06 Installation 1 - Accelerating Your Evolution - Q&A - Fall 2014

Installation 1 – Question & Answer
Accelerating Your Evolution

Ken: Hey, guys. It's Ken.
Ryan: Hey, Ken. How you doing?
Ken: How are you?
Ryan: I'm good.
Ken: Good. Excellent, buddy. Let me ask a favor. When you read the questions, just
give me the number as well.
Ryan: Okay, great. I'll go through them pretty much in order. For everybody listening to
the call, this is the Q&A and installation 1. We just started getting into the meat
of Ken's operating system levels. If you want to have any of your questions asked
on the call and any of the future calls, you can email us at
questions@superhumanos.net. Again, that’s questions@superhumanos.net.
Anytime you have any questions that the course, just make sure to send us an
email and let us know, and we'll try to ask Ken live, like we're going to do right
now.
Without further ado, Ken, let's get started with question 1. The first question is
from Ami, I think that’s how you pronounce it. She says, "Ken, for me the most
painful part of waking up and growing up to integral awareness has been talking
to close friends and family who are at what I perceive to be lower levels of
development. Could you explain more on how to talk to different levels? I
understand the basics, but certain scenarios it gets sticky. What if someone is
suffering and asks your advice, or what if you need their fiscal support, of
someone like your dad who's center of gravity may be orange and can't even see
the life that you're trying to build."

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"My hunch is that it'll be less painful and make more sense when I'm out of the
differentiation phase and have included more, but any pointing-‐out instructions
you can give?"
Ken: Yeah. This is a great question and certainly one of the more difficult issues that
comes about from the simple fact that human beings develop. It's not something
that’s immediately obvious. We tend to think, for example …
We've been talking recently about taking the role of other, and as I point out in
the last little Q&A session we had, you're not born with the capacity to take the
role of other. That’s actually doesn’t start to develop until around age 5 or 6. I
gave examples of what happens if you take a 3-‐ or 4-‐year-‐old and put them in a
position where they're supposed to take the role of other. They simply can't do
it.
The same is true with development. We go through all these developmental
levels, and it's just not obvious that we're not born with these, but we're not.
These things develop, and one of the difficulties is that there are, indeed, lower
and higher levels of virtually all of our intelligences. This is a problem certainly
for talking to people that are at lower levels. Remember there are also people
that are at higher levels. They're going to be having the same trouble with you
that you're having with somebody at lower level. There's almost always higher
levels.
Evolution seems to just keep going on forever. You can get to some very, very
high levels of development, but you can probably never get to something that
would be the highest level, because sooner or later there's going to be another
even higher level emerge.
It seems to be built into existence as we know it. It's not one of the ways you
would think an ideal existence would be built. In A Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy, there are two fictitious book titles, both of which are very funny and
that’s why they were put in there. One of the titles is, Who is This God Person,
Anyway? and another title is Fifty-‐Three More of God's Biggest Mistakes.
You sometimes think that development has to go into that category of: Fifty-‐
Three More of God's Biggest Mistakes because it's also the greater intelligence
and greater wisdom and greater capacity comes at the highest levels; but there
are fewer people at the highest levels. It means intrinsically that there are more,

to put it crudely, sypider,dumber, less intelligent people than there are smart,
competent, capable, wise people, simple because there are fewer people at the
higher levels. It seems exactly the backwards way to do it, but it has to happen
that way because each higher level transcends and includes the previous level.
There's always going to be fewer people at those higher levels.
This is about, in terms of talking to somebody that is at a lower level, when you
start studying levels of development, as we are, and the you start studying
multiple intelligences, as we will be, and realize that every one of them goes
through these same levels, then you realize pretty much that you can't escape
this lower and higher situation. The same is true for states of consciousness as
well, as we'll see.
It's truly one of the most difficult aspects of dealing with development, the fact
that some, maybe many are at lower levels. You can't really say this to them. If
you're talking with, say, a fundamentalist Southern Baptist who believes every
single thing in the Bible is literally true, you can't say, "Well, don’t worry. That’s
just a stage you're going through." A fundamentalist Muslin, a fundamentalist
Jew, a fundamentalist Hindu believes the exact same thing about their religion,
and each of them equally believes their religion is the one and only true religion
and real word of God in the whole world. They can't all be right, can they? "Don’t
worry. You'll grow out of this sooner or later and will be able to take a larger
view." If you say that to any one of them, they’ll go berserk on you. You can't
even point out why you're having the problem. Seriously, without being
incredibly rude and arrogant to some degree, you can't really look at somebody
and say, "I can't communicate with you because it's over your head."
There are a few things you can do if you find yourself discussing something with
somebody who is clearly at a lower level. First, you can't argue them out of their
viewpoint. Logic, reason, facts, evidence won't change their mind. This is simply
something they have to grow through, and it will take a few years for that to
happen.
Robert Keegan, perhaps the most famous developmental psychologist at Harvard
and a member of Integral Institute, by the way, has estimated on average it
takes a typical adult about 5 years to move through a major level of
development. If somebody is two levels lower than you and you're arguing
evolution, and just for the heck of it let's say you're at green and they're at
amber, the only way you're going to get them to agree with you is to wait 10

years [inaudible 00:08:36] one way. That development has to occur. You can't
argue them out of it.
Argument is out, and if they press you to agree, or push you to agree with their
fundamentalist viewpoints, for example, you might say something like, "Well, St.
Ambrose said, 'Whatever is true by whomsoever it is said is from the Holy Spirit.'
I believe God spoke to all peoples, and the result in some places was Buddhism,
and other places was Hinduism, and elsewhere was Christianity, all from the Holy
Spirit."
It's hard for them to disagree with that straight out because you’ve already said,
"All truth comes from the Holy Spirit," part, which they believe. They probably
haven't thought about the Hinduism and Buddhism part, but at least they're
from the Holy Spirit, too, so they’ll probably stop pressuring you.
You definitely can't get in an argument and totally. You definitely want to avoid
that.
Second, as much as possible, you can focus on those items that we have in
common as human beings. In many cases these will be largely simply the lowest
common denominators, or the lower stages that most adolescents and young
adults have already passed through like infrared physiological needs, or red
safety and security needs, so topics like how hard the job market is, or what an
unsafe world it is, or how crime is rising, or global terrorism, the Ebola virus, and
so on.
Third, you can focus on those common areas that many humans are concerns
with, or want, at no matter what stage, things like, "Do you have any kids?"
"How do you like you job?" "Are you in a relationship or married?" "What kind of
car do you drive?" and so on.
Four: In the example that you use about having a dad, an orange, and you need
his financial support but he can't even see, let alone understand, what you want
it for. What you want to do here, and this is true generally with anybody at a
lower level, the key here is to translate your desires into as many orange terms
as possible. Let's say we have a typical situation where dad is pure Mr.
Businessman. Profit and money is all that counts, but ever since you were young
you wanted to be an artist and you're pretty good at it. You need money for art
school. The general chances of your dad going for that are pretty close to zero.

The idea is to language it as much as possible in orange terms. You might say
something like, "Dad, I know you’ve always emphasized the importance of being
able to make a living, and I know you think that because I love art I just don’t
care about that; buy that’s not true. I really have been thinking about it. I do
have some genuine artistic talent. I think even you would agree. I've been doing
some research on what type of artistic skills will be in demand in the coming
years. It turns out that graphic engineering, graphic artistry, will have a very
strong market. It looks like I could make a fairly decent living as a graphic artist.
I also researched schools, and it turns out that right here in town the McKenzie
School of Practical Art has a whole range of art courses, including graphic design,
and all sorts of practical art skills. I'd really like to get a degree there. I think it
would be the best use of my talents to make a decent living. I'd like to talk to you
about that.
Of course, you could take any number of courses at that art school and create
your own degree, and you wouldn't have to necessarily focus all of it on graphic
design; but these are terms your dad would at least listen to.
This is just a really simplified example of a standard rule for developmental
levels, which is language what you are trying to say I the terms and values of the
level you are talking to. That’s your best chance at getting your message across.
Finally, definitely remember that a person's level of development is just one
aspect of their overall being. Of course, in some cases, it's by far the most
important, and it has to be carefully considered and taken into account; but a
human is also, and will be talking more about this later so you don't have to
worry about this now, but a person is also an authentic manifestation of spirit,
itself.
Both of you share the same ultimate self, the same ultimate spirit, so in a sense
you're talking with yourself. The more you focus on that true self, the more any
person becomes acceptable in the deepest sense.
Like I said, we'll be particularly talking about that part later, so hang in there for
that; but this is a really good question because it does focus on the very real
difficulty of the fact that we do have these levels of development, and every
intelligence we have, and again, we'll be going through at least 8 of them, every
single one of those, develops through these levels.

Learning about these levels, learning the general characteristics that they have,
and then languaging what you're trying to say, what you're trying to
communicate, in the terms and values of the level that you are communicating
with is the best chance of getting something like that across. It's definitely an
important issue.
Ryan: Ken, thank you. That was very helpful. That actually was really resonant for me
because I had a very similar process with my own dad as I discovered this stuff.
Really one of the things that you point is how the integral state of development
is where we start embracing all of the perspectives of the lower stages of
development. When I could start looking through my dad's eyes, I really started
to be able to have a much deeper and more connected relationship with him.
Ken: Great.
Ryan: It's been great. Thank you for that. Let's move on to the next question. This one
is from Laura from Berlin, and she asks … This is actually … I really like this
question a lot, because we get this a lot. "Can we help a person to develop or to
accelerate his or her development? Same for society. Can a society be supported
in its path to development? If so, how? Is it a relevant question for all
professions dedicated to personal development: psychologists, coaches, spiritual
leaders, etc." There must be an effective way of approaching these questions.
Ken: This is probably the single most asked question for developmentalists that they
ever face. Of course, it's a common and obvious question to ask. Clearly that’s
something that we would want to know.
Developmentalists have spent decades thinking and researching this topic.

Unfortunately, the results really aren't that good. The techniques and practices
that they’ve come up with are not terribly effective, they don’t work that well,
and they know this. They're aware of this. It's a constant question on
developmentalists' minds. The major reason that they haven't been able to
develop very effective methods, in my opinion, is that they aren't integral.
They actually approach only one or two major areas of human growth. They
don’t deal with all quadrants and all levels and all lines and states and types and
types and shadow; but all of these are involved in growth and development. All
of them are required. All of them have something to do with that. Anything less

than integral would be expected to not work very well, which is exactly what we
see in this area already.
That integral approach is exactly what we are doing in the superhuman
operating system. We are and will be addressing all quadrants, making sure
we're aware of all of them and using all of them, and we'll be explaining exactly
what these things mean as we get there. Again, no need to worry about trying to
remember them now.
We're addressing the full spectrum of levels, at least 8 levels running from
subconscious to self-‐conscious to super-‐conscious. We're addressing over half a
dozen lines, or multiple intelligences, and making sure all of these are active and
growing. We'll be dealing with the major states of consciousness including the
highest altered states leading to enlightenment and awakening, and covering the
types such as masculine and feminine so we don’t fall into the one-‐size-‐fits-‐all
problem.
This integral approach, which is truly inclusive and comprehensive, covers all the
major areas we are aware of that are involved in transformation. By the way, this
is the only approach that does so. All the other approaches deal with just a few
of those dozens of areas, which is why so few of them are really very effective.
This might seem a little complex, talking about quadrants and levels and lines
and states and types; but point is: we already have all of these areas present and
already operating. We're not making these things up, quadrants, levels, lines,
states, types, shadow. They're already there. They're already functioning.
They're already present. We're just the first to take all of them into account.
We'll be doing this slowly and carefully. We don’t want anyone to feel
overwhelmed or flooded with too much material. In each of 10 weeks we'll focus
on a particular crucial area, make you aware of it, and most important, get it
activated and growing and developing in you and show you how to do that.
The result is a path of transformation that actually works. From what evidence is
available, we have the highest rate of successful transformation of any approach
available, and that’s because we touch all the bases.
As this integral approach becomes more and more known, it's adopted in more
and more disciplines. There are right now, today, over 60 different human

disciplines using this integral approach, the same one that you'll be learning in
the coming 10 weeks or so. Hang onto your hat. You're in for a real ride. It will,
indeed, we believe, be one that is effective. If you end up working in the field of
being a change agent or a coach or therapist or any sort of consulting agent,
then you can adapt these dimensions to whatever the particular discipline is that
you happen to be working on and will very likely have the same positive results
there as well. That’s what we are hopefully going to be seeing.
Ryan: Yeah, Ken, thank you. One of the things I think that will become apparent more
as we go throughout the course is that, for a change agent to be able to help
people, it's not just getting people helping others get to a higher level. There's
other lines of development, there's states of consciousness, there's dealing with
shadow issues. For people to have better lives, it's not necessarily just growing
up through levels that they need to do in order to improve their lives. It may be a
different area.
As psychologists and coaches, learn all of this stuff to get a toolkit, to actually be
able to address the area that is the leverage for whoever they're working with.
Ken: Exactly.
Ryan: Yeah, it's very cool. Thank you, Ken. Let's jump to a bigger global-‐scale question
that came in from Amy, #3. She said, "If the world's conflicts come from value
conflicts and all of the world's wars come from value conflicts, does everybody
on the planet that is adult have to get to the integral stage of development in
order to end these global problems?"
Ken: This is a good question, and it's also important. It's not a matter of all or nothing.
It's more a matter of percentages. I'll try and explain what I mean by that.
Remember, for example, that everybody is born at square one. Everybody is
born at infrared and begins their growth from there, from infrared archaic, to
magenta magic, to red magic mythic, to amber mythic, to orange rational, to
green pluralistic, to turquoise integral, and every major intelligence that we have
moves through those same general levels.
They can do so at a different rate. This isn't just a [clunk and grind 00:26:01], one
ladder and everybody's moving up the ladder at the same 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 stage
kind of thing. It's every capacity you have goes through those levels but at a

different rate. Everybody's overall growth pattern is completely unique. No two
people go through the same growth pattern at all.
What that also means is that any culture and every culture is a different
percentage of people whose various lives are at different levels. If we just talk in
general, right now, the numbers I'm about to give will vary depending on exactly
how they're measured. They don’t add up to exactly 100% because there's a lot
of overlap. Right now about 5% of the population is at magenta magic, about
10% at red power or magic mythic, 30-‐40% at conformist or amber mythic,
about 50% at orange rational, about 20% of green pluralistic, and about 5% at
integral.
Right now only 5% of the world's population is at integral, and so only about 5%
could actually adopt a truly peaceful and inclusive stance; and by the time we
have 50% of the people at integral or higher, there will still be around 20% at
green, probably about 15% at orange, about 15% at amber, and so on.
It's not possible to have 100% of a society at any single given level, including
integral, and again, because everybody is born at square one and has to develop
through the whole spectrum one band at a time in whatever intelligence they're
moving through. We're going to get this whole percentage layer cake in every
culture that we have.
What does happen is that society's center of gravity, it's most common, most
average, most defining level, that can indeed grow higher and higher as
evolution continues.
There was a time, for example, when the world was mostly just magical, tribal;
and then it moved to where the larger percentage was at religious mythic,
empires. Then with the Western enlightenment, the central level moved up to
orange rational, and that became the defining level of Western European
culture, even though, again, a fair number of people were not at orange rational,
they were still at lower levels, still had this layer cake; but the defining central
level became the orange rational level.
Today, in developed countries, it's somewhere between orange and green, but
all of these are still first tier. That means still capable of wars, whether culture
wars or actual physical wars. That’s what we see around the world, basically
everywhere. That’s what we see in this country with our culture wars: amber

religion versus orange science very green postmodernism. Those are the three
main value sets that are at war in our culture wars, and each of those three, as
all first-‐tier levels do, think that their truth and values are the only correct truth
and values in existence and everybody else is wrong.
Orange science thinks that amber religion is infantile and that green
postmodernism and the sensitive self and all of that is just "woo-‐woo," and of
course, green postmodernism, green pluralism, thinks that both science and
religion are nothing but social constructions so there's not any real difference
between them anyway. Of course, amber religion, mythic, literal religion thinks
that both orange science and green postmodernism are going to burn in hell
forever, so who cares what they think. That’s our country. We're supposedly
fairly advanced, fairly evolved, and we still have these culture wars going on.
Of course, around the world where certain countries' centers of gravity are even
lower, where they're at magenta magic or at red power, magic mythic, or at
amber fundamentalist, then it's more likely that the wars that you're going to
find there are actual physical wars. This, of course, happens that the Mideast and
injection several other parts of the world where the culture's center of gravity
are at some of those more junior levels.
By the time more than 50% of the world's population has moved to integral or
higher, we would probably see moves to start creating a world federation,
something like a world federation. There will still be pockets of culture at red
and at amber, for example, and these will still fight. These will still get involved in
actual warfare, unless something like the world federation simply outlaws all
war. They would have to back that up with a universal corps of cops. The world
federation would have to have a military force, itself, that could enforce its laws.
That’s going to be one of the difficulties in creating a world federation, or course,
is that the countries that have power now are not going to want to release it.
That’s one of the things that will be dealt with as evolution continues, and we'll
eventually see how that works out.
The general point is that the higher the percentage of the world's population
that reaches integral, then the less warfare we'll see of basically any variety,
whether culture wars or actual physical wars. It will never 100%. We simply have
to track the percentages and see where they are in that overall layer cake.

It's an important question because it points to the fact that wars aren't caused
just by the standard things that they're always blamed on, by a grab for land or
money or food or goods or property. They're also caused by interior levels of
consciousness and values development. That’s a very important cause of
warfare.
Of course, at the lower levels, the warfare tends to be more aggressive, more
violent, more likely to involve actual physical aggression. Then as we move up
the levels and the basic individual needs, say if we even use Maslow's needs
hierarchy, at the lower levels of physiological needs: food, sex, water, or safety
needs, power and control, then you're more likely to find actual warfare
occurring at those levels.
During humankind's history, when we were basically at those levels, that’s when
we saw more warfare than at any other time. Steven Pinker's book on The Better
Angels or Our Nature, he demonstrates how in every era of human development
violence has gone down. That means physical violence. What happened as we
shifted up to higher needs and moved away from physiological needs, and safety
needs, and so on, and moved more into religious and business and economic
needs, then our warfare started to shift to those levels.
That’s essentially what we have in the developed world today is economic
warfare where not only nations but particularly different multinational
corporations are at each other's throats, each trying to win that business war
through intense competition.
As we grow and evolve and develop into higher levels, then what we are fighting
over, the cause of our war, likewise becomes subtler and subtler and subtler.
Suddenly we hit second gear. We hit integral, and there's what Graves called,
"That magnificent leap in meaning." All of a sudden the very desire for warfare
tends to be replaced with desires for cooperation; and desires that, at first tier
Maslow called "deficiency needs," we have needs because we lack something,
get replaced at second tier, or integral levels, with what Maslow called "being
needs," which means motivation driven by a sense of abundance or a sense of
overflowing.
It looks like, although this is still open to actual decision, but it does look like, if
you believe the technology people and the idea of a coming singularity, that
somewhere within the next 30 or 40 years, if there is a technological singularity,

that it would in effect create technologies that will, in a sense, end deficiency
anywhere simply because the means of creating virtually anything that we want
will become incredibly inexpensive.
We even have Xerox machines today that will produce 3-‐dimensional objects.
You can actually … We're right on the edge of being able to take … Let's say if
you have a bad liver, then taking just a small slice of healthy liver, putting it on
the Xerox machine, and out comes a new liver, literally. That’s put in your body,
and in essence your lifespan, of course, would expand by a hundred years easily.
The same thing could happen with whatever you wanted, whether it was
material to build a house in Hawaii or whatever.
Even if we have those techniques, and you have somebody and we're producing
that kind of abundance, physical abundance, but you have somebody who's still
at, let's say, red, the power, safety, drive level, that person will want nothing
more than to take over somebody else. They’ll want nothing more than
operating table control. The only thing that they’ll be motivated by is power, and
if they don’t get it they won't be happy.
We can't just rely on the technological and material argument that as soon as
everybody has enough food, enough water, enough shelter, etc., that everybody
will be happy and we'll all love each other. It's simply not true. We have to have
an interior development that matches that exterior capacity or we will never
have a peaceful humanity, ever. That’s the only thing that can help make people
happy, is to get them at stages of development that are inclusive and
comprehensive and capable of embracing whatever abundance is available.
Otherwise, abundance won't make the person happy. It won't work.
That’s why, again, we need an integral approach, not only to our own growth
and development, how to make ourselves happy, but how to make the world
happy. We're going to have to take an integral approach to the world's health
and happiness or we're not going to have health and happiness anywhere in the
world, ever.
That’s certainly something that we keep in mind as we adopt these integral
approaches.

Ryan: Wow, Ken, thank you. That was a really very rich answer. I hope Amy is satisfied.
That was very helpful. Also, I just want to highlight something, be we did have
another question come in about whether or not it's just people at different levels
fighting with each other or if people within the same level fight.
I know that people, as you were saying, at the lower levels of development, tend
to be in physical warfare between their in group and anybody outside of their in
group, so religious war. It doesn’t really matter if they're all in the amber level of
development, as long as they have different world views about how to interpret
things they’ll fight about it.
Also, Ken, there are two questions that just came in on Facebook that I think
would be really good to ask right now. One of them came from Terese in
Minneapolis, and she said, "I struggle with thinking about the possibility that this
whole model is egotistical, to say that we all develop to these levels and we are
at these higher levels, the people on this platform."
Can you speak to that? I know that I've heard you talk about it before.
Ken: Sure. It's a good question, and it comes in a lot. Let me first say that these ideas
aren't based on just notions that somebody made up. In other words, these
aren't simply my ideas and I've decided that we can arrange people in this order,
and that this is the way things should go, and that because I want it this way that
this is how it should it be; and of course, I'm at the highest level.
That’s not where these ideas come from. These ideas, just to give a quick
example, we have Carol Gilligan, for example, very well known feminist, wrote a
book called, In a Different Voice where she pointed out that men and women
tend to think and reason in different terms and with different values, that men
tend to think in hierarchical terms and in terms of rights and justice and
autonomy, and women tend to think more in non-‐hierarchical or relational
terms, in terms of relationship, care, and concern.
In that book, In a Different Voice, that’s what she was saying is that men and
women speak in a different voice. They reason differently.
The feminists took this to mean that, since men are the only ones involved in
hierarchies, and all hierarchies are bad, that therefore the patriarchy is the cause
of everything that’s bad; but Gilligan made a second point in that book, and that

point was studiously overlooked by the feminists and pretty much everybody
else. Her second point was that women's non-‐hierarchical thinking, itself,
develops through four hierarchical stages. Those were her terms, "hierarchical
stages."
This is because there are two types of hierarchies: there are dominating, power-‐
driven hierarchies like the caste system of systems of oppression or slavery or
something like that; but there's also growth hierarchies where people grow
through levels to more and more mature levels. According to Gilligan, she did
research on women's moral development, and she found that women go
through four stages. Again, these are her results of research. She just didn’t
make this up. The four stages for her:
Stage 1 she called selfish, and that is where the woman cares only for herself and
doesn’t care about anybody or anything else. In integral theory we also call that
egocentric.
Her second stage she called care, because the woman can start to care for
people other than just herself. This means she can care for groups, not all groups
but at least some groups: her family, her tribe, her nation, maybe her religion,
something like that. She can begin to care for groups. Integral theory also calls
that ethnocentric.
Her third stage she called universal care, which is all people. That means caring
for all groups, regardless of race, color, sex, or creed. That’s moving from me …
Integral theory, by the way, calls that stage world-‐centered. We've gone from
egocentric to ethnocentric to world centric, or from me to us to all of us.
Her fourth and highest stage she simple called integrated, and that’s where both
men and women integrate the contrasexual attitude in themselves, so women
integrate masculine and men integrate feminine.
Those are four stages. That’s what her research found. She didn’t say, "I just
want to believe this." That’s the way it is. She actually found research for this.
By the way, not everybody is at the highest level in that scheme. The majority of
people are at stage 1 and stage 2: egocentric and ethnocentric. That’s true,
incidentally, for men and women. Over 70% of the world's population is at
ethnocentric or lower, which is scary.

We have now over a dozen multiple intelligences, and we have probably close to
hundred models: East, West, premodern, postmodern, dealing with these stages
of development. What's so amazing, I included charts with 100 of these models
in them in a book called Integral Psychology. What's so amazing is that, with all
of those models, over a hundred of them, almost all of them agree to the same
essentially 6-‐8 basic levels of development.
If you look at the stages the way that they outline them, you can see the
similarities. It's pretty obvious. They have different names for them and there
are some slight differences and so on, but it's very clear that every major
researcher looking at human growth and development, who has come up with a
developmental model, has come up with these 6-‐8 or so major stages.
The point about that is that those stages are continuing to unfold.
Back around 500,000 years, and humanity only humanity only had the first two
of those stages available to it. We see no evidence of there are any higher stages
at all. As humanity continued its own evolution, higher stages kept coming into
existence.
Today we are … I don’t know anybody at the simply highest level, which is in
Aurobindo's system and in my system is called supermind. I don’t know anybody
who's at that stage simply all the time. I don’t know anybody. We're certainly not
saying that. The vast number of people are at much lower levels.
One of the things that we are interested in is that there's this huge jump from
first to second tier. The first tier is essentially the first 6 of those 6-‐8 levels, and
then second tier is essentially the next 2 or so major levels.
Sometimes we talk about a their tier, which is a few even higher levels, but very
few people are at those. It's this difference between first tier and second tier.
Second tier is the first stage that can accept and see value in stages other than
itself. That’s why most researchers studying these things, many of them actually
called one or more of those levels integral, or integrated. Jean Gebser called it
integral-‐aperspectival. Jane Loevinger called it integrated. Carol Gilligan called it
integrated also.
They say there's about 5% of the population has reached those integrated, or
integral, or second-‐tier levels, and those are very important because they're the

first stages that actually appreciate and include all the other stages and want to
make room for all of them. That’s never happened before. In all of humankind's
history, that hasn’t happened before.
We're not in any way saying that everybody who's interested in this is at the
highest stage of development. There are still several stages that, even if you're a
second tier, they're higher. As I said, I don’t know anybody at simply the absolute
highest level.
It's just not true. We're not saying that.
Second of all, in terms of who's where, we leave this up to evidence. This is just
based on research. It's based on research done now in, that I'm aware of, over
40 different countries. Even Piaget's cognitive stages have been tested on
Amazon rain forest tribes, have been tested on Australian aborigines, on German
factory workers, on Russians, on Mexicans, on Americans. No major exceptions
to his stages have been found in all of those countries.
We're just presenting that evidence. If you want to … You're not allowed to
simply claim you're at a level, anyway. There are tests to help determine in your
dozen different multiple intelligences what level you're at. If you want to know,
go take a test. You're not just simply allowed to say that you're at the highest
level. That’s not how it works.
What we are doing, though, is pointing out the importance of taking this into
account. It's the people that don’t take this into account that aren't helping us
get to higher stages that are loving and peaceful and inclusive and all-‐embracing,
that clearly is a good thing. That’s clearly what we want, if we want peace and if
we want harmony, and if we want human beings treating each other in a loving
and caring way.
It's people that don’t take this into account that are not helping us; whereas, the
people that do are helping us. That’s all we're trying to do is point to real
research, real evidence, and point out the importance of taking it into account.
Ryan: Thank you, Ken. It's really valuable to remember that this is based on research
and this isn't just an idea; and also that this level of development that we're
talking about needing to grow into culturally and individually is one that allows
us to more deeply listen to others and more deeply see the validity of their

perspective rather than butting heads with them and arguing. It's not about
talking down to anybody else or thinking about ourselves as above them, but
really looking for the value in their perspective.
Ken: It's just the opposite. Exactly. It's the opposite. The higher levels are more
inclusive. If you look at Carol Gilligan, you go from only caring about yourself.
That’s the first stage. Then you go to caring about just a group, maybe a religion
or maybe your nation or maybe your tribe, whatever it is, to going to world-‐
centric, universal care, caring about all people regardless of race, color, sex, or
creed. That’s an extremely rare achievement.
Of course that’s what we want. Of course it's better to be at a world-‐centric,
universal caring position that it is to be at a selfish, narcissistic, sexist, or racist
position. That’s what the first two stages are. Of course those aren't something
that are values that you want to aim for.
When we talk about higher levels, we're not talking about levels that exclude
more people. We're talking about levels that include more people. The lower
levels exclude pretty much everybody except themselves. They're exclusive. Not
the higher levels.
What we're looking for is to get to positions that are fully inclusive and include
not only all humans but all sentient beings, regardless of race, color, sex, creed,
or [speakies 00:57:30]. That’s world-‐centric.
Ryan: Yeah, I love this. Tying this back to the first question about someone's dad, I
know that for me, when I started really understanding this and trying to put it in
practice … I do think it is possible for people to use this to become more
egotistical and just to walk around thinking that they're higher developed than
everybody; but that’s not what it's about. That’s not the intention of it.
Ken: That’s a way to misuse it.
Ryan: That’s a way to misuse it, yeah. I know for me that I started being able to really
hear my dad and understand my dad a lot more, and get a lot of value from his
wisdom and his lifetime and everything that he's learned. Even though we have
contrasting values that made us butt heads, when I started listening and looking
for the validity in what he was saying, it started becoming very enlightening for

me. My relationship with my dad has deepened significantly. I'm really grateful
for that.
Ken: The point is at every level, we say, "Every stage is true but partial." There are
truths at every single stage of development. Sometimes we'll pass through
stages relatively quickly, and we don’t absorb all of the wisdom that’s possible
from there. We can learn a lot from people at age stage. That’s one of the things
that we learn as we look at these developmental studies.
Of course, as you pointed out, these developmental levels are only really one
small part of a fully integral model; but it's an important part. It just happens to
be where we're starting with, so our questions are about that.
If people hang in there, they’ll see that there are a whole lot of other areas that
are included, and this is the only one that has to do with levels.
Ryan: I'm looking forward to that. We're going to get into lines next, and that’s going to
help really add some depth to this.
I'm going to jump to question #7 because I think it's really helpful with what
we're talking about right now. This one's from Jason and Jason asks, "How is it
that taking the role of other …" which is the practice that we've been doing and
were assigned from the very beginning, "How is it that taking the role of the
other, even if they're at a lower stage of development than I perceive myself to
be at, can help me in my own growth?"
Ken: This can be stated very simply. Whenever you take the role of other, and it
doesn’t matter how low or high that role might be, but whenever you do that
you're practicing getting some distance from your own self, your own view.
Because of this, it's a miniature practice of transcendence, of moving beyond, of
letting go of your present stage and thus opening to the next higher stage,
whatever it may be.
To take the role of other is to get some distance from yourself, to let go of your
present stage, to open yourself to the next higher stage. This is true throughout
development, bottom to top. It's a good practice at age stage of development.
The last time that we were talking about this, I pointed out the fact that being
able to even take the role of other, to see the world through somebody else's

eyes, is not something you're born with. You can take a child who is, let's say, 4
years old, and take a ball that’s painted red on one side and green on the other.
This is a famous experiment that Piaget actually did. You take that ball and place
it between you and the 4-‐year-‐old child, and turn it around several times so the
child can see that half of it's red and half of it's green. Now the red part is facing
them, the green part is facing you, and then you turn it and the green part is
facing them and the red part's facing them.
Then turn it so that the green part is facing the child, and you, of course, are
looking at the red part. Simply ask the child, "What color are you looking at?"
The child will correctly say, "Green." Then say, "What color am I looking at?" You,
of course, are looking at red. The child will say, "Green." It can't see what you're
seeing. It can't look at the world through your eyes. It can't take your role.
Not only can it not take your role, it certainly can't see you. It certainly can't love
you in any profound or deep sense because it doesn’t even know you. It doesn’t
know how you see the world, how you think, what you're desires are, what you
want, what's important to you, or anything like that.
Take a child who's 7 years old and do the same thing. When you say, "What color
are you seeing?" they say, "Green." You say, "What color am I seeing?" they’ll
say, "Red." It's funny. If you show them a videotape of when they answered,
"Green," the wrong answer, they’ll think you doctored the videotape because
they can never imagine being that stupid. They just don’t believe that they ever,
ever could be that dumb and not get that they were looking at green and you
were looking at red. They’ll actually accuse you of doctoring the videotape if you
show it to them.
That’s learning to take a second-‐person perspective. What many

developmentalists, including Jane Loevinger, who is probably the most famous in
terms of self-‐development, and one of her best-‐known students,
[susankagreater 01:03:56], is, of course, a member of Integral Institute and has
developed to continue extending the higher stages to higher and higher
developmental points.
For Loevinger, each major developmental level adds another perspective. When
you move from red, which is egocentric, first person, can only see my own view,
Carol Gilligan's selfish stage, to amber or being able to take the role of other, or
ethnocentric, or second-‐person perspective, that’s when you start to find the

expansion of human societies from just small tribes to villages and eventually
towns. Some of them had 50,000 people. Of course, large empires started to
develop as well, and all of this was because we could take a second-‐person
perspective.
When we came to the Renaissance, and then into the Western Enlightenment, a
third-‐person perspective emerged. That meant a capacity to see universal
realities and universal patterns. For just that reason, modern science emerged at
that period and not before. At that period, all of a sudden we have modern
physics, modern biology. We have evolutionary theory. We have modern
geology. We have modern chemistry. We have the replacement of monarchy
and aristocracy with representative democracy where every person theoretically
has a vote.
That’s because everybody is considered important regardless of race, color, sex,
or creed, so slavery was outlawed. In a 100-‐year period, from around 1770-‐1870,
every major rational orange country on the face of the planet outlawed slavery.
The first time any [sidle type 01:06:26] has done that in history, including tribes.
Fifteen percent of tribal cultures had slavery.
All of a sudden, with the rational modern stage, we outlawed slavery, we
introduced representative democracy, eventually we gave blacks the vote, we
gave women the vote, minorities got the vote, and so on. All of this came
because of the third-‐person perspective.
With postmodernism, which emerged during the 60s, we added fourth-‐person
perspective.
Evolution, itself, is continuing to gain sets of eyeballs. It's continuing to gain
different viewpoints. More and more views are being included the more
evolution continues. That’s why these developmental studies that track these
interior stages of development are so important, because there's nothing we can
see running around out there, and most of people that just believe in what they
can see, or just believe in scientific materialism, or whatever, just pay attention
to the exterior. They think technology is going to solve everything, and so on.
As we were talking about earlier in terms of abundance, and actually having
people be happy, that’s an interior growth as well, not just an exterior growth,
and interior growth.

An integral approach includes both. We, of course, want to see exterior growth;
but we also want to see interior growth or else we're not really going to make
any fundamental gains at all.
Ryan: Great. Thank you, Ken. That’s why taking the role of other is so important. The
more that we flex our muscle in ourselves, the more we have the ability to take
first, second, third, fourth, and so on.
Let's ground this in real … How we can take it from here and actually go and take
this into our lives. The holidays are coming up, and for those of us in the US we
are going to be sitting around the Thanksgiving table with our families [crosstalk
01:08:57], having to make this real.
I'm going to jump to question #6 which Shelly posted in the Facebook group. She
said, "I was thinking about the upcoming holidays. Holidays are always stressful
for me because I have to be around my amber mythic mother, brother, and
sister. They're all staunch Catholics from the Latin days. I have personally long
transcended that stage of development, and at 13 announced I was no longer
Catholic. I actually announced it to my family, that I'm not a member of their
religion anymore." We're not going to go into great detail, but now her family is
still trying to convert her and praying for her and what have you. She says, "I'm
made to feel uncomfortable because I'm viewed as something of an outcast for
not joining in. Any thoughts here about how to approach our families at
Thanksgiving with all of this insight?"
Ken: This is one of the places where developmental studies can really help. Without
understanding the stages of growth that people go through … By the way, one's
religious beliefs, these have also been researched. Just to name one, James
Fowler did an extremely important series of research. One of the books he
published was called Stages of Faith, and it found again these same basic 6-‐8
major stages that people's belief, religious beliefs, go through. They're
essentially similar to these 6-‐8 stages that all the other intelligences go through
as well.
Understanding those can help you get a sense of where people are coming from.
In some cases, of course, you'll see that they're coming from higher levels that
you are. That doesn’t mean that everything they say is right. Just because
somebody's at a higher level than you doesn’t mean that you're always wrong
and they're always right. You can be at a higher level and get damn near

everything wrong. It just means that you're using much more complex ways of
thinking and you can see more perspectives. It doesn’t mean you get them right.
Higher level doesn’t automatically mean everything is great and lower level
doesn’t automatically mean everything is bad. At this particular stage that Shelly
is talking about is an extremely common stage of religious development. James
Fowler called in mythic literal, and we generally call it mythic. In Jean Gebser's
stages, his version of 6-‐8 stages, he named archaic to magic to mythic to rational
to pluralistic to integral.
We often use those similar kinds of stages. You'll notice that mythic was one of
the names of one of his stages as well. What mythic means here, as in when
Fowler is referring to mythic literal, is not myth in some broad, wonderful,
symbolic sense but just in a concrete literal sense. Moses really did part the Red
Sea. Mary really was a biological virgin when her son, Jesus, was born. God really
did rain locusts down on the Egyptians and so on.
That’s what the mythic literal stage means. Somebody at that stage is generally
going to be fundamentalistic. They're ethnocentric because they're at the
general amber altitude, and so they have a second-‐person ethnocentric stance.
That’s why they believe often that they're part of a chosen people, because it's a
group identity: ethnocentric, identified with a group. In this case, it's the group
of people that accept Jesus as their personal savior.
Again, that’s fine if that’s what a person wants to do; but when they start judging
you because you don’t agree with that, then that’s where you have a right at
least to defend yourself. There are two responses to people that are doing that
to you. One is fairly safe, not likely to cause more trouble but you're going to
have to endure a lot. The second one is to simply realize that these individuals
are indeed coming from a level of development that you, yourself, long ago
outgrew, at least in spiritual intelligence.
There might be some members of the family that in, let's say, mathematical
intelligence, are higher than you; or there's probably at least some people in this
family that are higher in musical intelligence that you are; but when it comes to
spiritual intelligence, if they're all coming from this fundamentalist, amber,
ethnocentric level and you outgrew that, then it's absolutely fair to say that
you're at a higher level of spiritual intelligence development than people
expressing that kind of fundamentalist view are.

If you just realize that and then listen to them with that attitude, you can in
some cases almost develop a kind of compassion for the fact that they're still at
that fairly undeveloped level of spiritual intelligence, and that there are much
higher levels of spiritual relationship that they could be in than they are now.
That’s sad. You just sit and, to the extent you can, smile inwardly at these nuts as
they're trying to tell you what's ultimately true and that you're going to fry in hell
forever for not believing this. That’s the fairly safe path, again, though you have
to endure a lot.
Then there's the risky path. I'm only known a few people that have tried this, but
strangely it worked in each case. I'll just mention it; I'm not necessarily
recommending it. The risky path is to just have it out with them once and for all.
You say something like …
You, of course, want to work this out with a little bit of care. "Look, there are a
dozen major religions around the world, and every single one of them believes
and thinks exactly what you do, that they have the one and only true word of
God and that everybody who doesn’t believe in their God is going to hell forever.
Since 11 out of 12 world religions disagree with you, I'd say your chances of
going to hell are quite high. Since you are very likely hell-‐bound, I want every one
of you to get off my case once and for all. I mean it. I don’t want to hear anything
about this ever again. Period."
As I say, that’s the risky way. Sometimes fundamentalists are driven by power,
and the only thing they’ll respond to is, equally, power. This might let them know
their ongoing efforts to put you in hell aren't working.
Either way, good luck. There's a common saying among therapists that, if you
want to know how much more work you still have to do, just go home and visit
your family.
Good luck to everybody for these coming holidays.
Ryan: I think that’s an important point, especially as we get into more of the course. As
we go back to see our families, it's not just levels conflicts that will happen. Even
if everybody in the same family were all on the same level, there'd be a whole
bunch of other issues that come around the Thanksgiving table.

I just want to add one more suggestion for that. For me, I have a lot of similar
issues with my own family. One of my common refrains is that I don't talk about
politics or religion. I don’t talk about it. When they prompt me on it, or ask me
about it, I say, "I love that you're doing what you're doing with you're lives and
you have your practice, and I don't talk about that."
The other thing is that I ask about what they do to be of service to others. All of
the religions teach something about being of service to others and those are not
as well off, and that’s a really good common ground to talk about how to help
the poor or the disenfranchised.
I just add those two as some suggestions.
Ken: Right. That’s acting on, as we were talking about earlier, the factors that are
common to humans at any stage of development, or almost any orientation. As
you say, service is something that virtually every religion stresses, and at virtually
every stage. It's something that is going to be a nice common denominator that
will not cause as much friction or tension.
The irritating parts with this are simply the parts where the fundamentalist
thinks that they know what's going on, and they think that you disagree with
them, and they're not going to let go until you change your mind. That’s where I
think it can become very frustrating.
It becomes a little bit harder to make nice at that point, but, of course, that’s one
of the safest and basic ways to do it. To the extent that you can attempt to see
them as a manifestation of the same spirit that you are, then you are moving
into more of a state of unity consciousness where you feel an identity with
everything that’s arising, including all of these individuals. You can start to feel
your way into that and have a little bit better luck working with that state than
with a contracted, egoic state.
Ryan: Again, this is where taking the role of other is tremendously helpful as a
foundational practice for all of us.
Ken: Exactly.
Ryan: That’s what I'm going to be doing over the next …

Ken, we have some more questions here, but we're out of time, so I'll save them
for the next call next Saturday.
We have 110 people on the line right now, and it's been absolutely delightful.
Ken: Wonderful. Thank you.
Ryan: On behalf of everybody listening, I also want to express gratitude. We've been
getting so many letter of appreciation for you, Ken.
Ken: Bless you all. Thank you so much.
Ryan: For all of you on the call, if you have any questions going forward, remember to
email us at question@superhumanos.net, or go into the Facebook group and
post from there, SHOS Community 2014. Also, get in there right now and let us
know what came up during this call. It always takes the practice a lot further
when we talk about it in community.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Ken.
Ken: Thank you all. Bye-‐bye.


06 Installation 1 - Accelerating Your Evolution - Q&A - Fall 2014

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Installation 1 – Question & Answer

Accelerating Your Evolution

Ryan: Hey, Ken. How you doing?

Ken: How are you?

Ryan: I'm good.

Developmentalists have spent decades thinking and researching this topic.

It's just not true. We're not saying that.

Ken: That’s a way to misuse it.

That’s learning to take a second-‐person perspective. What many

Good luck to everybody for these coming holidays.

I just add those two as some suggestions.

Ken: Wonderful. Thank you.

Ken: Bless you all. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Ken.

Ken: Thank you all. Bye-‐bye.

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06 Installation 1 - Accelerating Your Evolution - Q&amp;A - Fall 2014

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06 Installation 1 - Accelerating Your Evolution - Q&amp;A - Fall 2014

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Installation 1 – Question & Answer

Accelerating Your Evolution

Ryan: Hey, Ken. How you doing?

Ken: How are you?

Ryan: I'm good.

Developmentalists have spent decades thinking and researching this topic.

It's just not true. We're not saying that.

Ken: That’s a way to misuse it.

That’s learning to take a second-­‐person perspective. What many

Good luck to everybody for these coming holidays.

I just add those two as some suggestions.

Ken: Wonderful. Thank you.

Ken: Bless you all. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Ken.

Ken: Thank you all. Bye-­‐bye.

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06 Installation 1 - Accelerating Your Evolution - Q&A - Fall 2014

06 Installation 1 - Accelerating Your Evolution - Q&A - Fall 2014

That’s learning to take a second-‐person perspective. What many

Ken: Thank you all. Bye-‐bye.