The Concrete Quadrant

Let's take a look at the Upper Right quadrant in the AQAL model given in the last post. (AQAL stands for "All Quadrants, All Levels, All Lines, All States, All Types", or just "All Quadrants, All levels" for short. This is the short hand name for Ken Wilber's Integral Operating System (IOS), which is the name of this philosophical system.)

Quadrants are all about what you believe is real. What do you believe is real?

If you believe that reality can be reduced to nothing but a bunch of atoms, molecules, and electrical impulses zipping around, then you are right! If you believe that all manifestations or feelings or knowledge of God or the Universe or Oneness is nothing other than what your biological brain is capable of experiencing, then you are right!

The Upper Right quadrant says that reality is a concrete scientifically knowable existence. Just like in the other quadrants, there are Stages here too. Quarks make up protons, and neutrons. Protons and neutrons make up atoms, along with electrons. Atoms make up molecules. Molecules make up substances which in turn make up all kinds of stuff as we know it. Planets are in solar systems. Solar Systems are in galaxies, galaxies are in universes. Hell, in today's science there are even theories about clusters of universes! Those are Stages.

The Upper Right quadrant is the exact opposite of the Upper Left, or "I" quadrant. If instead you believe that reality is truly some unknowable mystical existence and that all physical things are really an illusion manifested by this unmanifest reality, then you are looking at it from the perspective of the Upper Left quadrant.

Here's the thing... All the quadrants are right.

Reality (with a capital "R") is made up of all four perspectives simultaneously. However, most people only come from one perspective. That does not make them wrong. That only means they have a part of the whole.

So those "science people" who are extreme in their views of reality and don't believe in any "mystical hoopla" are right. However, they are only partially right. By the same token, the ones who believe that science is a "trick of God to test our faith in what is true" are also right, but again, they are only partially right.