Jean Gebser

1
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
2
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)

3
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.
• Prajña, 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.
• Jagrata , a wakeful state in the outer
  consciousness.

4
The Integral Structure of Consciousness
5
Difficulties of Integration

• The new structure cannot be realised by a
  re-activation 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)

6
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)

7
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.

8
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).

9
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)

10
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)

11
Integration through concretion

• Again it should be emphasised that perception is
  not a super-sensory 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)

12
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)

13
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)

14
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)

15
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 Galileos maxim To measure
  everything measurable, and to make everything
  measurable that is not yet measurable. (p. 284)

16
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)

17

• 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)

18
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)

19
Three principle criteria for the mode of
manifestation and expression of the aperspectival
world.

1. Temporics, under which term are subsumed all
   endeavors to concretize time
2. 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
3. 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)

20
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)

21
What is time-freedom? To what extent can it be
realized? And in what sense is it the fourth
dimension?

1. Time-freedom is the conscious form of archaic,
   original pre-temporality.
2. 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.
3. 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)

22
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)

23
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)

24
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)

25
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)
26
Space and Time Properties
Structure 2. Sign 3. Essence 4. Properties 5. Potentiality
Archaic Integral Integrality None Prespatial Pretemporal
Magic Non-directional unitary, interwoven-ness or fusion Unity by Unification, Hearing/Hearkening Pre- perspectival 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
27
Properties of Consciousness
Structure 6. Emphasis a) Objective (external) b) Subjective (internal) 6. Emphasis a) Objective (external) b) Subjective (internal) 7. Consciousness a) Degree b) Relation 7. Consciousness a) Degree b) Relation
Archaic Unconscious Spirit None or Latency Deep sleep Universe-related Breathing-spell
Magic Nature Emotion Sleep Outer-related (Nature) Exhaling
Mythical 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?)
28
Properties of Forms and Attitudes
Structure 8. Forms of Manifestation a) efficient b) deficient 8. Forms of Manifestation a) efficient b) deficient 9. Basic attitude and agency of energy 10. Organ emphasis
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 hair-splitting) Reflection Cerebral Abstraction Will/Volition Brain - Eye
Integral Diaphainon (open, spiritual "verition") Void (atomizing dissolution) (Concretion) Integral (Rendering diaphanous) ("Verition") (Vertex)
29
Forms of Realisation and Thought I
Structure 11. Forms of realization and thought a) Basis b) Mode c) Process d) Expression 11. Forms of realization and thought a) Basis b) Mode c) Process d) Expression 11. Forms of realization and thought a) Basis b) Mode c) Process d) Expression 11. Forms of realization and thought a) Basis b) Mode c) Process d) Expression
Archaic Originary Presentiment Presentiment
Magic Empathy and Identification, Hearing Pre-rational, pre-causal, analogical Associative, analogizing, sympathetic interweaving Vital experience
Mythical Imagination and Utterance, Contemplation and Voicing Irrational non-causal, 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
30
Forms of Realisation and Thought II
Structure 11. Forms of realization and thought e) Formulation f) Limits g) Valence 11. Forms of realization and thought e) Formulation f) Limits g) Valence 11. Forms of realization and thought e) Formulation 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
31
Forms of Expression and Articulation
Structure 12. Forms of Expression 13. Forms of Assertion or Articulation
Archaic - -
Magic Magic Graven images Idol Ritual Petition (Prayer) being heard
Mythical Mythologeme Gods Symbol Mysteries Wishes (Ideals Fulfillment "wish dreams")
Mental Philosopheme God Dogma (Allegory, Creed) Method Volition attainment
Integral (Eteologeme) (Divinity) (Synairesis) (Diaphany) (Verition Present)
32
Forms of Relationships
Structure 14. Relationships a) temporal b) social c) general 14. Relationships a) temporal b) social c) general 14. Relationships a) temporal b) social c) general
Archaic _ _ Universal or ("cosmic)
Magic Undifferentiated Tribal world clan/kith and kin natural Egoless terrestrial
Mythical Predominantly past-oriented recollection, muse Parental world Ancestor-worship predominantly matriarchal Egoless "we"-oriented psychic
Mental Predominantly future-oriented 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
33
Forms of Bond and Motto
Structure 15.Localization of the soul 16. Forms of bond or tie 17. Motto
Archaic (Universe) _ (All)
Magic 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