku’s own vision, despite its reference to scientific jargon and a technologically advanced civilisation, has shifted little from the consciousness of the sixteenth to twentieth centuries when European cultures colonized, conquered and plundered much of the rest of the world under the power of steam, sail and gunpowder. Kaku fails to examine the possibility that the continued projection of the manic and dissociated consciousness that underpins much of the contemporary problems of our pre-planetary society will most likely see a perpetuation of those same problems.

Discourse/worldview
Kaku is clearly writing from a scientific worldview where what is real and true is that which is amenable to scientific methodology. Viewpoints of thinkers and philosophers outside of the scientific world are largely excluded. The author complains that often in the popular press “an eccentric social critic’s individual prejudices are substituted for the consensus within the scientific community.” (Kaku, 1998 p.5) He criticizes the New York Times Magazine for having publishing an entire edition which was devoted:

to life in the next 100 years. Journalists, sociologists, writers, fashion designers, artists, and philosophers all submitted their thoughts. Remarkably not a single scientist was consulted. (Kaku, 1998, p.5)

Yet Kaku commits the same error that he accuses the New York Times Magazine of committing. In his book Visions, it is the non-scientists who are excluded in favor of those with a scientific worldview. Quite clearly Kaku sees science as existing outside of a paradigmatic worldview. The consensus of the scientific community is clearly seen as being superior and separate from the ideas and thinking of those outside of the scientific community.

...predictions about the future made by professional scientists tend to be based much more substantially on the realities of scientific knowledge than those made by social critics, or even by those scientists of the past whose predictions were made before the fundamental scientific laws were completely known. (Kaku, Visions, p.5)

Kaku makes no attempt to critique the current visions and culture of science, nor to outline the worldviews of the scientists that influence the predictions that are being made. In this sense Kaku opens himself to making precisely the same mistakes that he accuses scientists of past eras of making – inaccurate visions based upon incomplete knowledge and false assumptions.

Kaku’s vision is comprised of a worldview, a language and a paradigm. It does not float in a sea of objectivity. Kaku’s work lacks the self-critical analysis of postmodernist scientific thought. In recent times thinkers such as Zia Sardar, Sohail Inayatullah, and Ronald S. Laura have added to the debate begun by Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and Michael Foucault. This debate has challenged contemporary science’s claims to be an “absolute” truth. Kaku writes as if his depiction of science, humanity and the universe is universally accepted and confirmed. Kaku’s vision reeks of scientism, with its “true-believer” style faith in the merits of objective scientific rationalism. In Kaku’s world, science is the “grand-narrative”, the ultimate purpose and purveyor of truth in a brave new world.

Myth/metaphor
Visions is an appropriate title for the book in the sense that it projects an image of the future that is imaginative, but one that is not very empirical. The book is replete with projected scenarios of the future. For example early in the book Kaku describes a typical week in the life of a person in 2020 in the second person. This includes a fictional account of ubiquitous interactions with computers, “smart molecules” detecting and eradicating cancer, and an intelligent household system that directly gives feedback about everything from the cholesterol content of food to which people are compatible with. (Kaku, 1998 pp. 66-69)

Yet perhaps the greatest unconscious narrative running through Visions is the story of the machine. The machine is what will save us: computers for everyone everywhere, robots, A.I., genetically enhanced cyborgs, and space travel. Technology will reign supreme and rescue us from the perils of the human condition. The spirit will die (it was intangible and immeasurable after all) and the machine will live. This is Kaku’s future.

Spiritual language
One of the ironic features of Kaku’s vision is the seemingly unconscious use of spiritual and biblical references in his idealized future. The book is called Visions, a noun that was once exclusively the realm of mystics and spiritual disciplines. He refers to ubiquitous computing as “endowing the planet with a cosmic intelligence.” (Kaku, 1998, p.43).

…computers will become so powerful and widespread that the surface of the earth becomes a “living” membrane, endowed with planetary “intelligence”, creating the fabled Magic Mirror featured often in fairy tales. (Kaku, 1998, Visions, p.42)

Further, we will “know the mind of God” when we finalise the equations to the theory of everything.

For Kaku human technology and information systems have replaced religious/spiritual concepts such as “God”. The physicist/scientist dons the white coat of the new priesthood. Yet, as argued above, there is no attempt to delve into the possible psychological /spiritual ramifications of this.

Interestingly Kaku touches on the idea of a kind of “integrated” intelligence, but one that differs from traditional mystical depictions. Computers will be everywhere (including on and in the body), linking everybody and all aspects of society. They will be able to sense our presence, movements, and even feelings. (Kaku, 1998 pp.27, 32) Once again Kaku’s simplistic understanding of the causes of human conflict surfaces when he writes that this “instantaneous communication linking society” will erase long standing cultural and national barriers, and humanity will leave its divisions and scars behind. (Kaku, 1998 pp. 325-326)

3. A Macrohistorical Perspective
If we were to give Kaku’s vision a macrohistorical perspective, where would it “fit in”? What has he left out? Johan Galtung in his essay Toward Eclecticism: Mapping Sarkar with Other Macrohistorians has developed an approach to history which compares and contrasts the views of twenty prominent macrohistorians. Taking such an approach with Kaku, contrasting and comparing him with various other thinkers, what aspects of Kaku’s vision and philosophy can be seen in a new light, with its strengths and weaknesses exposed?

Kaku’s is essentially a linear theory, typical of Western models such as Adam Smith’s, Marx’s (with an underlying cyclical aspect) and even Darwin’s. Kaku’s civilisation/evolution is seen as developing from primitive to advanced, and the spreading out of mankind through space to a planetary and interplanetary civilisation is seen as the horizontal dimension of this. In fact Kaku’s vision is completely horizontal. There is no movement through plains of consciousness which could potentially represent a vertical dimension, such as with Wilber and David R. Hawkins. Kaku’s Utopia seems to be an idealised future where humanity has achieved a kind of technological wonderland, traveling outward to the stars, consuming all that it requires, with all the benefits that technology may offer it. That future may contain human transformation and immortality via DNA modification, or ubiquitous computing and enhanced life-styles and life-experiences via cyborg technology; but essentially humanity will remain at its current level of consciousness.

Cyclical theories of History stand as a contrast to Kaku’s. They promise declines and inclines. Rudolph Steiner was cyclical with an overriding linearity. (Galtung in Inayatullah and Fitzgerald, 1999, p.35) Karl Marx and P.R. Sarkar refer to class upheavals. Spengler, Sorokin and Toynbee also write about societal declines if capital is not replenished. They, along with Ibn Khaldun (a 14th century
macrohistorian) refer to eco-catastrophes, alienation and modernization diseases, the increasing disparity between rich and poor, and issues with welfare, materialism, individualism. (Galtung, in Inayatullah and Fitzgerald, 1999,p.30) In contrast Kaku sees only one way, namely up - or bust.

Kaku’s vision is non-spiritual. We can place him along side the anti-religion/spiritual macro-historians such as Marx, Engels, Smith and Comte. Marx and Engels saw religion as “the opiate of the masses”. Comte saw the “theological” as equating to the fictitious, characterized by spurious belief in the supernatural. For him speculative reasoning was itself a stepping stone to the “positive” or scientific state of human cultural evolution. For Kaku the spiritual and religious does not even rate a mention. By implication we can assume that it plays no part in Kaku’s vision of the future. His depiction of typical days in the middle and late twentieth centuries are completely devoid of inner worlds and spiritual references. They simply describe interactions and activities, primarily with technology such as ubiquitous computing, which acts (ironically) a kind of omniscient guru or spiritual guide. There are no actual references to direct contact with other people, animals, plants or living organisms. At the very least one might ask, as did Weber, Gandhi, Sarkar, Khaldun and Steiner, whether a future devoid of the spiritual, including alienation from nature and other people, might create various psychological/spiritual dysfunctions.

Kaku’s vision is seemingly positivistic and rational, devoid of affective domains and intuitive perceptions. Thus we can compare him with the enlightenment philosophers Comte, Descartes, Bacon and also to Hume and Kant. These individuals saw a positivistic science as the means of moving humanity into a better future. It is open to question whether humanity could ever function effectively in such overtly rational societies, considering the realities of our brain physiology which necessitates emotional/intuitive cognition; or indeed whether a galaxy full of Spockian, cyber-enhanced DNA-perfect people would in fact be a desirable future.

Alternatively we can contrast Kaku’s philosophy to those philosophies with a spiritual bent to their history. de Chardin produced a Christian model which sought to integrate scientific aspects of the world. (Galtung, in Inayatullah and Fitzgerald, 1999, p.35). Sorokin saw humanity emerging from a socio-cultural civilisation to “the celestial spheres of the super-ideational”, and then descending again. He stated that people need more than just empirical truths. They also need theological and metaphysical truths. (Galtung, in Inayatullah and Fitzgerald, 1999, p.29). Sarkar, Steiner, Gandhi and Auribindo would no doubt agree on that. The vast majority of humanity that has a spiritual belief structure is left off Kaku’s map, as if they are just a temporary aberration in the empirical march of scientific progress.

Khaldun pointed to a connection between epistemological states and socio-economic stages. Kaku does no such thing. Do people become empiricists because they are trying to prove something about their lack of power and privilege, as Galtung suggests? Further, sophistication tends to bring a yearning for simplicity. (Galtung, in Inayatullah and Fitzgerald, 1999, p29). Could a powerful “Ludditian” reaction form in the wake of the increasingly technologically complicated nature of life of the world? How will people react if computing is ubiquitous and every aspect of life dependent upon the machine? How will that affect personal relationships? How many people would be willing to leave Earth to travel for a lifetime in space-ships to have their off-spring populate new worlds? By failing to examine psychological/spiritual/social factors, Kaku is in danger of overlooking crucial aspects of technology’s impact on humanity in the future.

Kaku’s vision seems driven by economic/capitalistic imperatives. Unlike Marx, Kaku’s vision seems rather capitalistic. Yet like Marx’s it is decidedly materialistic and atheistic. Marx has a cyclical aspect, ending in the seemingly utopian advanced communism. Kaku’s would seem to be a laissez-faire economic future. Governments and nation states are seen as potential obstacles to the onward march of progress. He would thus seem to have more in common with Smith than Keynes, although the latter advocated control and market regulation. Kaku’s technological and “gadget” depiction of the future can in some ways compare with Smith’s idea that capital determines the wealth of a society. Despite the lack of social insight Kaku does indicate a connection between affluence and social stability. This would seem to imply that the causes of social unrest are primarily economic, and that human well-being is dependent upon this factor only.

Kaku also makes very little attempt to examine the social implications of his vision. He is a little like the aloof sages and mystics such as Auribindo, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and many New Age philosophies who focus on the spiritual and dismiss the social as belonging to a lower sphere that can be transcended upon enlightenment. The difference is that Kaku sees the scientific/technological as transcending the social and economic. Apparently there is little relationship between the scientific/material, the social, political and psycho/spiritual aspects of society in Kaku’s envisioned world.

Who will have the power in Kaku’s future? Marx would have asked who will own the means of production? He would have looked for the power structures. Who will get rich, and at whose expense? Webber would have looked at differentiation and examined the possibility of privileged and non-privileged groups. (Galtung, in Inayatullah and Fitzgerald, 1999, p.28). Sarkar would also have looked for his four societal classes to see who held power. We can only infer from Visions that in Kaku’s future scientists (and those who serve science) will be the most powerful.

4. Some Alternative popular science
While Kaku’s vision seems narrow and devoid of deeper human values, there are numerous other popular depictions of science, the universe and the future that do attempt to paint a broader picture. Here are three of them.

Danah Zohar
With her books The Quantum Society, The Quantum Self and Spiritual Intelligence. Danah Zohar takes the world of micro-physics in hand. Zohar extrapolates such a different view of the world and universe than Kaku that one might scarcely believe that they are examining the same data. Zohar emerges with a brave attempt to depict a culture and a Self, (complete with values and a morality). Zohar’s concept of an organic spiritual intelligence, (an individual’s ability to intuit deeper meanings about the nature of life and existence), touches upon the idea of an integrated intelligence.

Where Zohar’s future contrasts most sharply with Kaku’s occurs when she delves into the nature of consciousness itself and human spirituality. She points out that Western cultures and political systems have left individuals and societies with a sense of meaninglessness, and created a “spiritual vacuum.” (Zohar, 1993, p.203) There is a need within people to find a sense of purpose, meaning and community that goes beyond the instrumental vacuity of alienated western cultures.

We cannot separate the sense of personal meaning and the value of personal freedom from the wider sense of public meaning and our more all-embracing democratic freedoms. Nor, I believe, can we separate either of these from a deeper sense of spiritual meaning, from a sense of what we value, what we think is good, how we define “the good life” or “good person”, what we think our freedom is for, what we think society is for… (Zohar, 1993, pp. 203-205)

Zohar sees the interconnectedness of quantum reality as a model upon which we can found such a society on a “scientific” basis. Kaku examines the same data and sees it merely as an opportunity to build space ships to conquer and colonise the universe.

Rupert Sheldrake and Matthew Fox
Fox and Sheldrake scour the works of medieval theologians Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Thomas Aquinas and Hildegard of Bingin for parallels with modern quantum physics, in their book The Physics of Angels. For example they compare the dual wave/particle nature of light to textual descriptions of angels’ movements and locations and decide that angels, like light, have a localised and non-localised aspect. (Fox and Sheldrake, 1996, pp.99-104) Their thesis is that it may well be time to re-incorporate the idea of angels into our current cosmological maps, essentially assuming their existence as real. (Fox and Sheldrake, 1996, p.194)

Where Sheldrake and Fox present an interesting contrast to Kaku, is in their depiction of the interconnected nature of the universe and consciousness. The writers move beyond purely localised, mechanical and brain-based models of the mind. They incorporate intuition and revelation into their map and conclude that there are “receptive” modes of consciousness. (Fox and Sheldrake, 1996, pp.42-43) The universe is described as a “holarchy,” an interconnected series of hierarchies, of which one consists of angelic intelligence. (Fox and Sheldrake, 1996, pp.36-37)

Timothy Ferris
Timothy Ferris’ The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe’s Report attempts to depict the current scientific map of the universe for the lay reader. While Ferris’ universe retains a distinctively mechanical flavor even in its depiction of “quantum weirdness”, it does attempt to throw open the question of creation and Cosmic Intelligence. An afterward is added in which the cosmological evidence for the existence of God is examined, and the agnostic conclusion at least suggests that not all scientists are deriding theological and ontological questions. Ferris, somewhat tongue in cheek but nonetheless respectful, weighs up the arguments for and against the existence of God. Ultimately he concludes that cosmology can add nothing to the debate, dismissing the argument from design, cosmological proof and ontological proof as all inconclusive and largely ambiguous. (Ferris, 1997, pp.301-312) Yet like physicist Paul Davies (with his books such as The Mind of God), Ferris is at least touching upon deeper issues of human meaning and existence. It may be the mere dabbing of the toe into the metaphysical sea, but the success of the writings of Davies and Ferris suggest a subtle shift in consciousness both of the public and of the science writers.

Kaku vs Zohar, Sheldrake and Fox, and Ferris

Looking back some decades, the popular writings of Fritjof Capra, David Bohm, Michael Talbot, Stanislav Grof and Gary Zukav have helped pioneer the way for people like Fox and Sheldrake, Zohar, and to a lesser degree Ferris and Davies. Despite flaws in these popular works, they have effectively depicted some of the limitations of purely mechanical models of life and the universe. Kaku seems to choose to ignore such insights, just as he has ignored the “non-scientists” to write Visions.

5. Kaku’s Success
No model that fails to address the spiritual needs, deepest ontological questions and the purpose of existence can serve as a sound basis for our future. Kaku commits precisely this error. In seeing the solutions to humanity’s problems as essentially technological and logistical Kaku commits an oversight of such gargantuan proportions that one can only wonder how our society produces individuals capable of such myopia.

Why is it that Kaku’s book has been so enduringly successful, despite its frighteningly obvious shortcomings? Visions is as much a product of a scientifically materialistic culture as Kaku is. As James Moffett has pointed out, contemporary education systems are devoid of meaning, value and purpose. Government controlled schools and institutions have avoided personal and spiritual development in favor of more immediate and practical outcomes – jobs and training, and economic imperatives. (Moffett, 1994, p.23-32) The result of this is a population that has no personal, spiritual or metaphysical awareness, and whose intellect and judgment are impaired. They cannot perceive holistically. (Moffett, 1994, p.43) To such a “retarded” population the only world that makes sense is “Flatland” (as Wilber calls it) – a spiritually void, mechanical world and universe. Such a system of indoctrination and education creates Kaku, and it creates his market, the people who buy his books.

6. Conclusion
In the end Visions tells us more about the present than the future, and the way that one man’s view of the universe colors his perception of it. It thus informs us of the delusion that there are worldviews that fall within the domain of the purely “objective.” Kaku’s vision is no greater, and indeed no less than that of the “journalists, sociologists, writers, fashion designers, artists, and philosophers” that he criticizes. After all, the entire history of science is one imbued with a social/historical dynamic. And that is not to mention the metaphysical/spiritual dynamic that so many others throughout History have depicted.

Kaku opens and closes Visions quoting Newton’s famous words that he (Newton) was like a mere child playing on the seashore gathering stones whilst “the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered” before him. (Kaku, 1998, pp. 3, 355). Yet Kaku seems to have forgotten those other famous words of Newton: “If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood upon the shoulders of giants.” Newton understood the historical and even spiritual aspects of his attempts to delve into the nature of the world and the universe. Kaku, apparently, has forgotten.

Footnotes
1. In this essay the term “spiritual” will be used to describe these intangible but vital aspects of human existence. There are no specific religious connotations to this word as used in this essay.

2. Throughout the essay the term “integrated intelligence” is used. Integrated intelligence is a transpersonal intelligence that transcends the boundaries of individual intelligence. It is in effect a collective human and universal intelligence. It has most commonly been depicted in spiritual and mystical texts and forms a part of all mystical traditions. Though not scientifically “proven” it is becoming more frequently used in various guises in contemporary discussions within sciences, the humanities and spiritual discourses. The same or similar concepts have been discussed by various thinkers. Amongst numerous, these include “cosmic consciousness” (Bucke, 1991; and Sarkar in Inayatullah 1999, 2002); “non-local intelligence” (Dossey, 2001); “spiritual intelligence” (Zohar, 2000); “non-dual consciousness” (Goswami, 2001), “L energy” (Pearsall, 1998), “non-algorithmic intelligence” (Penrose, 1989), and “psychic” perception (Wilber, 2000, 2001A, 2001B).

References
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Dossey, L. 2001, Healing Beyond the Body, Medicine and the Infinite Reach of the Mind. New York: Random House.
Foucault, Michael 1972. The Archeology of Knowledge. New York: Random House.
Fox, M., and Sheldrake, R. 1996. The Physics of Angels. San Francisco, Harper Collins.
Goswami, A. 2001: “Physics within non-duel consciousness”, Philosophy East and West, Honolulu, October 2001.
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Inayatullah, S. 1998, “Causal Layered Analysis: Poststructuralism as method.” Futures, Vol.30, No.8, pp815-829.
Inayatullah, S. 2002. Questioning the Future: Futures Studies, Action Learning and Organizational Transformation. Chapter 7, “Causal Layered Analysis: Unveiling the Future,” Taipei, Tamkang University.
Kuhn, T. 1970, The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kaku, M. 1997, Visions, How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century. Doubleday, New York.
Moffett, J. 1994. The Universal Schoolhouse: Spiritual Education Through Education. San Fransisco, Jossey-Bass.
Pearsall, P. 1998. The Heart’s Code: Tapping the Power and Wisdom of Our Heart’s Energy. New York, Broadway.
Penrose, R. 1989. The Emperor’s New Mind. Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press.
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Rifkin, J. 1985. Declaration Of a Heretic, Routledge.
Sahtouris, E. 2000. From Mechanics to Organics: An Interview with Elisabet Sahtouris. www.scottlondon.com/insight/scripts/sahtouris.
Sardar, Z. 2000. Thomas Kuhn and the Science Wars. Cambridge, Icon Books.
Sheldrake, R. 1981. A New Science of Life, Los Angeles, Tarcher.
Slaughter, R. 2000. Futures For the Third Millennium. St Leonards.
Prospect Media.
Suzuki, D. 1998. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place In Nature. Prometheus Books.
Spengler, O. 1939. The Decline of the West. New York, Knopf.
Talbot, M. 1992. Mysticism and the New Physics. London, Arkana.
Wilber, K. 2000. A Brief History of Everything. Boston, Massachusetts, Shambhala Publications.
Wilber, K. 2001A. Eye To Eye: The Search For the New Paradigm. Boston, Shambhala.
Wilber, K. 2001B. Integral Psychology. Boston, Massachusetts, Shambhala Publications.
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Zohar, D. 1993. The Quantum Society. London, Flamingo.

Academic Article: The Future of Intelligence?

Published in The Journal Of Futures Studies, November 2003 (vol 8, no.2)
Also published in The CLA Reader (ed. Sohail Inayatullah)

Abstract
Many classical depictions of intelligence suggest that individual human intelligence is part of a greater transpersonal consciousness. The concept of this integrated intelligence has resurfaced in contemporary times in a number of fields. This paper presents the ideas of four thinkers whose works incorporate integrated intelligence – Broomfield, Dossey, Wilber and Zohar. Inayatullah’s Causal Layered Analysis is used to deconstruct them. The four authors and their texts are compared and contrasted on some of their major themes. Finally, some of the most significant issues associated with integrated intelligence are introduced.

Integrated intelligence: The Future of Intelligence?

Introduction
While most contemporary academic and scientific research tends to depict consciousness and intelligence in localised and mechanistic terms, an increasing number of researchers, scientists, writers and philosophers from many fields are beginning to describe intelligence in non-localised and universal terms. Once generally considered purely the domain of New Agers and mystics, integrated intelligence is a strongly emerging issue at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
This paper introduces four different thinkers, who incorporate integrated intelligence into their discourse: Larry Dossey, Ken Wilber, Danah Zohar, and John Broomfield. They are, to some degree, all iconoclasts and outsiders–sometimes even within their respective fields. Yet because of recent developments across a multitude of disciplines, and the emerging issue of spirituality and consciousness, they represent important voices. They represent but a minute fraction of those writing about integrated intelligence. However, they have been chosen from amongst the many for the following reasons.

1. Each has a background within a different discipline. Dossey is a medical doctor. Wilber is a transpersonal psychologist. Zohar is a writer whose primary interest has been the links between quantum physics and social and individual development. Finally Broomfield is an historian who has turned his attention to other ways of knowing. As a collective these people represent a diversity of experience and knowledge within different fields, and thus suggest the extent to which integrated intelligence is being discussed in contemporary thought.
2. Each approaches the issue of integrated intelligence in different ways. For Wilber integrated intelligence is posited as the culminating process of the evolution of consciousness. His claims come backed by vast and diverse research that bridges a plethora of disciplines. Broomfield approaches the topic in highly anecdotal style, providing numerous specific examples of the way integrated intelligence works in everyday life. Zohar prefers the abstract approach, working scrupulously to establish a scientific and neurological foundation for her theory of spiritual intelligence. Dossey writes as an outsider within the medical profession, and mixes the personal with the scientific.

This paper examines these authors’ works whilst posing the following questions. What exactly are these people saying, and where are they situated with respect to a civilisational view of knowledge? How do they differ in their ideas, their worldviews, and their methods? What are the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments and what are the general problematics pervading this burgeoning field of enquiry?

The Methodology
Developed by Sohail Inayatullah, Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) is a post-structuralist methodology which probes the deeper meanings imbedded within texts through an exploration of four specific components. It allows for the acknowledgement of other ways of knowing. (Inayatullah 1998, p. 815) The first component of CLA examines the litany or the rational/scientific, factual and quantitative aspects of a text. The second component of CLA is the social and systems level. This uncovers the economic, cultural, political and historical issues. The third aspect of CLA examines the discourse/worldview of the author. This level identifies the assumptions of the author, and attempts to discern the deeper social, linguistic and cultural structures which emerge from the individual’s view of reality. This makes visible the writer’s map of reality which underpins his/her work. The final component is the mythical/metaphorical level. This attempts to uncover hidden and explicit mythologies, narratives, symbols and metaphors within the text. There may be emotional, unconscious and archetypal components at this level. (Inayatullah 1998, pp. 820-821)

Causal Layered Analysis is particularly useful as a research method as a means to conduct inquiry into the nature of past, present and future. It opens up the present and the past to create the possibility of alternative futures. (Inayatullah, 1998: 815) It is for this reason that it has been chosen as an ideal tool to deconstruct the ideas of the following four thinkers.

What is integrated intelligence?
Throughout this essay the term “integrated intelligence” is used. Integrated intelligence is a transpersonal intelligence that transcends the boundaries of the individual. It is in effect a collective human and universal intelligence. Historically it has most commonly been depicted in spiritual and mystical texts and forms a part of all mystical traditions. In ancient cultures such as the Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian and Tibetan, integrated intelligence was an implicit aspect of their worldviews. (Grof, 1995) Many indigenous cultures, both contemporary and past, also incorporate integrated intelligence into their ontologisms. (Groff, 1995; Pearsall 1998; Wildman, 1997) As Dossey writes:

The idea that the human mind is infinite or nonlocal - that at some level it cannot be confined to specific points in space, such as the brain and body, or in time, such as the present, is ancient. (Dossey, 1999B)

Though its elusive nature renders it highly problematic within the dominant rational/empirical scientific discourse, integrated intelligence is becoming more frequently used in various guises in contemporary discussions within science, the humanities and spiritual discourses. It differs from most contemporary depictions of intelligence and consciousness in that it is non-localised, and acknowledges sources of inspiration and knowledge that are physically and/or metaphysically external to the individual. It implies that the brain is a permeable organ imbedded within a sea of consciousness.
In this paper integrated intelligence is divided into two distinct but related components. The first is higher order perceptions of wholeness and integration, what Ken Wilber calls the subtle, causal, and nondual aspects of consciousness. (Wilber, 2000C) This is the direct experience of the integrated nature of the universe and consciousness. Hereafter this shall be referred to as “primary level integrated intelligence.” The second is various “paranormal” perceptual phenomena such as ESP, clairvoyance, and visionary experience; what is popularly known as the “psychic” realm. Such phenomena suggest the plausibility of non-localised consciousness. These shall be referred to as “secondary level integrated intelligence.” The phenomena associated with secondary level integrated intelligence can be deemed “secondary” as it may be argued that their existence is dependent upon the existence of an holistic, non-dual consciousness.

Four Depictions of Integrated intelligence

1. Danah Zohar
What does she say about integrated intelligence, and where does it fit into her map?
Zohar attempts to create an empirical basis for spiritual experience and perception in her book Spiritual Intelligence. Spiritual intelligence, or SQ is: “the intelligence with which we address and solve problems of meaning and value…with which we can place our lives in a wider, richer meaning-giving context…with which we can access that one course of action or one life-path that is more meaningful than another.” (Zohar 2000, pp.3-4) SQ is, according to Zohar, our ultimate intelligence. “Mere IQ or rational intelligence isn’t enough”, she writes. (Zohar 2000, p.21)
Zohar’s attitude to integrated intelligence is somewhat confusing, unclear and contradictory. On the one hand Zohar seems to acknowledge integrated intelligence and transpersonal consciousness, as when she writes that SQ “is an internal, innate ability of the human brain and psyche, drawing its deepest resources from the heart of the universe itself.” (Zohar 2000, p.9) Zohar also backs “the proto-consciousness view” - that consciousness is a fundamental property of all matter and the universe. (Zohar 2000, p.82)
Yet there are contradictions within the text in regard to integrated intelligence, both stated and implied. For example she writes:

There is a God’s eye view, but it is available only to God. The best that we can do is to gain knowledge of as many perspectives as we can, and acknowledge a whole that is greater than we can perceive. (Zohar 2000, p.204)

This clearly implies a single, localised and individualised point of perception, consistent with a non-transpersonal model of consciousness. This is distinctly different from integrated intelligence.
A further aspect of Zohar’s model that suggests her model of consciousness is non-integrated is that it is highly organic, and often highly reductionist. She writes that consciousness originates in “the synchronous 40Hz oscillations… that unify data in the brain”. These oscillations are the source of SQ. (Zohar 2000, p.7) Despite the aforementioned transcendent aspects of consciousness in Zohar’s model, hers is a brain-based depiction of consciousness:

(The brain) produces the mystery of the conscious mind, our awareness of ourselves and our world and our ability to make free choices about engaging in the world. It generates and structures our thoughts, enables us to have emotions and mediates our spiritual lives.” (Zohar 2000, pp.39-40)

Zohar’s largely organic model would be more legitimate if her text did not expand SQ’s domain beyond the original rather mundane definition (as written above). The original definition was about “addressing” such things as “meaning”, “value” and “context”. There is nothing transcendent or mystical in that definition, which extols the virtues of SQ as a hermeneutic tool, a means of “recontextualising” experience. Hermeneutics is implicitly interpretative, a mental/intellectual activity, not a transcendent one.

The Litany
There are, according to Zohar, three kinds of intelligence. The first is the rational/logical intelligence which she associates with the way in which individual neurons in the brain fire and connect sequentially. (Zohar 2000, p.12) The second intelligence is: “the emotion-driven, pattern recognizing, habit-building intelligence.” (Zohar 2000, p.12) Entire segments of the brain fire together simultaneously and electrical activity occurs across the brain in patterns in response to various kinds of experiences. (Zohar 2000, pp.11-13)
Zohar then identifies a third kind of intelligence, namely spiritual intelligence. (SQ). Zohar employs reference to brain research to support her argument. She refers to Austrian neurologist Wolf Singer’s work on “the binding problem,” which suggests that there “is a neural process in the brain devoted to unifying and giving meaning to our experience.” (Zohar 2000, p.12) She also refers to the research of Rodolfo Linas’ on sleeping and waking consciousness and the binding of cognitive events in the brain; and to biological anthropologist Terrance Deacon’s work on the origins of language. (Zohar 2000, p.12)
The potential connection between the localised self-equals-brain (Zohar’s equation) and transcendent consciousness is briefly explored via quantum theory. Zohar examines some of the evidence for the possible existence of quantum level electrical fluctuations and Bose-Einstein condensates in the brain. She largely dismisses the research thus far done into quantum theories of consciousness since the 1930s, because they have focused their gaze upon micro-phenomena such as the neuronal structures within the brain. Instead Zohar believes that larger-scale neural phenomena, such as cross-brain electrical activity, are more likely to produce useful evidence for the quantum consciousness school. (Zohar 2000, pp.84-90) Finally Zohar speculates that the Higgs-Field, the fast oscillating energy field that emerges from the quantum vacuum, may be the key to validating the proto-consciousness argument.

If proto-consciousness in the universe is a fundamental property of the universe, then there is proto-consciousness in the Higgs Field, and the quantum vacuum becomes very like what mystics have called the ‘immanent God’, the God within all. (Zohar 2000, p.90)

This in turn would link the 40Hz oscillations in the brain to “God”. (Zohar 2000, p.90).

Social Level
Zohar outlines some of the reasons why SQ has not yet featured heavily in contemporary discourses. The “dominating IQ paradigm has overshadowed further enquiry into their (intelligence researchers’) own data”, she states. (Zohar 2000, p.11) Further she claims that the social sciences since the seventeenth century have “reinforced the certainties of Newtonian absolutism.” (Zohar 2000, p.201) These trends were further reinforced by custom, tradition, family and community. (Zohar 2000, p.202)
Zohar also points to “the poverty of western humanism,” criticizing it for its anthropocentrism. Enlightenment thinkers followed Aristotle’s model and defined humans as rational animals. (Zohar 2000, p.32) Social and political philosophers followed this lead, as did society at large. We became alienated from nature, magic and mystery by reductionist scientific thought, and from the center of the self, as psychology also defined humanity in terms of the isolated ego. (Zohar 2000, p.32)
Zohar touches upon another social issue when she explains that SQ can help young people from making the same mistakes as their parents did. It can aid in the search for meaning, and this is fundamental in our lives. (Zohar 2000, pp.20-21)

Worldview
Like Broomfield (below), Zohar spends time in Nepal. She relates that the rich and colorful Hindu and Buddhist cultures there have “certainly influenced many of the thoughts I express throughout the book.” (Zohar 2000, p.23) She integrates mystical concepts such as the Hindu chakra system (in her model of personality types), subtle energies of the body, and quotes from Eastern sages such as Tagore, Lao Zi and Mahatma Gandhi. She also makes references to Jewish, Islamic and Christian teachings and in particular their mystical aspects. These references are scattered sparsely in the first four parts of the book. It is in the last part, where she outlines the more practical aspects and applications of SQ, that these mystical influences become more explicit in the text.
Zohar points out that science is “bottom up truth,” based on observation. (Zohar 2000, p.203) However she valorises the “bottom-up truth” religions and spiritual traditions such as the mystics of “the Abrahamic religions, Taoists, Hindus, Buddhists” and Quakers. (Zohar 2000, p.203) She values the spiritual approaches that emphasise inner truth and inner experience as a means to the sacred. They insist that we must work on ourselves “to find some inner light.” (Zohar 2000, p.203). Thus Zohar ultimately has a place in her worldview for both reductionist empirical science, and for mysticism.
However Spiritual Intelligence cannot be easily labeled “New Age”, despite the fact that the Bloomsbury edition categorises it as “Self Help/New Age/Business”. While the subject matter is spiritual, the method is predominantly otherwise.

Mythical/Metaphorical level
Zohar’s text is dotted with mechanistic metaphors of consciousness and the brain, despite Zohar’s comments on the limitations of “the brain as computer” metaphor. (Zohar 2000, pp.54-55) Zohar uses the terms “wiring”, “rewiring” (pp.41, 52, 197) and “hardwiring” (pp.40,41, 94, 106) to explicate neuro-physiology. Such mechanistic terminology places Zohar’s work implicitly closer to mechanistic science than the explicit claims of her thesis would suggest.
Zohar employs a steady stream of metaphors as she attempts to explicate SQ. She takes traditional spiritual metaphors, and then substitutes them with scientific metaphors in an attempt to clarify the spiritual principles. Thus Zohar is in effect writing about spirituality within the scientific discourse. An example of this metaphor swapping is the following, where she writes about “God:”

…the source of self that is beyond awareness (that) is both the ground of being itself, the source of all manifestation, and the ultimate source of the energy which becomes conscious and unconscious mind. In twentieth-century science, this source of both existence and self is associated with the quantum vacuum, the still, ground energy state of the universe. In the Lotus of Self, I depict it as the primal mud out of which the lotus’ roots and stem grow. (Zohar 2000, p.127)

Zohar has utilized a classical eastern motif, the lotus, as metaphor for “self” but inserted a scientific metaphor (“the quantum vacuum”) into the middle of it, to replace the idea of God.
Later, Zohar critiques a parable from the Surangama Sutra, where the Buddha talks to Ananda, his chief disciple. In the story Ananda asks why the unity and oneness of the universe “appears as so very many emanations.” To explain this, the Buddha takes out a handkerchief and ties it into six knots and explains “Then we have her six knots, but it is still one handkerchief.” (Zohar, 2000, p.159) To this Zohar responds:

Today such accounts don’t speak to the modern mind. Today such questions demand ‘scientific’ answers, brain phenomena that we can ‘weigh and measure’, experiments that we can read about.” (Zohar, 2000, p.159)

Here we have an explanation of why Zohar employs scientific metaphors such as the following.

These (40 Hz oscillations) are the ‘center’ of the self, the neurological source from which ‘I’ emerge. (Zohar, 2000, p.159).

You and I, the chairs on which we sit, and the food we eat are all patterns of this energy…(oscillating on) a still ‘ocean’ or background state of unexcited energy called the quantum vacuum. (Zohar, 2000, p.160)

We are ‘waves’ on the ‘ocean’ of the vacuum; the vacuum is the ultimate center and source of the self. (Zohar, 2000, p.160)

It is debatable whether Zohar’s metaphors are as effective as the originals. The idea that we must connect with “the center” (Zohar 2000, p.162) is not a terribly attractive option when that center is called “the quantum vacuum.” The original metaphors such as “God”, “the sun”, “the lotus” etc. are all archetypal motifs within human consciousness, and are comprehended at a deep level by the non-conscious mind, (if one is to follow Jungian psychology). Zohar’s metaphors are superficial intellectual abstractions which are most likely nonsensical to the vast majority of the world’s population who do not dabble in quantum physics.
Further, Zohar’s text, as with Wilber’s, does not mention her direct spiritual experiences or perceptions. According to the references in her text, she gleans her knowledge of spirituality from ancient and modern mystics – Lao Tzu, Sufi mystic poet Rumi, St John of the Cross, as well as Western figures like Plato, Socrates, the story of Faust, and the mystical traditions mentioned above.
The lack of personal reference is one of the most notable features of Zohar’s texts. She shares only one deeply personal anecdote in Spiritual Intelligence, where she relates her own struggle with some highly personal issues to do with her past, in particular her father. (Zohar 2000, pp.186-191) Yet there are very few personal anecdotes elsewhere. The effect of this is to depersonalise the text. Perhaps this is Zohar’s intention, to keep it with the scientific tradition of “objectivity.” Yet it raises the question of how much personal experience Zohar actually has with spiritual intelligence.
Whereas classical and New Age texts with spiritual or mystical import tend to refer to and incorporate supernatural phenomena and deistic references, Zohar’s text is almost completely devoid of such references. The former allow (or insist upon) the possibility that thoughts can be generated or at least influenced by sources beyond the brain – from other individuals, spiritual entities, deific sources and even animals, places, nature and the Earth as Gaia. Zohar’s shallow treatment of secondary level integrated intelligence is surprising in a book about spiritual intelligence, considering the importance of the numinous experience historically detailed in religious and spiritual texts, including Dossey’s and Broomfield’s (below).
In section five of her book (the final section), Zohar takes a dramatic about-face and her method changes radically. Suddenly Zohar begins a steady employment of myths and anecdotes, quoting mystics and poets numerous times. It is an almost disconcerting change, given the heavy scientific and intellectual flavor of the previous four sections. However, this section still avoids personal references to Zohar herself.

Some concluding remarks on Zohar
Zohar exhorts: “I shall propose a model of self that is intended to be both broader and deeper than any postulated before.” (Zohar 2000, p.115) Yet it is difficult to see where her thesis is so unique. As far as depth goes, it lacks the hierarchical depth of Wilber’s model, whose vertical dimension is far more sophisticated and concise.
The limited representation of the mystical and numinous in Spiritual Intelligence suggests a lack of courage on her behalf of Zohar to explore “strange things,” to borrow Broomfield’s terminology. Her goal is to establish a working model for consciousness that incorporates the spiritual, but she is ultimately handicapped by the methodology she employs. Most mystical traditions have upheld the view that spiritual experience is by its nature non-organic, transcendent, and transpersonal. Zohar’s insistence on using predominantly scientifically credited research and concepts to build her case restricts her thesis.
Yet perhaps the most self-limiting problematic apparent in Zohar’s work is her insistence that spiritual insight is simply “recontextualising.” (Zohar 2000, p. 65) For Zohar the transcendent is equated with “putting things in wider context.” (Zohar 2000, p.68) It is difficult to believe that this is what “gives us a taste of the extraordinary, the infinite, within ourselves or within the world around us,” as she claims. (Zohar 2000, p.69) Wilber has pointed out that many of the newer maps of reality and the universe, particularly in systems theory, introduce greater breadth, but not depth. (Wilber 2000D, pp.147-149)
It seems Zohar largely falls into this category. Re-contextualisation, at least if we follow Wilber’s view, is inadequate as an explanation for transcendent consciousness, as it lacks anything more than a simplistic hierarchical aspect and does not adequately account for expanded and non-ordinary states of consciousness. Indeed transpersonal and integrated intelligence would appear to require an entire expansion of consciousness beyond the boundaries of the self. According to many transpersonalists, mystics and thinkers such as Wilber (2000A, 2000B, 2000C, 2000D); Bucke (2001); Hawkins (1995); and Grof (1995), this is not a cognitive/intellectual process. It is a process requiring transcendence, a shift to a higher level of consciousness.

2. Larry Dossey
What does he say about integrated intelligence, and where does it fit into his map?
Larry Dossey’s research specialty is non-localised consciousness, especially within contemporary medicine. A medical doctor, Dossey once held a standard mechanistic worldview in his practice of medicine. However, as he describes in the introduction to Reinventing Medicine, a series of dreams that he had early in his career shifted his perspective, and indeed his worldview. These dreams “revealed” information about his patients that he states he could not have known consciously. (Dossey 1999, introduction) After this point in time he began to research “distant intentionality” and non-localised intelligence.
Though voices such as his are marginalised in modern medicine and science, he is not alone. Other writers such as Deepak Chopra (1992), Caroline Myss (2001), and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (1997) have also enjoyed success writing in related fields.
The world that Dossey writes about is replete with integrated intelligence. He believes that prayer can directly lead to healing of the sick, that consciousness can influence the growth of plants, that spiritual beings exist and communicate with human beings, and that clairvoyance, telepathy and ESP are extant. He also comes down in favor of the idea that healing is spiritual, which he defines as:

…the sense of connectedness with a factor in the universe that is wiser and more powerful than the individual sense of self and that is infinite in space and time. I choose to refer to this factor as the Absolute. In the great religions it is often referred to as God, Goddess, Allah, the Tao, Universe, and so on. (Dossey, 2002)

The Litany
As a trained medical practitioner, Dossey has a sound understanding of science and scientific methodology. He has conducted empirical experiments into the effects of non-localised consciousness in healing, specifically the effects of prayer on healing. His texts often delve into the empirical level of non-localised consciousness. He makes references to papers that indicate that people can consciously inhibit the growth of fungus through mental intention, can influence the growth of yeast in test tubes, and cure mice of cancer via “laying on of hands”. (Dossey 1999B) Many of his published papers include extensive notes and references to specific scientific studies of non-local intelligence and its associated phenomena. His bibliographical publication with Stephen A. Schwartz features some 21 pages of bibliographical notes and references. (Dossey 1999B) He states that the scientific evidence for distant intentionality deserves far more attention than it is currently being given in the scientific community.
Dossey also makes reference to the possible links between distant intentionality and developments in quantum physics. He often quotes physicists such as Sir John Eccles, John Wheeler and Henry P. Stapp. The latter is quoted as stating that human thoughts are “efficacious.” (Dossey, 2002)

Social Level
One of Dossey’s seminal points in his papers and books is “the science blues” – how his initial love for contemporary science has been replaced by “wariness and suspicion” because of science’s narrow parameters, its failure to acknowledge psi phenomena, its hidden dangers, and scientists’ tendencies to ignore and hide data that contradicts their worldview or endangers their research grants. Further, Dossey laments that science has become alienated from public consciousness and has lost touch with "awe" and the "genuine mysteries." (Dossey, 2000) Like other writers writing at the interface of science, consciousness and spirituality, he recounts various cases of prejudice and scorn that he has experienced because of his particular research field.
Criticism of science is a central theme in Dossey’s work, not surprising as his worldview and that of science are often diametrically opposed. He labels scientists narrow minded and bigoted. He relates an incident, involving a radio interview where he stated that dreams could be an integral part of healing for “which there is much historical precedent and a growing body of experimental and clinical evidence.” However the journalist interviewing him later consulted a noted academic who dismissed Dossey’s argument as a “dream” in itself. (Dossey, 2000). Dossey repeatedly refers to examples of how scientists and scientific institutions and publications unfairly reject and ridicule religious and spiritual beliefs, and research related to psi, and in particular consciousness and its non-localised effects. (Dossey, 2000). The sheer contempt in which Dossey sometimes regards contemporary science is perhaps best represented by his statement that: “scientists typically understand science about as well as fish understand hydrodynamics.” (Dossey, 2000)
Dossey argues that “opening to the psyche's nonrational dimensions would lead to the fulfillment of science, not its ruin, as some critics charge.” (Dossey, 2000) He sees the need in medicine and science for an integration of the rational and intuitive ways of knowing.

Worldview
Dossey holds what perhaps can best be termed a scientific/New Age worldview. (1) He upholds much of the rigor of scientific methodology and research and refers to numerous case studies, but admonishes science for its myopic perspectives on the more esoteric aspects of life, especially consciousness and spirituality. His work draws upon various non-empirical epistemologies, such as indigenous cultures, shamanism, spiritual traditions and New Age thinking. He believes in the power of prayer and spiritual healing, valorizes spiritual experiences and is an advocate of the idea of the primacy of consciousness in the universe.

Mythical/Metaphorical level
It is through anecdotes that Dossey communicates some of his most powerful insights. He uses autobiographical references to elaborate much of his experience and understanding, such as the case (mentioned above) where he “saw” a child patient experiencing problems in a medical consultation with another doctor the day before it actually happened. (Dossey, 1999, introduction) When pointing out the problems with finding appropriate terms to describe psi phenomena, he tells the story of a friend who had problems selling beef stroganoff in his restaurant because nobody in that area knew what that particular dish was. When the item’s name was changed to “beef and noodles,” it sold well. The point being made was: “If you want to sell something, be careful what you call it.” (Dossey, 2002).
Dossey also compares his loss of faith in contemporary science to being like a “jilted lover,” an extended metaphor he uses in his essay “The Science Blues.” (2000)

Science teased and seduced me, adorning herself with layers of paint and glitter that concealed flaws I never suspected. Her emissaries, sent ahead to make introductions, lied out of their teeth. They exaggerated her dowry, inflating what she had to contribute to our arrangement. I could have endured a few lies; it was when the actual abuse set in that I began to wake up. (Dossey 2000)
Such metaphors as these bring a personalized dimension to Dossey’s work which make it more accessible to the general public. They also serve to emphasis Dossey’s message. In the case of the jilted lover metaphor, that message is the degree of his anger and sense of betrayal at science.
Some concluding remarks on Dossey
Dossey’s problems in gaining acceptance with the general medical and scientific community, and the adversarial nature of his relationship with them, indicates the difficulty of introducing the discourse on integrated intelligence to these traditional bastions of the mechanistic paradigm. Yet his work is highly accessible, as his methods can be considered highly readable for a wide public audience.

3. John Broomfield
What does he say about integrated intelligence, and where does it fit into his map?
John Broomfield’s Other Ways of Knowing is a text which aims to expand the parameters of what currently constitutes valid means of perception amidst the dominant scientific discourse. First published in 1997, this book is aimed at the popular market.
Integrated intelligence features heavily in Broomfield’s world. Broomfield is quick to insist that indigenous peoples’ beliefs in an intelligent and vitalistic universe are legitimate. Humans and nature are not separated, but are in “unity.” (Broomfield 1997, p. 96) Nature communicates with us in subtle ways as well as through “audible messages and visible appearances.” (Broomfield 1997, p.113) This is a world in which animals are endowed with vibrant intelligence, and non-verbal communication with them is possible. It is also a universe of angels, devas and “nature entities” (Broomfield 1997, p.110); a universe where Polynesians communicate with spirit guides to navigate their way around the pacific (Broomfield 1997, pp. 2-4, 106); and where Australian Aborigines follow the songlines of the land and of their ancestors. (Broomfield 1997, pp. 105-106) It is the Western and modern world that has forgotten these ways of knowing, according to Broomfield.
Thus nature can teach us spiritual enlightenment. (Broomfield 1997, p.5) It is in dances (p.106), dreams (pp. 101, 156), songs (pp.105-106), meditations and in the connection with “the sacred unconscious” (p.79) that the vitalistic sprit of the universe opens up to us, argues Broomfield.

Empirical level
Like many “New Age” texts in the wake of Capra’s The Tao of Physics, Broomfield likes to make analogies with quantum physics to bring a scientific bent to his ideas. For example in order to validate the idea that consciousness and matter are not dualistic, he refers to John Wheeler’s theory of the “participator,” where mind and matter are intricately intertwined, the former “co-creating” the universe” at a personal as well as universal level. (Broomfield 1997, p.38). Broomfield also skims over the works and theories of David Bohm and his holographic universe, Ilya Prigogine’s dissipative structures, Rupert Sheldrake’s morphogenetic fields, and dots the text with quotes such as holographic brain theorist and neurologist Karl Pribram’s maxim that: “Mental properties are the pervasive organizing principles of the universe.” (Broomfield 1997, p.72).
To support his case for extrasensory perception, Broomfield briefly refers to the research of the Mobius society and SRI International in California, Mundelein College in Chicago, and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research programme, which have each achieved modest results in attempting to empirically validate psi phenomena such as scientific remote viewing and ESP. (Broomfield 1997, pp.116, 157)
Yet this is not a text that valorizes the empirical, and its means is true to its ends. The empirical level constitutes only a small part of the book.

Social Level
Broomfield’s text examines various cultural depictions of intelligence, and different “ways of knowing.” He examines indigenous and ancient belief structures, and uses their myths and stories as a means to demonstrate his points.
Broomfield then contrasts these ways of knowing with modern scientific depictions of intelligence. It is in the wake of the enlightenment philosophers such as Descartes, Bacon and Newton that modern science began to reject integrated conceptions of the universe, and consciousness itself. Modern science has become increasingly fragmented in its approach, and linear in its constructions of time and place. (Broomfield 1997, pp 32-37, pp.13-17) Broomfield is heavily critical of many aspects of modern life and “our scientific perception of segmented materialism.” (Broomfield 1997, p. 30) We have “boxed ourselves in” with linear schemata, linear causation and temporal linearity. (Broomfield 1997, p.30) Scientists must become holistic and develop “inner awareness,” Broomfield argues. (Broomfield 1997, p.75)
Broomfield believes that a society and politics based on divine guidance is possible. He uses Gandhi’s ideology of satyagraha as his example of a political “vehicle for transforming the consciousness of a nation.” (Broomfield 1997, p.187) According to Broomfield politics must be based on a “recognition that consciousness makes reality, that our politics is a manifestation of the state of our individual and collective awareness.” In turn politics shapes consciousness. Social and economic policies must follow from these principles. It is a “spiritual politics.” Self-empowerment of individuals and groups must take precedence over power over others. (Broomfield 1997, p.180-181) Economics must also be based upon an “attunement to seasonal rhythms,” not just human reason. He praises E.F. Schumacher (Broomfield 1997, pp. 196,197, 202, 203) and the “loving economy” of Wendell Berry (Broomfield 1997, pp.206-207).
In his discussion on education Broomfield states that this is a universe where “the whole sends messages to the parts.” In such a world the teacher’s role is to encourage exploration, learning and growth. Broomfield thus criticises the “banking concept” of education. This concept assumes that knowledge is a gift passed from those who know, down to those who know nothing. This, argues Broomfield, stultifies the development of the desire to learn or “to create independent, self-confident, whole people.” (Broomfield 1997, p.213) He maintains that such disempowerment of the young is not what is needed in a rapidly changing world.
Knowledge is not simply intellectualisation, but must have “inner knowing.” Broomfield states that: “deep wisdom is available to us if we will but listen intently to our bodies.” (Broomfield 1997, p.219) Teachers must encourage students to “trust their gut understandings, their intuitions.” (Broomfield 1997, p.219) The symbolic realms such as found in the universal archetypes in the form of dreams, daydreams, meditations and altered states, fables, and fairy tales, poetry, music, dance sculpture and painting must be explored by students. (Broomfield 1997, p.219) Further these must be reinforced by experience. (Broomfield 1997, p.220) Students and teachers should spend time in wild and sacred places to restore “direct awareness of the intricate interconnections that sustain life.” (Broomfield 1997, p.220) Our education must work to restore the relationships between things. (Broomfield 1997, p.221)

Worldview
Broomfield was Professor of Modern Indian History at the university of Michigan for twenty years. However he has delved deeply into alternative and spiritual methodologies and practices. He studied shamanism with Michael Harner and Sandra Ingerman, and was also President of of the California Institute of Integral Studies (one of America’s most prominent alternative philosophy academic institutions) from 1983 until 1990. Further, as he elaborates in his book, he now spends significant time in the foothills of the Himalayas on spiritual retreats.
Considering his biography it is not surprising that Broomfield’s worldview and universe is a deeply spiritual one, and bristles with life and spirit at every level. His is a deeply vitalistic philosophy. It is a world of life after death, interspecies and spirit communication, psi and supernatural phenomena. He writes that evolution “can be seen as the never-ceasing dance of life-energy shaping vital, interconnected patterns – a vivid kaleidoscope of opportunities for creative spirit in matter.” (Broomfield 1997, p.172)

Mythical/Metaphorical level
“Classical science and history will not suffice as the mythologies of the twenty-first century”, writes Broomfield. For these are the stories of colonization, domination and segmentation, and “Judeo-Christian millenarianism.” (Broomfield 1997, p.53) Broomfield states explicitly that mythology and story are legitimate ways of knowing. They create a “connected knowing” that stands in contrast to the “separate knowing” of fragmented reason. (Broomfield 1997, p.218) Many of his points are elaborated with stories, and many with actual mythologies of indigenous peoples. In order to validate his remark that all things in the universe are connected, Broomfield does not refer to empirical data, but re-tells the Maori myth of the beginning of the universe involving Mother, Papa, and the Father Rangi, and their three children. A resulting family squabble saw the children take the forms of the ocean (Tangaroa), sky (Tawhirimatea), and the forest (Tane). Other relatives took on the forms of the birds, fish and land animals. (Broomfield 1997, pp.97-98)

Some concluding remarks on Broomfield
Broomfield’s text is the most “radical” and New Age of the four writers deconstructed here. He does not baulk at introducing seemingly paranormal phenomena into his arguments and anecdotes. No doubt Wilber would criticize his ready employment of mythology and dreams as method, in that Broomfield makes no distinction between higher and lower, pre-personal and transpersonal realms of consciousness. (2) Yet the text is heavily personal, bringing to life many of his arguments. It valorizes the native and the shaman, the indigenous worldview, and seemingly asks us to return to a simpler lifestyle, which in turn features a more integrated intelligence.

4. Ken Wilber
What does he say about integrated intelligence, and where does it fit into his map?
Transpersonal psychologist Ken Wilber’s model of consciousness is an incredibly detailed, complex, and intellectual one. In Integral Psychology he attempts to posit a comprehensive map of consciousness and psychology which “honor(s) and embraces(s) every legitimate aspect of human consciousness…” (Wilber 2000C, p.2) His is a layered or hierarchical system, where human consciousness develops from the pre-personal undifferentiated modes, through to rational, and then into the transpersonal realms. In this model phylogenetic and ontogenetic evolution mirror each other. (Wilber 2000D, pp. 153-154). Put rather simply, this development of consciousness also corresponds to his three ways of knowing: the “eye of flesh” (sensorimotor), the “eye of reason” (mental/rational), and the “eye of contemplation” (spiritual/mystical). (Wilber 2000B, pp.2-6) It is in the contemplative and transpersonal realms where Wilber locates the aspects of consciousness which relate to integrated intelligence. These, in sequence, are the psychic, subtle, causal and non-dual. (Wilber 2000C, p. 197) Each of these later stages in Wilber’s model represents part of the soul’s journey from ego to spirit.
Wilber makes the important distinction between the psychic, or paranormal aspects of perception, and the actual state of integrated awareness that characterizes the final stages of spiritual development in his model. This is a more sophisticated model than general New Age literature, which often fails to distinguish clearly between the two, and often valorises psychic development as a vital goal in spiritual development (if not the most vital goal).
Thus Wilber acknowledges both the psychic and transpersonal realms of consciousness, yet goes little into detail about the former. Indeed his “psychic” level of consciousness does not refer specifically to clairvoyant perception, but to an expanded concept of self that transcends ego, although psychic experiences may comprise an aspect of it. (Wilber 2000A, p.183) The psychic is not valorised in Wilber’s model. Wilber’s attitude towards the psychic is typical of the Buddhist attitude towards psychic phenomena, which acknowledges it, but sees it as relatively insignificant or a distraction in the journey to enlightenment. Instead his texts valorise experiences of primary level integrated intelligence. Indeed his entire argument is predicated upon the evolution of consciousness and transcendent consciousness in general.
Wilber correlates rationality and the “mental” domains of consciousness with ego-centered, alienated self-consciousness. In Wilber’s model, rationality, like all but the final nonduel stage in the Great Chain of Being, is merely a stepping-stone to enlightenment, soon to be included, and transcended within higher states of consciousness.

Empirical level
Wilber’s texts are almost bursting with references and notations to scientific and academic research. Indeed Sex, Ecology and Spirituality features some 235 pages of end notes! These include references to a plethora of disciplines and research fields, including psychology, ecology, anthropology, cosmology, mysticism, theology, postmodernism, physics etc. The depth of his scholarship is immense. Thus Wilber is foremost a scholar. He makes this point himself in the semi-autobiographical Grace and Grit, claiming in a conversation with his late wife Treya Wilber that: “We both know I am no Buddha.” He compares himself instead to the ancient Buddhist scholars. (Wilber 2000E)
Wilber’s hierarchical and developmental model of sociocultural evolution situates the various schools of psychology and consciousness and their respective thinkers upon the “Great Chain of Being.” For example the work of Jurgen Habermas is inserted at the next-to-lower levels of the Chain (the phantasmic-emotional) and moves through to the final stages of the rational (vision-logic) level. Jean Piaget’s work spans a slightly greater range, from the very beginning (sensorimotor) and also terminating at the vison-logic stage. The work of Duane Elgin begins at the phantasmic emotional level and moves right through to the final nonduel level on Wilber’s model. (Wilber 2000C, pp. 215-216) But not only individuals fit into the model. Schools of thought are also situated on the map. For example he maps the various stages of Yoga Tantra in precisely the same way, spanning the entirety of the stages of the Great Chain of Being. (Wilber 2000C, p.210).

Social Level
Wilber’s is an integral model and the social dimensions are incorporated theoretically into his model. The cultural aspects of evolution constitute the lower left-hand quadrant of his four-quadrant system, while the social aspects are covered in the bottom left column. His breadth is impressive, but not the depth. There are no detailed explorations of specific social issues like crime, education, politics, or social welfare. Since his major focus is upon the evolution of consciousness, social issues are delved into only in respect to their influence on the history of ideas, religion, mysticism, science etc. Some of the issues he does touch upon include power structures in feminism (Wilber 2000D, p.393), science and global culture (Wilber 2000D, pp.710-716), the development of postmodernism in the wake of modernist science (Wilber 2000A, pp.54-64) and the men’s movement. (Wilber, 2000D, p.258) The narrow treatment of such issues leaves Wilber open to the criticism that his books are more intellectual and theoretical than grounded in mundane or practical human concerns.
In a broader sense Wilber’s books are all social commentary. Society and culture are subsumed within metaphysics in his model of evolution. The development of society and culture are embraced within the evolution of consciousness. Indeed according to Wilber, cultures and societies merely reflect the evolution of spirit. Just as individuals evolve, moving higher along the Great Chain of Being, societies evolve collectively, mirroring the evolution of the individual. (Wilber 2000D, pp.153-157)

Worldview
In Grace and Grit, Wilber compares his life before meeting his late wife Treya Wilber to that of a Zen monk. His worldview, like the postrational stages of his model of sociocultural evolution, is heavily influenced by Buddhist and mystical philosophies in general. He regularly refers to Buddhist, Sufi, Tantric, Gnostic and Hindu mystics in his texts.
Unlike Broomfield and to a certain degree Dossey, Wilber does not valorize indigenous ways of knowing. He relegates them to essentially pre-personal levels of consciousness, which in effect means pre-rational. (Wilber 2000D, pp.244-247) Thus Wilber claims that indigenous peoples (with perhaps the exception of a few shamans) represent a lower level of consciousness that predates the current typical level of modern human consciousness. (3) He criticises several contemporary theorists - including Jungians (such as Jung himself and James Hillman), the “romantics” and New Agers in general for failing to comprehend the distinction between pre-personal and transpersonal realms of consciousness. (Wilber 2000C, p.104) Conversely he sees genuine mystics as operating within the transpersonal realms, beyond the level of the purely rational-logical.
Wilber’s worldview may best be described as mystical/intellectual. The sheer depth of its research and critical inquiry distinguishes it clearly from typical New Age (and indeed mystical) thinking, and unlike New Ageism it is heavily intellectual.

Mythical/Metaphorical level
The “story” that persists throughout Wilber’s writings is not a new one. It is the story of the journey from ignorance to enlightenment - the story of the spiritual journey. What Wilber does is take the spiritual and mythical element of the spiritual journey, and place them in a contemporary, rational and sometimes scientific guise.
In Grace and Grit (2000E), Wilber recounts the tragic tale of his wife Treya’s fatal battle with cancer in spiritual terms. Finally, his wife finds her enlightenment, or so he believes. This belief he garners from an interpretation of a dream he has shortly after her death.
Yet the rest of Wilber’s texts lack an anecdotal/mythical dimension. This absence of the mythical and allegorical clearly distinguishes Wilber’s works from those of the New Age, and classical spiritual texts. The reason for the absence is made implicit in Sex, Spirituality, Ecology. (2000A) Here Wilber takes to task the work of such thinkers as Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. Wilber deconstructs Campbell’s claim that myth grants access to transrational apprehension, suggesting that “mythology can rightly lay claim only to the childhood of men and women.” (Wilber 2000D, p.250). Mythology cannot be employed as a means to greater understanding without the aid of the rational mind, Wilber argues, thus identifying an inherent weakness in Campbell’s argument that myth is the equal of science (Wilber 2000D, p.247-50). Writes Wilber:

…a myth is being a “real myth” when it is “not” being taken as true, when it is being held in an “as if” fashion. And Campbell knows perfectly well that an “as if” stance is possible only with formal operational awareness.” (Wilber 2000D, p. 247)

Thus, argues Wilber, a myth can only be understood properly when it has been transcended by rationality. In Wilber’s model the mythic is transcended by the rational, and then the rational is transcended by the transpersonal. The Jungians’ elevation of myth in cognitive status is thus a function of “the pre-trans fallacy.” (Wilber 2000D, p. 247)
Ironically it is the lack of a personal/anecdotal dimension which is one of the most problematical aspects of Wilber’s work. As Richard Slaughter has pointed out, it is unclear how Wilber came to the insights he represents in his work, and thus how valid his understanding of higher levels of consciousness is. (Slaughter 2000, p.349) It is arguably inconsistent of Wilber to criticise systems theories as being unable to offer a unified theory of everything because they have ignored the personal and the inner, (Wilber, 2000C, p.147) when his own work reduces spiritual experiences to approximations and linguistic abstractions (e.g. “the nonduel”, “subtle”, “causal” etc.) without anecdote or personal insight. By doing so, in part he reduces his books to the very “flatland” dimension that he criticises systems theorists for.
Wilber’s books most often comprise page after page of interpretation of other scientists, thinkers and sages, positing them within his spiritual framework, but lacking in any explicit experiential dimension. The means of Wilber’s perception are mental/rational (the eye of reason), as analysis, interpretation and synthesis of data are the dominant cognitive tools employed in the construction of his thesis. Since Wilber has explicitly stated that the eye of reason is an inadequate means to comprehend the mystical/transrational, he creates an inherent contradiction in his thesis. His failure to explicate his own transrational experiences of consciousness seems rather incredible, in view of his stated valorisation of mystical experience in comprehending the higher stages of consciousness. Thus it is not at all clear that he has had any direct experience of transrational consciousness, as there is not a single reference to any such experience in his five books listed in the bibliography of this paper. These books largely comprise his most recent works.

Some concluding remarks on Wilber
Books, theories and empirical/rational research are the tools of the dominant scientific discourse. The task of writers like Wilber in attempting to posit trans-rational ideas in rational/linguistic format thus becomes highly problematical. The fact that his texts are highly intellectual and abstract does not help his cause. The question thus needs to be asked; what is the value of a text whose thesis is predicated upon transrational consciousness, when the mode of delivery is overtly rational, thus stultifying the possibility that the subject matter can be fully comprehended by its intended academic audience?

Conclusion
The issue of effectively communicating insights gleaned from mystical experience in the overtly mental/rational medium of books and academic papers, is but one of the problematics pervading texts on integrated intelligence. There are various others. Briefly some of those issues include the lack of an established terminology, confusion of what comprises the litany, the problematic nature of establishing empirical validity, a tendency to over rely on analogies from quantum physics and systems theory, and the scorn of many skeptics, academics and those working within mainstream science and academia.
Still, many are embracing the challenge, researching and writing about integrated intelligence. This paper has presented just four thinkers in four different disciplines who are taking the notion of integrated intelligence seriously. Just a handful of the many others across various fields include: John Wheeler, F. David Peat, Brian Josephson (physics); Kurt Godel, S.J.S. Clarke, David J. Chalmers (logic and mathematics): Gillian Ross (science and mysticism); Rupert Sheldrake, Elisabet Sahtouris, Theodore Rozak, (biology and ecology); Ervin Laszlo (systems theory) Jean Housten, David R. Hawkins, Stanislav Grof (psychology and psychiatry); Karl Pribram, Chilton Pierce, Roger Penrose (neuro-science and consciousness); and Dean Raden, M. Schlitz, R. Wells (parapsychology). Further, this list does not to mention the countless writers and thinkers writing in the popular New Age, theological and spiritual discourses.
Thus the trend towards depicting intelligence in integrated terms is gaining momentum in numerous fields. Integrated intelligence can no longer be dismissed as irrelevant, purely mystical or anachronistic to the current age. This movement is pervasive and profound in its implications. Integrated intelligence cannot simply be incorporated into our map of reality like a new discipline or an emerging field, as artificial intelligence theory or genetic theory have been, for example. These fields reside firmly within the mechanistic reductionist paradigm which legitimates them and elevates them to valorised positions within modernist space. Conversely integrated intelligence is paradigm shaking. It threatens to destabilise the foundations of our maps of the universe. It promises to expand our minds beyond the boundaries of self. And as Einstein once stated, a mind once expanded by a new idea, can never return to its former size.

Notes
1. Possibly Dossey and others categorised here under the “New Age” label would be unhappy with the term. However I use the term because the New Age shares some similarities with the thinkers referred to here, namely:

· A spiritual, metaphysical focus, which often includes acknowledgment of other levels of existence beyond the physical, as well as paranormal phenomena; and possibly non-physical life-forms such as spirits, angels and demons.
· The incorporation of transpersonal themes.
· The acknowledgement of inner worlds and consciousness as crucial or highly significant, within any given discourse.
· Eclecticism – drawing from wide ranges of sources for information and inspiration.

However there are several ways in which the thinkers mentioned here typically differ from popular New Age thinkers:

· They also valorise critical and analytical thinking.
· They have a tendency to rely just as much (or more) on scientific and empirically validated knowledge and research as personal (spiritual) experience.
· Their worldviews and arguments are reflective, self-critical and discursive and (at least in theory) malleable.

Wilber is particularly severe in criticising Romantic, New Age and Jungian writers for failing to make clear the distinction between lower and higher psychic impulses. He calls this error “the pre-trans fallacy”. (Wilber 2000A, pp.244-50)
Wilber believes that average human consciousness is now moving into the vision-logic phase of consciousness evolution. This represents the beginnings of the transcendence of rationality. (Wilber 2000A, p.266-269)

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