JEAN GEBSER AND INTEGRAL : A CULTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE PRESENT

Jean Gebser (1905-1973) was a poet, , and phenomenologist of consciousness who is best known in the English speaking world for his magisterial The Ever-Present Origin (1949). Writing in the midcentury during a period of intense cultural transformation and crisis in Eu- rope, Gebser intuited a series of mutational leaps in the of human consciousness, the lat- est of which emerging was the “integral” structure, marked by the presence of -freedom and transparency. Gebser’s insights on the phenomenology of human consciousness has brought profound intellectual depth and spiritual transmission to the field of integral and consciousness studies, influencing the works of American historians such as and the philosopher . Further syncretic corroboration links Gebser’s integral age to those of the Indian revolutionary and yogi ’s “integral yoga” and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary mysticism.

This presentation will briefly introduce Gebser’s structures of consciousness—the archaic, mag- ic, mythic-, mental and integral—through concrete examples in art and culture before moving into a discussion of our mediated present. The present, as read through Gebser’s methodology (Kulturphilosophie), aids us in our attempt to generate new, but latent, world-ings amidst the planetary crisis of ecological devastation, late-capitalism and the Anthropocene. The integral- aperspectival world, as Gebser suggests, is not only about waring the past, but realizing the future. In some small way, this presentation hopes to convey to participants that revisiting Gebser’s insights into the phenomenology of presence (Ursprung) would offer great to contemporary integral scholarship in our collective efforts to move from crisis to mutation, in- dustrialization to planetization, and planetary collapse to planetary culture.

APRIL 18 | 6:30—8:30 PM

LIVE STREAMED: https://ciis.zoom.us/j/564599126

Jeremy Johnson, MA, is a scholar, writer, and editor for Revelore Press and founder of Nura Learning. He received his masters in Consciousness Studies from Goddard College, where he studied the intersections of media ecology, the structures of consciousness and depth psycholo- gy. He is the author of Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness (2018) and an editor for Mutations: Art, Consciousness and the Anthropocene (2019). Jeremy is the current president of the International Jean Gebser Society. His writing has been featured in OMNI, Conscious Lifestyle Magazine, Kosmos Journal, Integral Leadership Review, Evolve Magazine, and Evolve and Ascend. Find out more on his website, Twitter, or Patreon pages.