This is taken from

Which is a good site explaining the basics of this theory - which is very useful for Integral Permaculture designers and indeed much of its basic framework is implicit (always has been) in permaculture design theory.

What if we took everything that all the various cultures have to tell us about human potential—about spiritual growth, psychological growth, social growth—and put it all on the table? What if we attempted to find the critically essential keys to human growth, based on the sum total of human knowledge now open to us? What if we attempted, based on extensive cross-cultural study, to use all of the world’s great traditions to create a composite map, a comprehensive map, an all-inclusive or integral map that included the best elements from all of them? In the following article series, Ken Wilber shares an overview of this map: The Integral Operating System (IOS).