Telling the Story of Development

Susanne Cook-Greuter

Susanne Cook-Greuter is a researcher—and a damn good one at that! You may have noticed her name alongside those of Robert Kegan, Clare Graves, and Jane Loevinger in Ken's new book, Integral Spirituality. She is internationally known as the leading expert in mature ego development and self-actualization; her sentence completion tests are sophisticated enough to tease out the subtle differences between Teal, Turquoise, Indigo, and Violet altitudes of development.

One of the concepts that make an Integral Approach more than a merely two-dimensional map of reality is its deep understanding of the developmental nature of human growth and unfolding. Failing to take into account the developmental aspect of interior growth is to guarantee a profoundly inadequate mode of relating to your fellow man and woman. Susanne is at the leading tip of scholars and researchers actively exploring and documenting this crucial dimension of human experience.

"The whole climate of postmodernism, with its rabid anti-ranking of any sort, made sure they got rid of all hierarchies—and when they did, they also got rid of all growth…."

Susanne has dedicated her life to documenting and understanding how stages of self-identification and growth unfold in individuals, with an eye particularly on the least-understood and least-studied realms of the higher levels of adult development. Expanding upon the work of her mentor and teacher Jane Loevinger, Susanne has empirically demonstrated that there are legitimate stages of development beyond the "Integrated" stage that was the uppermost possibility in Loevinger’s work. Reaching the "Integrated" or, as Susanne calls it, the "Construct-aware" stage is no small feat—and is comparable to other integral and second-tier levels in other systems—but the remarkable fact is that there are even more integral levels than that—levels that begin to take on a distinctly transpersonal or spiritual tenor, transcending and including all that has come before in the development-that-is-envelopment pattern of evolution itself.

Clearly, Susanne’s work is an extremely important facet of both the theoria and praxis of a more Integral Approach to the human condition. In addition to the fascinating details regarding the practical experience of charting these new waters, Susanne and Ken talk about how the heavily postmodern climate of academia and society at large has influenced this work. The truths revealed by a pluralistic and postmodern view are of utmost importance in terms of how we understand the world today, but far too often those views degenerate into boomeritis, pluralitis, and the mean-green-meme—all different names for what is essentially postmodern imperialism and dogmatism, whereby no truths that question a postmodern approach will be tolerated. Indeed, Susanne tells us about the tricky task of explaining to her academic superiors that their postmodern approach was merely a stepping stone to yet further levels of development. But however difficult the going may get, there are definitely pockets of integral and developmental consciousness present—and emerging—in academia, from colleagues at HGSE, to the two graduate-degree programs offered through John F. Kennedy University and the Fielding Graduate University.

Further topics include the difference between "talk" and "walk" (or simply "levels and lines"), why states are exclusionary and stages are inclusionary, why it’s so important to encourage flourishing at every stage of development alongside the invitation to keep growing, how different stages of development responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and why computerizing the Sentence Completion Test (created by Loevinger, and expanded by Susanne) might be the next big step in learning ever-more about the ways we learn and grow.

In a scholarly aside, Ken mentions that for several decades people attempting more integral syntheses knew that both states of consciousness and stages of consciousness were important, but how they related to each other wasn’t entirely clear. Since most Western models of consciousness growth stopped somewhere around vision-logic, centauric, or integral by whatever name, it seemed the natural and logical thing to do to then stack the profound psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual realms explored by the spiritual traditions "on top." As elucidated in Ken’s Integral Spirituality, this got it half right and half wrong. Because states of consciousness are demonstrably available to nearly all human beings regardless of their level of development—because waking, dreaming, and deep-sleep states (the basic realities that spiritual experiences deepen and focus) are part of everyone’s daily existence—putting these state-realms on top was problematic.

But as we said, this move was still intuiting a correct truth, and here’s how: as one grows into the structures or stages of consciousness beyond vision-logic/centauric/integral, it appears that one is naturally forced to objectify the content of these broad states of consciousness. Drawing upon Aurobindo’s levels, Ken explains that as one grows into the Illumined Mind the entire gross-waking world becomes objectified; as one grows into the Intuitive Mind the entire subtle-dreaming world becomes objectified; as one grows into the Overmind one has objectified all gross and subtle form and has constant or at-will access to the Witness; as one grows into the Supermind even the Witness yields to ever-present radiant nondual Suchness, with no objects—or subjects—to be found anywhere. A very important kind of mastery of states of consciousness is indeed "on top" of the developmental scale, but it’s equally important to remember that these profound states of consciousness can be "mastered" and entered consciously at nearly any stage of development—which is why it’s possible, for example, for a "fully enlightened" Zen Master to be shockingly ethnocentric, xenophobic, and militaristic. To learn more about the "two axes of Enlightenment"—states and stages—see Integral Spirituality.

Not only is Susanne a founding member of Integral Institute, she is also one of our most popular seminar trainers, receiving some of the highest scores of any of our teachers. A perfect example of why higher development is an increase in one’s ability for care, compassion, and inclusivity, we heartily invite you to join us in this exploration of where we are today, and who we might become tomorrow….