Is Spirituality Developmental? The Five Definitions

Wilber's View

Wilber's answer to "does spirituality unfold in stages?" is that the question is underspecified — it depends entirely on which of (at least) five things people mean by "spirituality," and the five don't all get the same answer. Two are straightforwardly stage-like: spirituality as the highest (post-postconventional) reaches of any developmental line, and spirituality as its own separate line in its own right (with its own stage research — meditative traditions East and West, which he argues show real cross-cultural convergence despite surface differences). Two are not: spirituality as an attitude available at any stage (which he thinks is popular but poorly specified — can egocentric love really count as "spiritual"?), and spirituality as peak experience, which by definition is temporary rather than a permanent structural gain.

The sharpest tool he introduces here is the states-versus-structures distinction: states of consciousness are temporary and mutually exclusive (you can't be drunk and sober simultaneously), while structures are cumulative and can coexist (a later structure transcends and includes the one before it, the way molecules include atoms without erasing them). This is doing real work beyond the spirituality question — it's his general answer to why a peak experience of a "higher" state doesn't by itself make someone a more developed person, since only the conversion of a temporary state into an enduring structural trait counts as development.

What's worth pressing on: the "separate developmental line" definition is where his own model has the most riding on it, since that's the one he can point to actual research charts for (see Chart 6) — but it's also the definition most vulnerable to the charge that he's selecting which contemplative traditions count as evidence and reading a Wilberian stage sequence back into them, rather than the sequence emerging independently. He addresses a version of this objection (critics accusing him of over-reading Buddhist/ Vedantic parallels) in the surrounding text, but doesn't fully resolve whether the five-definitions framework is a neutral typology or already tilted toward validating his own stage model.

In Integral Psychology

Here are the common definitions: (1) Spirituality involves the highest levels of any of the developmental lines. (2) Spirituality is the sum total of the highest levels of the developmental lines. (3) Spirituality is itself a separate developmental line. (4) Spirituality is an attitude (such as openness or love) that you can have at whatever stage you are at. (5) Spirituality basically involves peak experiences, not stages. — Integral Psychology, ch. 10

In this usage, spirituality (or this particular aspect of spirituality) definitely follows a sequential or stage-like course, because it is, by definition, the post-postconventional stages in any of the developmental streams. — Integral Psychology, ch. 10

Spirituality is itself a separate developmental line. Obviously in this case spiritual development would show some sort of stage-like unfolding, since a developmental line, by definition, shows development. — Integral Psychology, ch. 10

We can't easily say that the requisite attitude is love, because love, according to most research, tends (like other affects) to unfold from egocentric to sociocentric to worldcentric modes; and therefore this attitude is not fully present at all of the levels, but rather itself develops (do we really want to call egocentric love "spiritual"?). — Integral Psychology, ch. 10

Moreover, states, unlike structures, are mostly incompatible. You cannot be drunk and sober at the same time. (This is quite unlike structures, which, because they transcend and include, can coexist: cells and molecules can both exist together, the one embracing the other—which is why growth and development occur by way of structures, not states, although the latter are significant in themselves and can have a direct impact on development.) — Integral Psychology, ch. 10

Those are five of the more common definitions of spirituality. The conclusion: not everything that we can legitimately call "spirituality" shows stage-like development. Nonetheless, many aspects of spirituality turn out, upon closer inspection, to involve one or more aspects that are developmental. — Integral Psychology, ch. 10

See Also

• Waves and Streams — the levels/lines framework these five definitions are all variations on.
• The Psychic, Subtle, Causal, and Nondual — the transpersonal stages definitions (1) and (3) point to.
• The Proximate Self and the Distal Self — how temporary peak states (definition 5) get "metabolized" into permanent structural gains for the self.
• The Pre/Trans Fallacy — a closely related trap: mistaking a pre-rational state for a trans-rational one.