Jean Gebser

THE EVER-PRESENTORIGIN

Power Point Presentation for the Seminar on Psychology of Social Developmentorganized 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 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)

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 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)

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) “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)

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) 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)

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 PropertiesStructure 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

SpacelessTimeless*

Mythical: Circular and polar Complementarity

Unification by Complementarityand Correspondence

Unperspectival SpacelessNatural 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 ConsciousnessStructure 6. Emphasis

a) Objective (external) b) Subjective (internal) 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?)

Properties of Forms and AttitudesStructure 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)

Forms of Realisation and Thought IStructure

11. Forms of realization and thought a) Basis b) Mode c) Process d) Expression

Archaic: Originary Presentiment Presentiment

Magic: Empathy andIdentification, 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

Forms of Realisation and Thought IIStructure 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

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)

Forms of Relationships

Structure 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

Forms of Bond and MottoStructure 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: PresentPerceiving and Imparting Truth