A Short Introduction To Ken Wilber’s AQAL Model

Ken Wilber is a philosopher whose prime concern since the publication of his first book in 1971 (“The Spectrum Of Consciousness”) has been the synthesis and integration of Eastern and Western philosophies and wisdom traditions. Working from the concept that no worldview can be completely wrong and that every worldview must contain elements that are right, he has been building a model that contains the best and truest of every tradition. His thinking has gone through radical developments of the past thirty years in over thirty books.

In any situation, be it consulting within an organisation, coaching and mentoring, leading and managing, teaching and training, we need to pay attention to all elements of the AQAL model if our work is to be truly integral and, hence, effective.

The AQAL Model

 AQAL stands for “All Quadrants, All Levels” but has been extended to include “All Lines, All States, All Types”.

All Quadrants recognises that each worldview is looking through a particular set of eyes when viewing the world and that only when we honour all four perspectives do we get a full view of the world. The four views are:

Individual Interior - the thoughts and beliefs, feelings, emotions and values of the individual.

Individual Exterior - the words, actions and behaviours of the individual.

Social Interior - the beliefs, values and culture of the collective.

Social Exterior – the external structures and systems of the collective.  

All Levels recognises that we are all at different developmental stages with each of these quadrants and that we need to pay attention to our own level of development and also to that of others. If we are not careful what we tend to do is to assume that everyone else is at the same level of development that we are. There are many ways of considering these levels of development; at efa we find that Graves’ Values Model (also known as “Spiral Dynamics”) is one of the best.   

All Lines recognises that there are different skills and aptitudes and that most of us are at very different levels of development within each of these lines. For example, a senior manager may be highly developed in the intellectual and verbal reasoning lines but lower down in the interpersonal line. By helping people to realise where they are in terms of these lines they can start to realise strengths but also areas that they may need to develop.

All States recognises that we can be in different emotional states at any time and that these states affect the ways in which we manifest the levels and lines. NLP has many ways to explore these states (and, in particular, “Core Transformation”), and also to shift and change them where appropriate.

All Types – recognises that within all of the above elements there are different types of people and that we will move through the levels of development, manifest the lines, and feel the states in different ways. There are many ways of exploring typography but we have found that The Enneagram is the best one to explore this aspect of the AQAL Model.