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Chapter 1 - Integral Methodological Pluralism
Contributor: Ken Wilber 
The eight methodologies, which, taken together, compose Integral Methodological Pluralism, are of immense importance to the idea of Integral Spirituality. The world’s religious traditions have not fared well in the face of attacks from modernity (which demanded evidence for their subjective claims) and postmodernity (which pointed out their ignorance of intersubjectivity). Having been thoroughly deconstructed by modernity and postmodernity, the traditions can now be reconstructed via Integral Methodological Pluralism, allowing them to take their rightful and important place in the future.
The stunning insight of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality is that there are four irreducible dimensions to every occurrence. In seeking to construct a theory of everything, Ken Wilber made a distinction between the individual and the collective, and one between the interior and the exterior. Taken together, the individual/collective and interior/exterior axes result in four dimensions, or what are commonly referred to as “the four quadrants.”
In the course of beginning to write Volume 2 of the Kosmos Trilogy, Wilber made another critical distinction. Any occurrence can further be viewed from the inside or from the outside. For example, the interior of the individual (or the upper-left quadrant) can be viewed from the inside, via introspection, or from the outside, via structuralism. The same occurrence, viewed via two different methodologies, results in two completely different views.
In fact, the four quadrants, viewed from the inside and from the outside, result in eight irreducible methodologies for gaining reproducible knowledge. Without exception, every observation ever made was done so by means of one of them.
The eight methodologies, which, taken together, compose Integral Methodological Pluralism, are of immense importance to the idea of Integral Spirituality. The world’s religious traditions have not fared well in the face of attacks from modernity (which demanded evidence for their subjective claims) and postmodernity (which pointed out their ignorance of intersubjectivity). Having been thoroughly deconstructed by modernity and postmodernity, the traditions can now be reconstructed via Integral Methodological Pluralism, allowing them to take their rightful and important place in the future.
Applying the principle of Ockham's razor, Jim Roi asks whether the Upper Right and Lower Right quadrants might be collapsed into the "Science" of the Big Three. Ken relates his own experience in wrestling with the question, and how he came to the conclusion that they are irreducible....
John Baker asks Ken for a "transmission" on what 4th-person, 5th-person and 6th-person perspectives really mean. Does one need to be at a turquoise altitude to really understand these perspectives? And how far down does the rabbit hole go?
Beth Richard, quoting Ken from page 54 of Integral Spirituality Chapter 1, IMP, "...holon's address = its altitude + perspective...all of this is important because it relates to being able to "prove" the existence of anything, whether a rock, a proposition, or God...," asks Ken if this can be related to the Pauli Exclusion Principle in quantum mechanics. Can two events have the same address?
Yotam Schachter begins by quoting Ken: "while contemplative prayer or vipassana might free you from your ego, it will not free you from your culture, whose prejudices remain in the hidden intersubjective background never brought to consciousness and thus never transcended." So if meditation helps you grow in the values and cognitive lines, wouldn’t this process help you shed your cultural biases? And if not, what can free you from your intersubjective background?
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