The Biosocial Self

Wilber does not draw up a table for this stage. Instead, he says:

"The general dividing line between the mature and socially-adapted ego and the authentic centaur (using that italicized term as existentialists do) - is what I call the "Biosocial Bands." "Bio-" denotes "body" (typhon) and "social" denotes "membership" and "membership concepts" - thus the biosocial band represents the upper limit of membership-cognition and gross bodily orientations, beyond which lie those realms of being which transcend conventional, egoic, institutional, and social forms-as indicated schematically in (the following figure):

By the same token, those realm. of self and being which lie beyond the biosocial bands also tend to be trans-verbal, trans-conceptual, and trans-social. The interested reader will find the "Biosocial Bands" listed in all the appropriate Tables and Figures in this volume; for simplicity's sake, however, I will not dwell on this transitional plane, except to point it out-the only item I wish to emphasize...is that there is a total world of difference between the pre-social being and the trans-social being, between those who have not yet arrived at the membership-stages and those who now start to transcend them and move beyond the biosocial realm. Because both pre-social and trans-social are a-social, the two have been horrendously confused by orthodox psychology, especially psychoanalysis, with a reductionistic fury."

The Atman Project, p.56

I have in consistency with the other pages in this series, I present an approximate description in the following table