There's 4 sides to this story....

So we talked about the development of a single individual along a spiritual line. But wait a minute.... isn't that a bit self-centered? All about "me", "myself", and "I"? You bet! Don't you think there's more to the story than that? Like what about the rest of the world's existence and development?

This is where the term "quadrants" come in. It is a basic principle in Integral philosophy or an integral approach to anything.

When you talk about yourself, or "I", that is one perspective. There's words to describe yourself in most languages, e.g. "I", "me", "mine", "myself"... etc. There are also words to describe the person you are talking to, right? Languages use words like "you", "your", "yours", "yourself" for that. "I" is first person, and "you" is second person.

So right there, there's another possible perspective.

Then of course, you can talk about "us". If you and I are speaking, then "We" understand each other, and "we" feel this way about something. There is a collective plural "we" happening there. In other words, "you" + "I" equals "We". "We" is first person plural.

It's trivial, but stay with me.

Finally, "We" can talk about some other object or person, a third person "it". The third person "it" can also be plural, i.e. "them" or "a bunch of its".

So, in all, there are four perspectives to everything. There are four facets to existence.

The four perspectives, "I", "It", "We", and "Its" can be laid out in four quadrants, like below:




So, thinking back, the spiritual line of development is a line that only exists in the Upper Left quadrant, the "I" quadrant. It's only part of the story! The Upper Left quadrant only deals with interior things inside the individual.

I'll spend a little bit of time talking about each of the other quadrants now. If you look on the diagram, you will notice that the "I" and "It" quadrants deal with the individual, and the "We" and "Its" quadrants deal with the collective. Also, the left side deals with internal things, inside of people, and the right side deals with external things, i.e. outside of people.

Thanks to wisdomspace.net for the graphic on quadrants.