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 Mental structure of consciousness
5
The transition from the Magic to the Mythical
and Mental structures with respect to the
faculties of consciousness

• Feeling/Hearing
• Speaking/Imagining
• Thinking/Seeing
• or we can paraphrase it as
• perceiving inwardly the nature as part of oneself
  through feelings and emotions
• expressing oneself as the inner soul by speech
  and imagination, already different from nature
  (from within to without)
• perceiving outwardly oneself as a distinct part
  of nature by seeing objectively oneself and
  others and thinking about it.

6
Transition from Mythical to Mental thinking

• The Greek word menis, meaning wrath and
  courage, comes from the same stem as the word
  menos, which means resolve, anger, courage
  and power it is related also to the Latin word
  mens, which has an unusually complex set of
  meanings intent, anger, thinking, thought,
  understanding, deliberation, disposition,
  mentality, imagination.
• What is fundamental here is already evident in
  the substance of these words it is the first
  intimation of the emergence of directed or
  discursive thought. Whereas mythical thinking, to
  the extent that it could be called thinking,
  was a shaping or designing of images in the
  imagination which took place within the confines
  of the polar cycle, discursive thought is
  fundamentally different. It is no longer polar
  related, enclosed in and reflecting polarity from
  which it gains its energy, but rather directed
  toward objects and duality, creating and
  directing this duality, and drawing its energy
  from the individual ego. (p.75)

7
Some Sanskrit derivations

• ma, to measure, create, make from here we have
  derivations like ma-t?, mother, creatrix,
  ma-ya, creative force of knowledge, power of
  illusion, etc.
• man, to think, will, wish, understand, with
  derivations of manas, mind, intellect,
  will, etc., manu, thinking creature, man, the
  first Man manu?ya, manava, man etc., mati,
  thought, opinion etc.
• manyu, high spirit or temper, ardour, zeal,
  passion rage, fury, wrath, anger, etc.

8
Man is the measure of all things.

• The root (man), then, on which mental is based
  carries within itself the germ of an entire world
  which takes on form and shape, and becomes
  effective reality in the mental structuration it
  is the world of man, that is, a predominantly
  human world where man is the measure of all
  things (Protagoras), where man himself thinks
  and directs this thought. And the world which he
  measures, to which he aspires, is a material
  world a world of objects outside himself, with
  which he is confronted. Here lie the rudiments of
  the great formative concepts, the mental
  abstraction which take the place of the mythical
  images and are, in certain sense, formulae or
  patterns of gods, i.e., idols anthropomorphism,
  dualism, rationalism, finalism, utilitarianism,
  materialism in other words, the rational
  components of the perspectival world.
• When compared to the mythical structure, with
  its temporal-psychic emphasis, the transition to
  the mental structure suggests a fall from time
  into space. Man steps out of the sheltering,
  two-dimensional circle and its confines into
  three-dimensional space. Here he no longer exists
  within polar complementarity here he is in
  confrontation with an alien world a dualism
  that must be bridged by a synthesis in thought, a
  mental form of trinity. Here we can no longer
  speak of unity, correspondence, or
  complementarity, not to mention integrity.
• (p. 77)

9
Three distinct features of the Mental structure
in Art and Sculpture

• First, there is an awakening sense of the human
  body expressed in this sculpture, which forms a
  precondition of the later conscious realisation
  of space.
• Second, there is the so-called archaic smile, a
  mysterious smile remote from pain and joy, but
  reflecting the awakening and dawn of the emergent
  radiant human countenance.
• And third, there is a gradual appearance of the
  free and clear forehead, which, in the earliest
  sculpture, is covered by artfully plaited hair
  almost downward to the eyebrows a protection,
  as it were, of the still dreaming forehead. Even
  today, this forehead, unawakened from dream with
  hair loosely combed over it, can be seen among
  male peasants

10
The emergence of the Mental structure in Drama

• In Greek Drama (based on the ritual presentation
  to Dionysus) the chorus stood in opposition, as
  it were, to the individual performers,
  critisizing or explaining their actions. We have
  an individual who acts in contrast to common
  psyche and distinct from it, even if he acts in
  the name of the god the Etruscan word persona
  was most likely etymologically related to Greek
  prosopon, mask. the performer wearing the
  mask is placed in opposition to the chorus. The
  performer was called a Hypokrites, which meant
  essentially the responder and in the early
  Greek period he co-responds mythically, as the
  individual soul, to the common soul and forms its
  reciprocal pole. He re-sponds or reciprocates the
  words of the chorus, subsuming it and
  establishing the polar equilibrium and polar
  complement. Later in tragedy this process
  undergoes a change. The performer is no longer a
  responder in the mythical sense rather, as an
  individual (one becoming conscious), he
  represents the opposite or antithesis of the
  chorus (the unconscious). The mask as an
  expression of magic egolessness gives a way to
  the mask in our modern sense which depersonalizes
  or obstructs the true ego the ego concealed
  behind it in the newly acquired dimension of
  depth, which is as inaccessible to the magic
  structure as a spatial behind.

11
The emergence of the Mental structure in the
terms of social law

• Indian Primal Man, the law-giver Manu
• Cretan King Minos (son of Zeus and Europa)
• The first historical Egyptian King Menes (3100
  BC), or the first human pharaoh, who inherited
  Egypt directly from God Horus.
• Wherever the lawgiver appears, he upsets the
  old equilibrium (mythical polarity), and in order
  to re-establish it, laws must be fixed and
  established. Only a mental world requires laws
  the mythical world, secure in the polarity,
  neither knows nor needs them. (p.76)

12
Monotheistic Religions and the transition to the
Mental Structure

• Moses introduces Ten Commandments to the people
  of Israel, who before only worshipped the powers
  of Nature in its magic structure. He gives them
  the Word, the Language, and the Mythical history,
  and the Law to obey and follow. (It is still
  based on the Matriarchic domination).
• Jesus spoke of the realisation of the individual
  soul and its relation to the Universal Soul.
  Jesus was often called the Son of Man. Jesus is
  in the heart of every man, and it is through him
  only that one can come to His Father. (Equality
  of men and women).
• Mahomet even stronger insists on the religious
  dogma, which is to be followed, legalizing the
  fear of punishment for the disobedience to the
  Social and Religious Law. (Patriarchal
  domination).

13
Transition to the natural philosophy

• Philosophy itself is a prerequisite of Mental
  Structure. Parmenides and especially his pupil
  Zeno (450 BC) defines the comprehension of being
  as spatially extended being. But the decisive
  fact is that space assumes form in conceptual
  thought and philosophical statement and
  formulation. ... Which in turn lead via Socrates
  to logic just one generation later and with
  logic, we step out into the clarity of thought
  where we can breath freely after having been only
  too long devoted to magic darkness and mythical
  twilight. (p. 83)
• Clarity is where there is not further search
  (according to Plato) yet it is precisely this
  search for truth which supplants truth itself
  that was characteristic of Socrates and even of
  Pythagoras.
• Parmenides first made an attempt to place the
  new element, thought, and Being because it is
  identified with thought into opposition with
  Non-Being. And this Non-Being is definitely a
  reference to the mythical context whose
  spacelessness is henceforth mentally defined as
  Non-Being. (p.84)

14
The Word and the emergence of mental language

• The difficulties against which conceptualization
  struggled are more intelligible if we recall the
  psychic and vital profusion inherent in every
  word at that time each word was the flaring up
  of an aspect of the psyche and the visible
  psychic reality which, undifferentiated, includes
  the one or the other aspect of the same word as a
  kind of sympathetic vibration. This wealth of
  connotation in each word, which to us appears
  like an irritating hyper-fertility where even the
  unspoken aspect is conveyed, posed nearly
  insurmountable difficulties of expression to
  early philosophical attempts.
• The Parmenides theory of Being is an eloquent
  example of these difficulties. It required
  centuries to sufficiently devitalize and
  demythologize the word so that it was able to
  express distinct concepts freed from the wealth
  of imagery, as well as to reach the rationalistic
  extreme where the word, once a power and later an
  image, was degraded to a mere formula. (p.83)

15
Polarity and Duality of the Word

• The duality of a mental structure differs in one
  essential aspect from the polarity of the
  mythical structure. In polarity correspondences
  are valid. Every correspondence is a complement,
  a completion of the whole. Whatever is spoken is
  corroborated by the invisible and latent unspoken
  to which it co-responds it the polar,
  unperspectival world of the mythical structure,
  both the voice and the muteness, appropriate to
  myth what is spoken and what is left unsaid
  are correspondences and complements to each
  other. They suspend and supersede the polarity,
  returning it to near-integrality, to an identity
  that nonetheless diminished, since its archaic
  authenticity seemed to be irrecoverable it is a
  re-completed, not a completed identity.
• But with respect to duality we cannot speak of
  correspondence or complementarity as we could in
  the case of polarity in the mental realm we can
  never speak of something, but only determine
  something or conceive of it. (p. 86)

16
The directional character of time in the
Mental Structure

• The temporicity of myth differs from the
  temporality of the mind. The temporistic movement
  of nature and the cosmos is unaware of the
  temporal phases of past, present and future it
  knows only the polar self-complementarity of
  coming and going which completely pervades it all
  the times. It is devoid of directionality,
  whereas the past and the future, viewed from the
  present of any given person, are temporal
  directions. It is this directional character of
  time which underscores its mental nature and
  therefore its constitutional difference from
  natural-cosmic temporistic movement which is
  mythical in nature. Or, we might say that time
  differs from temporicity because of its
  directness, and hence a retrogression into
  mythical movement can neither answer nor resolve
  the question as to the nature of our mental
  time. (p. 173)

17
Transition from Mythical to Mental thinking

• Oceanic thinking could be described as oceanic
  circling, reminiscent of mythical image it is a
  form of thought closely tied to the mythical
  structure.
• Pyramidal (logical) thinking is the efficient
  form of Mental-rational (conceptual) thinking of
  which the Perspectival (spatial) thinking is the
  deficient form.
• Paradoxical thinking is like a residue of the
  Mythical and Magic in the Mental structure.

18
Oceanic thinking

• In the beginning (A) was the Word (B) and the
  Word (B) was with God (C) and God (C) was the
  Word (B). The same Word (B) was in the
  beginning (A) with God
• It is a process of self-contemplation, and the
  central concept - here circumscribed rather than
  described is God. (p.253)
• AB/BC/CB/BA
• The fact that oceanic thinking
  circumscribes something is a vivid demonstration
  that the mythical circular world has a content.
  By destroying the circle with directed thinking,
  man, to the extent that he is mental man, has
  lost this content for space is without content.
  The lack of content, which initially appears as
  openness, became obvious in the deficient
  rational phase (of the mental structure). This
  openness has been described as emptiness, and
  indeed since then it is emptiness. For that
  reason any mere description is today empty and
  noncommittal. In this sense, descriptions are
  rational, flattened, and quantified attributions
  that initially had a mental value and made our
  conceptual world possible."

19
Heraclites says For souls it is death to become
water for water it is death to become earth. But
from the earth comes water and from water soul.
(p. 252)
Soul A
A Soul
Death
B Water
Water B
Water B
B Water
Earth C
C Earth
20
Pyramidal Thinking

• First premise All men are mortal.
  AB
• Second premise Socrates is a man.
  CA
• Conclusion Therefore, Socrates is mortal. CB

creatures
mortal
immortal
men
animals
Socrates
Plato
others
21
Deficiency of pyramidal logic

• Reduced validity of perspectival thinking
  can be found in the logic from a particular to
  general, for instance
• A man fell into the water.
• We are all men.
• Consequently, we will all fall into the water.
• If Pyramidal logic of Plato made us visualize a
  vertically constructed world image and
  philosophical system. Kants dualism on the other
  hand, where appearances confront cognition and
  reason as their object and the thing in itself is
  to be sought behind the appearances, presupposes
  a horizontal arrangement of basic concepts and
  their content. There is surely a basic
  distinction between Platonic and Kantian
  philosophy inasmuch as Kants ideas no longer
  reside above man, but are points of orientation
  lying in the same plane with man.
• But this has made thinking itself spatial and
  static, permitting the materialisation of
  spirit and even the spatialization of time
  (p. 259)

22
Paradoxical Thinking

• The bond which diaresis has severed a bond
  which man dispenses with only at the peril of
  denying a part of himself (the irrational)
  cannot be restored either by pyramidal or, even
  less, by perspectival thought.
• Yet it is possible to propose a previously
  unrecognized form of thought that reveals the
  co-validity of the irrational in a form
  reminiscent of a rational mode of formation. We
  have called this thought form paradoxical and
  described paradoxical statement as the
  pre-eminent form of religious utterance.
• From the mental point of view, paradoxical
  thinking actually establishes the bond or religio
  to the irrationality and pre-rationality of the
  mythical and magic structures. It is a form that
  mediates between the oceanic and perspectival
  thinking and contains both rational and
  irrational elements. A good example of
  paradoxical expression is the well-known
  statement of Pascal You would not seek me if
  you had not found me. (p. 259)

23
Mirroring image in Paradoxical thinking
You would not find me B
A if you had not sought me.
You would not seek me, A
B if you had not found me.

• Whatever lies beyond the
  spatial-perspectival point in infinity that
  is, in the immeasurable verifies in its image
  what is posited in rational terms as a result. In
  other words, a statement of irrational character
  in the rational sphere has in the irrational
  structure a rational character, that is, beyond
  and on the other side of the point behind the
  spatialising horison. This re-establishes in an
  anusually clever and effective manner the bond or
  religio to the past. (p. 260)

24
Three most familiar statements on thought and
thinking

• Thinking and being is one and the same.
  (Parmenides) This statement equates, giving
  moderation and balance.
• Thinking is calculation in words. (Hobbes) The
  measuring aspect of thinking, its quality, has
  been changed to a quantity via the pluralizing
  inherent in the statement as well as by the
  numerical calculation.
• I think, therefore I am. (Descartes) Here the
  isolated thinking by an individual is alone
  valid, and the spatial Being of Parmenides comes
  to be identified, as a consequence of thinking,
  with the being of a person.

25
The formation of the Ego in the mental structure

• Descartes with his cogito (I think), transposes
  the action or movement confirming or
  substantiating the existence of the ego
  essentially from the psychic-vital realm into the
  psychic-mental and this is merely a kind of
  hyper-gradation that does not eliminate ergo
  (therefore) sum, I am.
• The fact that such varied interpretations are
  possible at all and remain at variance even if we
  take into account the particular definitions of
  each individual philosopher, can be explained if
  we remember that all such axioms are in part
  determined by the psyche. In the rarified air of
  abstraction, they regain a certain ambiguity and
  equivocation inherent in the psyche. How could
  this not be true also of Descartes who limits his
  inquiry in Discourse de la Methode to the
  rationalistic calculation of the verities, the
  truths alone? (p.97)

26
Deficient formations of the mental structure

• Here we can discern the tragic aspect of the
  deficient mental structure Reason, reversing
  itself metabolistically to an exaggerated
  rationalism, becomes a kind of inferior plaything
  of the psyche, neither noticing nor even
  suspecting the connection. Although the convinced
  rationalist will be unwilling to admit it, there
  is after all the rational distorted image of the
  speculatio animae the speculatio rationis, a
  kind of shadow-boxing before a mirror whose
  reflection occurs against the blind surface. This
  negative link to the psyche, usurping the place
  of the genuine mental relation, destroys the very
  thing achieved by the authentic relation the
  ability to gain insight into the psyche.
• In every extreme rationalisation there is not
  just a violation of the psyche by the ratio, that
  is, a negatively magic element, but also the
  graver danger, graver because of its avenging and
  incalculable nature the violation of the ratio
  by the psyche, where both become deficient. The
  authentic relation to the psyche, the mental, is
  perverted into its opposite, to the disadvantage
  of the ego that has become blind through
  isolation. (p. 97)

27
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)
28
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
29
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?)
30
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)
31
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
32
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
33
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)
34
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
35
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