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
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 Mental structure of
consciousness
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.
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)
Some Sanskrit derivations
• mā, ‘to measure, create, make’ from here we
have derivations like: mā-tṛ, ‘mother’, ‘creatrix’,
mā-yā, ‘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’;
manuṣya, mānava, ‘man’ etc., mati, ‘thought,
opinion’ etc.
• manyu, ‘high spirit or temper, ardour, zeal,
passion; rage, fury, wrath, anger, etc.’
“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)
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…”
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”.
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 reestablish 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)
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).
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)
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)
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 nearintegrality, to an identity that nonetheless diminished, since its
archaic authenticity seemed to be irrecoverable: it is a recompleted, 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)
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)
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.
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."
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
B Water
B Water
C Earth
Death
Water B
Water B
Earth C
Pyramidal Thinking
• First premise: ‘All men are mortal.’
A=B
• Second premise: ‘Socrates is a man.’
C=A
• Conclusion: ‘Therefore, Socrates is mortal’. C=B
creatures
mortal
men
Socrates
immortal
animals
Plato
others
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. Kant’s 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 Kant’s 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)
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)
Mirroring image in Paradoxical thinking
You would not find me
B
“You would not seek me, A
A
B
if you had not sought me.
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)
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.
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)
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)
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 Properties
Structure
2. Sign
3. Essence
4. Properties
5. Potentiality
Archaic:
Integral
Integrality
None
Prespatial
Pretemporal
Magic:
Non-directional
unitary, interwovenness or fusion
Unity by Unification,
Hearing/Hearkening
Preperspectival
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
Properties of Consciousness
Structure
6. Emphasis
a) Objective (external) b) Subjective (internal)
Archaic:
Unconscious
Spirit
None or Latency
Magic:
Nature
Mythical:
7. Consciousness
a) Degree
b) Relation
Deep sleep
Universe-related:
Breathing-spell
Emotion
Sleep
Outer-related
(Nature): Exhaling
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 Attitudes
Structure
8. Forms of Manifestation
9. Basic attitude and
agency of energy
10. Organ
emphasis
a) efficient
b) deficient
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 hairsplitting)
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 I
Structur
e
11. Forms of realization and thought
a) Basis
Archaic:
b) Mode
c) Process
d) Expression
Originary
Presentiment
Presentiment
Magic:
Empathy and
Identification,
Hearing
Pre-rational, precausal, analogical
Associative, analogizing,
sympathetic
interweaving
Vital experience
Mythical:
Imagination and
Utterance,
Contemplation and
Voicing
Irrational: noncausal, 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 II
Structure
e) Formulation
11. Forms of realization and thought
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
Archaic:
Magic:
Mythical:
Mental:
Integral:
Magic:
Mythologeme
13. Forms of Assertion or Articulation
Graven images
Idol
Ritual
Gods
Symbol
Mysteries
Philosopheme: God
Dogma (Allegory, Creed)
Method
(Eteologeme:) (Divinity)
(Synairesis)
(Diaphany)
Petition (Prayer): being heard
Wishes (Ideals: Fulfillment
"wish dreams")
Volition: attainment
(Verition: Present)
Forms of Relationships
Structure
a) temporal
Archaic:
_
14. Relationships
b) social
_
c) general
Universal or
("cosmic“)
Magic:
Undifferentiated
Tribal world [clan/kith and
kin] natural
Egoless terrestrial
Mythical:
Predominantly pastoriented [recollection,
muse]
Parental world
[Ancestor-worship]
predominantly matriarchal
Egoless "we"oriented psychic
Mental:
Predominantly futureoriented [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 Motto
Structure
15.Localization of
the soul
Archaic:
(Universe)
Magic:
16. Forms of bond or tie
17. Motto
_
(All)
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