Transcript Jean Gebser - University of Human Unity

Jean Gebser
THE EVER-PRESENT
ORIGIN
Power Point Presentation
for the Seminar on Psychology of Social Development
organized by the University of Human Unity, Auroville
Structures of consciousness
• Archaic ( Primal man, Protanthropos, Purusha of the Rig Veda,
Adam Kadmon of the Cabbala, Osiris of the Egyptian-Gnostics)
• Magic (‘here the primal man becomes the maker’, vital impulse and
instinct thus unfold and develop a consciousness in dealing with
Nature; witchcraft and sorcery, totem and taboo are the natural
means of freeing himself from Nature) (appr. before 10 000 BC)
• Mythical (brings the awareness of the inner life of the soul, its
history and its origin, the primal Myth) (appr. before 2500 BC)
• Mental (‘It individualizes man from his previously valid world,
emphasizing his singularity and making his ego possible.’(p.76) It
introduces a perspectival perception of the world (1250-1500 AD) by
spatializing time perception; it represents life by conceptualizing it,
distancing man from his own nature.)
• Integral (freedom from all the structures by their transparent
rearrangement into one integral oneness of being)
The structures of consciousness in
the Mandukya Upanishad
•
•
•
•
Turiya, the original state of identity of the pure
transcendental consciousness and being, which
somehow embodies all the three following stages and
at the same time transcends them all.
Prajñā, a dream without dreaming, pure perception,
not marred by the dreams coming from the interaction
with the outer or inner world.
Svapna, a dream like state with dreams being
dreamed.
Jāgrata , a wakeful state in the outer consciousness.
The Integral Structure of
Consciousness
Difficulties of Integration
• The new structure cannot be realised by a reactivation of those structures underlying it.
• None of these routes is passable: all paths lead only to
where they have led away from. Either we run in a circle,
inexorably confined and imprisoned, or we run to and fro
from one opposite to the other in the belief that in this
compulsive back-and-forth we will find a synthesis. What
is needed, then, is not a way or a path, but a “leap”.
(p. 99)
The concretion of Time and
Integration of Man
• “The concretion of time is one of the preconditions for
the integral structure; only the concrete can be
integrated, never merely abstract. By Integration we
mean a fully completed and realized wholeness – the
bringing about of an integrum, i.e., the re-establishment
of the inviolate and pristine state of origin by
incorporating the wealth of all subsequent achievement.
The concretion of everything that has unfolded in time
and coalesced in a spatial array is the integral attempt
to reconstitute the “magnitude” of man from his
constituent aspects, so that he can consciously
integrate himself with the whole.” (p. 99)
Man himself is the integrator
• The integrator, then, is completed to have not only
concretized the appearances, be they material or mental,
but also to have been able to concretize his own
structure.
• This means that the various structures that constitute
him must have become transparent and conscious to
him; it also means that he has perceived their effect on
his life and destiny, and mastered the deficient
components by his insight so that they acquire the
degree of maturity and equilibrium necessary for any
concretion.
• Only those components that are in this way
themselves balanced, matured, and mastered
concretions can effect an integration.
The illumination of the structures by mental
consciousness
• A mere conscious illumination of these states
(deep sleep of the archaic, a sleep-like state of
the magic, a dream-like state of the mythical,
and wakefulness of the mental), which are for
the most part only dimly conscious, does not
achieve anything; in fact, to illuminate these
states from consciousness is to destroy
them. Only when they are integrated via a
concretion can they become transparent in
their entirety and present, or diaphanous (and
are not, of course, merely illuminated by the
mind).
The definition of Consciousness
• “There are two important consequences that indirectly
result from these observations.
• One is that consciousness is not identical with
intelligence or rational acuity.
• The other is that the completion of integration is never
an expansion of consciousness as spoken of today
particularly by psychoanalysis and certain ‘spiritual’
societies of a quasi-occult kind. The expansion of
consciousness is merely a spatially conceived
quantification of consciousness and consequently an
illusion. Rather we are dealing here throughout with an
intensification of consciousness; not because of any
qualitative character which might be ascribed to it, but
because it is by nature ‘outside’ of any purely qualitative
valuation or quantitative devaluation.” (p.100)
The fifth structure
•
•
•
“Just as magic structure cannot be represented but only lived, the
mythical structure not represented but only experienced, and the
rational structure neither lived nor experienced but only represented and
conceptualized, so the integral structure cannot be represented but only
“awared-in-truth”. This perception or “verition” is, then, not an impossibility if
the fourth-dimensional coordinate system receives a consciousness character.
… the aperspectival world, which is arational, does not represent a
synthesis. To be a synthesis it would have to attempt to unite two worlds – for
instance, the rational and the irrational – an attempt which paradoxical
thinking undertakes. But here we are concerned with at least four worlds
or structures, each of which is valid as well as necessary; and the fifth is
absolutely required.”
In the face of these four structures and the fact that not only originality but also
lived events, experience, conceptions, and thinking or cognition must be
achieved in and through us, a fifth cannot be attained by synthesis but
only by integration.
Perception-in-truth or “verition” is not bound to our capacity of sight, which
primarily shapes the mental structure: but without in any way going beyond
the senses, it presentiates forms of appearance or manifestation and is thus
able to perceive diaphaneity, which cannot be realised by simple seeing,
hearing, or sensing. (p. 268)
Integration through concretion
• “Again it should be emphasised that perception is not a supersensory process. Concepts such as intuition and the like are
definitely out of place when characterizing it. It is an integral event
and, if you will, an integral state of the “itself”. It is presential and
itself renders diaphonous; and this diaphoneity can neither be heard,
intuited, nor seen. That is to say: through perception or verition the
merely audible, intuitable, and visible world will be present in its
entirety or wholeness. What is necessary is that this integrity and
integrality be actualized.
• The actualization of this entirety or wholeness is possible only when
the parts which form together merely an aggregate can, by the
decisive act of perception and impartation of truth, become a whole.
For this to happen there is one basic prerequisite: the parts must be
heard or experienced, intuited or endured, seen or thought in accord
with their very essence. Only concretized parts can be integrated;
the abstract, and especially the absolute, always remain separated
parts.” (p. 268)
The unknown landscapes of
the Integral structure of consciousness
• “Whatever the nature of this landscape, it cannot be a repetition of
what has been. At the very outset (or the conclusion) of this “new
landscape” four major and encompassing modalities of the world
from which we have come forth, lived, experienced, and thought,
and from which we continue to go forth, live, experience, and think –
four encompassing and intensifying realms of possible and actual
forms of manifestation are eliminated. This surely does not simplify
our task, but it does serve to clarify it.
• The mutations as presented also make clear that something not
experience-able did come to be experienced; something
inconceivable did come to be conceived of; something unthinkable
did come to be thought. For magic man cannot realise the
experience or thought of the mental structure. For merely mental
man the perceptibility of the integral structure will not be
conceivable; nevertheless we are already in the inception of this
integral structure – a circumstance that provides support for events
which still seem unrealizable.” (p. 272)
Towards the Spiritual Consciousness
• “When the Mexicans in their deficient mythical-magic
structure encountered the mentally-oriented Spaniards,
the magic-mythical power failed in the face of mental
strength; clan consciousness failed in the face of the
individualized ego-consciousness. If the integral man
were to encounter a deficient mental man, would not
deficient mental power fail in the face of integral
strength? Would not the individual ego-consciousness
falter in the face of the Itself-consciousness of mankind?
the mental rational in the face of the spiritual?
fragmentation in the face of integrality?” (p. 273)
Truth as a criterion of the spiritual present
• “It is today no longer a question as to whether “reforms” are of use;
this is evident from the course of our discussion.
• Yet one question remains: what can man do to bring about this
mutation? To this we have already hazarded an answer: we must
know where we are to effect events, or to let them take their course;
where we are merely to “be aware” of truth, and where we may
“impart the truth”. For we too presentiate the whole by realizing
that we are to the same degree active as well as enduring and
passive, past as well as future.
• Man is in the world to sustain it as well as himself “in truth”, not
for his or its own sake, but for the sake of the spiritual present.
• It is this spiritual present which elevates wholeness to transparency
and frees us from our transient age, for this age of ours is not the
present but partiality and flight, indeed, almost a conclusion. Only
someone who knows of origin has present – living and dying in the
whole, in integrity.” ( p. 273)
The awakening Consciousness of Freedom
from Time
• “The irruption of time into our consciousness: this is the profound
and unique event of our historical moment.
• Our present consciousness is one of transition, a consciousness in the
process of mutation which is beginning to unfold new forms of
realization. At the moment when consciousness became able to
account for the essence of “time”, time irrupted. The sense of
“irruption” is ambiguous just as the moments of transition are
ambiguous and Janus-faced. The term “irruption” signifies both the
intrusion as well as the collapse of time for our consciousness.
• But what is time? It is more than a mere clock time which was
previously considered to be reliable and constant. …The three
dimensional conceptual world of our fathers had not sensorium for the
phenomenon of time. Living in a spatially frozen world, they
considered the temporal world to be a disturbing factor which was
repressed, either by being ignored, or by being falsified by
measurement into a spatial component. For perspectival-thinking man
time lacked all quality. This is the decisive factor: he employed time
only in a materialized and quantitative sense. He lived by Galileo’s
maxim: “To measure everything measurable, and to make everything
measurable that is not yet measurable.” (p. 284)
Aperspectival perception of Time
• “To the perception of the aperspectival world time appears to
be the very fundamental function, and to be of a most
complex nature. It manifests itself in accordance with a given
consciousness structure and the appropriate possibility of
manifestation in its various aspects as clock time, natural time,
cosmic or sidereal time; as biological duration, rhythm, meter;
as mutation, discontinuity, relativity; as vital dynamics, psychic
energy (and thus in a certain sense in the form we call “soul”
and the “unconscious”), and as mental dividing. It manifests
itself as the unity of past, present and future; as a certain
principle, the power of imagination, as work, and even as
“motoricity”. And along with the vital, psychic, biological, cosmic,
rational, creative, sociological, and technical aspects of time, we
must include - last but not least – physical-geometrical time
which is designated as the “forth dimension”. (p. 285)
Time and Space are that one Conscious-Being
viewing itself in extension, subjectively as Time,
objectively as Space. Our mental view of these two
categories is determined by the idea of measure
which is inherent in the action of the analytical
dividing movement of Mind. Time is for the Mind a
mobile extension measured out by the succession of
the past, present and future in which Mind places
itself at a certain standpoint whence it looks before
and after. Space is a stable extension measured out by
divisibility of substance; at a certain point in that
divisible extension Mind places itself and regards the
disposition of substance around it.
The Life Divine (p. 133)
Major criteria of the new mutation in terms of
causality, time and space
1) “Origin” is not identical with the “beginning” since it is
not spatially and temporally bound, whereas the
“beginning” is always temporally determined.
2) The “Present” is not identical with the “moment” but is
the undivided presence of yesterday, today, and
tomorrow which in a consciously realized actualization
can lead to that “presentiation” which encompasses
origin as an ineradicable present.
3) The “aperspectival world” is a “world” whose structure
is not only jointly based in the pre-perspectival,
unperspectival, and perspectival worlds, but also
mutates out of them in its essential properties and
possibilities while integrating these worlds and liberating
itself from their exclusive validity.” (p. 294)
Three principle criteria for the mode of manifestation
and expression of the aperspectival world.
1)
2)
3)
“Temporics”, under which term are subsumed all
endeavors to concretize time;
“Diaphaneity”, that which is pellucid and transparent,
which we can perceive as the form of spiritual
manifestation. It is perceptible only in a “world” where
the concretion of time transforms time into time
freedom and thus makes possible the concretion of the
spiritual;
“Verition”, which as the integral “a-waring” or
perception and impartation “of truth”, is the realization
form of the integral consciousness structure which
lends to the aperspectival world a transparent reality.”
(p. 300)
The New Concepts:
The Fourth Dimension (amension)
• “The fourth dimension is freedom from time, i.e., the
Achronon. The fourth dimension is not the concept of
merely measurable time but the “form” of the temporal or
temporistic principle which we have defined as time
freedom. This is of decisive importance.” (p. 340)
• The magic component recognizable in the postulates of
space-time unity and relativity. The mythical component
is visible in the correlated complementarity principle
which equates mass and energy, particle and wave as
(polar) phenomena. The mental component is expressed
by the spatialization of time and its fixed geometrical
form as the fourth dimension.
• Only the space-free, time-free component is lacking: and
it will remain so until the error is perceived of mistakenly
treating the fourth dimension as measurable rather than
integrative and transparent time.” (p.353)
What is time-freedom?
To what extent can it be realized?
And in what sense is it the fourth dimension?
1)
2)
3)
Time-freedom is the conscious form of archaic, original pretemporality.
Time-freedom can be realized by achieving each of the previous
time-mutations from archaic pre-temporality. By granting to magic
timelessness, mythical temporicity, and mental-conceptual
temporality their integral efficacy, and by living them in accord with
the strength of their degree of consciousness, we are able to bring
about this realisation. This concretion of the previous three
exfoliations of original pre-temporality instantaneously opens for us
pre-conscious timelessness. This also means that we perceive the
world in its foundations and are not exclusively bound to its vital,
experiential, and conceptual forms. … We perceive it as
aperspectival and unfixed. Anyone able to realize and thus
concretize the three previously basic temporal forms already
consciously stands in four-dimensionality.
Time-freedom is the fourth dimension because it constitutes and
unlocks the four-dimensionality. … it is an integrative dimension, or,
more exactly, it is the amension and not just an expanding or
destructive spatial dimension.” (p. 356)
The temporal boundaries of the Word in the
Integral Structure
•
•
•
This temporal aspect resides in the primordial meaning of the word-root
which even today gives the word in latent and potential form its distinct
stamp. It is the original meaning that is still luminous throughout the unfolding
changes of meaning taken on or attributed over the years. Every word, after
all, is not only a concept or a fixed equivalent in writing; it is also an
image and thus mythical, or sound and thus magic, a root and thus
archaic, and thus, by virtue of this root meaning, still present from
origin.
We must go back to the word-roots, as we have been doing, and listen to
those words that belong together; we must complement these with others that
seem to correspond to each other until an image appears, and we must allow
ourselves to be directed by the criteria imposed on us by our thinking, or
which we impose on it. Then we can be certain that we remain within the
respective framework of the data of each individual structure, and that these
data, viewed from our present mental standpoint, are effectual.
But merely avoiding the danger of overemphasizing one aspect – magic,
mythical, or rational – in our interpretation of a given world is not enough; we
must guard against a greater danger of not recognizing the temporal
boundaries of even the integral approach. These boundaries – or more
precisely, limits – are found in the ‘furthermost’ or ‘deepest’ past where a
beginning starts to mutate from origin, and they are also found in the present,
since it too has the character of origin.” (p.124)
Words manifesting integrity
• “Let us than keep in mind that the presence of origin manifest in the
inceptual unity – and in the successive mutations to polarity and
then duality – is still recognizable in the principle words. If we remain
cognizant of the origin and employ the words in a manner that
manifests their integrity, they will at least lend the lustre of
wholeness to those phenomena which they denote. Then, too, our
sense of hearing, our heart, and our mind must be equally awake;
within the natural measure of things none of these faculties must
dominate to a degree greater than that commensurate with our
given state of consciousness.
• For the world – at least to us - is not just a concept but at the same
time always a sound and an image. “Behind” these the presence of
origin “resides”, and can be diaphanously present for us only when
we presentiate these aspects of our world as a whole.” (p.127)
Creativity as an Originary Phenomenon
• “In creativity, origin is present. Creativity is not
bound to space and time, and its truest effect
can be found in mutation, the course of which is
not continuation in time but rather sponteneous,
acausal, and discontinuous. Creativity is a visibly
emerging impulse of origin which “is” in turn
timeless, or more accurately, before or “above”
time and timelessness. And creativity is
something that “happens” to us, that fully effects
or fulfills itself in us.” (p. 313)
Space and Time Relationship
Structure
a) Dimensioning
b) Perspectivity
c) Emphasis
Archaic:
Zero-dimensional
None
Identity
(Integrality)
Magic:
One-dimensional
Point
Unity
(Oneness)
Mythical:
Two-dimensional
Circle
Polarity
(Ambivalence)
Mental:
Three-dimensional
Triangle
Duality
(Opposition)
Integral:
Four-dimensional
Sphere
Diaphaneity
(Transparency)
Space and Time Properties
Structure
2. Sign
3. Essence
4. Properties
5. Potentiality
Archaic:
Integral
Integrality
None
Prespatial
Pretemporal
Magic:
Non-directional
unitary, interwovenness or fusion
Unity by Unification,
Hearing/Hearkening
Preperspectival
Spaceless
Timeless*
Mythical:
Circular and polar
Complementarity
Unification by
Complementarity
and
Correspondence
Unperspectival
Spaceless
Natural
temporicity
Mental:
Directed dual
oppositionality
Unification by
Synthesis and
Reconciliation
Perspectival
Spatial
Abstractly
temporal
Integral:
Presentiating,
Diaphanous
“rendering whole"
Integrality by
Integration and
Presentiation
Aperspectival
Space-free
Time-free
Properties of Consciousness
Structure
6. Emphasis
a) Objective (external) b) Subjective (internal)
Archaic:
Unconscious
Spirit
None or Latency
Magic:
Nature
Mythical:
7. Consciousness
a) Degree
b) Relation
Deep sleep
Universe-related:
Breathing-spell
Emotion
Sleep
Outer-related
(Nature): Exhaling
Soul/Psyche
Imagination
Dream
Inner-related
(Psyche): Inhaling
Mental:
Space – World
Abstraction
Wakefulness
Outer-related
(Spatial world):
Exhaling
Integral:
(Conscious
Spirit)
(Concretion)
(Transparency)
(Inward-related:
Inhaling? or
Breathing-Spell?)
Properties of Forms and Attitudes
Structure
8. Forms of Manifestation
9. Basic attitude and
agency of energy
10. Organ
emphasis
a) efficient
b) deficient
Archaic:
None
Presentiment,
foreboding
Origin: Wisdom
Magic:
Spell-casting
Witchcraft
Instinct
Vital: Drive Emotion
Viscera - Ear
Mythical:
Primal myth
(envisioned myth)
Mythology
(spoken myth)
Imagination
Psychic: Sensibility
Disposition
Heart –Mouth
Mental:
Menos (directive,
discursive thought)
Ratio (divisive,
immoderate hairsplitting)
Reflection Cerebral:
Abstraction Will/Volition
Brain - Eye
Integral:
Diaphainon (open,
spiritual "verition")
Void (atomizing
dissolution)
(Concretion) Integral:
(Rendering diaphanous)
("Verition")
(Vertex)
-
Forms of Realisation and Thought I
Structur
e
11. Forms of realization and thought
a) Basis
Archaic:
b) Mode
c) Process
d) Expression
Originary
Presentiment
Presentiment
Magic:
Empathy and
Identification,
Hearing
Pre-rational, precausal, analogical
Associative, analogizing,
sympathetic
interweaving
Vital experience
Mythical:
Imagination and
Utterance,
Contemplation and
Voicing
Irrational: noncausal, polar
Internalized recollection,
contemplation
externalized utterance,
expression
Undergone
experience
Mental:
Conceptualization
and Reflection,
Seeing and
Measuring
Rational: causal,
directed
Projective speculation:
oceanic, paradoxical,
then perspectival
thinking
Representation
Conception, Ideation
Integral:
(Concretion and
Integration, "Verition“
and Transparency)
(Arational:
acausal, integral)
Integrating, rendering
diaphanous
Verition
Forms of Realisation and Thought II
Structure
e) Formulation
11. Forms of realization and thought
f) Limits
g) Valence
Archaic:
World-origin
Magic:
World-knowledge, the
"recognized" world
Conditioned
Univalent
Mythical:
World-image:
the contemplated and
interpreted world
Temporally bound
Ambivalent
Mental:
World-conception: the thought
and conceptualized world
Limited
Trivalent
Integral:
World-Verition: the world
perceived and imparted in
truth
Open, free
Multivalent
Forms of Expression and Articulation
Structure
12. Forms of Expression
Archaic:
Magic:
Mythical:
Mental:
Integral:
Magic:
Mythologeme
13. Forms of Assertion or Articulation
Graven images
Idol
Ritual
Gods
Symbol
Mysteries
Philosopheme: God
Dogma (Allegory, Creed)
Method
(Eteologeme:) (Divinity)
(Synairesis)
(Diaphany)
Petition (Prayer): being heard
Wishes (Ideals: Fulfillment
"wish dreams")
Volition: attainment
(Verition: Present)
Forms of Relationships
Structure
a) temporal
Archaic:
_
14. Relationships
b) social
_
c) general
Universal or
("cosmic“)
Magic:
Undifferentiated
Tribal world [clan/kith and
kin] natural
Egoless terrestrial
Mythical:
Predominantly pastoriented [recollection,
muse]
Parental world
[Ancestor-worship]
predominantly matriarchal
Egoless "we"oriented psychic
Mental:
Predominantly futureoriented [purpose and
goal]
World of the first-born son,
individuality [child-adulation]
predominantly patriarchal
Egocentric
materialistic
Integral:
(Presentiating)
Mankind,
neither matriarchy nor
patriarchy but integrum
Ego-free, amaterial,
apsychic
Forms of Bond and Motto
Structure
15.Localization of
the soul
Archaic:
(Universe)
Magic:
16. Forms of bond or tie
17. Motto
_
(All)
Semen and blood
Proligio (prolegere) emotive
and point-like
Pars pro toto
Mythical:
Diaphragm and heart
Relegio (relegere) observing,
internalizing (recollecting) and
externalizing (expressing)
Soul is identical to life
(and death)
Mental:
Spinal cord and brain
Religion {religare): believing,
knowing and deducing
Thinking is Being
Integral:
Cerebral cortex,
humoral
Praeligio (praeligare):
presentiating, concretizing,
integrating
Origin: Present
Perceiving and
Imparting Truth