Integral Consciousness

A New View of the world?

An introduction to the world of thought of Jean Gebser

Gebser stands in the tradition of Kant's idea that reality is not simply given to man, but is the result of the constitution of human consciousness. Every structure of consciousness conditions (constitutes) a certain awareness of time and space. This consciousness fundamentally determines not only what man calls reality, but above all his attitude to the world and his actions. Gebser's basic concern: The conscious attempt to overcome space and time and the associated consequences.

...“What are the consequences of the way of perceiving the reality of integral consciousness, which overcomes the split, without therefore denying either the validity of the polar complementary structure of the psychic, or that of the dualistically differentiating and dividing systems of the mental-rational - what are the consequences of this way of perceiving reality, which makes the whole perceptible, as far as this is possible at all for the human mind? Among other things, it also has the consequence that we can neither speak of a beginning nor of an end - apart, of course, from the straight line that we divisively cut out of the whole and thus make measurable.

The inseparability of beginning and end is not a negation of change, but a confirmation that rest and movement are always simultaneous. But above all: the whole, of which we are a part, knows neither beginning nor end. What does that mean for us? That birth is not a beginning, death is not an end. In other words: that we live both before birth and after death.

If the one is contained in the other, then our present life is neither our first nor our last...” (Quote from (Ursprung und Gegenwart)

I would like to introduce you to the cultural philosopher, poet and pioneer of consciousness Jean Gebser. As a representative of Integral Theory, he strove to combine scientific and spiritual knowledge. In this context, he is regarded as one of the first consciousness researchers with a cultural science orientation who established a structural model of the history of human consciousness.

His contemporary, C.G. Jung, said of Gebser on September 6, 1955:

“That is just the fate of the pioneer: he himself is too early, and what he longs for comes too late...”

What is it that Gebser longs for, his basic concern?

Before we take a closer look at his demands, as set out in his three-part magnum opus Ursprung und Gegenwart, let us first take a brief biographical overview:

1. Short Biography

Jean, actually Hans Gebser, was born on 20.08.1905 in Posen an der Warthe, now Poland, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. During his childhood and youth, he moved around a lot: Breslau, Koenigsberg, Berlin, monastery school in Rossleben. After grammar school (aborted), bank apprenticeship in Berlin, co-founder of the “Rabenpresse”, listens to Guardini at the University of Berlin.

1929 sets off on a major educational trip to Italy, then hikes in southern France.  1931 - 1936 in Spain. Personal acquaintance with Garcia Lorca, translates contemporary Spanish poetry and writes his first book: Rilke and Spain. 1932/33 Gebser receives (in an extraordinary state of consciousness, a “satori” enlightenment experience) the inspiration for his basic idea for his later work (the conscious overcoming of time and space and thus the overcoming of the ego, which he does not work on until 1939. 1937-1939 after his escape from Spain in Paris, contact with Picasso.

From August 1939 permanent stay in Switzerland, first in Ascona, connection with C.G.Jung's Eranos circle, later in Burgdorf and Bern. His main works are created: 

Abendlaendische Wandlung (Transformation of the West) (1943), Ursprung und Gegenwart (The Ever Present Origin) (1949-1952), Asien lächelt anders (Asia Smiles Differently) (1968), Der unsichtbare Ursprung (The invisible origin) (1970), Verfall und Teilhabe (Decay and Participation) (1973).

Frequent lecturer in Germany and Switzerland. Friendship with Arthur Jores (founder of psychosomatics), Karlfried Graf Duerckheim, Werner Heisenberg, Lama Govinda

In 1973, Jean Gebser died in Wabern near Bern with a gentle and knowing smile on his lips, according to eyewitnesses. Gebser had written in his autobiographical narrative The Sleeping Years: “When we are born, we scream and cry; when we die, we should leave with a smile on our lips”.

But let Jean Gebser himself have his say:

“In the end, everything is simple.

Of course, to say that seems nonsensical. Since we are sitting in a cage that we constructed ourselves, and since what is happening seems very complicated to us, the imprisoned and cut off, we sacrifice what little strength we have to illusory things that are ultimately hopeless. At any rate, that is the situation today.

This book deals only indirectly with the simple. But it concludes with it. Not that it goes towards it. There is no path to the everlasting. Sometimes it becomes clear that the origin and the present are simply and irrevocably neither a duality nor a succession of states, but the same thing, but the whole.

But all this seems threatened, and it is. Threatened by our complicated cage thinking, by our cage security, in which, as we think, gigantic things happen and are represented, which - what great creatures we are! - have been created by us, exclusively by us. We have lost our inner security and gained our cage security...

The majority think this way today.  That is the decline. Even if you think it's unstoppable ascent...

The simple is within us. It is participation. Participation in the invisible unknown, but evident. A tiny seed within us that contains all transparency: the illuminated world, the most radiant and soberest bliss. It is so all-encompassing that neither our clever, overconfident cage thinking nor our lamentable, plaintive and powerful longing - much poverty makes it visible! - are even able to sense it. And yet it is within us.

We can become aware of it, because it is close enough to us, and we can clairvoyantly push aside the latticework of the cage as an illusion. Nothing but the instinct to persevere prevents us from lifting the latticework of obsessions. The tiny seed of participation enables us to overcome it.

If we allow it to become transparent, the simple becomes reality as a result of the radiant participation. It is the everlasting. The unattainable that is very close. And it is always present. In order to become aware of it, the images and ideas of cage existence have to be pushed aside - all the piled-up rubbish that threatens to confusingly suffocate humanity with its protuberances, in other words: the excess of psychotic and mental-rational processes. The ignorant rightly revolt against this, unfortunately by the wrong means: Terror, anarchism, violence - excesses that still bear the mark of the grid life from which they want to free themselves. But for that they would have to know what for, where to and why…”

So writes Jean Gebser in the conclusion to his last book, “Decay and Participation”, just two weeks before his death in Bern in May 1973.

In this book, Gebser reiterates his basic concerns as set out in his main work on cultural history, “Ursprung und Gegenwart”.

But his cultural-historical system, his historical theory of phases, is also a fragment. Those who focus their gaze on the one and whole (the origin) are only able to grasp fragments. Those who think they can see through everything, on the other hand, basically see nothing. That is the dilemma of human cognition. Gebser's fragments create transparency, make the invisible accessible, as it were: and it is not nothingness, but the eternal.

2. The Basic Concern

     A) What is consciousness?

     B) Development of human consciousness

     C) the integral consciousness

 A) What is Consciousness

The American philosopher, Karin Gloy, pulls herself out of the affair in her book Theories of Consciousness by rephrasing a saying of St. Augustine analogously to “time”:

“If no one asks me what consciousness is, I know it; but if I have to explain it to a questioner, I do not know it.”

She rightly says that consciousness is the most self-evident thing in the world and yet at the same time the most resistant to theoretical understanding.

Consciousness is a quintessentially universal concept of our mental life, which we cannot think away from it without abolishing it ourselves. Regardless of which layers of mental life we think of, whether feelings and sensations such as joy, sadness, pain, whether perceptions, imagination, image consciousness or the acts of thinking and speaking, judging, wishing, expecting and the like, they are always accompanied by consciousness.

Consciousness is therefore a prerequisite that cannot be distanced from in such a way that it can be explained.

Consciousness as a riddle:

In a materialistic world view, the riddle of consciousness arises from the question of how it can be possible in principle for consciousness to arise from a certain arrangement and dynamics of matter. The proponents of the thesis that consciousness is mysterious argue that even a complete elucidation of all physiological brain processes cannot answer this question; it seems unclear why a person cannot simply function without consciously experiencing it. The conceivability of this situation reveals that the phenomenon of consciousness cannot be explained from a scientific point of view.

The philosopher Thomas Metzinger explains:

“The problem of consciousness today forms - perhaps together with the question of the origin of our universe - the outermost limit of human striving for knowledge”.

Hegel says: “The only revolution worthy of man consists in the bestial sacrifice of the earlier forms of consciousness”.

Could this be a challenge to the scientific framework of modern thought in favor of a further, more open form of thought, integral thought, which of course does not exclude the framework of thought, but demands other forms where they are more appropriate? Quantum physics has already taken a step along this path, although even physicists are reluctant to accept it.

   B) Development of Human Consciousness

Although the problem of consciousness cannot ultimately be explained, it is possible to point out various developments and aspects of consciousness.

If we look at the development of consciousness in the history of mankind, we can see that different types of consciousness have existed at different times.

We cannot even speculate about what the first consciousness of humans was, but we know from anthropology that fellow human beings from more ancient cultures, some of which still exist today, perceive the world differently and react to it.

Jean Gebser concluded from this and from etymological (study of words and their roots = etymology) and cultural-historical considerations that the development of human consciousness took place in stages. These are:

the archaic, the magical, the mythical, the mental and the newly emerging, integral structure of consciousness.

(Since descriptions of archaic consciousness tend towards speculation, I will not discuss it further). Gebser characterizes it through pre-temporality and pre-spatiality, it is a zero-dimensional consciousness. Since unconsciousness prevails here, this means that this phase is egoless.

Magical consciousness is characterized by the fact that the person begins to vaguely perceive the world as an object. At the same time, he knows himself to be in unity and harmony with it. Remnants of this way of seeing can still be found in remote areas today. In a certain sense, it can be said that in this structure, consciousness is not yet in man, but still rests in the world. Unconscious spacelessness and timelessness still prevail. The symbol of this consciousness is the point at which one size can represent other sizes “pars pro toto”. I am thinking of the “cow” as a representative of the “all-mother”, which is also the world.

A later development within magical consciousness was the discovery of magic. Man tries to banish and control the forces flowing towards him from outside. Totem and taboo are the natural means by which he tries to free himself from the overpowering influence of nature.

The transition from the magical to the mythical sphere of consciousness is described by Jean Gebser as a feeling of the times that has a natural character. Closely linked to this sense of time is “the soul”. “Time” and “soul” are expressions of psychic energy and are the preforms of “matter”. Jean Gebser distinguishes between magical consciousness as the awareness of nature and mythical consciousness as the awareness of the soul. Gebser recognizes the mythical structure in the seasonal rites of ancient civilizations. The rhythm of nature is perceived as a temporal phenomenon. The mythical sphere of consciousness now discovers the inner world of man, the soul. The isolated point of the motif “pars pro toto” acquires a two-dimensional structure, which can be represented in the circle enclosing surfaces, the symbol of the soul. The circle encompasses all polarities and binds them together in a balancing way. (Polarity - Yin and Yang)

The behaviour of the deity or the human being in the mythical phase of consciousness is characterized by the closing of the sensory organs, the silent inward seeing and inward hearing. The result is the myth, the word as a means of expressing what is seen and dreamed within.

The transition from mythical to mental consciousness can be described as the awakening of humanity. About two and a half millennia ago, a developmental leap of such enormous proportions took place that we cannot identify any comparable before or after. We can say without exaggeration that the forms of thought of all advanced civilizations were created within a few generations. What we call our logic (or the logic of other civilizations) was finally established at that time. To this day, the sages of all peoples and cultures refer to this time and the works created at that time. It is perhaps no exaggeration to claim that almost all the essential riddles that humans have to face in their world were found and discussed at that time.

This is why the philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term “Axis period of humanity” for this epoch: Around 500 B.C., the spiritual foundation of humanity, from which it still draws today, occurred simultaneously and independently in China, India, Persia, Palestine, Greece. (as a leap in consciousness or mutation, as Gebser calls it).

This axial time is referred to as the end of the mythical age, which was characterized by calm and self-reliance.

Once a unit has disintegrated, insight is also lost. Contradictions arise that did not exist before, reality has become different.

And that seems to me to be the essential pivotal point of the Axis Era: People have become aware of the contradictions they are involved in and have come to terms with them in their thinking and through their lives. Where this happened, the calm and self-reliance of the mythical age was irretrievably lost. Harmony, unity with the creation was now impossible, the contradictions prevented it; only the loss of paradise, the realization of the finiteness of every human existence, demands the search for meaning and becomes the lingering fear of dying before it could become reality. This loss of unity is magnificently depicted in our culture by the image of the fall of mankind.

Although the tranquillity and self-reliance of paradise is lost, it is precisely because of this that people are pointed on a path whose restlessness allows them to constantly seek to make real what has already been laid down in them.

Erich Fromm also believes that two fundamentally different answers are possible in the face of this event:

One answer says that we should return to pre-human, pre-conscious existence, abolish reason, become an animal and thus become one with nature again... the other answer to the question of human meaning would be to develop the specifically human abilities of reason and love and thus find a new harmony between man and nature - and between man and man. In the fall into sin lies both the horror of the loss of harmony and the promise, for only through it does love become possible, for only that which has previously fallen apart can be brought together. (Freedom - self-determination - love possible).

And Karl Jasper believes that there has only been one event since then with the same impact on world history: the scientific and technological age in Europe since the 17th century. While the Axis period encompassed a large part of the peoples of our world at the same time, this second event initially remained limited to the Occident. (Petrarch's Mount Ventoux experience.

C) The Integral Consciousness

Gebser's basic concern is to show that we are living in a turning point today, in which a new developmental leap from mental to integral consciousness is taking place. (Deficiency of mental consciousness).

Quote from Jean Gebser on integral consciousness (1949):

“The new consciousness which, anticipating itself, first took shape in the creative creations of artists (Picasso, Braque, etc.) thinkers (Teilhard de Chardin and Yogananda, etc.) and scientists (Einstein, Planck, etc.) will not become complete as long as it is not lived in everyday life. In what form can this happen? It will, of necessity, happen of its own accord. But the confusion of the current situation requires a certain willingness, open-mindedness and cooperation from each individual.  (integral life practice...example...Internet)

It will happen of its own accord, as the structure of the new way of realization has already begun to manifest itself in the most diverse areas of our lives with an intensity that can no longer be denied. (Internet, sustainability, environmental awareness, growing spirituality, globalization...Examples)

However, everyone can contribute through their attitude and actions to ensuring that the consolidation process (Gebser calls this concretization) takes place without the detour via a possible catastrophe... (Warning against...catastrophes in this phase of transition).

It is equally evident that in due course the new structure must also become conscious for the general public. The foundations of our ways of thinking have already been changed and restructured by facts. No one can escape this restructuring in the long term. Imperceptibly and naturally, the new structure of consciousness will become valid for everyone. And those who do not accept it, who want to remain in the old one, will be largely eliminated by the new force in the course of the next generations…” (the last will be the first - the meek, the ego-free...)

The necessity of overcoming the false form of the intrusion of time, as expressed in motorization, the hunt for worthless “goods” and the like, becomes all the clearer. We have created this environment, factory and office, ourselves; we have allowed this formlessness of emptiness to be imposed on us by empty motorization. It will change to the extent that we are able to realize what we have been given to do. Preparing for this remains a must for everyone. There are many hours in the day between paid work and sleep. Those who know how to use them will make the most of them. But not by acquiring “education” or “knowledge”, but by trying to live these hours not only purposefully, but meaningfully, day after day. What is called “free time” today should not be wasted, but should make us “free of time”...

The confusion in the life of the individual of our day, his unfulfillment in work, his isolation in the masses, his powerlessness in the face of the idling of anonymous powers, be they machines or bureaucracy, his insecurity and lack of freedom are only a reflection of the general situation. The unsustainability of this situation is just as obvious as the signs that it is being overcome. What applies to the general situation on a large scale also applies to the individual on a small scale. The restructuring of reality as a whole has already begun. It will depend on us whether the final breakthrough to it, and its consolidation takes place with our help or against our intransigence.

“Every confusion that each of us tries and is able to clarify in our daily lives and actions, every interception of fear, every grain of security that we acquire, every distancing - even the slightest - that we gain from ourselves, every prejudice and every resentment that we are able to discard, are necessary achievements that will consolidate the new reality and provide us and the general public with a wealth of meaning. Everyone is free to accomplish it”. (Jean Gebser: Ursprung und Gegenwart, Vol. 2, p. 672f, 675f)

3. Emergence of an Integral Culture

Gebser's work Ursprung und Gegenwart deals with the demands that today's times of crisis and uncertainty place on our consciousness and a new way of understanding reality.

But first, perhaps an attempt to get a better grasp of the term “reality”. For natural scientists today, it is probably the central concept, the anchor of their knowledge, in that they point out that it is not possible to understand the world as a reality whose state exists independently of observation, so that the separation of mind and matter and the subject-object problem would have to be questioned anew. In other words, quantum mechanics claims that reality is only constituted through experiment.  This is extremely exciting, because the Aristotelian logic, the either-or logic, has been softened as a result.

The construction of reality as a reflection of a given reality is called into question. This triggers fears. There are fears of ego dissolution, fears of loss of identity that shine through.

This also explains why the results of the new physics have not yet become anchored in everyday consciousness.

Gebser is of the opinion that we are faced with the task of developing a new consciousness in order to master today's emergency situation, which manifests itself in economic crises as well as in spiritual disorientation and political-social disorientation. Gebser calls this consciousness the integral consciousness.

In order to substantiate his hypothesis of the new integral consciousness, Gebser researched and described the history of human consciousness, because

“...the new cannot be understood if the old is not known”. (Vol II, p. 70) But the new cannot be explained by the old either. The idea of a progressive, continuous development of human consciousness is also antiquated for Gebser, because a truly decisive process does not proceed continuously, but in spurts. Gebser uses the term mutation for this. Such a mutation always occurs when the previously prevailing structure of consciousness is no longer sufficient to cope with the world. He now believes that he has found four stages of consciousness through which humanity has had to pass in the course of cultural development - and through which each individual must grow and mature in strict compliance with the basic bioenergetic law. I repeat once again the four structures of consciousness:

the archaic, the magical, the mythical, the mental and the newly emerging fifth, the integral structure of consciousness.

Five levels of reality, five intensifying (not expanding) and interrelated layers of human-spiritual world-affirmation, lie growing around each other like rings around a stone thrown into the water. Gebser leaves no doubt that it was not the human being who threw the stone into the water, but the impulse stemming from the origin, which is of a spiritual and divine nature. In integral consciousness, this event now becomes transparent to man (maturing towards the spiritual).

(Relationship to you, relationship to the divine - humility and devotion - development of the ability to love, freedom and self-determination)

According to Gebser, today's inability of rationalized and mechanized people to meet the You in love, instead of with power and control, is rooted in the death of God (the splitting off of the spirit). As long as we assume that there is no tangible God/origin that is invisible in man and unconsciously omnipresent in the origin, the I cannot really meet the You. Without seeing the divine in oneself and in the other, there can be no love between people. Gebser writes:

“The real bond from human being to fellow human being, however, always goes, mentally speaking, through God, the spiritual/origin. In him lies the valid point of reference. All other bonds between people who are unaware of this fundamental fact and leave it unconsidered are a transient intoxication, a transient feeling, a transient projection of the transient ego”. (Vol. III, p. 572) (cf. “Marriages are made in heaven”)

“After all, what is being human if not the attempt to be a humble co-worker of God!” (Vol. II, p. 13)

To become a humble coworker of God requires that I entrust myself more and more to an attitude of life that is similar to those words of Mary when she says:

“Let it be done to me as you have said!” (The Grail opened upwards)

In November 1932 in Spain, Gebser suddenly had the thought that was to be the basis for his further work: in a nutshell, this thought is: overcoming space and time. And he goes on to explain: “What does that mean? It means that we should consciously overcome space and time; it certainly does not mean that space and time should be abolished, but that we should free ourselves from both to a certain extent, but without slipping back into magical, unconscious spacetime”.

Gebser had received this basic idea in a sudden inspiration on the one hand, but was also able to discover it over many years of work as a fundamental concern of the creative endeavors of our time.

Gebser found his basic idea in physics, biology and psychology as well as in the poetry of our time (Rilke and Spain, The Grammatical Mirror) In his main work Ursprung und Gegenwart we find the results of years of cultural phenomenological and cultural philosophical work.

How we can apply our integral consciousness to the actual process of the evolution of self and society.

Integral consciousness is the philosophical and spiritual hope for the new century. It is a powerful new worldview and fundamental for all those who are seriously interested in understanding the world and changing it for the better.

It represents the next significant step in the evolution of our civilization. The transformative potential of this worldview shows us a way in which we ourselves can become the change we want to bring about and see in the world. Through a new understanding of the evolution of consciousness and culture, this expanded worldview, known as Integral Philosophy, offers realistic and pragmatic solutions to our growing global problems.

On the cusp of the 21st century, the pace of world development is being determined by increasingly rapid technological innovation. Future technologies promise ways out of global dangers such as climate change and solutions for vital tasks such as securing the world's food supply. However, their application also harbors new global risks for the environment and work, society and culture.

If one adheres to Jean Gebser's integral theme, this requires, as a “conditio sine qua non”, an awareness that masters the possibilities opened up by technological progress - and not the other way around. “For it is the intellectual possibilities,” says Gebser, “that ultimately determine the political, economic and sociological ones”. 

Ervin Laszlo, philosopher, systems scientist, futurologist and founder of the Club of Budapest, who has formulated a “Manifesto on Planetary Responsibility”, sets out ideas and approaches in his book The Third Millennium that have at least a spiritual affinity with the basic theses of integral consciousness set out by Gebser more than half a century ago.

Quote from Laszlo in his visions in Part 3 “Creative Paths of Human Evolution”:

“The vision of the world as a system in which everything is connected to everything else is neither naïve utopia nor pure speculation; it is the vision that is emerging at the forefront of the natural sciences and the humanities, that has been anticipated and made visible by visionary artists and writers, that is evident in religious and spiritual experience and in the emerging alternative and youth cultures”.

In connection with the emergence of an “integral culture”, a quote from Duane Elgin (.......), who analyzed surveys in the USA and worldwide in a similar way to Laszlo:

“...this new culture bridges contrasts, connects people, unites efforts, and discovers a higher level commonality. Its components include global ecological vigilance, the search for new values, a sustainable way of life and the development of a global mind through global communication systems and growing spirituality. People are searching for a greater understanding and a meaningful synthesis”.

Duane concluded that a new global culture and a new integral consciousness have taken root.

But how this newness differs mutatively from earlier cultures and earlier consciousness is nowhere more profoundly described than in Gebser's shift from mental to integral thinking.

The fundamental change towards an integral global consciousness of our present and future has been well-founded early on by a universalist like Jean Gebser, technically far-reaching and actually "newly" conceived with the help of original concepts (aperspectival, arational...) and thought connections.

According to Gebser, the path was already taken in the first half of the 20th century with a leap in growth (mutation), although the dangers feared by Havel and Laszlo have not been eliminated. Both Havel and Laszlo, like Gebser, attach decisive importance to a change in consciousness (For Gebser, integral does not mean having to “decide”, because the opposites cancel each other out in the integral and lose their irreversibility in perception. However, this does not appear possible in the perspective and its logical conclusions, but only in the A-perspective, A-logical).

4. Space-time-Constitution of the Structures of Consciousness

If we look at the development of consciousness in the history of humanity, we realize that different types of consciousness existed at different times. We cannot even speculate about what the first human consciousness was, but we know from anthropology that fellow human beings from more ancient cultures, some of which still exist today, perceive the world differently and react to it. Jean Gebser has concluded from this and from etymological (study of words and their roots = etymology) and cultural-historical considerations that the development of human consciousness can be demonstrated in 4 different structures that appeared in succession. He calls these structures of consciousness the archaic, the magical, the mythical and the mental. In our time, the breakthrough of a new, integral level of consciousness is taking place, the basic theme of which is the overcoming of the purely mental (linear) attachment to space and time through the concretion of time (as a quality of holistically realized presence that can be experienced without time).

The structures of consciousness are sometimes referred to as “phases of consciousness”. This gives the impression that the structures of consciousness follow one another, with one structure replacing the other. However, each structure remains effective even after a new structure has “mutated” out of it.

Although Gebser took the concept of mutation from biological terminology, it takes on a spiritual meaning in the context of human consciousness. It refers to a sudden, discontinuous breakthrough of the new. This is why Gebser speaks of structures of consciousness and not of “phases”. He also deliberately avoids the spatial expression “levels of consciousness” or “stages”, because the structures of consciousness are “not mere spatial structures”, but can above all also be structures of a spatiotemporal, even a spacetime-free nature.

Furthermore, Gebser is of the opinion that consciousness has not “developed” continuously, but that erratic, discontinuous transformations of structures have taken place. As soon as a structure becomes “deficient”, i.e. as soon as it is exhausted and begins to have a destructive effect, another structure of consciousness breaks through, which is not a continuous continuation of the old structure of consciousness, but something completely new. Gebser expresses the erratic, discontinuous character of the transformation of consciousness by speaking of “mutations of consciousness”.

Thinkers such as Hegel, Comte and Herbert Spencer believed that in the history of human consciousness they recognized a progressive higher development, in the course of which earlier forms of consciousness were recognized as “errors” and replaced by new, “better” forms of consciousness. No new structure is “better” than the old one from which it emerges. Every awareness is both a gain and a loss. It is a loss insofar as it removes the person from the whole. However, it is a gain insofar as it holds the opportunity for the growing dissociation of space and time and thus for overcoming space and time, for gaining space-time freedom, which again touches on Gebser's basic idea.

5. Summary of the integral formation of consciousness

The Karlsruhe philosophy professor Ernst Oldemeyer says of Gebser that “with his rich collection of evidence and symptoms from the arts and sciences, he had a pioneering effect on the understanding of an integral formation of consciousness, in which the analytical, delimiting subject-object rationality is transformed by synthetic-systemic thinking in networks”.

Integral consciousness means becoming whole, the restoration of the uninjured original state with the enriching inclusion of all previous achievements of consciousness. The integral person becomes transparent and aware of the various structures. He also becomes aware of the effects on his own life and destiny. He will master the deficient components through his own insight in such a way that they receive the degree of maturity and equal weight that is necessary for the preparation of concretization. Concretization is the key word.

“for only the concrete can be integrated, never the abstract...” (Vol.1, 167)

According to Jean Gebser, Jacopo da Pontormo, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, was the first to attempt the leap from mental to integral consciousness, for in the “Doctrine of Conic Sections” (16f39), Pontormo leaves three-dimensional space behind in the fulfilled spherical space.

He thus leaves the “emptiness” of only linear space and touches on that dimension which, as fulfillment, presupposes the at least latent presence of the temporal (Vol. 1, 168 f.)

The sphere is the meaningful symbol of the integral structure, especially since the moving sphere represents a four-dimensional structure. Jean Gebser also sees the same moving circular structure contained in classical music, for example, because every musical movement has to end in the same key in which it began. (Vol. 1, 170)

Jean Gebser sees our time as ripe for the transition from mental to integral consciousness to take place on a broad level.

Contributions to the Integral Worldview, Hartwig Volbehr:

“The work of Jean Gebser is of particular importance today because, through its affirmative and spiritual attitude towards the development of humanity, it counteracts the doomsday mood of many people in our era...The action permeated by consciousness works on the fate of humanity. This consciousness transforms the ego-like egoism of the mental-rational, material perception of the world and leads to the ego-free individuality of the integral world view. The ego-freedom of the new consciousness lives from the spiritual encounter between people and is tested in tolerance and brotherhood. The shaping of consciousness is the responsibility of each individual. However, he or she is not alone here, but can be guided by people who, like Jean Gebser, serve as spiritual guides for humanity through their special abilities and vocation”.

The “integral consciousness”. Its doyen is the Swiss poet-philosopher Jean Gebser, according to voices from America.

Lama Anagarika Govinda: With Jean Gebser, one of the greats of the spirit has passed away - one of the most important representatives of European culture that our time has produced - a man with the rare gift of uniting past and future in the alert presence of his being, his consciousness encompassing all areas of knowledge. Rarely has a thinker expressed his thoughts in such clear and poetically beautiful language, rarely has an artistically sensitive person shaped his visions so convincingly into a more powerful work of art with dimensions that transcend time and transcend the temporal, and rarely has a man of such creative talent been more warm-hearted and modest...In memory of Jean Gebser (1973)

6. Conclusion - Findings and Insights

What are the main impulses emanating from Jean Gebser's work?

a) Gebser's insight that consciousness is not identical with rational thinking and must not be confused with it; that consciousness is much broader and more comprehensive than mental-rational thinking, with which our epoch still identifies itself one-sidedly. Gebser distinguishes between archaic, magical, mythical, mental-rational and integral consciousness. (Development of human consciousness and individual human life)

b) Gebser's realization that consciousness is capable of development; that a development takes place both in individual life and collectively in the cultural history of mankind, which gives man the opportunity to discover and unfold fundamentally new possibilities of consciousness again and again. Gebser therefore understands our epoch as a transitional epoch in which we have the opportunity and also the task of moving beyond logical-conceptual thinking and discovering a new dimension of consciousness, which Gebser calls integral or aperspectival consciousness.

c) Gebser's realization that the phenomenon of time has a key function in this transitional epoch. The intrusion of time into our consciousness can be clearly recognized everywhere today: in science (e.g. time as the fourth dimension in physics), in art (e.g. in painting, which leaves behind the obligation to spatial and three-dimensional forms of representation, in modern narrative and theatrical forms, in which the orderly succession of time is dissolved) and in everyday life (even if only in the symptomatic and distressing experience: “I have no time”).

d) finally, Gebser's insight that in integral consciousness man can become newly aware of his spiritual and divine origin, that a sober, clear religiosity or spirituality can be found beyond magical trance, mythical image, mental concept. In this context, Gebser speaks of the translucent, of the transparency of the divine/spiritual origin in the present, in the here and now.

The Relevance of Jean Gebser today.  

Many leading contemporary thinkers, futurists, scientists and visionaries speak of an unprecedented global threat and crisis.        

Will we be able to avert what could develop into a collapse of evolution through an evolutionary leap of consciousness into integral thinking by pulling together as an extended human family? The challenge remains for each and every one of us to live up to our self-chosen name “Homo sapiens sapiens”, our ability to be doubly wise.  

Or as E.F. Schumacher says: “Our species is far too clever to survive without wisdom”.