Elena on Integral Consciousness

I’m very grateful to Ton for presenting this paper. Mr. Mahood’s synthesis of Gebser’s work is wonderfully useful, I should read Gebser himself soon to delight myself in his contribution to the understanding of consciousness.

There seem to be parallels between Gebser’s and Steiner’s approaches to the evolution of consciousness but I find Gebser’s very clear about the particular shifts, as if he had focused with even more detail on the particularities of each period.

I would like to approach the subject from here, I’ll simply write “Elena:” before I make a comment:

The Integral Structure of Consciousness
As can be guessed, then, Gebser feels that we are on the threshold of a new structure of consciousness, namely the Integral. For Gebser, this structure integrates those which have come before and enable the human mind to transcend the limitations of three- dimensionality. A fourth dimension, time, if you will, is added. This integration is not simply a union of seemingly disparate opposites, rather it is the “irruption of qualitative time into our consciousness.”[15] The supercession of time is a theme that will play an extremely important role in this structure. In fact, the ideas of arationality (as opposed to the rationality of the current structure), aperspectivity (as opposed to the perspective, spatially determined mentation of the current structure), and diaphaneity (the transparent recognition of the whole, not just parts) are significant characteristics of this new structure.

Elena: This is beautifully stated. _______End

Stated differently, the tensions and relations between things are more important, at times, than the things themselves; how the relationships develop over time takes precedence to the mere fact that a relationship exists. It will be this structure of consciousness that will enable us to overcome the dualism of the mental structure and actually participate in the transparency of self and life. This fourth structure toward which we are moving is one of minimum latency and maximum transparency; diaphaneity is one of its hallmarks. Transparency is not a “not seeing” as one does not see the pane of glass though which one looks out a window, rather one sees through things and perceives their true nature.

Elena: This too is wonderful. I would like to emphasize the idea that the tensions and relations between things are more important than the things themselves. How the relationships develop over time takes precedence to the mere fact that a relationship exists.

This fact is what can allow us to understand the idea of an objective reality that I’ve been working on before. The “objective reality” of the “thing itself” is one aspect and how the individual interacts with the “thing itself” is another. The “how” the interaction takes place is fundamental because it is determined by the level of being of the individual performing the “act” but even if the level of being of the individual performing the act is not very “conscious”, the act itself “sculpts” the individual’s being. There is a perfectly dynamic relationship between the individual and the object through the act. I don’t know that I would affirm that the tensions and relations between things are more important than the things themselves, everything is “important” but understanding the objective reality of each of the “things” that come into a relationship does not in any way take importance away from the relationship between them.

If for example, we take the act of eating, the objective reality of the individual is one aspect, the objective reality of food, another and the digestive process between them a third one. The process of digestion itself is as significant for the food as for the eater but it is even more significant if we can grasp the multiple dimensions that are being affected by the event.

In the purely instinctive dimension, a body is fed but there is no such a thing as a purely physical dimension. Human beings today hardly understand where matter comes from, how food exists, why carrots, apples or beans, what planets influence the making of such substances and how the Sun and the Earth itself actually play into their making. We also don’t understand in our full reasoning, how exactly each “ingredient” affects not only our physical self but the whole of our self. There is knowledge, a great deal of mental, rational knowledge about all these things but to be able to experience all these things through one’s consciousness is another matter. THAT is what all this is about. The limitations of the mind are such that the mental period of development has limited the extent of our reach as if we had cut our wings. Is it necessary for the human being to “learn” through our minds to be able to perceive through our “self”? Did coming down to Earth, the “Fall” mean that we had to taste the physical through the mind? Taste it to the point of intoxication? Destroy our selves in the unconsciousness of possession? Is it precisely because we are unconscious of the universality of our being that in the period of mental development we become “possessed” by “possession”, even though nothing physical that we’ll ever possess can be possessed longer than our short period of life? The fact that only a few in power posses what belongs to all precisely reveals the state of consciousness that conditions those facts. It is a state of consciousness in which the ego pretends to hold the “whole” through “physical ownership” but even the rich cannot avoid death and loose everything they own.

The shift into “integral” consciousness HAS to mean that the individual human being realizes that the race of “individualism” to own the planet for the few in power is simply self-destructive. To address only one example, the fact that although it is clear that the climate is being altered by the use and abuse of natural resources for the car industry, the businesses and governments related to it continue to pretend to exploit it to its full, even though millions of people are dying due to the “man made disasters” all over the world. It’s THAT lack of “integral” consciousness what determines the actions of these people. They are still fully tied to the mental consciousness tied to the physical plane in which what matters is the few who are “gaining” from the exploitation of resources.

Do I seem to have deviated from the subject of consciousness? If we cannot actualize our consciousness to our practical lives, then it is a consciousness that continues at the service of the mental stage that projects reality to fit its instinctive dimension through imagination. If we cannot actualize consciousness in our every day lives, we are simply in imagination. Consciousness cannot go back. “Instinctive” consciousness aimed at using the mental for personal satisfaction is a retrograde process in human evolution. People do not matter in that consciousness and that is exactly what we are seeing in capitalism. Capitalism justifies the death of no matter who or how many as long as those in power can “own” the goods. In “human” consciousness, people matter. In it, it doesn’t matter what is lost to save no matter how few.

This is what people didn’t understand in the fofblog: that people in the fellowship cult mattered more than the whole system of laws of the United States of America. That what is needed is to question the laws that legalize crime in no matter what institutionalized cult, corporation or agency. That laws that allow some people to abuse, exploit and psychologically annihilate people while still leaving them to function as slaves are not human laws. That people in every institution of our world today in which a few in power literally annihilate the rights of the many at their service are systematically abusing each and every individual’s rights as human beings. That in the “integral” period of consciousness, WE do not adhere to hierarchies of any kind to act on our own name and free will, that WE do not respect anyone above our selves, that WE respect everyone too much to belittle our selves or anyone else.

It is this consciousness what beats powerfully in the Tunisian and Egyptian and in the wikileaks phenomenon, We are shifting from the hierarchic order of things in which a few people submit others into the democratic order of things in which the majority submits itself to the law for the well being of the whole. But for that to happen we need a full reform of the laws so that governments SERVE the people instead of “dominate” them for an indefinite exploitation by the few.

It is a very great time what we are living today, it is a great privilege to be a witness to one’s times!

I need to go, I’ll check for corrections later.