Vertical hierarchy and the invariance principle in four models of consciousness/spirituality

This paper is an invitation to recognize the connecting links between four different models of spirituality or consciousness, ranging from contemporary physics to emerging integral thinking, and to see how such links serve to expand and deepen our notions of what spirituality/consciousness actually is and how it functions in various levels of human endeavour, including clinical practice. I pinpoint and discuss an emerging six-point model of spirituality in the contemporary world of health care as presented in issue 6.2 of Journal for the Study of Spirituality. With a view to relating it to its historical precedents and other disciplines that may be thought at the moment to be irrelevant, tangential or even hostile to it, I point to the Western and East Indian traditions of a stepwise, hierarchical approach to spirituality or consciousness. I go on to study three contemporary vertical models in tandem – one from physics, another from consciousness studies, and the third from integral spirituality – to illustrate not only the basic structure of the model but also the invariance principle, which states that models related to the same core structure can be related to each other despite their lack of the same descriptive language. My intention is to make it easier for the health care community and others to recognize a possible relationship between their own preferred models and those in disciplines that may not currently appear cognate, as well as to enrich and further define themselves with what is offered in those disciplines

Consciousness · Epistemology · Hierarchy · Political science · Sociology · Spirituality · Action Observation and Synchronization · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Representations and Identity

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• Integral psychology

  Ken Wilber•Integral psychology•2000

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