Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness

by Jeremy D. Johnson

Seeing Through the World introduces the reader to the work of German-Swiss philosopher, poet, and intellectual mystic Jean Gebser (1905-1973). Writing in the midcentury during a period of intense cultural transformation and crisis in Europe, Gebser intuited a series of mutational leaps in the history of human consciousness, the latest of which emerging was the “integral” structure, marked by the presence of time-freedom. Gebser’s insights on the phenomenology of human consciousness has brought profound intellectual depth and spiritual transmission to the field of integral philosophy and consciousness studies, influencing the works of American historians such as William Irwin Thompson and the philosopher Ken Wilber. Further syncretic corroboration links Gebser’s integral age to those of the Indian revolutionary and yogi Sri Aurobindo’s “integral yoga” and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary mysticism.

Arguably, Gebser’s structures of consciousness are as significant an ontological insight as C. G. Jung’s “reality of the psyche.” Yet, until now, very little secondary literature has been available in the English-speaking world. Jeremy Johnson, the current president of the International Jean Gebser Society who has spent the last decade as an integral scholar and researcher, produces this introductory volume on the life and writings of Jean Gebser. Part companion piece to Gebser’s magnum opus, The Ever-Present Origin, part inspired treatise on an integral futurism, Jeremy guides the reader through the structures of consciousness and incepts integral scholarship as a divination that scries the age of ecological collapse and the ontological recodings of the Anthropocene.

It is the first volume in the NuraLogicals series, produced in partnership with Nura Learning.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

212 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2019

About the author

Jeremy D. Johnson, MA is the founder/director of Nura Learning and has worked in the online learning field for five years with companies such as Evolver and the Open Center in New York City. He is also a contributing editor at Reality Sandwich magazine. He has published on OMNI, Conscious Lifestyle Magazine, Kosmos Journal, Evolve Magazine, and Evolve and Ascend. Jeremy is the current president of the International Jean Gebser Society.

Reviews

[Konrad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction to Gebser. My only realistic (and minor) criticism is that Johnson is guilty, in parts, of applying a linear/positive historicism, especially by injecting contemporary 'progressive' stances in relation to consciousness, while simultaneously reinforcing that Gebser made it explicit that this mistake is to be avoided in analysis.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic small book about a large book.

Jean Gebser moves me in a way that no other figures from the "Integral Scene" ever have. His ability to think and be with the particulars, and to de-hierarchize his understanding of mutating structures of consciousness is an extremely helpful tool for integrating time.

Jeremy Johnson introduces the major themes and concepts of Ever Present Origin. I would have liked even more concretion and less hinting-at the integral structure with inspiring turns of phrase. Maybe that's still to come. Will prepare you to read Gebser and will inspire you to spiral off in related directions.

[Oskar Knutsen Brennhagen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Traces of a new Real.

[Elior Elkayam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good summary of Gebser's philosophy. I recommend reading this book if you don't have the patience for reading Gebser's Ever-Present Origin. There are contemporary examples which are somewhat useful. My criticism is that Gebser keeps talking about "concretion", i.e. That the integral structure is all about concretizing abstractions, but this book didn't seem to me to actually concretize these very airy concepts such as systasis, synerasis and so on. What these words mean is still a mystery to me. I wish there were more concrete examples.

[Yitzchok · Rating 2 out of 5]

Favorite excerpts:

As William Faulkner remarked in Requiem for a Nun, “The past is never dead, it’s not even past.” – page 4

Escalating between a powerlessness to control the forces unleashed by the perspective world on the one hand, and a total self-intoxicating power on the other – between “anxiety” and “delight” – is our modern condition. Generations after Gebser wrote about it, this crisis has only become more acute. – page 56

In this leap of thinking style from pyramidic linearity to spherical systasis, Gepser is perhaps unique as an integral thinker in that he made this jump so early (beginning with his research in the 1930s). – page 72

All mutations are phenomenologically co-present in human consciousness. “We are convinced,” Gebster writes, “of the continuous effectuality of the ‘earlier’ structures in us and the incipient, i.e., present effectuality of the so-called ‘future structure.’” Remember Rilke: “There is no place that does not see you.” – pages 80-81

Gebser asks us to look specifically to the steam engine, invented by James Watt in 1782, as the first indicator of time breaking forth into consciousness: “The machine, in the form of the steam engine, is the progenitrix of motor forces that rent asunder the static, spatial construction that has been attained since 1500.” – page 139

The qualities of this “quiet jubilation” and its transfiguration of consciousness and clarity and “transparent light” lends us further insight into the qualities of tomorrow’s homo integer. This final criteria is an expansion of the previous list, and offered to us towards the end of Gebser’s life in his final book, Decline and Participation:

Haste is replaced by silence and the capacity for silence;
Goal oriented, purposive thought is replaced by unintentionalness;
The pursuit of power is replaced by the genuine capacity for love;
Quantitative idle motion is replaced by the qualitative spiritual process;
Manipulation is replaced by the patient acceptance of the providential powers;
Mechanistic classification and organization is replaced by the “being-in-order”;
Prejudice is replaced by their renunciation of value judgments, that is to say, the emotional short- circuit is replaced by unsentimental tolerance;
Action is replaced by poise;
Homo faber is replaced by homo integer;
The divided human being is replaced by the whole human being;
The emptiness of the limited world is replaced by the open expanse of the open world.
- Pages 169-171

Ken Wilber has adapted Gebser’s concepts for his own, developmentally emphasized Integral Theory. - Page 185

[Antonio · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that reveals the Time entrapment and how to integrate it in order to be free from it.